in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... mooc's, educational materials,...) images generously made available by the internet achive. nietzsche his life and works [philosophies ancient and modern] by anthony m. ludovici author of 'who is to be master of the world?' and 'notes to zarathustra' preface by dr. oscar levy constable & company ltd london 1910 introduction the commission for a book on nietzsche, to form the latest addition to a series of famous philosophers, is most certainly a sign that the age of adversity, through which the earlier nietzscheans had to struggle, has at last come to an end. for ten consecutive years they had had no reply whatever to their propaganda, and their publications, loud as some of them were, proved as ineffective as cannon shots fired into the eternity of interplanetary space. finally, however, when the echo was at last heard, it gave back nothing like the original sound: it was an echo of groans and moans, an echo of roaring disapproval and hissing mockery. yet the years rolled on and on--and so did the printing-presses--hissing and roaring as much as ever--but at last, their thunders grew tamer and more subdued--the tempest of their fury seemed to die away in the distance--occasionally a slight mutter was still to be heard, but no more flashes and hisses--and suddenly a streak of blue was observed over the horizon, followed by a ray and smile of sunlight--and a soft zephyr of subdued and tentative compliments--and when our nietzsche edition had begun to appear in its stately volumes we were enabled to receive from our former enemies on both sides of the atlantic "respectful congratulations." and now all my brave friends are radiant with joy and optimism. like the wanderer in the fairy tale, while the storm of disgust and loud reproach was raging, they wrapped themselves all the more closely in their cloaks, and no impudent wind could tear a shred of garments from them, but now that the sun of approval has set in, they would fain get out of their armour and enjoy the fine weather as a reward for past perils. has not the spring come at last? are not the gay flowers at our feet meant to welcome the victorious warriors?... are not the ladies --ladies that from time immemorial have loved the warrior (especially when he is successful)--smiling at us more gloriously even than the sun?... sun, ladies, flowers, smiles--was there ever a nicer combination?... but, alas! there is an unimaginative creature among the guests, an earnest face among the cheerful, a disbeliever among the faithful, a dark countenance amid the bright assembly;--a being who, in glaring contrast to the sun, the smiles, and the gaily-coloured dresses and sunshades, is keeping a tight hold upon a dark umbrella--for he has an uncontrollable mistrust of english weather! and i may claim that i not only know the meteorological conditions of england, but also those of the whole of modern europe. i know them so well that i have the greatest doubts whether nietzsche's influence will be strong enough to withstand the terrible hurricane of democracy which in our age is sweeping everything before it, and leaving a level plain in its rear. nietzsche may have been ever so right, but truth and righteousness do not always prevail in this world of ours, indeed, they don't: the bible itself, that otherwise optimistic book, lets this grand secret out once and only once--in the story of job. the "happy ending" in that book will deceive no realistic observer: it was added to the story, as it is added to modern plays and novels, for the edification and comfort of the audience: the true story of job was without it, as was the true story of many a brave man, as was the true story of that great pope, who on his deathbed came out with the confession: "dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem, _propterea_ morior in exsilio,"[1] a confession which went in the very teeth of his own virtue-rewarding creed with its happy-go-lucky trust in the moral order of the universe. nietzsche may have been right, _therefore_ he may be unsuccessful. i myself regard nietzsche's views on art, religion, psychology, morality, as extremely sound; i think they are proved both by history and by common experience; i even suspect that they could be confirmed by science, if only science would give up looking at the world through the coloured spectacles of democratic prejudice ... but then, it is so difficult to give up this democratic prejudice; for it is by no means simply a political opinion. democracy, as a political creed, need terrify no one; for political creeds succeed each other like waves of the sea, whose thunder is loud and whose end is froth; but the driving power behind democracy is not a political one, it is religious --it is christianity. a mighty religion still, a religion which has governed the world for two thousand years, which has influenced all philosophies, all literatures, all laws, all customs up to our own day, till it has finally filtered into our hearts, our blood, our system, and become part and parcel of ourselves without our being aware of it. at the present moment we are all instinctive christians. even if this christian religion has been severely wounded by nietzsche's criticism--and i believe this to be the case--i beg to suggest that a wounded lion may still have more strength than all the fussy, political, rationalistic, agnostic, nonconformist, nietzschean and super-nietzschean mice put together. it was all the braver, therefore, on nietzsche's part to assail such a mighty enemy, and to attack him exactly on the spot where attack was most needed, if victory were to be won. nietzsche clearly recognised that the canons of criticism had until now only been directed against the outer works of that stalwart fortress--at dogmatic, at supernatural, at ecclesiastical christianity, and that no one had yet dared to aim right at the very heart of the creed-its morality, which, while the shamfighters were at work outside, was being enormously strengthened and consolidated from within. this morality, however, nietzsche recognised as intimately connected with modern democracy--and behind the rosebush of democracy with its flowery speeches and its fraternityand liberty-blossoms, nietzsche clearly saw the dragon of anarchy and dissolution lurking. it was the mortal fear of annihilation and ruin which gave nietzsche the daring to fulminate against our religion with such imperishable dithyrambics. he was the first to mean the phrase, "_écrasez l'infâme!_" which in voltaire's mouth was only an epigrammatic exclamation. for nietzsche's great forerunner on the continent, wolfgang goethe, who was also just as well aware how it would all end, was much too prudent a man to lay his innermost heart bare to his enemies, he--the grand old hypocrite of weimar--gauged the power of the contrary current correctly, and wisely left the open combat against christianity and democracy to his great colleague--to that man of tragic wit, to heinrich heine. and there were others on the continent--very few to be sure, and no politician or man of science or woman among them--others who saw the drift of modern ideas: all of them poets. for poets are prophets: their sensitive organisation feels the fall of the glass first, while their pluck and their pride, their duty and their desire to face the storm drive them into the very thick of it. the german poet hebbel, the french novelist stendhal, were amongst them. a new matthew arnold --the object of my wish for this country--would perhaps like to include another poet, the frenchman alfred de vigny, in whose journal are to be found those awe-inspiring words against democracy: "alas! it is thou, democracy, that art the desert! it is thou who hast shrouded and bleached everything beneath thy monticles of sand! thy tedious flatness has covered everything and levelled all! for ever and ever the valley and the hill supplant each other; and only from time to time a man of courage is seen: he rises like a sand-whirl, makes his ten paces towards the sun, and then falls like powder to the ground. and then nothing more is seen save the eternal plain of endless sand." goethe and hebbel, stendhal and heinrich heine, alfred de vigny and friedrich nietzsche, all made their ten steps towards the sun and are now sleeping peacefully beneath the dry sands of christian democracy. their works are read, to be sure; but alas! how few understand their meaning! i see this and i shudder. and i remember another moment in my life--a moment of perturbation too--a moment in which an idea overcame me, which has been haunting me ever since. i was on a visit to mrs. förster-nietzsche, in her villa high up amongst the hills of weimar, waiting in the drawing-room for my hostess to enter. it was the first time that i had stood upon the holy ground where friedrich nietzsche gave up his heroic soul, and i was naturally impressed; my eyes wandered reverently around the scene, and i suddenly noticed some handwriting on the wall. the handwriting consisted of a powerful letter n which the ingenious builder had engraved profusely upon the oak panels of the room. the n, of course, reminded me of another big n, connected with another big name,--the n which used to be engraved together with the imperial crown and eagle upon the plate and regalia of napoleon bonaparte. there was another victim of democracy: the man who, elevated by its revolutionary wave, tried to stifle and subdue the anarchical flood, was swallowed up as ignominiously as its other implacable opponent, the plucky parson's son of the vicarage of röcken. the mighty sword in the beginning and the mighty pen at the end of the last century were alike impotent against--fate. no doubt, i saw in that moment, as though lit up by a flashlight, the fate of europe clearly before my eyes. a fate--an iron fate. a fate unavoidable for a continent that will have no more guides, no more great men. a fate unavoidable for an age that spills its best blood with the carelessness of ignorance. a fate unavoidable for a people that is driven by its very religion to disobedience and anarchy. and i thought of my own race, which has seen so many fates, so many ages, so many empires decline--and there was i, the eternal jew, witnessing another catastrophe. and i shuddered, and when my hostess entered i had not yet recovered my breath. gruesome, isn't it? but what if it should not come true? "there are no more prophets to-day," says the talmud scornfully. well, unlike my ancestor jonah, who became melancholic when his announcement of the downfall of nineveh was not fulfilled, i beg to say that i on the contrary shall be extremely delighted to have proved a false prophet. but i shall keep my umbrella all the same. oscar levy. 54 russell square, london, w.c. [1] 'i have loved justice and i have hated iniquity, _therefore_ i die in exile.' contents introduction chapter i life and works chapter ii nietzsche the amoralist chapter iii nietzsche the moralist chapter iv nietzsche the evolutionist chapter v nietzsche the sociologist summary and conclusion books useful to the student of nietzsche abbreviations used in referring to nietzsche's works d. d. = dawn of day. z. = thus spake zarathustra. g. e. = beyond good and evil. g. m. = the genealogy of morals. aph. = aphorism. chapter i life and works "holy be thy name to all coming generations! in the name of all thy friends, i, thy pupil, cry out our warmest thanks to thee for thy great life. "thou wast one of the noblest and purest men that ever trod this earth. "and although this is known to both friend and foe, i do not deem it superfluous to utter this testimony aloud at thy tomb. for we know the world; we know the fate of spinoza! around nietzsche's memory, too, posterity may cast shadows! and therefore i close with the words: peace to thy ashes!"[1] this view, expressed by peter gast, nietzsche's staunchest friend and disciple, at his master's graveside, in august 1900, may be regarded as typical of the nietzsche enthusiast's attitude towards his master. on the other hand we have the assurance of nietzsche's opponents and enemies that nothing could have been more utterly disastrous to modern society, more pernicious, dangerous, and ridiculous than nietzsche's life-work. at the present day nietzsche is so potent a force and his influence is increasing with such rapidity that, whatever our calling in life may be, it behoves us to know precisely what he stands for, and to which of the opinions above given we should subscribe. as a matter of fact, the inquirer into the life and works of this interesting man will find that he has well-nigh as many by-names as he has readers, and not the least of our difficulties in speaking about him will be to give him a fitting title, descriptive of his mission and the way in which he understood it. some deny his right to the title "philosopher"; others declare him to be a mere anarchist; and a large number regard all his later works as no more than a shallow though brilliant reversal of every accepted doctrine on earth. in order to be able to provoke so much diversity of opinion, a man must be not only versatile but forcible. nietzsche was both. there is scarcely a subject in the whole range of philosophical thought which he does not attack and blow up; and he hurls forth his hard, polished missiles in a manner so destructive, and at the same time with such accuracy of aim, that it is no wonder a chorus of ill-used strongholds of traditional thought now cry out against him as a disturber and annihilator of their peace. yet, through all the dust, smoke, and noise of his implacable warfare, there are both a method and a mission to be discerned--a method and a mission in the pursuit of which nietzsche is really as unswerving as he seems capricious. throughout his life and all his many recantations and revulsions of feeling, he remained faithful to one purpose and to one aim--the elevation of the type man. however bewildered we may become beneath the hail of his epigrams, treating of every momentous question that has ever agitated the human mind, we still can trace this broad principle running through all his works: his desire to elevate man and to make him more worthy of humanity's great past. even in his attack on english psychologists, naturalists, and philosophers, in _the genealogy of morals_, what are his charges against them? he says they debase man, voluntarily or involuntarily, by seeking the really operative, really imperative and decisive factor in history precisely where the intellectual pride of man would least wish to find it, i.e. in _vis inertiæ_, in some blind and accidental mechanism of ideas, in automatic and purely passive adaptation and modification, in the compulsory action of adjustment to environment. again, in his attack on the evolutionists' so-called "struggle for existence," of which i shall speak more exhaustively later, it is the suggestion that life--mere existence in itself--is worthy of being an aim at all, that he deprecates so profoundly. and, once more, it is with the view of elevating man and his aspirations that he levels the attack. whatever we may think of his methods, therefore, at least his aim was sufficiently lofty and honourable, and we must bear in mind that he never shirked the duties which, rightly or wrongly, he imagined would help him to achieve it. what was nietzsche? if we accept his own definition of the philosopher's task on earth, we must place him in the front rank of philosophers. for, according to him, the creation of new values, new principles, new standards, is the philosopher's sole _raison d'être_; and this he certainly accomplished. if, on the other hand, with all the "school" philosophers, we ask him to show us his system, we shall most surely be disappointed. in this respect, therefore, we may perhaps need to modify our opinion of him. be that as it may, it is safe to maintain that he was a poet of no mean order; not a mere versifier or rhapsodist, but a poet in the old greek sense of the word, _i.e._ a maker, in our time such men are so rare that we are apt to question whether they exist at all, for poetasters have destroyed our faith in them. goethe was perhaps the last example of the type in modern europe, and although we may recall the scientific achievements of men like michelangelo, leonardo da vinci and galileo, we are not sufficiently ready to associate their divining and intuitive power in the department of science with their purely artistic and poetic achievements, despite the fact that the two are really inseparable. knowing the high authority with which poets of this order are wont to sneak, it might be supposed that we should approach nietzsche's innovations in the realm of science with some respect, not in spite of, but precisely owing to, his great poetic genius. unfortunately to-day this no longer follows. too thoroughly have we divorced science from emotion and feeling (very wrongly, as even herbert spencer and buckle both declared), and now, wherever we see emotion or a suggestion of passion, we are too apt to purse our lips and stand on our guard. when we consider that nietzsche was ultimately to prove the bitterest enemy of christianity, and the severest critic of the ecclesiastic, his antecedents seem, to say the least, remarkable. his father, karl ludwig nietzsche, born in 1813, was a clergyman of the german protestant church; his grandfather had also taken orders; whilst his grandmother on his father's side was descended from a long line of parsons. nor do things change very much when we turn to his mother's family; for his maternal grandfather, oehler, was also a clergyman, and, according to nietzsche's sister, he appears to have been a very sound, though broad, theologian. yet, perhaps, it is we who are wrong in seeing anything strange in the fact that a man with such orthodox antecedents should have developed into a prophet and reformer of nietzsche's stamp; for we should remember that only a long tradition of discipline and strict conventionality, lasting over a number of generations, is able to rear that will-power and determination which, as the lives of most great men have shown, are the first conditions of all epoch-making movements started by single individuals. friedrich nietzsche was born at röcken near lützen, in the prussian province of saxony, on the 15th of october 1844. from his earliest childhood onwards the boy seems to have been robust and active and does not appear to have suffered from any of the ordinary ailments of infancy. in the biography written by his sister much stress is laid upon this fact, while the sometimes exceptional health enjoyed by his parents and ancestors is duly emphasised by the anxious biographer. elisabeth nietzsche (born in july 1846), the biographer in question, is perfectly justified in establishing these facts with care; for we know that our poet philosopher died insane, and many have sought to show that his insanity was hereditary and could be traced throughout his works. nietzsche's father died in 1849, and in the following year the family removed to naumburg. there the boy received his early schooling, first at a preparatory school and subsequently at the gymnasium--the grammar school--of the town. as a lad, it is said that he was fond of military games, and of sitting alone, and it appears that he would recline for hours at his grandmother nietzsche's feet, listening to her reminiscences of the great napoleon. towards the end of 1858 mrs. nietzsche was offered a scholarship for her son, for a term of six years, in the landes-schule, pforta, so famous for the scholars it produced. at pforta, where the discipline was very severe, the boy followed the regular school course and worked with great industry. his sister tells us that during this period he distinguished himself most in his private studies and artistic efforts, though even in the ordinary work of the school he was decidedly above the average. it was here, too, that he first became acquainted with wagner's compositions, and a word ought now perhaps to be said in regard to his musical studies. music, we know, played anything but a minor rôle in his later life, as his three important essays, _richard wagner in bayreuth_, _the case of wagner_, and _nietzsche contra wagner_, are with us to prove. i fear, however, that it will be impossible to go very deeply into this question here, save at the cost of other still more important matters which have a prior claim to our attention. let it then suffice to say that, as a boy, nietzsche's talent had already become so noticeable that for some time the question which agitated the elders in his circle of relatives and friends, among whom were some competent judges, was whether he should not give up all else in order to develop his great gift. in the end, however, it was decided that he should become a scholar, and although he never entirely gave up composing and playing the piano, music never attained to anything beyond the dignity of a serious hobby in his life. in saying this i naturally exclude his critical writings on the subject, which are at once valuable and important. nietzsche's six years at pforta were responsible for a large number of his subsequent ideas. when we hear him laying particular stress upon the value of rigorous training free from all sentimentality; when we read his views concerning austerity and the importance of law, order and discipline, we must bear in mind that he is speaking with an actual knowledge of these things, and with profound experience of their worth. the excellence of his philological work may also be ascribed to the very sound training he received at pforta, and the latin essay which he wrote on an original subject (theognis, the great aristocratic poet of megara) for the leaving examination, laid the foundation of all his subsequent opinions on morality. nietzsche left pforta in september 1864 and entered the university of bonn, where he studied philology and theology. the latter he abandoned six months later, however, and in the autumn of 1865 he left bonn for leipzig, whither his famous teacher ritschl had preceded him. between 1865 and 1867 his work at leipzig proved of the utmost importance to his career. hellenism, schopenhauer and wagner now entered into his life and became paramount influences with him, and each in its way determined what his ultimate mission was to be. hellenism drew him ever more strongly to philology and to the problem of culture in general; schopenhauer directed him to philosophy, and wagner taught him his first steps in a subject which was to be the actual _leit-motif_ of his teaching--i refer to the question of art. his work during these two years, arduous though it was, in no way affected his health, and, despite his short-sight, he tells us that he was then able to endure the greatest strain without the smallest trouble. being of a robust and energetic nature, however, he was anxious to discover some means of employing his bodily strength, and it was for this reason that, regardless of the interruption in his work, he was enthusiastic at the thought of becoming a soldier. in the autumn of 1867 he entered the fourth regiment of field artillery, and it is said that he performed his duties to the complete satisfaction of his superiors. but, alas, this lasted but a short time; for, as the result of an unfortunate fall from a restive horse, he was compelled to leave the colours before he had completed his term of service. in october 1868, after a serious illness, the student returned to his work at leipzig, and now that event took place which was perhaps the most triumphant and most decisive in his career. it was nietzsche's ambition to get his doctor's degree as soon as possible and then to travel. meanwhile, however, others were busy determining what he should do. some philological essays which he had written in his student days, and which, owing to their excellence, had been published by the "rheinisches museum," had attracted the attention of the educational board of bâle. one of the board communicated with ritschl concerning nietzsche, and the reply the learned scholar sent was so favourable that the university of bâle immediately offered ritschl's favourite pupil their professorship of classical philology. this was an exceptional honour, and, to crown it, the university of leipzig quickly granted nietzsche his doctor's degree without further examination --truly a remarkable occurrence in straitlaced and formal germany! his first years at bâle are chiefly associated in our minds with his inaugural address: "homer and classical philology," with his action in regard to the franco-german war, and with his lectures on the "future of our educational institutions." i can do no more than refer to these here, but as regards the war it is necessary to go into further detail. in july 1870, hostilities opened between france and prussia. now, although nietzsche had been forced to become a naturalised swiss subject in order to accept his appointment at bâle, he was loth to remain inactive while his own countrymen fought for the honour of germany. he could not, however, fight for the germans without compromising switzerland's neutrality. he therefore went as a hospital attendant, and in this capacity, after obtaining the necessary leave, he followed his former compatriots to the war. according to elisabeth nietzsche, it was this act of devotion which was the cause of all her brother's subsequent ill-health. in ars-sur-moselle, while tending the sick and wounded, nietzsche contracted dysentery from those in his charge. with his constitution undermined by the exertions of the campaign, he fell very seriously ill, and had to be relieved of his duties. long before he was strong enough to do so, however, he resumed his work at bâle; and now began that second phase of his life during which he never once recovered the health he had enjoyed before the war. in january 1872 nietzsche published his first book, _the birth of tragedy_. it is really but a portion of a much larger work on hellenism which he had always had in view from his earliest student days, and it may be said to have been prepared in two preliminary lectures delivered at bâle, under the title of the "greek musical drama," and "socrates and tragedy." the work was received with enthusiasm by wagnerians; but among nietzsche's philological friends it succeeded in rousing little more than doubt and suspicion. it was a sign that the young professor was beginning to ascribe too much importance to art in its influence upon the world, and this the dry men of science could not tolerate. between 1873 and 1876, nietzsche, while still at bâle, published four more essays which, for matter and form, proved to be among the most startling productions that germany had read since schopenhauer's prime. their author called these essays _thoughts out of season_, and his aim in writing them was undoubtedly the regeneration of german culture. the first was an attack on german philistinism, in the person of david strauss, the famous theologian of tübingen, whom nietzsche dubbed the "philistine of culture," and was calculated to check the extreme smugness which had suddenly invaded all departments of thought and activity in germany as the result of the recent military triumph. the second, _the use and abuse of history_, was a protest against excessive indulgence in the "historical sense," or the love of looking backwards, which threatened to paralyse the intelligence of germany in those days. in it nietzsche tries to show how history is for the few and not for the many, and points out how rare are those who have the strength to endure the lesson of experience. in the third, _schopenhauer as educator_, nietzsche pits his great teacher against all other dry-as-dust philosophers who make for stagnation in philosophy. the fourth, richard wagner in bayreuth, contains nietzsche's last word of praise as a friend of the great german musician. in it we already see signs of his revulsion of feeling; but on the whole it is a panegyric written with love and conviction. the fourth, richard wagner in bayreuth, contains nietzsche's last word of praise as a friend of the great german musician. in it we already see signs of his revulsion of feeling; but on the whole it is a panegyric written with love and conviction. the only one of the four _thoughts out of season_ which created much comment was the first, concerning david strauss, and this gave rise to a loud outcry against the daring young philologist. nietzsche had been very unwell throughout this period. dyspepsia and headaches, brought on partly by overwork, racked him incessantly, and, in addition, he was getting ever nearer and nearer to a final and irrevocable breach with the greatest friend of his life--richard wagner. after obtaining leave from the authorities he went to sorrento, where, in the autumn of 1876, he began work on his next important book, _human, all-too-human_, the book which was to part him for ever from wagner. in february 1878 the first volume was ready for the printer, and was published almost simultaneously with wagner's parsifal, which work, as is well known, was the death-blow to nietzsche's faith in his former idol. in _human, all-too-human_, nietzsche as a philosopher is not yet standing on his own legs, as it were. he is only just beginning to feel his way, and is still deeply immersed in the thought of other men--more particularly that of the english positivists. as a work of transition, however, _human, all-too-human_ is exceedingly interesting, as are also its sequels _miscellaneous opinions and apophthegms_ (1879) and _the wanderer and his shadow_ (1880). but in none of these, as the author himself admits, is there to be found that certainty of aim and treatment which characterised his later writings. in 1879, owing to ill-health, nietzsche was compelled to resign his professorship at the university of bâle, and the spring of that year saw him an independent man with an annual pension of 3000 francs, generously granted to him by the board of management on the acceptance of his resignation. with this pension and a small private income derived from a capital of about £1400, he was not destitute, though by no means affluent, and when we remember that he was obliged to defray the expenses of publication in the case of almost every one of his books, we may form some idea of his actual resources. from this time forward nietzsche's life was spent in travelling and writing. venice, marienbad, zürich, st. moritz in the ober-engadine, sils maria, tautenberg in thuringia, genoa, etc., etc. were among the places at which he stayed, according to the season; and during the year 1880 his health materially improved. in january 1881 he had completed the manuscript of the _dawn of day_, and is said to have been well satisfied with his condition. in the _dawn of day_ nietzsche for the first time begins to reveal his real personality. this book is literally the dawn of his great life work, and in it we find him grappling with all the problems which he was subsequently to tackle with such a masterly and courageous hand. it appeared in july 1881 and met with but a poor reception. indeed, after the publication of the last of the _thoughts out of season_ nietzsche appears to have created very little stir among his countrymen--a fact which, though it greatly depressed him, only made him redouble his energies. in september 1882 _the joyful wisdom_ was published--a book written during one of the happiest periods of his life. it is a veritable fanfare of trumpets announcing the triumphal entry of its distinguished follower _zarathustra_. with it nietzsche's final philosophical views are already making headway, and it is full of the love of life and energy which permeates the grand philosophical poem which was to come after it. disappointed by the meagre success of his works, and hurt by the attitude of various friends, nietzsche now retired into loneliness, and, settling down on the beautiful bay of rapallo, began work on that wonderful moral, psychological, and critical rhapsody, _thus spake zarathustra_, which was to prove the greatest of his creations. during the years 1883-84, the three first parts of this work were published, and, though each part was issued separately and met with the same cold reception which had been given to his other works of recent years, nietzsche never once lost heart or wavered in his resolve. it required, however, all the sublime inspirations which we find expressed in that wonderful _book for all and none_, to enable a man to stand firmly and absolutely alone amid all the hardships and reverses that beset our anchorite poet throughout this period. it was about this time that nietzsche began to take chloral in the hope of overcoming his insomnia; it was now, too, that his sister --the only relative for whom, despite some misunderstandings, he had a real affection--became engaged to a man with whom he was utterly out of sympathy; and all the while negotiations, into which nietzsche had entered with the leipzig university for the purpose of securing another professorial chair, were becoming ever more hopeless. in the course of this exposition i shall have to treat of the doctrines enunciated in _thus spake zarathustra_--indeed, seeing that this work contains all nietzsche's thought in a poetical form, it would be quite impossible to discuss any single tenet of his philosophy without in some way referring to the book in question. i cannot therefore say much about it at present, save that it is generally admitted to be nietzsche's _opus magnum_. besides the philosophical views expounded in the four parts of which it consists, the value of its autobiographical passages is enormous. in it we find the history of his most intimate experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs, and the like; and the whole is written in a style so magnetic and poetical, that, as a specimen of _belles-lettres_ alone, entirely apart from the questions it treats, the work cannot and ought not to be overlooked. although there is now scarcely a european language into which _zarathustra_ has not been translated, although the fame of the work, at present, is almost universal, the reception it met with at the time of its publication was so unsatisfactory, and misunderstanding relative to its teaching became so general, that within a year of the issue of its first part, nietzsche was already beginning to see the necessity of bringing his doctrines before the public in a more definite and unmistakable form. during the years that followed--that is to say, between 1883 and 1886--this plan was matured, and between 1886 and 1889--the year of our author's final breakdown, three important books were published which may be regarded as prose-sequels to the poem _zarathustra_. these books are: _beyond good and evil_ (1886), _the genealogy of morals_ (1887), and _the twilight of the idols_ (1889); while the posthumous works _the will to power_ (1901) and the little volume antichrist, published in 1895, when its author was lying hopelessly ill at naumburg, also belong to the period in which nietzsche wished to make his _zarathustra_ clear and comprehensible to his fellows. in the ensuing chapters it will be my endeavour to state briefly all that is vital in the works just referred to. what remains to be related of nietzsche's life is sad enough, and is almost common knowledge. when his sister elizabeth married dr. förster and went to paraguay with her spouse, nietzsche was practically without a friend, and, had it not been for peter gast's devotion and help, he would probably have succumbed to his constitutional and mental troubles much sooner than he actually did. before his last breakdown in turin, in january 1889, the only real encouragement he is ever known to have received in regard to his philosophical works came to him from copenhagen and paris. in the latter city it was taine who committed himself by praising nietzsche, and in the former it was dr. george brandes, a clever and learned professor, who delivered a series of lectures on the new message of the german philosopher. the news of brandes' success in copenhagen in 1888 greatly brightened nietzsche's last year of authorship, and he corresponded with the danish professor until the end. it has been rightly observed that these lectures were the dawn of nietzscheism in europe. as the result of over-work, excessive indulgence in drugs, and a host of disappointments and anxieties, nietzsche's great mind at last collapsed on the 2nd or 3rd of january 1889, never again to recover. the last words he wrote, which were subsequently found on a slip of paper in his study, throw more light upon the tragedy of his breakdown than all the learned medical treatises that have been written about his case. "i am taking narcotic after narcotic," he said, "in order to drown my anguish; but still i cannot sleep. to-day i will certainly take such a quantity as will drive me out of my mind." from that time to the day of his death (25th august 1900) he lingered a helpless and unconscious invalid, first in the care of his aged mother, and ultimately, when elizabeth returned a widow from paraguay, as his sister's beloved charge. for an opinion of nietzsche during his last phase i cannot do better than quote professor henri lichtenberger of nancy, who saw the invalid in 1898; and with this sympathetic frenchman's valuable observations, i shall draw this chapter to a close:-"in the gradual wane of this enthusiastic lover of life, of this apologist of energy, of this prophet of superman there is something inexpressibly sad--inexpressibly beautiful and peaceful. his brow is still magnificent--his eyes, the light of which seems to be directed inwards, have an expression which is indefinably and profoundly moving. what is going on within his soul? nobody can say. it is just possible that he may have preserved a dim recollection of his life as a thinker and a poet." [1] das leben friedrich nietzsche's by frau förster-nietzsche. * * * * * chapter ii nietzsche the amoralist from a casual study of nietzsche's life it might be gathered that he had little time for private meditation or for any lonely brooding over problems foreign to his school and university studies. indeed, from the very moment when it was decided that he should become a scholar, to the day when the university of leipzig granted him his doctor's degree without examination, his existence seems to have been so wholly occupied by strenuous application to the duties which his aspirations imposed upon him that, even if he had had the will to do so, it would seem that he could not have had the leisure to become engaged in any serious thought outside his regular work. nevertheless, if we inquire into the matter more deeply, we find to our astonishment, that during the whole of that arduous period--from his thirteenth to this twenty-fourth year--his imagination did not once cease from playing around problems of the highest import, quite unrelated to his school and university subjects. in the introduction to _the genealogy of morals_, he writes as follows: --"... while but a boy of thirteen the problem of the origin of evil haunted me: to it i dedicated, in an age when we have in heart half-play, half-god, my first literary child-play, my first philosophical composition; and, as regards my solution of the problem therein, well, i gave, as is but fair, god the honour, and made him _father_ of evil."[1] and then he continues: "a little historical and philological schooling, together with an inborn and delicate sense regarding psychological questions, changed my problem in a very short time into that other one: under what circumstances and conditions did man invent the valuations good and evil? and what is their own specific value?" this problem, as stated here, seems stupendous enough; in fact, it would be difficult, in the whole realm of human thought, to discover a question of greater moment and intricacy; and yet we shall see that nietzsche was just as much born to attack and solve it as cardinal newman seems, from the _apologia pro vita sua_, to have been born to the roman catholic church. if we reflect a moment, we find that "good" and "evil" are certainly words that exercise a tremendous power in the world. to attach the word "good" to any thing or deed is to give it the hall-mark of desirability: on the other hand, to attach the word "evil" to it is tantamount to proscribing it from existence. even in the old english proverb, "give a dog a bad name and hang him," we have a suggestion of the enormous force which has been compressed into the two monosyllables "good" and "bad," and before we seriously take up the problem, it were well to ponder a while over the really profound significance of these two words. nietzsche, as we have already observed, was never in any doubt as to their importance: his life passion was the desire to solve the meaning, the origin, and the intrinsic value of the two terms; and he did not rest until he had achieved his end. let us now examine what morality--what "good" and "evil"--means to almost everybody to-day. in the minds of nearly all those people who are neither students nor actual teachers of philosophy, there is a superstition that "good" is a perfectly definite and absolute value, and that "evil" is known unto all. few seem to doubt that the meaning of these words has been fixed once and for ever. the ordinary european lives, reads, and sleeps, year in, year out, under the delusion that all is quite clear in regard to right and wrong. such a person is, of course, somewhat abashed when you tell him that a certain people in the east practise infanticide and call it good or that a certain people in the west always separate at meals and eat apart and call _this_ good. he usually gets over the difficulty, however, by saying that they know no better, and when at last he is hard pressed, and is bound to admit that views of good and bad, sometimes the reverse of his own, actually do preserve and unite people in strange lands, he takes refuge in the hope that all differences may one day be broken down and that the problem will thus be solved. no such facile shelving of the question, however, could satisfy nietzsche. from the very outset he freed himself from all national and even racial prejudices, and could see no particular reason why the kind of morality now prevailing in europe, or countries like europe, must necessarily and ultimately overcome and supplant all others. he therefore attacked the question with a perfectly open mind, and asked himself whether he quite understood the part the terms "good" and "evil" have played in human history. is morality--its justification in our midst and its mode of action--comprehended at all?--he replies to this question so daringly and so uprightly, that at first his clearness may only bewilder us. these terms "good" and "evil," he tells us, are merely a means to the acquisition of power. and, indeed, in the very resistance we offer when he attempts to criticise our notions of morality, we tacitly acknowledge that in this morality our strength does actually reside. "no greater power on earth was found by zarathustra than good and evil"[2] "no people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth."[3] in the last sentence we have seized nietzsche's clue to the whole question. if you would maintain yourself, you cannot and must not value as your neighbour values. good and evil, then, are not permanent absolute values; they are transient, relative values, serving an end which can be explained in terms of biology and anthropology. but now let us halt a moment, for the sake of clearness, and let us inquire precisely how nietzsche himself was led to this conclusion. in the summer of 1864, when he was in his twentieth year, he was given some home work to do which he was expected to have ready by the end of the holidays. it was to consist of a latin thesis upon some optional subject, and he chose "theognis, the aristocratic poet of megara." while preparing the work he was struck with the author's use of the words "good" and "bad" as synonymous with aristocratic and plebeian, and it was this valuable hint which first set him on the right track. theognis and his friends, being desirous of making their power prevail, were naturally compelled to regard any force which assailed that power as bad--"bad," in the sense of "dangerous to their order of power"; and thus it came to pass that theognis, as an aristocrat in the heat of a struggle between an oligarchy and a democracy, spoke of the democratic values as "bad" and of those of his own party as "good." the writing of this essay had other consequences which i shall only be able to refer to in the next chapter; but at present let it suffice to say that, in recognising the arbitrary use made by theognis of the epithets good and bad in designating the oligarchy and the democracy respectively, nietzsche was first induced to look upon morality merely as a weapon in the struggle for power, and he thus freed himself from all the usual bias which belongs to the absolutist's standpoint. hence his claim to the surname "amoralist," and his use of the phrase "beyond good and evil," as the title of one of his greatest works. let us, however, remember that although nietzsche did undoubtedly take up a position beyond good and evil, in order to free himself temporarily from the gyves of all tradition, still this attitude was no more than a momentary one, and he ultimately became as rigid a moralist as the most exacting could desire. it was a new morality, however, or perhaps a forgotten one, which he ultimately preached, and with the view of preparing the ground for it he was in a measure obliged to destroy old idols. "he who hath to be a creator in good and evil," says zarathustra, "verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and to break values to pieces."[4] assuming the position of the relativist, then, nietzsche observed that, all morality, all use of the words "good" and "evil," is only an artifice for acquiring power. turning to the animal kingdom, he went in search of support for his views, and very soon discovered that, in biology at least, no fact was at variance with his general hypothesis. in nature every species of organic being behaves as if its kind alone ought ultimately to prevail on earth, and, whether it try to effect this end by open aggression or cowardly dissimulation, the motive in both cases is the same. the lion's good is the antelope's evil. if the antelope believed the lion's good to be its good, it would go and present itself without further ado before the lion's jaws. if the lion believed the antelope's good to be its good it would adopt vegetarianism forthwith and eschew its carnivorous habits for the rest of its days. again, no parasite could share the notions of good and evil entertained by its victim, neither could the victims share the notions of good and evil entertained by the parasite. everywhere, then, those modes of conduct are adopted and perpetuated by a species, which most conduce to the prevalence and extension of their particular kind, and that species which fails to discover the class of conduct best calculated to preserve and strengthen it gets overcome in the war of conduct which constitutes the incessant struggle for power. now, applying the knowledge to man, what did nietzsche find? he found there was also a war being waged between the different modes of conduct which now prevail among men, and that what one man sets up as good is called evil by another and _vice versâ_. but of this he soon became convinced, that whenever and wherever good and evil had been set up as absolute values, they had been thus elevated to power with the view of preserving and multiplying one specific type of man. all moralities, therefore, were but so many trades union banners flying above the heads of different classes of men, woven and upheld by them for their own needs and aspirations. so far, so good. but then, if that were so, the character of a morality must be determined by the class of men among whom it came into being. we shall see that nietzsche did not hesitate to accept this conclusion, and that if for a moment he declared: "no one knoweth yet what is good and what is evil!" the next minute he was asking himself this searching question: "is _our_ morality--that is to say, the particular table of values which is gradually modifying us--compatible with an ideal worthy of man's inheritance and past?" if nietzsche has been called dangerous, pernicious and immoral, it is because people have deliberately overlooked this last question of his. no thinker who states and honestly sets out to answer this question, as nietzsche did, deserves to be slandered, as he has been slandered, by prejudiced and interested people intent on misunderstanding only in order that they may fling mud more freely. nietzsche cast his critical eye very seriously around him, and the sight of the modern world led him to ask these admittedly pertinent questions: "is that which we have for centuries held for good and evil, really good and evil? does our table of ethical principles seem to be favouring the multiplication of a desirable type?" in answering these two inquiries, nietzsche unfortunately stormed the most formidable strongholds of modern society--christianity and democracy; and perhaps this accounts for the fact that his fight was so uneven and so hopeless. the strength of modern europe, if indeed there be any strength in her, lies precisely on the side of christianity and democracy, the grandmother and the mother of what is called "progress," "modernity"; and in assailing these, nietzsche must have known that he was engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with stony-hearted adversaries unaccustomed to giving quarter and unscrupulous in their methods. nietzsche clearly saw that if all moral codes are but weapons protecting and helping to universalise distinct species of men, then the christian religion with its ethical principles could be no exception to the rule. it must have been created at some time and in some place by one who had the interests of a certain type of man at heart, and who desired to make that type paramount. now if that were really so, the next question that occurred to nietzsche's mercilessly logical mind was this: "is the christian religion, with its morality, tending to preserve and multiply a _desirable_ type of man?" to this last question nietzsche replies most emphatically "_no!_" but, before going into the reasons of this flat negative, let us first pause to consider the age and the circumstances in which our author wrote and thought. long before nietzsche had reached his prime david strauss had published his _life of jesus_; in 1863, when nietzsche was still in his teens, renan published his _vie de jésus_, and in the meantime charles darwin had given his _origin of species_ to the world. these books had been read by a europe that had already studied hume and lamarck, kant and schopenhauer, and in all directions a fine ear could not help hearing the falling timbers of christian dogma. in the midst of this general work of destruction it was almost impossible for nietzsche to remain unmoved or indifferent, and very soon he found that he too was drawn into the general stream of european thought; but only to prove how completely he was independent of it, and in every way superior to it. he contemplated the work of the destroyers for some time with amused interest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to inquire whether these zealous and well-meaning housebreakers were really doing any lasting good, or whether all their efforts were not perhaps a little misguided. true, they were pulling the embellishments from the walls and were casting the most cherished idols of the christian faith into the dust. but the walls themselves, the actual design of the edifice, remained untouched and as strong as ever. a few broken stones, a few complaints from the priestly archæologists who wished to preserve them, and then all the noise subsided! europe remained as it was before --that is to say, still in possession of a stronghold of christianity, merely divested of its superfluous ornament. nietzsche soon perceived that, in spite of all the rubbish and refuse which such people as kant, schopenhauer, strauss, renan and others had made of christian dogma, the essential core of christianity, the vital organ of its body--its morality--had so far remained absolutely intact. nay, he saw that it was actually being plastered up and restored by scholars and men of science who vowed that they could proffer reasonable, rationalistic, and logical grounds in support of it. just as christian dogma and metaphysics had been rationalised and philosophically proved by the scholars of the middle ages, and even as late as leibnitz; so, now, christian morality was being presented in a purely philosophical garb by the intellects of europe. having relinquished the dogma as no longer tenable, all scholars and men of science were trying with redoubled vigour to bolster up christian ethics with elaborate text-books and learned treatises. there were some who accepted it all as if it were innate in human nature, and attributed it to a "moral sense"; there were others--good-natured biologists--who were likewise desirous of leaving it whole, and who declared with conviction that it was the natural outcome of the feelings of pleasure and pain; and there were yet others who assumed that it must have been evolved quite automatically out of expediency and non-expediency. not one of these would-be rationalists, however, halted at the christian terms "good" and "bad" themselves, in order to ask himself whether, like all the other notions of good and evil prevailing elsewhere under the shelter of other religions, these, the christian notions, might not have been invented at some particular time by a certain kind of man, simply with the view of preserving and universalising his specific type. breathless from their efforts at getting rid of the dogma, they did not dream that perhaps the most important part of the work still remained to be done. nietzsche went to the very foundation of the christian edifice. he pointed to its morality and said: if we are going to measure the value of this religion, let us cease our petty quarrels concerning the truth or falsehood of such stories as the loss of the gadarene swine, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and let us throw the whole of christian morality into the scales and appraise its precise worth as a system of ethics. nietzsche would have scorned to quarrel with the church, as huxley did; for much more important issues were at stake. the worth of a religion is measured by its morality; because by its morality it moulds and rears men and reveals the type of man who ultimately wishes to prevail by means of it. with the metaphysics and the dogma of christianity in ruins all around him, therefore, nietzsche took a step very far in advance of the rationalistic iconoclasts of his age. he attacked christian morals, and declared them to be, like all other morals, merely a weapon in the hands of a certain type of man, with which that type struggled for power. but bold as this step was, it constituted but the first of a series, the next of which was to discover the type which had laid the foundations of the christian ideal. if it could be proved that these christian values had been created by a noble species with the object of perpetuating that species, then christianity would come forth from the inquiry vindicated to the hilt, and fill the damage done to its dogma would not have deterred nietzsche from standing by it and upholding it to his very last breath. alas! things turned out somewhat differently and nietzsche was not by any means the least pained by the result. pursuing the inquiry with his usual unflinching and uncompromising honesty, and avoiding no conclusion however unpleasant or fatal, nietzsche, the scion of a profoundly religions house, the lover of order and tradition, with the blood of generations of earnest believers in his veins, finally found himself compelled to renounce and even to condemn, root and branch, the faith which had been the strength and hope of his forebears. before turning to the next chapter, where i shall explain how he came to regard this step as inevitable, it should be said concerning nietzsche's philosophy in general, that it is essentially and through and through religious and almost prophetic in spirit. no careful reader of his works can doubt that nietzsche was a deeply religious man. a glance at _thus spake zarathustra_ alone would convince any one of this; while in his constant references to religion throughout his works, as "a step to higher intellectuality,"[5] as "a means to invaluable contentedness,"[6] as "a measure of discipline,"[7] as a powerful social factor,[8] a more substantial confirmation of the fact is to be found. it is well to bear in mind, however, throughout our study of nietzsche, that he had a higher type always in view; that he was also well aware that this type could only be attained by the strict observance of a new morality, and that if he opposed other forms of morality--more particularly the christian form--it was because he earnestly believed that they were rearing an undesirable and even despicable kind of man. "verily men have made for themselves all their good and evil. verily they did not take it: they did not find it: it did not come down as a voice from heaven."[9] "behold, the good and just! whom do they hate most? him who breaketh up their tables of values; the breaker, the law-breaker: he, however, is the creator."[10] "verily a muddy stream is man. one must be at least a sea to be able to absorb a muddy stream without becoming unclean." "behold, i teach you superman: he is that sea; in him your great contempt can sink."[11] [1] see also d.d. aph. 81. [2] z., p. 67. [3] z., p. 65. [4] z., p. 138. [5] g. e., p. 81. [6] g. e., p. 81. [7] g. e., p. 80. [8] g. m., 3rd essay, aph. 15. [9] z., p. 67. [10] z., p. 20. [11] z., p. 8. * * * * * chapter iii nietzsche the moralist conceiving all forms of morality to be but weapons in the struggle for power, nietzsche concluded that every species of man must at some time or other have taken to moralising, and must have called that "good" which its instincts approved, and that "bad" which its enemies instincts approved. in beyond good and evil, however, he tells us that after making a careful examination "of the finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on earth," he found certain traits recurring so regularly together, and so closely connected with one another, that, finally, two primary types of morality revealed themselves to him. that is to say, after passing the known moralities of the world in review, he was able to classify them broadly into two types. he observed that throughout human history there had been a continual and implacable war between two kinds of men; it must have begun in the remotest ages, and it continues to this day. it is the war between the powerful and the impotent, the strong and the weak, the givers and the takers, the healthy and the sick, the happy and the wretched. the powerful formed their concept of "good," and it was one which justified their strongest instincts. the impotent likewise acquired their view of the matter, which was often precisely the reverse of the former view. in this way nietzsche arrived at the following broad generalisation: that all the moralities of the world could be placed under one of two heads, _master morality or slave morality_. in the first, the master morality, it is the oak which contends: i must reach the sun and spread broad brandies in so doing; this i call "good," and the herd that i shelter may also call it good. in the second, the slave morality, it is the shrub which says: i also want to reach the sun, these broad branches of the oak, however, keep the sun from me, therefore the oak's instincts are "bad." it is obvious that these two points of view exist and have existed everywhere on earth. apart from national and racial distinctions, mankind does fall into the two broad classes of master and slave, or ruler and subject. we also know that each of these classes must have developed its moral code, and must have tried to protect its conduct and life therewith. but, what we did not know until nietzsche pointed the fact out to us, was: which morality is the more desirable and the more full of promise for the future? admitting that the master and the slave moralities are struggling for supremacy still, which of them ought we to promote with every means in our power?--which of them is going to make life more attractive, more justifiable, and more acceptable on earth? these are now questions of the utmost importance; because it is precisely now that pessimism, nihilism, and other desperate faiths are beginning to set their note of interrogation to human existence, and to shake our belief even in the desirability of our own survival. it is now time for us to discover whence arises this contempt and horror of life, and to lay the blame for it either at the door of the master or of the slave morality. in order that we may understand how to set forth upon this inquiry, let us first form a mental image of the two codes as they must have been evolved by their originators. nietzsche reminds us before we start, however,[1] that in most communities the two moralities have become so confused and mingled, in order to establish that compromise which is so dear to the hearts of the peaceful, that it would be almost a hopeless task to seek any society on earth in which they are now to be seen juxtaposed in sharp contrast. be this as it may, in order to recognise the blood of each when we come across it, we have only to think of what must have occurred when the ruling caste and the ruled class took to moralising. taking the ruling caste first, it is clear that in their morality, all is _good_ which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for the motive force behind the people who evolved it was simply the will to discharge a plenitude, a superabundance, of spiritual and physical wealth. a consciousness of high tension, of a treasure that would fain give and bestow,--this is the mental attitude of the nobles. the antithesis "good" and "bad" to this first class means the same as "noble" and "despicable." "bad" in the master morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with "an eye to the main chance," who would forsake everything in order to live. the creator of the master morality was he who, out of the very fulness of his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it better, greater, more beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the slave morality. great artists, great legislators, and great warriors belong to the class that created master morality. turning now to the second class, we must bear in mind that it is the product of a community in which the struggle for existence is the prime life-motor. there, inasmuch as oppression, suffering, weariness, and servitude are the general rule, all will be regarded as good that tends to alleviate pain. pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, and humility,--these are undoubtedly the virtues we shall here find elevated to the highest places; because they are _useful_ virtues; they make life endurable; they are helpful in the struggle for existence. to this class, all that proceeds from strength, superabundance of spiritual or bodily power, or great health, is looked upon with loathing and mistrust, while that which is awful is the worst and greatest evil. he is good who is amenable, kind, unselfish, meek, and submissive; that is why, in all communities where slave morality is in the ascendant, a "good fellow" always suggests a man in possession of a fair modicum of foolishness and sentimentality. the creator of slave-morality was one who, out of the poverty of his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it smaller, meaner, and less beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the master values. great misanthropists, pessimists, demagogues, tasteless artists, nihilists, spiteful authors and dramatists, and resentful saints belong to the class that created slave-morality. the first order of values are active, creative, dionysiac. the second are passive, defensive, venomous, subterranean; to them belong "adaptation," "adjustment," and "utilitarian relationship to environment." now, seeing that mankind is undoubtedly moulded by the nature of the values which prevail over it, it is manifestly of paramount importance to the philosopher to know which order of values conduces to rear the most desirable species of man, and then to advocate that order, with all the art and science at his disposal. nietzsche saw two lines of life: an ascending and a descending line. at the end of the one he pictured an ideal type, robust in mind and body, rich enough in spirit and vigour to make giving and bestowing a necessary condition of its existence; at the end of the other line he already perceived degeneracy, poverty of blood and spirit, and a sufficiently low degree of vitality to make parasitism a biological need. he believed that the first, or noble morality, when it prevailed, made for an ascending line of life and therefore favoured the multiplication of a desirable type of man; and he was now equally convinced that whenever ignoble or slave morality was supreme, life not only tended to follow the descending line, but that the very men whose existence it favoured were the least likely to stem the declining tide. hence it seemed to him that the most essential of all tasks was to ascertain what kind of morality now prevailed, in order that we might immediately transvalue our values, while there was still time, if we believed this change to be necessary. what then are our present values? nietzsche replies most emphatically --they are christian values. in the last chapter we saw that although christian dogma was very rapidly becoming mere wreckage, its most earnest opposers and destroyers nevertheless clung with fanatical faith to christian morality. thus, in addition to the vast multitude of those professing the old religion, there was also a host of atheists, agnostics, rationalists, and materialists, who, as far as nietzsche was concerned, could quite logically be classed with those who were avowedly christian. and, as for the remainder--a few indifferent and perhaps nameless people,--what could they matter? even they, perhaps, if hard pressed, would have betrayed a sneaking, cowardly trust in christian ethics, if only out of a sense of security; and with these the total sum of the civilised world was fully made up. perhaps to some this may appear a somewhat sweeping conclusion. to such as doubt its justice, the best advice that can be given is to urge them to consult the literature, ethical, philosophical, and otherwise, of those writers whom they would consider most opposed to christianity before the publication of nietzsche's works; and they will then realise that, with very few exceptions, mostly to be found among uninfluential and uncreative iconoclasts, the whole of the western civilised world in nietzsche's time was firmly christian in morals, and most firmly so, perhaps, in those very quarters where the dogma of the religion of pity was most honestly disclaimed. it had therefore become in the highest degree necessary to put these values under the philosophical microscope, and to discover to which order they belonged. was christianity the purveyor of a noble or of a slave morality? the reply to this question would reveal the whole tendency of the modern world, and would also answer nietzsche's searching inquiry: "are we on the right track?" pursuing nietzsche's method as closely as we can, let us now turn to christianity, as we find it to-day, and see whether it is possible to bring its values into line with one of the two broad classes spoken of in this chapter. in the first place, nietzsche discovers that christianity is not a world-approving faith. the very pivot upon which it revolves seems to be the slandering and depreciating of this world, together with the praise and exaltation of a hypothetical world to come. to his mind it seems to draw odious comparisons between the things of this earth and the blessings of heaven. finally, it gushes in a very unsportsmanlike manner over an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and disadvantage of a "here," of this earth, of this life, and posits another region--a nether region--for the accommodation of its enemies.[2] what, now, is the mental attitude of these "backworldsmen," as nietzsche calls them, who can see only the world's filth? who is likely to need the thought of a beyond, where he will live in bliss while those he hates will writhe in hell? such ideas occur only to certain minds. do they occur to the minds of those who, by the very health, strength, and happiness that is in them, transfigure all the world --even the ugliness in it--and declare it to be beautiful? do they occur to the powerful who can chastise their enemies while their blood is still up? admitting that the world may be surveyed from a hundred different standpoints, is this particular standpoint which we now have under our notice, that of a contented, optimistic, sanguine type, or that of a discontented, pessimistic, anæmic one? "to the pure all things are pure!--i, however, say unto you: to the swine all things are swinish."[3] nietzsche's sensitive car caught curious notes in the daily dronings of those around him--notes that made him suspicious of the whole melody of modern life, and still more suspicions of the chorus executing it. he heard to his astonishment: ... "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, the impotent, the lowly alone are good; only the sufferers, the needy, the sick, the ugly are pious only they are godly; them alone blessedness awaits--but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for aye and evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless; ye will also be, to all eternity, the unblessed, the cursed, and the damned."[4] he continued listening intently, and, with his ear attuned anew, these sentiments broke strangely upon his senses:-"blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. "blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. "blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of god."[5] there was no time for brooding over stray thoughts; there was still much to be seen and hoard. when you want to catch some one napping, you keep your eye eagerly upon him, and turn neither to the right nor to the left. nietzsche, it must be remembered, was at this stage treading softly towards europe whom he believed to be "napping." in his lonely hermit cell he was able to catch all the sounds that rose from the city beneath him, and he heard perhaps more than the inhabitants themselves. he could see them all fighting and quarrelling, and he was cheered, because he knew that where the great fight for power ceases, the standard of life falls. but some he saw were wounded, others were actually unfit for the battlefield, a large number looked tired and listless, and there were yet others--a goodly multitude--who were resentful at the sight of their superiors and who, like sulky children, dropped their arms in a pet and declared that they would not play any more. and what were all these feeble and less viable mortals doing? they were crying aloud, and making their deepest wishes known. they were elevating their desiderata to the highest places amongst earthly virtues--and driving back the others with _words_! nietzsche thought of reynard the fox, who, at the very moment that he was about to be hanged, and with the rope already round his neck, succeeded by his dialectical skill in persuading the crowd to release him. for nietzsche could hear the weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the fight, crying quite distinctly through their lips parched for rest: "peace is good! love is good! love for one's neighbour is good! ay, and even love for one's enemy is good!"[6] and some cried: "it is god that avengeth me!" to those who oppressed them, and others said: "the lord avenge me!"[7] whereupon nietzsche thought of the jehovah of the old testament, the god of revenge and thunderbolts; he recalled the sentiment: "ye shall chase your enemies and they shall fall fall before you by the sword," and he wondered how this had come to mean "love your enemies," in the new testament. had another type of men perhaps made themselves god's mouthpiece? yes, that must be so; for, in their holy book, he came across this passage, ascribed to one of their greatest saints: "hath not god made foolish the wisdom of this world? "for after that in the wisdom of god the world by wisdom knew god, it pleased god by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. "... not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble _are called_: "but god hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and god hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty: "and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath god chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are."[8] here, nietzsche tells us, he began to hold his nose; but he still listened; for there was yet more to be heard. from the smiles that were breaking over the lips of those who read the above words, he gathered that they must have overcome their unhappiness. yes, indeed, they had. but what did they call it? this was important--even the christian view of unhappiness seemed significant to nietzsche in this inquiry. their unhappiness, their wretchedness, they called a trial, a gift, a distinction! not really? yes indeed! as nietzsche points out: "they are wretched, no doubt, all these mumblers and underground forgers, though warmly seated together. but they tell us their wretchedness is a selection and distinction from god, that the dogs which are loved most are whipped, that their misery may perhaps also be a preparation, a trial, a schooling; perhaps even more--something which at some time to come will be refuted and paid back with immense interest in gold. no! in happiness. this they call 'blessedness.'"[9] at this point nietzsche declares that he could stand it no longer. "enough, enough! bad air! bad air!" he cried. "methinks this workshop of virtue positively reeks." he had now realised in whose company he had been all this time. these people who halted at nothing in order to elevate their weaknesses to the highest place among the virtues, and to monopolise goodness on earth--who called that good which was tame and soft and harmless, because they themselves could only survive in litters of cotton wool; who coloured the earth with the darkness _that_ was in their own bodies; --who did not scruple to dub all manly and vital virtues odiously sinful and wicked, and who preferred to set the life of the whole world at stake, rather than acknowledge that it was precisely their own second-rate, third-rate, or even fourth-rate, vitality which was the greatest sin of all; who in one and the same breath preached their utilitarian "universal love" to the powerful, and then sent them to eternal damnation in another world: nietzsche asks, are these people the supporters of a noble or of a slave morality? the answer is obvious, and we need not labour the point. but it was so obvious to the lonely hermit, that the thought of it filled him with horror and dread, and he was moved to leave his cell and to descend into the plain, while there was yet time, with the object of urging us to transvalue our values. in christian values, nietzsche read nihilism, decadence, degeneration, and death. they were calculated to favour the multiplication of the least desirable on earth: and, as such, despite his antecedents, and with his one desire, "the elevation of the type man," always before him, he condemned christian morality from top to bottom. this magnificent attempt on the part of the low, the base, and the worthless, to establish themselves as the most powerful on earth, must be checked at all costs, and with terrible earnestness he exhorts us to alter our values. "o my brethren, with whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? is it not with the good and the just? "_break up, break up, i pray you, the good and the just!_" this condemnation of christian values, as slave values--which nietzsche regarded as his greatest service to mankind--he says he would write on all walls. he tells us he came just in the nick of time; to-morrow might be too late. "it is time for man to fix his goal. it is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope. "his soil is still rich enough for that purpose. but that soil will one day be too poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon."[10] [1] g. e., p. 227 [2] john xii. 25; 1 john ii. 15, 16; james iv. 4. [3] z., p. 249. [4] g. m., 1st essay, aph. 7. [5] matthew v. [6] matthew xxiii. 39; mark xiii. 31; luke x. 27; matthew v. 44. [7] 2 luke xviii. 7, 8; romans xii. 19; revelation vi. 10. [8] i corinthians i. 20, 21, 26, 27, 28. [9] g. m., 1st essay, aph. 14. see also epistle to the hebrews xii. 6, and revelation iii. 19. [10] z., p. 12 * * * * * chapter iv nietzsche the evolutionist "transvalue your values or perish!" this was the message of the hermit nietzsche to the people inhabiting the valley into which he had descended. "transvalue your values!"--that is to say, make them what they once were, noble, life-approving, virile! for two thousand years the roll of the world-wheel had been reversed--stendhal had said that many years before nietzsche lived--but it was left to nietzsche, stendhal's admirer and pupil, to teach and prove this fact. stendhal, too, had cried out against the tameness, the lukewarmness, the effeminacy of society; but nietzsche took up this cry with a voice more brazen than stendhal's at a time when mankind was in much greater need of it. stendhal had pointed enthusiastically to the sun and to the passion of the south, and had donned a moral respirator whenever he turned to face the grey and depressing atmosphere of northern ideas and northern tepidness. nietzsche follows his master's hint with alacrity, but in doing so converts stendhal's clarion notes into thunder, and the glint of stendhal's rapier into strokes of lightning.[1] when nietzsche began to write europe was suffering from the worst kind of spiritual illness--weakness of will. everywhere comfort and freedom from danger were becoming the highest ideals; everywhere, too, virtue was being confounded with those qualities which led to the highest possible amount of security and tame, back-parlour pleasures; and man was gradually developing into a harmless domesticated type of animal, capable of performing a host of charming little drawing-room tricks which rejoiced the hearts of his womenfolk. sleep seemed to be the greatest accomplishment. it had become all important to have a good night's rest, and everything was done to achieve this end. a man no longer asked his heart what it dictated, when he stood irresolute before a daring deed, he simply consulted morpheus, who warned him that he could not promise him a soft pillow if he did anything that was ever so slightly naughty. in the end, morpheus would prevail, and thus all europe was beginning to snore peacefully the whole night through, with marvellous regularity, while manliness rotted and danger dwindled.[2] nietzsche protested against this state of affairs:--"what is good? ye ask. to be brave is good. let the little schoolgirls say: to be good is sweet and touching at the same time. ye say, a good cause will hallow even war? i say unto you: a good war halloweth every cause. war and courage have done greater things than love!"[3] "i pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they have become _smaller_, and ever become smaller: _the reason thereof is their doctrine of happiness and virtue_. "for they are moderate also in virtue--because they want comfort. with comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible. "of man there is little here: therefore do their women make themselves manly. for only he who is man enough, will _save the woman_ in woman. "in their hearts, they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them. "that, however, is _cowardice_, though it be called virtue."[4] some there were, of course, who were conscious of the dreadful condition of things, and who deplored it, without, however, being able to put their finger on the root of the evil. such people were most of them pessimists, and, at the time that nietzsche lived, schopenhauer was their leader. sensitive, noble-minded, artistic people, deprived by rationalistic and atheistic teachers of the belief in god, felt the ignobleness of european hopes and aspirations, and knowing of no better creed and possessing the intelligence to see the hopelessness of things under the rule of the values which then prevailed, they succumbed to a mood of utter despair, subscribed to schopenhauer's horror and loathing of the world, and regarded the very optimism of childhood with suspicion and scorn. for a while nietzsche, too, was an ardent and devoted follower of schopenhauer. godlessness was bad enough to endure: but godlessness in a world of un-pagan and effeminate manhood, was too much for the loving student of classical antiquity, and he turned to schopenhauer as to one who, he thought, would understand how to steel his heart against life's misery. but this opiate did not maintain its sway over nietzsche long. our poet was of a type too courageous and too vigorous to be able to surrender himself so completely to sorrow and to buddhistic consolations. gradually he began to regard the humble and resigned attitude of the pessimist before life's hardships and modernity's greyness as unworthy of a spirited and active man. slowly it dawned upon him that the root of the evil lay, not in the constitution of the earth, but in man himself, and in man's actual values. if man could be roused to pursue higher ideals; if he could be moved to kill the poisonous snake of ignoble values that had crawled into his throat and choked him while he was in slumber;[5] in fact, if man could surpass himself and regard the reversal of the world's engines, for the last two thousand years, as stendhal had done--that is to say, as the grossest error and most ridiculous _faux pas_ that had ever been made--then, nietzsche thought, pessimism and schopenhauer might go to the deuce, and conscious, sensitive, intellectual, and artistic europe would once more be able to smile instead of shuddering at the thought of mankind's former qualities. thus it was the condemnation of modern values, together with the thought of man's being able to surpass himself, which gave nietzsche the grounds and the necessary strength for abandoning pessimism and embracing that wise optimism which characterises the whole of his works after _the joyful wisdom_. true, god was dead; but that ought only to make man feel more self-reliant, more creative, prouder. undoubtedly god was dead: but man could now hold himself responsible for himself. he could now seek a goal in manhood, on earth, and one that was at least within the compass of his powers. long enough had he squinted heavenwards, with the result, that he had neglected his task on earth.[6] "dead are all gods!" nietzsche cries, "now we will that superman live!"[7] we are now before nietzsche the evolutionist, and we must define him, relatively to those other evolutionists with whom we, as english people, are already familiar. to begin with, then, let us dispose of the fundamental question: nietzsche's concept of life. we have had life variously defined for us by our own writers, and perhaps one among nietzsche's greatest contemporaries in england--herbert spencer--defined it in the most characteristically english fashion. spencer said: "life is activity," or "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." now there is absolutely nothing in either of these definitions, no suggestion or hint, which would lead the most suspicious to conjecture what life really is. (activity) reveals nothing of life's passions, its hate, its envy, its covetousness, its hard, inexorable principles; the process of the continual adjustments of internal relations to external relations might mean the serpent's digestion of its prey, or the training of an opera singer's voice, and it might also be a scientific formula for a "moral order of things." both definitions are delightfully unheroic and vague; though they do not compromise the writer they compromise with everything else, and to start out with them is to shelve the question in a way which allows of our subsequently weaving all the romance and sweetness possible into life, and of making it as pretty as a little nursery story. nietzsche, always eager for a practical and tangible idea, naturally could not accept these two definitions as expressing anything profound about life at all. looking into the race of nature, and reading her history from the amoeba with its predatory pseudo-podia, to the lion with its murderous prehensile claws, he defined life practically, uprightly, and bravely, as "appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation, and, at least, putting it mildest, exploitation."[8] thus, as we see, from the start nietzsche closes his eyes at nothing, he does not want life to be a pretty tale if it is not one. he wants to know it as it is: for he is convinced that this is the only way of arriving at sound principles as to the manner in which human existence should be led. "appropriation," then, he takes as a fact: he does not argue it away, any more than he tries to argue away "injury," "conquest of the strange and weak," "suppression," and "incorporation." these things are only too apparent, and he states them bravely in his definition. we know life is all this; but how much more comfortable it is, when we are sitting in our soft easy-chairs before our cheerful fires, to think that life is merely activity! to believe that there is a moral order in the universe is to believe that these unpleasant things in nietzsche's definition will one day be overcome. this was the position christianity assumed from the start. put, though it was excusable in a religion fighting for power, and compelled to use nice and attractive words for its followers, to suppose that all the misery on earth will one day be transformed by god's wisdom into perfect bliss; such an attitude is quite unpardonable in the case of a philosopher or even of a poet. when browning chanted smugly: "god's in his heaven: all's right with the world," he confessed himself a mediocre spirit with one stroke of the pen. and when spencer wrote that the blind process of evolution "must inevitably favour all changes of nature which increase life and augment happiness," he did the same. we may now perhaps understand nietzsche's impatience of his predecessors and contemporaries, who refused to see precisely what he saw in the face of nature. but even in his extended definition of life, the modern biologist brings himself no nearer to nietzsche's honest standpoint, and for the following reasons:-the modern biologist says, this "activity" he speaks of has a precise meaning. it connotes "the struggle for existence," or in other words "self-defence." (again he is looking at life through moral or christian glasses; because if every thing on earth is done in self-defence, even the devil himself is argued out of existence, and god remains creator of the "good" alone.) nietzsche replies by denying this flatly. he says that the definition is again inadequate. he warns us not to confound malthus with nature.[9] he admits that the struggle occurs, but only as an exception. "the general aspect of life is not a state of want or hunger; it is rather a state of opulence, luxuriance, and even absurd prodigality--where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power." --will to power and not will to live is the motive force of life. "wherever i found living matter," he says, "i found will to power, and even in the servant i found the yearning to be master. "only where there is life, there is will: though a not will to live, but thus i teach thee--will to power."[10] is there no aggression without the struggle for existence? is there no voluptuousness in a position of power for us own sake? of course there is! and one wonders how these english biologists could ever have been schoolboys without noticing these facts. as nietzsche points out, however, they are every one of them labouring under the christian ideal still--in spite of all their upsetting of the first chapter of genesis, and in spite of all their blasting of the miracles. put, if life is the supreme aim of all, how is it that many things are valued higher than life by living beings? if the will to live sometimes finds itself overpowered by another will--more particularly in great warriors, great prophets, great artists, and great heroes--what is this mightier force which thus overpowers it? we have heard what nietzsche calls it--it is the will to power. "psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. a living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength--life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof."[11] in spite of everything we have already said, nietzsche's disagreement with our own biologists may still seem to many but a play upon words. a moment's meditation, however--more particularly over the passage just quoted--will show that it is really much deeper than this. it is one thing to regard an animal as a mere automaton, prowling around to satisfy its hunger, and happy to remain inactive when the sensation of hunger is appeased, and quite another to regard an animal as a battery of accumulated forces which _must_ be discharged at all costs (and for good or evil), with only temporary lapses of purely self-preservative desires and self-preservative actions. all the different consequences of these two views will occur to the thinker in an instant. upon this basis, then, the will to power, nietzsche builds up a cosmogony which also assumes that species have been evolved; but again, in the processes of that evolution he is at variance with darwin and all the natural-selectionists. nietzsche cannot be persuaded that "mechanical adjustment to ambient conditions," or "adaptation to environment"--both purely passive, meek, and uncreative functions--should be given the importance, as determining factors, which the english and german schools give them. with samuel butler, he protests against this "pitchforking of mind and spirit out of the universe," and points imperatively to an inner creative will in living organisms, which ultimately makes environment and natural conditions subservient and subject. in the _genealogy of morals_[12] he makes it quite clear that he would ascribe the greatest importance to a power in the organism itself, to "the highest functionaries in the animal, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative principle," and that even in the matter of the mysterious occurrence of varieties (sports) he would seek for inner causes. darwin himself threw out only a hint in this direction; that is why it is safe to suppose that, if nietzsche and darwin are ever reconciled, it will probably be precisely on this ground. in the _origin of species_, speaking of the causes of variability, darwin said: "... there are two factors, namely the nature of the organism, and the nature of the conditions. _the former seem to be much the more important_,[13] for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand, dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be uniform." thus differing widely from the orthodox school of evolutionists, nietzsche nevertheless believed their hypothesis to be sound; but once more he has an objection to raise. why did they halt where they halted? if the process is a fact, if things have become what they are, and have not always been so; then why should we rest on our oars? if it was possible for man to struggle up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower primates, and reach the zenith of his physical development; why, nietzsche asks, should he not surpass himself and attain to superman by evolving in the same decree volitionally and mentally? "the most careful ask to-day: 'how is man preserved?' but zarathustra asketh as the only and first one: 'how is man surpassed?'[14] "all beings (in your genealogical ladder) have created something beyond themselves, and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide? "behold i teach you superman!"[15] and now, again, at the risk of being monotonous, i must point to yet another difference between nietzsche and the prevailing school of evolutionists. whereas the latter, in their unscrupulous optimism, believed that out of the chaotic play of blind forces something highly desirable and "good" would ultimately be evolved; whereas they tacitly, though not avowedly, believed that their "fittest" in the struggle for existence would eventually prove to be the best--in fact that we should "muddle through" to perfection somehow, and that something really noble and important would be sure to result from john brown's contest with harry smith for the highest place in an insurance office, for instance; nietzsche disbelieved from the bottom of his heart in this chance play of blind and meaningless tendencies. he said: given a degenerate, mean, and base environment and the fittest to survive therein will be the man who is best adapted to degeneracy, meanness, and baseness--therefore the worst kind of man. given a community of parasites, and it may be that the flattest, the slimiest, and the softest, will be the fittest to survive. such faith in blind forces nietzsche regarded merely as the survival of the old christian belief in the moral order of things, fogged out in scientific apparel to suit modern tastes. he saw plainly, that if man were to be elevated at all, no blind struggle in his present conditions would ever effect that end; for the present conditions themselves make those the fittest to survive in them who are persons of absolutely undesirable gifts and propensities. he declared (and here we are in the very heart of nietzscheism) that nothing but a total change in these conditions, a complete transvaluation of all values, would ever alter man and make him more worthy of his past. for it is values, values, and again values, that mould men, and rear men, and create men; and ignoble values make ignoble men, and noble values make noble men! thus it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, truth without end--for men. nietzsche realised "all that could still be made out of man, through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements"; he knew "how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in mysterious and dangerous crossways, and has launched forth upon the right or the wrong road, impelled merely by a whim, or by a hint from the giant chance."[16] and now, he was determined that, whether man wished to listen or not, at least he should be told of the ultimate disaster that awaited him, if he continued in his present direction. for, there was yet time! it is to higher men that nietzsche really makes his appeal, the leaders and misleaders of the mob. he had no concern with the multitude and they did not need him. the world had seen philosophies enough which had advocated the cause of the "greatest number"--english libraries were stacked with such works. what was required was, to convert those rare men who give the direction--the heads of the various throngs--the vanguard. "awake and listen, ye lonely ones! from the future, winds are coming with a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings for fine ears. "ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise and from it superman."[17] [1] g. e., aph. 254, 255, 256. [2] see schopenhauer on _the vanity and suffering of life_. [3] z., p. 52. [4] z., pp. 204, 205, 206. [5] z., pp. 192, 193. [6] see z., p. 98 _et seq_. [7] z., p. 91. [8] g. e., p. 226. [9] twilight of the idols, part 9, aph. 14. [10] z., pp. 136, 137. [11] g. e., p. 20. [12] second essay, aph. 12. [13] the italics are mine.--a. m. l. [14] z., p. 351. [15] z., p. 6. [16] g. e., p. 130. [17] z., p. 89. * * * * * chapter v nietzsche the sociologist for nietzsche, as we are beginning to see, a fitting title is hard to find. unless we coin new names for things that have not yet been given names, nietzsche remains without a title among his fellow thinkers. he has been called the "arch-anarchist," which he is not; he has been called the "preacher of brutality," which he is not; he has been called the "egoist," which he is not. but all these titles were conferred upon him by people whose interest it was to reduce him in the public's esteem. if he must be named, however, and we suppose he must, the best title would obviously be that which would distinguish him most exactly from his colleagues. now, how does nietzsche stand out from the ranks of almost all other philosophers? by the fact that he was throughout his life an "advocate of higher man." whereas other philosophers and scholars had always thought they had some divine message to impart in the cause of the "greatest number"; nietzsche--the typical miner and underminer--believed that his mission was to stand for a neglected minority, for higher men, for the gold in the mass of quartz. no title therefore could be more fair, and at the same time more essentially descriptive, than the "advocate of higher man," and in giving this title to nietzsche, we immediately outline him against that assembly of his colleagues who were "advocates of the greatest number." it is of the first importance to humanity that its higher individuals should be allowed to attain their full development, for only by means of its heroes can the human race be led forward step by step to higher and ever higher levels. in view of the fact that nietzsche realised this, some of his principles, when given general application, may very naturally appear to be both iniquitous and subversive, and those who read him with the idea that he is preaching a gospel for all are perfectly justified if they turn away in horror from his works. the mistake they make, however, is to suppose that he, like most other philosophers with whom they are familiar, is an advocate of the greatest number. let us take a single instance. in _the honey sacrifice_[1] the phrase "become what thou art," occurs. now it is obvious that however legitimate this command may be when applied to the highest and best, it becomes dangerous and seditious when applied to each individual of the mass of mankind. and this explains the number of errors that are rife concerning nietzsche's gospel. whenever nietzsche spoke esoterically, his enemies declared that he was pronouncing maxims for the greatest number; whenever he spoke for the greatest number, as he does again and again in his allusions to the mediocre, he was accused of speaking esoterically. how would any other philosophy have fared under such misrepresentation and calumny? nietzsche could not believe in equality; for within him justice said "men are not equal!" those to whom it gives pleasure to think that men are equal, he conjures not to confound pleasure with truth, and, like professor huxley, he finds himself obliged to recognise "the natural inequality of men." but, far from deploring this fact, he would fain have accentuated and intensified it. this inequality, to nietzsche, is a condition to be exploited and to be made use of by the legislator. the higher men of a society in which gradations of rank are recognised as a natural and desirable condition constitute the class in which the hopes of a real elevation of humanity may be placed. the divine manu, laotse, confucius, muhammad, jesus christ--all these men, who in their sublime arrogance actually converted man into a mirror in which they saw themselves and their doctrines reflected, and who in thus converting man into a mirror really made him feel happy in the function of reflecting alone:--these leaders are the types nietzsche refers to when he speaks of higher men. ruling, like all other functions which require the great to justify them, has fallen into disrepute, thanks to the incompetent amateurs that have tried their hand at the game. as in the fine arts, so in leading and ruling; it is the dilettantes that have broken our faith in human performances. the really great ruler reaches his zenith in dominating an epoch, a party, a nation or the world, to the best advantage of each of these; but it does not follow that the motive power propelling him should necessarily be the conscious pursuit of the best advantage of those he rules,--this is merely a fortuitous circumstance curiously associated with greatness in ruling,--generally speaking, however, his only conscious motive is the gratification of his inordinate will to power. the innocent fallacy of democracy lies in supposing that by a mere search, by a mere rummaging and fumbling among a motley populace, one man or several men can be found, who are able to take the place of the rare and ideal ruler. as if the mere fact of searching and rummaging were not in itself a confession of failure,--a confession that this man does not exist! for if he existed he would have asserted himself! he would have needed no democratic exploration party to unearth him. "there is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the powerful of the earth are not at the same time the first men. then everything becometh false and warped and monstrous."[2] "for, my brethren, the best shall rule: the best will rule! and where the teaching is different, there--the best _is lacking_."[3] here we observe that nietzsche advocated an aristocratic arrangement of society. a firm believer in tradition, law, and order, and, in spite of his opponents' accusations, an undaunted enemy of anarchy and _laisser-aller_, he saw in socialism and democracy nothing more than two slave organisations for the raising of every individual to his highest power, individuality made as general as possible; or, in other words, socialism and democracy meant to nietzsche the annihilation of all higher aims and hopes. it meant valuing all the weeds and noble plants alike, and with such a valuation, the noble plants, being in the minority, must necessarily suffer and ultimately die out. where everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody. socialism, _i.e._ organised individualism, seemed to nietzsche merely the reflection in politics of the christian principle that all men are alike before god. grant immortality to every tom, dick, and harry, and, in the end, every tom, dick, or harry will believe in equal rights before he can even hope to reach heaven, but to deny the privileges of rare men implies the proscription from life of all high trees with broad brandies,--those broad brandies that protect the herd from the rain, but which also keep the sun from the envious and ambitious shrub,--and thus it would mean that the world would gradually assume the appearance of those vast scotch moors of gorse and heather, where liberalism and mediocrity are rampant, but where all loftiness is dead. nietzsche was a profound believer in the value of tradition, in the value of general discipline lasting over long periods. he knew that all that is great and lasting and intensely moving has been the result of the law of castes or of the laws governing the individual members of a caste throughout many generations.[4] this building up of the rare man, of the great man (of the cultivated type in a darwinian sense) as every scientist is aware, is utterly frustrated by any thing in the way of injudicious and careless cross-breeding (see darwin on the degeneration of the cultivated types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding), by democratic _mésalliances_ of all kinds, and by the laisser aller which is one of the worst evils of that kind of freedom which tends to prevail when the slaves of a community have succeeded in asserting and expressing their insignificant and miserable little individualities. believing all this, nietzsche could not help but advocate the rearing of a select and aristocratic caste, and in none of his exhortations is he more sincere than when he appeals to higher men to sow the seeds of a nobility for the future. "o my brethren, i consecrate you to be, and show unto you the way unto a now nobility. ye shall become procreators and breeders and sowers of the future. "verily, ye shall not become a nobility one might buy, like shopkeepers with shopkeepers' gold. for all that hath its fixed price is of little worth. "not whence ye come be your honour in future, but whither ye go!" your will, and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves,--be that your new honour!" "your children's land ye shall love (be this your new nobility), the land undiscovered in the remotest sea! for it i bid you set sail and seek!"[5] "every elevation of the type man," says nietzsche, "has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society--and so will it always be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. without the _pathos of distance_, such as grows out of the incarnated differences of classes, out of the constant outlooking and downlooking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type 'man,' the continued 'self-surmounting of man,' to use a moral formula in a super-moral sense."[6] i cannot attempt to give a full account of the society nietzsche would fain have seen established on earth. it will be found exhaustively described in aph. 57 of the _antichrist_: while in the book of _manu_ (max müller's "sacred books of the east," no. 25), similar sociological prescriptions are to be found, correlated with all the imposing machinery of divine revelation, supernatural authority, and religious earnestness. briefly, nietzsche says this:-it is ridiculous to pretend to treat every one without regard to those natural distinctions which are manifested by superior intellectuality, or exceptional muscular strength, or mediocrity of spiritual and bodily powers, or inferiority of both. he tells us that it is not the legislator, but nature herself, who establishes these broad classes, and to ignore them when forming a society would be just as foolish as to ignore the order of rank among materials and structural principles when building a monument. though the base of a pyramid does not require to be of the very finest marble, we know it must be both broad and massive. nietzsche declares that no society has any solidarity which is not founded upon a broad basis of mediocrity. though the stones get fewer in the layers as we ascend to the top of the pyramid, we know that their gradation is necessary if the highest point is to be readied. nietzsche believes in the long scale of gradations of rank with the ascending line leading always to the highest--even if he be only a single individual. though the very uppermost point consists of a single stone, it is around that single stone that the weather will rage most furiously and the sun shine most gorgeously. that single stone will be the first to cleave the heavy shower, and the first, for, to meet the lightning. nietzsche says: "life always becomes harder towards the _summit_,--the cold increases, responsibility increases."[7] "saepius ventis agitatur ingens pinus, et celsae graviore casu decidunt turres, feriuntque summos fulgura montes."[8]--horace, _carm_. ii. x. thus he would have the intellectually superior, those who can bear responsibility and endure hardships, at the head. beneath them are the warriors, the physically strong, who are "the guardians of right, the keepers of order and security, the king above all as the highest formula of warrior, judge, and keeper of the law. the second in rank are the executive of the most intellectual." and below this caste are the mediocre. "handicraft, trade, agriculture, _science_, the greater part of art, in a word, the whole _compass_ of business activity, is exclusively compatible with an average amount of ability and pretension." at the very base of the social edifice, nietzsche sees the class of man who thrives best when he is well looked after and closely observed,--the man who is happy to serve, not because he must, but because he is what he is,--the man uncorrupted by political and religious lies concerning equality, liberty, and fraternity,--who is half conscious of the abyss which separates him from his superiors, and who is happiest when performing those acts which are not beyond his limitations. he forestalls this sketch of his ideal society by enunciating the moral code wherewith he would transvalue our present values, and i shall now give this code without a single remark or comment, feeling quite sure that the reader who has understood nietzsche so far will not require any assistance in seeing that it is the necessary and logical outcome of the rest of his teaching. * * * * * "what is good? all that increases the feeling of power, will to power, power itself in man. "what is bad?--all that proceeds from weakness. "what is happiness?--the feeling that power _increases_, that resistance is overcome. "not contentedness, but more power; not peace at any price, but warfare; not virtue, but capacity (virtue in the renaissance style, virtù free from any moralic acid)."[9] * * * * * i cannot well close this chapter on nietzsche's sociological views without touching upon two of the most important elements in modern society, and his treatment of them. i refer to "altruism" and to "pity." i am more particularly anxious to express myself clearly on these two points, inasmuch as i know how many erroneous opinions are current in regard to nietzsche's attitude towards them. in all gregarious communities, as is well known, altruism and pity have become very potent life-preserving factors, and it would be hard to find in europe to-day, a city, a town, or a village, in which these two qualities are not considered the most creditable of virtues. now apart from the fact that this excessive praise of compassion and selflessness is a sign of slave values being in the ascendant, we must bear in mind two things: (1) that under our present system of society, in which cruelties are perpetrated far more brutal than any that could be found in antiquity, a sort of maudlin sentimentality has arisen among the oppressing classes, whereby they attempt to counterbalance their deeds of oppression with lavish acts of charity. this sentimentality is a sign that their conscience is no longer clean for the act of oppressing; because in their heart of hearts they feel themselves unworthy of being at the top: (2) that wherever two or three human beings collect together, a certain modicum of altruism and compassion is a prerequisite of their social unity. dismissing observation one as the mere expression of a regrettable fact which scarcely requires substantiation, and which is responsible for more than three-quarters of the anomalies that characterise modern western civilisation; and passing over the suggestion that the excessive praise of compassion and selflessness denotes an ascendency of slave values (for we have dealt with this question in chapter iii.), let us turn to the more abstract proposition enunciated in observation two and try to grasp nietzsche's treatment of it. in the first place, let us understand that there are two kinds of pity and selflessness, just as there are two kinds of generosity. there is the pity, the selflessness and the generosity which is preached and praised as a virtue by him who urgently requires them because he is ill-constituted, needy, and hungry; and there is the pity, the selflessness and the generosity which suggests itself to the man overflowing with health, trust in the future, and confidence in his own powers. to such a man, pity, selflessness, and generosity are a means of discharging a certain plenitude of power, and in his case giving and bestowing are natural functions. in the first instance, the three virtues are preached from a utilitarian standpoint which tends to increase an undesirable type; in the second, they are the sign of the existence of a desirable type. let us hear nietzsche-"a man who says: 'i like that, i take it for my own, and mean to guard it and protect it from everyone'; and the man who can conduct a case, carry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence; a man who has his indignation and his sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man who is a master by nature--when such a man has sympathy, well! that sympathy has value! but of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer! or of those even who preach sympathy!" wherever we find anything akin to "pity," even in nature: the suckling of the young, the maintenance of dependants (the lion's attitude towards the jackal), the protection of the helpless young (as in many fish and mammals), it is always the superabundance of the giver and his will to power which creates the pitiful act. but the pity which most of us understand as a virtue in europe to-day, is merely a sort of sickly sensitiveness and irritability towards pain, an effeminate absence of control in the presence of suffering, which has nothing whatever to do with our powers of alleviating the misery we contemplate, and which is only compatible either with excessive sentimentality or with weak and overstrained nerves. in that case all it does is to add to the misery of this world, and to elevate to a virtue that which is perhaps one of the saddest signs of the times. it is then indiscriminate, rash, and short-sighted, and gives rise to more evil than it tries to dispel. "ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? and what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful? "woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!"[10] the legislator or the leader (and it is to him, remember, that nietzsche appeals), is often obliged to leave dozens to die by the wayside, and has to do so with a clean conscience. if the march he is organising requires certain sacrifices, he must be ready to make them; the slavish pity, then, which would sacrifice the greater to the less, must have been overcome by him in his own heart., and he must have learnt that hardness which is wider in its sympathies, more presbyopic in its love, and less immediate in its effect. but he alone can feel like this who has something to give to those he leads, _i.e._ his protection and guidance, his promise of a better land. "myself i would sacrifice to my design, and my neighbour as well--such is the language of creators. "all creators, however, are hard."[11] now turning to the question of egoism _cru et vert_, which, according to some, is the very basis and core of nietzscheism, what are the points which strike us most in nietzsche's standpoint? to begin with, in this question, as in all others, his honesty is paramount, and we become conscious of it the moment we read his first line on the subject. where nietzsche discusses matters of which others are wont to speak with heaving breasts, florid language, and tearful voices, he takes particular pains to be clear, concise, calculating and cold--hence perhaps the hatred he has provoked in those who depend for their effect upon the impression of benevolence which their watery eyes, their cracked, good-natured voices, and their high-falutin' words make upon a multitude. nietzsche puts his linger on the very centre of the question of egoism, he simply says: "not every one has the right to be an egoist. whereas in some egoism would be a virtue, in others it may be an insufferable vice which should be stamped out at all costs." in whom then is egoism a vice? obviously in him who is physiologically botched, below mediocrity in spirit and body, mean, despicable, and even ugly. egoism in such a man means concentrating certain interests, and not always the least valuable, upon the promotion and enhancement of an undesirable element in society. the egoism of him who is below mediocrity is a form of tyranny which leads to nothing, save, perhaps, a heaven where the _haute volée_ will consist of the whole scum and dross of humanity. such egoism leads humanity downwards: it practically says: "i, the bungled and the botched, i the poor in spirit and body, i the mean, despicable and ugly, want my kind to be all-important, paramount and on the top--i the least desirable wish to prevail." but this egoism would mean humanity's ruin, it would mean humanity's suicide and annihilation: it would certainly mean humanity's degradation. when such egoism says: "i will have all," the only decent retort is deafness. when such egoism says: "i have as much right to live and flourish as the well-constituted, the superior in spirit and body, the beautiful and the happy," wisdom replies with a shrill of its shoulders. and when such egoism preaches altruism--then! then woe to all those who are tempted to practise one virtue more! woe to humanity! woe to the whole world! there is, on the other hand, a form of egoism, which is both virtuous and noble. it is the egoism of him whose multiplication would make the world better, more desirable, happier, healthier, superior in spirit and body. egoism in such a case is a moral duty; wherever, _in such a case_, giving, bestowing--altruism in fact--is not compatible with survival, then egoism becomes the highest principle of all, and it is in such circumstances that altruism may become a vice. now let us hear nietzsche's own words:-"selfishness," he says, "has as much value as the physiological value of him who possesses it: it may be very valuable or it may be vile and contemptible. each individual may be looked at with respect to whether he represents an ascending or a descending line of life. when that is determined, we have a canon for determining the value of his selfishness. if he represent the ascent in the line of life, his value is in fact very great--and on account of the collective life which in him makes a further step, the concern about his maintenance, about providing his optimum of conditions, may even be extreme... if he represent descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, or sickening, he has little worth, and the greatest fairness would have him _take away_ as little as possible from the well-constituted. he is then no more than their parasite."[12] this is all clear enough; but it is quite conceivable that a misunderstanding of it might lead to the most perverted notions of what nietzsche actually stood for, and when i hear people inveighing against the so-called egoism of his teaching, and declaring it poisonous on that account, i often wonder whether they have really made any attempt at all to comprehend the above passage, and whether there is not perhaps something wrong with language itself, that a thought which to some seems expressed so clearly and unmistakably, should still prove confusing and incomprehensible to others. speaking once more to higher men, then, nietzsche tells them, with some reason on his side, that altruism may be their greatest danger, that altruism may be even their greatest temptation, that there are times when they must avoid it as they would avoid a plague. in periods of gestation, when plans and dreams of plans for the elevation of themselves and their fellows are taking shape in their minds, altruism may lure them sideways, it may make them diverge from their path, and it may make mankind one great thought the poorer. in this sense, and in this sense alone, does our author deprecate the altruistic virtues; but, again, i venture to remind readers that it is the simplest thing on earth to awaken suspicion against him by declaring, as some have declared, that his deprecation of altruism applies to all. no greater nonsense could be talked about nietzsche than to say that he preached universal egoism. universal egoism as opposed to select egoism is behind all the noisiest movements to-day--it is behind socialism, democracy, anarchy, and nihilism--but it is not behind nietzscheism, and nobody who reads him with care could ever think so. with these observations in mind, we can read the following passages from _thus spake zarathustra_ without either surprise or indignation; indeed we may even learn a new valuation from them which will alter our whole outlook on life, though no such sudden revulsion of feeling need necessarily follow a study of nietzsche's doctrine. only when we have given his thoughts time to become linked up and co-ordinated in our minds are we likely to find that our view of the world has become in the least decree transformed. * * * * * * "do i advise you to love your neighbour? leather do i advise you to flee from your neighbour and to love the most remote. "higher than love to your neighbour is love unto the most remote future man. "it is the more remote (your children and your children's children) who pay for your love unto your neighbour.[13] "your children's land ye shall love (be this love your new nobility!), the land undiscovered in the remotest sea! for it i bid your sails seek and seek! "in your children ye shall make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! this new table do i place over you!"[14] [1] z., chap. lxi. [2] z., p. 299. [3] z., pp. 256, 257. [4] g. e., aph. 188. [5] z., pp. 247, 248. [6] g. e., p. 223. [7] antichrist, aph. 57. [8] "the big pine is more often shaken by the winds: the higher a tower, the heavier is the fall thereof, and it is the tops of the mountains that the lightning strikes." [9] _antichrist_, aph. 2. [10] z., pp. 104, 105. [11] z., p. 105. [12] _the twilight of the idols_, par. 10, aph. 33. [13] z., pp. 69, 70. [14] z., p. 248. * * * * * summary and conclusion when we have done rubbing our eyes and ears at the dazzling and startling novelty of all we have seen and heard, let us ask ourselves calmly and dispassionately what sort of man this is who has led us thus far into regions which, from their very unfamiliarity and exoticness, may have seemed to us both unpleasant and forbidding. this is no time for apologetics, or for pleading extenuating circumstances. even if nietzsche's doctrines have been presented in a form too undiluted to be inviting, it would scarcely mend matters, now, to beg pardon fur them; and i have no intention of doing anything of the sort. but these questions may be put without any fear of assuming a penitential attitude, and i do not hesitate to put them: was the promise of nietzsche's life fulfilled? did the task he started out with, "the elevation of the type man," receive his best strength, his best endeavours, his sincerest application? however fundamentally we may disagree with his conclusions, were they reached by means of an upright attempt at grappling with the problems? to all of those questions there is but one answer, and that answer clears nietzsche of all the slander and calumny to which he has been submitted for the last thirty years. however often we may think he has erred, it is nonsense any longer to speak of him as an anarchist, an advocate of brutality, a supporter of immorality in its worst modern sense, and a guardian saint of savage passions. if i have led any readers to suspect that he was all this, i can only entreat them to turn as soon as possible to the original works themselves, and there they will find that it was i who was wrong. personally i believe, as hippolyte taine, dr. george brandes and wagner believed, that nietzsche's work is greater than his own or the next generation could ever suspect. questions such as art, the future of science, and the future of religion, which nietzsche treats with his customary skill, i have been unable to find room for, in this work. but in each of these departments, i believe (and in this belief i am by no means alone) that nietzsche's speculations may prove of the very highest value. already in biology there are signs that nietzsche's conclusions are gaining ground. in art, as i hope to able to show elsewhere, his doctrines are likely to effect a salutary revolution: while, in the departments of history, psychology, jurisprudence and metaphysics, specialists will doubtless arise who will attempt to make innovations under his leadership. for the present, though the outlook is brighter than it was, nietzscheism--that is to say: free-spiritedness, intellectual bravery; the ability to stand alone when every one else has his arm linked in something; the courage to face unpleasant, fatal, and disconcerting truths,--has not much hope of very general acceptance, among those to whom it really ought to appeal. calumny, which had a long start, has deafened many to the cause and will continue deafening a larger number still, until the truth is ultimately known. yet it is to be hoped that readers may learn to be less satisfied than they have been heretofore with second-hand accounts of what nietzsche stood for, and that very shortly everybody who is interested in the matter will be able to reply to the slanderer with facts culled from nietzsche's life and works. * * * * * * "mine enemies have grown strong," says zarathustra, "and i have disfigured the face of my teaching, so that my dearest friends have to blush for the gifts i gave them."[1] "but like a wind i shall one day blow amidst them, and take away their breath with my spirit; thus my future willeth it. "verily a strong wind is zarathustra to all low lands; and his enemies and everything that spitteth and speweth he counselleth with such advice: beware of spitting against the wind."[2] [1] z., pp. 95, 96. [2] z., p. 116. books useful to the student of nietzsche biographies:- _das leben friedrich nietzsche's_, by mrs. förster-nietzsche. _erinnerungen an friedrich nietzsche_, by deussen. _nietzsche, sein leben und sein werk_, by raoul richter. editions of works. the complete works of friedrich nietzsche. edited by dr. oscar levy. (the first complete and authorised english translation.) t. n. foulis, 21 paternoster square. _friedrich nietzsche's werke_. library edition 15 vols.----pocket edition (very good) 10 vols. monographs. bélart, _nietzsche's ethik._ ----- _nietzsche's metaphysik._ ----- _nietzsche und richard wagner._ brandes, g., _menschen und werke._ common, thos., _nietzsche as critic._ fouillée, a., _nietzsche et l'immoralisme._ gaultier, j., de kant à nietzsche. ----- _nietzsche et la réforme philosophique._ kennedy, j. m., _the quintessence of nietzsche._ lichtenberger, h., _la philosophie de nietzsche._ mügge, _nietzsche his life and works._ sera, leo, _on the tracks of life._ tienes, _nietzsche's stellung zu den grundfragen der ethik genetisch dargestellt_. tille, a., _von darwin bis nietzsche._ zeitler, j., _nietzsche's æsthetik._ nietzsche's works: authorised version: edited by dr. oscar levy. _thoughts out of season_. 2 vols. _the birth of tragedy_. _thus spake zarathustra_. _beyond good and evil_. _the future of our educational institutions_. _human, all too human_. vol. i. _the will to power_. 2 vols. _the genealogy of morals_. _the case against wagner_. _the joyful wisdom_. _the dawn of day_. http://www.freeliterature.org (images generously made available by the internet archive.) nietzsche and other exponents of individualism by paul carus chicago london the open court publishing company 1914 [illustration: friedrich nietzsche. statue by klein.] table of contents anti-scientific tendencies deussen's recollections extreme nominalism a philosophy of originality the overman zarathustra a protest against himself nietzsche's predecessor ego-sovereignty another nietzsche nietzsche's disciples the principle of valuation individualism conclusion index anti-scientific tendencies. philosophies are world-conceptions presenting three main features: (1) a systematic comprehension of the knowledge of their age; (2) an emotional attitude toward the cosmos; and (3) a principle that will serve as a basis for rules of conduct. the first feature determines the worth of the several philosophical systems in the history of mankind, being the gist of that which will last, and giving them strength and backbone. the second one, however, appeals powerfully to the sentiments of those who are imbued with the same spirit and thus constitutes its immediate acceptability; while the ethics of a philosophy becomes the test by which its use and practicability can be measured. the author's ideal has been to harmonize these three features by making the first the regulator of the second and a safe basis of the third. what we need is truth; our fundamental emotion must be truthfulness, and our ethics must be a living of the truth. truth is not something that we can fashion according to our pleasure; it is not subjective; its very nature is objectivity. but we must render it subjective by a love of truth; we must make it our own, and by doing so our conduct in life will unfailingly adjust itself. former philosophies made the subjective element predominant, and thus every philosopher worked out a philosophy of his own, endeavoring to be individual and original. the aim of our own philosophy has been to reduce the subjective to its proper sphere, and to establish, in agreement with the scientific spirit of the age, a philosophy of objective validity. it is a well known experience that the march of progress does not advance in a straight line but proceeds in epicycles. man seems to tire of the rigor of truth. from time to time he wants fiction. a strict adherence to exact methods becomes monotonous to clever minds lacking the power of concentration, and they gladly hail vagaries. truth, they claim, is relative, knowledge mere opinion, and poetry had better replace science. then they say: error, be thou our guide; error, thou art a liberator from the tyranny of truth. glory be to error! similar retrograde movements take place from time to time in art. classical taste changes with romantic tendencies. goethe, schiller and lessing are followed by schlegel and tieck, mozart and beethoven by wagner. the last half-century has been an age of unprecedented progress in science and we would expect that with all the wonderful successes and triumphs of scientific invention this age of science ought to find its consummation in the adoption of a philosophy of science. but no! the mass of mankind is weary of science, and anti-scientific tendencies grow up like mushrooms, finding spokesmen in philosophers like william james and henri bergson who have the ear of large masses, proclaiming the superiority of subjectivism over objectivism, and the advantages of animal instinct over human reason. these subjective philosophies if considered as expressions of sentiment, as sentimental attitudes toward the world, as poetical effusions of a semi-philosophical nature, are perfectly legitimate and can be indulged in as well as the several religions which in allegories attune the minds of their followers toward the all of which they are parts. there is no need to condemn arts or emotions for they have a right to exist just as they are. we protest against subjectivism in philosophy only when it denies the possibility of an objective philosophy. we do not deny that the masses of the world are not, cannot be and never will be scientific thinkers. science is the prerogative of the few, and the large masses of mankind will always be of a pragmatist type. if the pragmatist considered himself as a psychologist pure and simple showing how the majority of mankind argues, how people are influenced by their own interest and how their thoughts are warped by what they wish the facts to be, pragmatism would be a commendable branch of the science of the soul. pragmatism explains the errors of philosophy and we can learn much from a consideration of its principles. it becomes objectionable only in so far as it claims to be philosophy in the strict sense of the word. the name philosophy is used in two senses, first as we defined it above, as a world-conception based upon critically sifted knowledge; and secondly it is used in a vague general sense as wisdom in the practical affairs of life. and if pragmatism claims to be a philosophy in this second sense it ought not to deny that philosophy as a science is possible. philosophy as a science is philosophy _par excellence_. it is the only philosophy of objective validity. all other philosophies are effusions of subjective points of view, of attitudes, of sentiment. but we must insist that these two contrasts may exist side by side just as art does not render mathematics supererogatory, and as a physicist who in his profession devotes himself to a study of nature according to methods of an objective exactness may in his leisure hours paint a _stimmungsbild_ to give an artistic expression to a subjective mood. this world is not merely the object of science. there are innumerable tendencies which exist and have a right to exist, but they ought not to banish science, scientific enquiry and scientific ideals from the place they hold; for science is the mariners' compass which guides us over the ocean of life, and though the majority of the passengers do not and need not worry about it, science is after all the only means which makes for progress and lifts mankind to higher and higher levels. if we criticize men like james and bergson and other philosophers of subjectivism we do it as a defence of the indispensable character of the objectivity of science as well as of philosophy as a science. james and bergson were by no means the originators of their method of philosophizing. there have been many sages before them who deemed the spectacles through which they viewed the world to be the most important or even the only significant issue of life's problems. the ionian physicists were outdone by the sophists, and in modern times friedrich nietzsche expressed the most sovereign contempt for science. among all the philosophies of modern times there is perhaps none which in its inmost principle is more thoroughly opposed to our own than nietzsche's, and yet there are some points of mutual contact which are well worth pointing out. the problem which is at the basis of nietzsche's thought is the same as in our philosophy, but our solution is radically different from his. friedrich nietzsche is a philosopher who astonishes his readers by the boldness with which he rebels against every tradition, tearing down the holiest and dearest things, preaching destruction of all rule, and looking with disdain upon the heap of ruins in which his revolutionary thoughts would leave the world. for more than a century germany has been the storm-center of philosophical thought. the commotions that started in the fatherland reached other countries, france, england, and the united states, after they had lost their force at home. kant's transcendentalism and hegel's phenomenalism began to flourish among the english-speaking races after having become almost extinct in the home of their founders. prof. r. m. wenley of the university of michigan, ann arbor, mich., expresses this truth with his native scotch wit in the statement which i do not hesitate to endorse, that "german professors when they die go to oxford," and we may add that from oxford they travel west to settle for a while in concord, boston, washington, or other american cities. hegelianism had scarcely died out in the united states when schopenhauer and nietzsche began to become fashionable. the influence of the former has been felt in a quiet way for some time while the nietzsche movement is of more recent date and also of a more violent character. nietzsche represents a type of most modern date. his was a genius after the heart of lombroso. he was eccentric and atypical. lombroso's psychology is an outgrowth of nominalism which does not recognize an objective norm for truth, health, reason, or normality of any kind, and regards the average as the sole method of finding a norm. if, however, the average type is the standard of measurement, the unusually excellent specimens, being rare in number, must be classed together with all other deviations from the average, and thus a genius is regarded as abnormal as much as a criminal--a theory which has found many admirers in this age that is sicklied over with agnosticism, the modern offshoot of nominalism. the truth is that true genius (not the pseudo-genius of erratic minds, not the would-be genius of those who make a failure of life) is uncommonly normal--i had almost said "abnormally normal." a perfect crystal is rare; so the perfectly normal man is an exception; yet for all that he is a better representative of the ideal of his type than the average. nietzsche was most assuredly very ingenious; he was unusually talented but he was not a genius in the full sense of the word. he was abnormal, titanic in his pretensions and aims, and erratic. breaking down under the burden of his own thought, he ended his tragical career in an insane asylum. the mental derangement of nietzsche may be an unhappy accident but it appears to have come as the natural result of his philosophy. nietzsche, by nature modest and tractable, almost submissive, was, as a thinker, too proud to submit to anything, even to truth. schopenhauer had taught him that the intellect, with its comprehension of truth, is a mere slave of the will, ancilla voluntatis. our cognition of the truth has a purpose; it must accommodate itself to our own interest. but the self is sovereign; the self wants to assert itself; the self alone has a right to exist; and the self that does not dare to be itself is a servile, menial creature. therefore nietzsche preaches the ethics of self-assertion and pride. he is too proud to recognize the duty of inquiry, the duty of adapting his mind to the world, or of recognizing the cosmic order of the universe as superior to his self. he feels bigger than the cosmos; he is himself; and he wants to be himself. his own self is sovereign; and if the world is not satisfied to submit to his will, the world may go to ruin. if the world breaks to pieces, it will only cause him to laugh; on the other hand, if his very self is forced to the wall in this conflict, he will still, from sheer pride, not suffer himself to abandon his principle of the absolute sovereignty of selfhood. he will not be a man, human and humane, but an overman (_uebermensch_), a superhuman despiser of humanity and humaneness. the multitudes are to him like cattle to be used, to be milked, fleeced and butchered, and nietzsche calls them herds, animals of the flock, _heerdentiere_. nietzsche's philosophy is unique in being throughout the expression of an emotion--the proud sentiment of a self-sufficient sovereignty of self. it rejects with disdain both the methods of the intellect, which submit the problems of life to an investigation, and the demands of morality, which recognize the existence of duty. other philosophers have claimed that rights imply duties and duties, rights. nietzsche knows of rights only. nietzsche claims that there is no objective science save by the permission of the sovereign self, nor is there any "ought," except for slaves and fools. he prides himself on being "the first unmoralist," implying the absolute sovereignty of man--of the overman--and the foolishness as well as falsity of moral maxims. deussen's recollections professor paul deussen, sanskritist and philosopher of kiel, was friedrich nietzsche's most intimate friend. they were chums together in school in schulpforta, and remained friends to the end of nietzsche's life. nietzsche had come to schulpforta in 1858, and deussen entered the next year in the same class. once nietzsche, who as the senior of the class had to keep order among his fellow scholars during working periods and prevent them from making a disturbance, approached deussen while he sat in his seat peacefully chewing the sandwich he had brought for his lunch and said, "don't talk so loud to your crust!" using here the boys' slang term for a sandwich. these were the first words nietzsche had spoken to deussen, and deussen says:[1] "i see nietzsche still before me, how with the unsteady glance peculiar to extremely near-sighted people, his eye wandered over the rows of his classmates searching in vain for an excuse to interfere." [illustration: friedrich nietzsche as a pupil at schulpforta in the year 1861.] nietzsche and deussen began to take walks together and soon became chums, probably on account of their common love for anacreon, whose poems were interesting to both perhaps on account of the easy greek in which they are written. in those days the boys of schulpforta addressed each other by the formal _sie_; but one day when deussen happened to be in the dormitory, he discovered in the trunk under his bed a little package of snuff; nietzsche was present and each took a pinch. with this pinch they swore eternal brotherhood. they did not drink brotherhood as is the common german custom, but, as deussen humorously says, they "snuffed it"; and from that time they called each other by the more intimate _du_. this friendship continued through life with only one interruption, and on laetare sunday in 1861, they stepped to the altar together and side by side received the blessing at their confirmation. on that day both were overcome by a feeling of holiness and ecstasy. thus their friendship was sealed in christ, and though it may seem strange of nietzsche who was later a most iconoclastic atheist, a supernatural vision filled their young hearts for many weeks afterwards. there was a third boy to join this friendship--a certain meyer, a young, handsome and amiable youth distinguished by wit and the ability to draw excellent caricatures. but meyer was in constant conflict with his teachers and generally in rebellion against the rules of the school. he had to leave school before he finished his course. nietzsche and deussen accompanied him to the gate and returned in great sorrow when he had disappeared on the highway. what has become of meyer is not known. deussen saw him five years later in his home at oberdreis, but at that time he was broken in health and courage, disgruntled with god, the world and himself. later he held a subordinate position in the custom house, and soon after that all trace of him was lost. probably he died young. this meyer was attached to nietzsche for other reasons than deussen. while deussen appreciated more the intellectuality and congeniality of his friend, meyer seems to have been more attracted by his erratic and wayward tendencies and this for some time endeared him to nietzsche. thus it came to pass that the two broke with deussen for a time. the way of establishing a state of hostility in schulpforta was to declare oneself "mad" at another, and to some extent this proved to be a good institution, for since the boys came in touch with each other daily and constantly in the school, those who could not agree would have easily come to blows had it not been for this tabu which made it a rule that they were not on speaking terms. this state of things lasted for six weeks, and was only broken by an incidental discussion in a latin lesson, when nietzsche proposed one of his highly improbable conjectures for a verse of virgil. the discussion grew heated, and when the professor after a long latin disquisition finally asked whether any one had something to say on the subject, deussen rose and extemporized a latin hexameter which ran thus: "_nietzschius erravit, neque coniectura probanda est_" on account of the declared state of "mad"-ness, the debate was carried on through the teacher, addressing him each time with the phrase: "tell nietzsche," "tell deussen," "tell meyer," etc., but in the heat of the controversy they forgot to speak in the third person, and finally addressed their adversaries directly. this broke the spell of being "mad" and they came to an understanding and a definite reconciliation. nietzsche never had another friend with whom he became so intimate as with deussen. deussen says (page 9): "at that time we understood each other perfectly. in our lonely walks we discussed all possible subjects of religion, philosophy, poetry, art and music. often our thoughts ran wild and when words failed us we would look into each other's eyes, and one would say to the other: 'we understand each other.' these words became a standing phrase which forthwith we decided to avoid as trivial, and we had to laugh when occasionally it escaped our lips in spite of us. the great ordeal of the final examination came. we had to pass first through our written tests. in german composition, on the 'advantages and dangers of wealth' nietzsche passed with no. 1; also in a latin exercise _de bello punico primo_; but in mathematics he failed with the lowest mark, no. 4. this upset him and in fact he who was almost the most gifted of us all was compelled to withdraw." while the two were strolling up and down in front of the schoolhouse, nietzsche unburdened his grief to his friend, and deussen tried to comfort him. "what difference does it make," said he, "if you pass badly, if only you pass at all? you are and will always be more gifted than all the rest of us, and will soon outstrip even me whom you now envy. you must increase but i must decrease." the course of events was as deussen had predicted, for nietzsche though not passing with as much distinction as he may have deserved nevertheless received his diploma. when deussen with his wife visited nietzsche in august 1907 at sils-maria, nietzsche showed him a requiem which he had composed for his own funeral, and he added: "i do not believe that i will last much longer. i have reached the age at which my father died, and i fear that i shall fall a victim to the same disease as he." though deussen protested vigorously against this sad prediction and tried to cheer him up, nietzsche indeed succumbed to his sad fate within two years. [illustration: friedrich nietzsche from photograph in the possession of professor deussen.] * * * * * professor deussen, though nietzsche's most intimate friend, is by no means uncritical in judging his philosophy. it is true he cherishes the personal character and the ideal tendencies of his old chum, but he is not blind to his faults. deussen says of nietzsche: "he was never a systematic philosopher.... the great problems of epistemology, of psychology, of ã¦sthetics and ethics are only tentatively touched upon in his writings.... there are many pearls of worth upon which he throws a brilliant side light, as it were in lightning flashes.... his overwhelming imagination is always busy. his thoughts were always presented in pleasant imagery and in language of dazzling brilliancy, but he lacked critical judgment and was not controlled by a consideration of reality. therefore the creation of his pen was never in harmony with the actual world, and among the most valuable truths which he revealed with ingenious profundity there are bizarre and distorted notions stated as general rules although they are merely rare exceptions, as is also frequently the case in sensational novels. thus nietzsche produced a caricature of life which means no small danger for receptive and inexperienced minds. his readers can escape this danger only when they do what nietzsche did not do, when they confront every thought of his step by step by the actual nature of things, and retain only what proves to be true under the touchstone of experience." between the negation of the will and its affirmation nietzsche granted to deussen while still living in basel, that the ennoblement of the will should be man's aim. the affirmation of the will is the pagan ideal with the exception of platonism. the negation of the will is the christian ideal, and according to nietzsche the ennoblement of the will is realized in his ideal of the overman. deussen makes the comment that nietzsche's notion of the overman is in truth the ideal of all mankind, whether this highest type of manhood be called christ or overman; and we grant that such an ideal is traceable everywhere. it is called "messiah" among the jews; "hero" among the greeks, "christ" among the christians, and chiã¼n, the superior man, or to use nietzsche's language, "the overman," among the chinese; but the characteristics with which nietzsche endows his overman are unfortunately mere brutal strength and an unscrupulous will to play the tyrant. here professor deussen halts. it appears that he knew the peaceful character of his friend too well to take his ideal of the overman seriously. we shall discuss nietzsche's ideal of the overman more fully further down in a discussion of his most original thoughts, the typically nietzschean ideas. [1] see dr. paul deussen's _erinnerungen an friedrich nietzsche._ leipsic, 1901. extreme nominalism according to nietzsche, the history of philosophy from plato to his own time is a progress of the idea that objective truth (a conception of "the true world") is not only not attainable, but does not exist at all. he expresses this idea in his twilight of the idols (english edition, pp. 122-123) under the caption, "how the 'true world' finally became a fable," which describes the successive stages as follows: "1. the true world attainable by the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man,--he lives in it, he embodies it. "(oldest form of the idea, relatively rational, simple, and convincing. transcription of the proposition, 'i, plato, am the truth,') "2. the true world unattainable at present, but promised to the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man (to the sinner who repents). "(progress of the idea: it becomes more refined, more insidious, more incomprehensible,--it becomes feminine, it becomes christian.) "3. the true world unattainable, undemonstrable, and unable to be promised; but even as conceived, a comfort, an obligation, and an imperative. "(the old sun still, but shining only through mist and scepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, northerly, koenigsbergian.) "4. the true world--unattainable? at any rate unattained. and being unattained also unknown. consequently also neither comforting, saving nor obligatory: what obligation could anything unknown lay upon us? "(gray morning. first dawning of reason. cock-crowing of positivism.) "5. the 'true world'--an idea neither good for anything, nor even obligatory any longer,--an idea become useless and superfluous; consequently a refuted idea; let us do away with it! "(full day; breakfast; return of _bon sens_ and cheerfulness; plato blushing for shame; infernal noise of all free intellects,) "6. we have done away with the true world: what world is left? perhaps the seeming?... but no! in doing away with the true, we have also done away with the seeming world! "(noon; the moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; climax of mankind; _incipit zarathustra!_)" the reader will ask, "what next?" probably afternoon and evening, and then night. in the night presumably "the old sun," i. e., the idea of plato's true world, which (according to nietzsche) grew pale in the morning, will shine again. nietzsche's main desire was to live the real life and make his home not in an imaginary utopia but in this actual world of ours. he reproached the philosophers as well as the religious leaders and ethical teachers for trying to make mankind believe that the teal world is purely phenomenal, for replacing it by the world of thought which they called "the true world" or the world of truth. to nietzsche the typical philosopher is plato. he and all his followers are accused of hypocrisy for making people believe that "the true world" of their own fiction is real and that man's ambition should be to attain to this "true world" (the world of philosophy, of science, of art, of ethical ideals) built above the real world. nietzsche means to shatter all the idols of the past, and he has come to the conclusion that even the scientists were guilty of the same fault as the philosophers. they erected a world of thought, of subjective conception from the materials of the real world, and so he denounces even their attempts at constructing a "true world" as either a self-mystification or a lie. it is as imaginary as the world of the priest. in order to lead a life worthy of the "overman," we should assert ourselves and feel no longer hampered by rules of conduct or canons of logic or by any consideration for truth. with all his hatred of religion, nietzsche was nevertheless an intensely religious character, and knowing that he could not clearly see a connection between his so-called "real world" and his actual surroundings, he developed all the symptoms of religious fanaticism which characterizes religious leaders of all ages. he indulged in a mystic ecstacy, preaching it as the essential feature of his philosophy, and his dionysiac enthusiasm is not the least of the intoxicants which are contained in his thought and bring so many poetical and talented but immature minds under his control. it is obvious that "the real world" of nietzsche is more unreal than "the true world" of philosophy and of religion which he denounces as fictitious, but he was too naive and philosophically crude to see this. nietzsche's "real world" is a fabric of his own personal imagination, while the true world of science is at least a thought-construction of the world which pictures facts with objective exactness; it is controlled by experience and can be utilized in practical life; it is subject to criticism and its propositions are being constantly tested either to be refuted or verified. nietzsche's "real world" is the hope (and perhaps not even a desirable hope) of a feverish brain whose action is influenced by a decadent body. nietzsche's so-called "real world" is one ideal among many others. it is as much subjective as the ideals of other mortals,--of men who seek happiness in wealth, or in pleasures, or in fame, or in scholarship, or in a religious life--all of them imagine that the world of their thoughts is real and the goal which they endeavor to reach is the only thing that possesses genuine worth. in nietzsche's opinion all are dreamers catching at shadows, but the shadow of his own fancy appeared to him as real. according to nietzsche the universe is not a cosmos but a chaos. he says (_la gaya scienza_, german edition, p. 148): "the astral order in which we live is an exception. this order and the relative stability which is thereby caused, made the exception' of exceptions possible,--the formation of organisms. the character-total of the world is into all eternity chaos, not in the sense of a missing necessity, but of missing order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom, and as all our ã¦sthetic humanities may be called." in agreement with this conception of order, nietzsche says of man, the rational animal: "i fear that animals look upon man as a being of their own kind, which in a most dangerous way has lost the sound animal-sense,--as a lunatic animal, a laughing animal, a crying animal, a miserable animal." (_la gaya scienza_, german edition, p. 196.) if reason is an aberration, the brute must be superior to man and instinct must range higher than logical thought. man's reason, according to this consistent nominalist view, is purely subjective and has no prototype in the objective world. this is a feature common to all nominalistic philosophies. john stuart mill regards the theorems of logic and mathematics, not only not as truths, but as positive untruths. he says: "the points, lines, circles, and squares, which any one has in his mind, are (i apprehend) simply copies of the points, lines, circles, and squares which he has known in his experience. our idea of a point, i apprehend to be simply our idea of the _minimum visibile_, the smallest portion of surface which we can see. a line, as defined by geometers, is wholly inconceivable. we can reason about a line as if it had no breadth; because we have a power, which is the foundation of all the control we can exercise over the operations of our minds; the power, when a perception is present to our senses, or a conception to our intellects, of attending to a part only of that perception or conception, instead of the whole. but we cannot conceive a line without breadth; we can form no mental picture of such a line: all the lines which we have in our minds are lines possessing breadth." nietzsche shows his nominalistic tendencies by repeatedly pronouncing the same propositions in almost literally the same words,[1] without, however, acknowledging the school in which he picked up this error. it is quite true that mathematical lines and circles are human conceptions, but they are not purely subjective conceptions, still less untruths; they are great and important discoveries. they are not arbitrarily devised but constructed according to the laws of the uniformities that dominate existence. they represent actual features of the factors which shape the objective universe, and thus only is it possible that the astronomer through the calculation of mathematical curves can predict the motion of the stars.[2] reason is the key to the universe, because it is the reflex of cosmic order, and the cosmic order, the intrinsic regularity and immanent harmony of the uniformities of nature, is not a subjective illusion but an objective reality. when goethe claims that all things transitory are symbols of that which is intransitory and eternal, nietzsche answers that the idea of anything intransitory is a mere symbol, and god (the idea of anything eternal) a poet's lie. like a mocking-bird, the nominalist philosopher imitates the ring of goethe's well-known lines at the conclusion of the second part of "faust," in which the "real world" of transient things is considered as a mere symbol of the true world of eternal verities: "das unvergangliche ist nur dein gleichniss. gott der verfã¤ngliche ist dichter-erschleichniss. weltspiel, das herrische, mischt sein und schein:- das ewig-nã¤rrische mischt uns--hinein." "the non-deciduous is a symbol of _thy_ sense, god ever invidious, a poetical license. world-play domineeringly mixes semblance and fact, and between them us sneeringly the ever-foolish has packed." in spite of nietzsche's hunger for the realities of life, that is to say for objectivity, he was in fact the most subjective of all philosophers--so much so that he was incapable of formulating any thought as an objectively precise statement. he did not believe in truth: "there is probability, but no truth," says he in _der wanderer und sein schatten_, p. 190; and he adds concerning the measure of the value of truth (ibid., aphorism 4): "the trouble in ascending mountains is no measure of their height, and should it be different in science?" it is true that such words as "long" and "short" are relative, because dependent on subjective needs and valuations. but must we for that reason give up all hope of describing facts in objective terms? are not meters and foot-measures definite magnitudes, whether or not they be long for one purpose and short for another? relativity itself admits of a description in objective terms; but if a statement of facts in objective terms were impossible, the ideals of exact science (as all ideals) would be a dream. that nietzsche prefers the abrupt style of aphorisms to dispassionate inquisitions is a symptom that betrays the nature of his philosophy. his ideas, thus expressed, are easily understood. they are but very loosely connected, and we find them frequently contradictory. they are not presented in a logical, orderly way, but sound like reiterated challenges to battle. they are appeals to all wild impulses and a clamor for the right of self-assertion. while nietzsche's philosophy is in itself inconsistent and illogical, it is yet born of the logic of facts; it is the consistent result and legitimate conclusion of principles uttered centuries ago and which were slowly matured in the historical development of thought. the old nominalistic school is the father of nietzsche's philosophy. a consistent nominalist will be driven from one conclusion to another until he reaches the stage of nietzsche, which is philosophical anarchism and extreme individualism. the nominalist denies the reality of reason; he regards the existence of universals as a fiction, and looks upon the world as a heap of particulars. he loses sight of the unity of the world and forgets that form is a true feature of things. it is form and the sameness of the laws of form which makes universality of reason possible. nominalism rose in opposition to the medieval realism of the schoolmen who looked upon universals as real and concrete things, representing them as individual beings that existed _ante res, in rebus_, and _post res_, i. e., in the particulars, before them and after them. the realists were wrong in so far as they conceived universals as substances or distinct essences, as true realities (hence the name "realism"); only they were supposed to be of a more spiritual nature than material things but, after all, they were concrete existences. they were said to have been created by god as an artisan would make patterns or molds for the things which he proposes to produce. according to plato, ideas serve the creator as models of concrete objects of which they are deemed to be the prototypes. the realists were mistaken in regarding the ideal as concrete and real, but the nominalists, on the other hand, also went too far in denying the objective significance of universals and declaring that universals were mere names (_nomina_ and _flatus vocis_), i. e., words invented for the sake of conveniently thinking things and serving no other purpose. at the bottom of the controversy lies the problem as to the nature of things. the question arises, what are things in themselves? do things, or do they not, possess an independence of their own? kant's reply is, that things in themselves can not be known; but our reply is, that the nature of a thing consists in its form; a thing is such as it is because it has a definite form. therefore "things in themselves" do not exist; but there are "forms in themselves." form is not a non-entity but the most important feature of reality, and the pure laws of form are the determinative factors of the world. the sciences of the laws of pure form, logic, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, etc., are therefore the key to a comprehension of the world, and morality is the realization of ideals, i. e., of the conceptions of pure forms, which are higher, nobler, and better than those which have been actualized. from our standpoint, evolution is a process in which the eternal laws of being manifest themselves in a series of regular transformations, reaching a point at which sentiency appears. and then evolution takes the shape of progress, that is to say, sentient beings develop mind; sentiments become sensations, i. e., representative images; and words denote the universals. then reason originates as a reflex of the eternal laws of pure form. human reason is deepened in a scientific world-conception, and becoming aware of the moral aspect of universality it broadens out into comprehensive sympathy with all forms of existence that like ourselves aspire after a fuller comprehension of existence. thus the personality of man is the reflex of that system of eternalities which sways the universe, and humanity is found to be a revelation of the core of the cosmos, an incarnation of godhood. this revelation, however, is not closed. the appearance of the religions of good-will and mutual sympathy merely marks the beginning of a new era, and we may expect that the future of mankind will surpass the present, as much as the present surpasses savagery. such is the higher humanity, the true "overman," representing a higher species of mankind, whom we expect. nietzsche's philosophy of "unmorality" looms on the horizon of human thought as a unique conception apparently ushered into this world without any preparation and without any precedent. it sets itself up against tradition. schopenhauer, nietzsche's immediate predecessor, regarded history as the desolate dream of mankind, and nietzsche exhibits a remorseless contempt for everything that comes to us as a product of history. nietzsche scorns not only law and order, church and state, but also reason, argument, and rule; he scorns consistency and logic which are regarded as toys for weaklings or as tools of the crafty. nietzsche is a nominalist with a vengeance. his philosophy is particularism carried to extremes. there is no unity of existence to him. the god-idea is dead--not only the old metaphysical notion of a god-individual, but also god in the sense of the ultimate ground of being, the supreme norm of the cosmos. nietzsche's world is split up into particular selves. he does not ask how they originated; he only knows that they are here. above all, he knows that his own self is here, and there is no bond of sympathy between it and other selves. the higher self is that which assumes dominion over the world. his ideal is brutal strength, his overman the tyrant who tramples under foot his fellowmen. democracy is an abomination to him, and he despises the gospel of love as it is preached by both christ and buddha. this is the key to his anti-moralism and to the doctrine of the autonomy of selfhood. nietzsche's philosophy might be called philosophical nihilism, if he did not object to the word. he calls it positivism, but it is particularism, or rather an aristocratic individualism which in the domain of thought plays the same role that political nihilism plays in russia. it would dethrone the hereditary czar, the ruler by god's grace, but it would not establish a republic. it would set on the throne a ruthless demagogue, a self-made political boss--the overman. it is the philosophy of protest, and nietzsche is conscious of being slavic in thought and aspiration. nor does he forget that his ancestors belonged to the nobility. he claims to have been descended from a polish nobleman by the name of niã«tzki, a protestant who came to germany in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee. nietzsche's love of slavism manifested itself in his childhood, for when the news of the fall of sebastopol became known, nietzsche, at that time a mere boy, was so dejected that he could not eat and gave expression to his chagrin in mournful strains of verse. he who has faith in truth accepts truth as authority; he who accepts truth as authority recognizes duty; he who recognizes duty beholds a goal of life. he has found a purpose for which life appears worth living, and reaches out beyond the bounds of his narrow individuality into the limitless cosmos. he transcends himself, he grows in truth, he increases in power, he widens in his sympathies. here we touch upon the god problem. in denning god as the ultimate authority of conduct, we are confronted by the dilemma, is there, or is there not a norm of morality, a standard of right and wrong, to which the self must submit? and this question is another version of the problem as to the existence of truth. is there truth which we must heed, or is truth a fiction and is the self not bound to respect anything? we answer this question as to the existence of truth in the affirmative, nietzsche in the negative. but he who rejects truth cuts himself loose from the fountain-head of the waters of life. he may deify selfhood, but his own self will die of its self-apotheosis. his divinity is not a true god-incarnation, it is a mere assumption and the self-exaltation of a pretender. nietzsche's philosophy is more consistent than it appears on its face. being the negation of the right of consistency, its lack of consistency is its most characteristic feature. if the intellect is truly, as schopenhauer suggests, the servant of the will, then there is no authority in reason, and arguments have no strength. all quarrels are simply questions of power. then, there is might, but not right; right is simply the _bon plaisir_ of might. then there is no good nor evil; good is that which i will, bad is that which threatens to thwart my will. good and evil are distinctions invented for the enslavement of the masses, but the free man, the genius, the aristocrat, who craftily tramples the masses under foot, knows no difference. he is beyond good and evil. this, indeed, is the consequence which nietzsche boldly draws. it is a consistent anarchism; it is unmoralism, a courageous denial of ethical rule; and a proud aristocratism, the ruthless shout of triumph of the victor who hails the doctrine of the survival of the strongest and craftiest as a "joyful science." nietzsche would not refute the arguments of those who differ from him; for refutation of other views does not befit a positive mind that posits its own truth. "what have i to do with refutations!" exclaims nietzsche in the preface to his genealogy of morals. the self is lord. there is no law for the lord, and so he denounces the ethics of christianity as slave-morality, and preaches the lord-morality of the strong which is self-assertion. morality itself is denounced by nietzsche as immoral. morality is the result of evolution, and man's moral ideas are products of conditions climatic, social, economical, national, religious, and what not. why should we submit to the tyranny of a rule which after all proves to be a relic of barbarism? nietzsche rejects morality as incompatible with the sovereignty of selfhood, and, pronouncing our former judgment a superstition, he proposes "a transvaluation of all values." the self must be established as supreme ruler, and therefore all rules, maxims, principles, must go, for the very convictions of a man are mere chains that fetter the freedom of his soul. [1] _la gaya scienza_, german edition, p. 154; and _passim_ in _menschliches_, etc. [2] for further details of a refutation of this wrong conception of geometry, see the author's _foundation of mathematics_. a philosophy of originality one might expect that nietzsche, who glories in the triumph of the strong over the weak in the struggle for life, red in tooth and claw, would look up to darwin as his master. but nietzsche recognizes no, master, and he emphasizes this by speaking in his poetry of darwin as "this english joker," whose "mediocre reason" is accepted for philosophy.[1] to nietzsche that which exists is the mere incidental product of blind forces. instead of working for a development of the better from the best of the present, which is the method of nature, he shows his contempt for the human and all-too-human; he prophesies a deluge and hopes that from its floods the overman will emerge whose seal of superiority will be the strength of the conqueror that enables him to survive in the struggle for existence. nietzsche has looked deeply into the apparent chaos of life that according to darwin is a ruthless struggle for survival. he avoids the mistake of those sentimentalists who believe that goody-goodyness can rule the world, who underrate the worth of courage and over-rate humility, and who would venture to establish peace on earth by grounding arms. he sees the differences that exist between all things, the antagonism that obtains everywhere, and preferring to play the part of the hammer, he showers expressions of contempt upon the anvil. and nietzsche's self-assertion is immediate and direct. he does not pause to consider what his self is, neither how it originated nor what will become of it. he takes it as it is and opposes it to the authority of other powers, the state, the church, and the traditions of the past. an investigation of the nature of the self might have dispelled the illusion of his self-glorification, but he never thinks of analysing its constitution. bluntly and without any reflection or deliberation he claims the right of the sovereignty of self. he seems to forget that there are different selves, and that what we need most is a standard by which we can gauge their respective worth, and not an assertion of the rights of the self in general. we do not intend to quarrel with nietzsche's radicalism. nor do we underrate the significance of the self. we, too, believe that every self has the liberty to choose its own position and may claim as many rights as it pleases provided it can maintain them. if it cannot maintain them it will be crushed; otherwise it may conquer its rivals and suppress counter-claims; but therefore the wise man looks before he leaps. reckless self-assertion is the method of brute creation. neither the lion nor the lamb meditate on their fate; they simply follow their instincts. they are carnivorous or herbivorous by nature through the actions of their ancestors. this is what buddhists call the law of deeds or _karma_. man's karma leads higher. man can meditate on his own fate, and he can discriminate. his self is a personality, i. e., a self-controlled commonwealth of motor ideas. man does not blindly follow his impulses but establishes rules of action. he can thus abbreviate the struggle and avoid unnecessary friction; he can rise from brute violence to a self-contained and well-disciplined strength. self-control (i. e., ethical guidance) is the characteristic feature of the true "overman"; but nietzsche knows nothing of self-control; he would allow the self blindly to assert itself after the fashion of animal instincts. nietzsche is the philosopher of instinct. he spurns all logical order, even truth itself. he has a contempt for every one who learns from others, for he regards such a man as a slave to other people's thought. his ambition for originality is expressed in these four lines which he inserted as a motto to the second edition of _la gaya scienza_: "ich wohne in meinem eignen haus, hab' niemandem nie nichts nachgemacht und--lachte noch jeden meister aus, der nicht sich selber ausgelacht." we translate faithfully, preserving even the ungrammatical use of the double negative, as follows: "in my own house do i reside, did never no one imitate, and every master i deride, save if himself he'd derogate." we wonder that nietzsche did not think of goethe's little rhyme, which seems to suit his case exactly: "a fellow says: 'i own no school or college; no master lives whom i acknowledge; and pray don't entertain the thought that from the dead i e'er learned aught.' this, if i rightly understand, means: 'i'm a fool by own command.'" nietzsche observes that the thoughts of most philosophers are secretly guided by instincts. he feels that all thought is at bottom a "will for power," and the will for truth has no right to exist except it serve the will for power. he reproaches philosophers for glorifying truth. fichte in his _duties of the scholar_ says: "my life and my fate are nothing; but the results of my life are of great importance. i am a priest of truth; i am in the service of truth; i feel under obligation to do, to risk, and to suffer anything for truth." nietzsche declares that this is shallow. will for truth, he says, should be called "will to make being thinkable." here, it seems to us, nietzsche simply replaces the word "truth" by one of its functions. truth is a systematic representation of reality, a comprehensive description of facts; the result being that "existence is made thinkable." nietzsche is in a certain sense right when he says that truth in itself is nothing; for every representation of reality must serve a purpose, otherwise it is superfluous and useless. and the purpose of truth is the furtherance of life. nietzsche instinctively hits the right thing in saying that at the bottom of philosophy there is the will for power. in spite of our school-philosopher's vain declamations of "science for its own sake," genuine philosophy will never be anything else than a method for the acquisition of power. but this method is truth. nietzsche errs when he declares that "the head is merely the intestine of the heart." the head endeavors to find out the truth, and the truth is not purely subjective. it is true that truth is of no use to a man unless he makes it his own; he must possess it; it must be part of himself, but he cannot create it. truth cannot be made; it must be discovered. since the scholar's specialized business is the elucidation of the method of discovering the truth--not its purpose, not its application in practical life--fichte's ideal of the aim of scholarship remains justified. omit the ideal of truth in a philosophy, and it becomes an _ignis fatuus_, a will-o'-the-wisp, that will lead people astray. truth makes existence thinkable, but thinkableness alone is not as yet a test of truth. the ultimate test of truth is its practical application. there is something wrong with a theory that does not work, and thus the self has a master, which is reality, the world in which it lives, with its laws and actualities. the subjective self must measure its worth by the objective standard of truth--to be obtained through exact inquiry and scientific investigation. the will for power, in order to succeed, must be clarified by a methodical comprehension of facts and conditions. the contradictory impulses in one's own self must be systematized so that they will not collide and mutually annihilate themselves; and the comprehension of this orderly disposition is called reason. nietzsche is on the right track when he ridicules such ideals as "virtue for virtue's sake," and even "truth for truth's sake." virtue and truth are for the sake of life. they have not their purpose in themselves, but their nature consists in serving the expansion and further growth of the human soul. this is a truth which we have always insisted upon and which becomes apparent when those people who speak of virtue for its own sake try to define virtue, or determine the ultimate standard of right and wrong, of goodness and badness. we say, that whatever enhances soulgrowth, thus producing higher life and begetting a superior humanity, is good; while whatever cripples or retards those aspirations is bad. further, truth is not holy in itself. it becomes holy in the measure that it serves man's holiest aspirations. we sometimes meet among scientists, and especially among philologists, men who with the ideal of "truth for truth's sake," pursue some very trivial investigations, such, for example, as the use of the accusative after certain prepositions in greek, or how often homer is guilty of a hiatus. they resemble faust's famulus wagner, whom faust characterizes as a fool ".... whose choice is to stick in shallow trash for ever more, who digs with eager hand for buried ore, and when he finds an angle-worm rejoices." thus there are many trivial truths of no importance, the investigation of which serves no useful purpose. for instance, whether the correct pronunciation of the greek letter _ãªta_; was _ee_ or _ay_ need not concern us much, and the philologist who devotes all his life and his best strength to its settlement is rather to be pitied than admired. various truths are very different in value, for life and truth become holy according to their importance. all this granted, we need not, with nietzsche, discard truth, reason, virtue, and all moral aspirations. nietzsche apparently is under the illusion that reason, systematic thought, moral discipline and self-control, are external powers, and in his love of liberty he objects to their authority. did he ever consider that thought is not an external agent, but a clarification of man's instincts, and that discipline is, or at least in its purpose and final aim ought to be, self-regulation, so that our contradictory thoughts would not wage an internecine war? thus, nietzsche, the instinct-philosopher, appears as an ingenious boy whose very immaturity is regarded by himself as the highest blossom of his existence. like an intoxicated youth, he revels in his irresponsibility and laughs at the man who has learned to take life seriously. because the love of truth originates from instincts, nietzsche treats it as a mere instinct, and nothing else. he forgets that in the evolution of man's soul all instincts develop into something higher than instinct, and the love of truth develops into systematic science. nietzsche never investigated what his own self consisted of. he never analyzed his individuality. other-wise he would have learned that he received the most valuable part of his being from others, and that the bundle of instincts which he called his sovereign self was nothing but the heirloom of the ages that preceded him. in spite of his repudiation of any debt to others, he was but the continuation of others. but he boldly carried his individualism, if not to its logical conclusions, yet to its moral applications. when speaking of the order of assassins of the times of the crusades, he said with enthusiasm: "the highest secret of their leaders was, 'nothing is true, everything is allowed!'" and nietzsche adds: "that indeed, was liberty of spirit; that dismissed even the belief in truth." the philosopher of instinct even regards the adherence to truth as slavery and the proclamation of truth as dogmatism. [1] see nietzsche's poems in the appendix to _a genealogy of morals_, eng. ed., macmillan, p. 248. the overman he quintessence of nietzsche's philosophy is the "overman." what is the overman? the word (_uebermensch_) comes from a good mint; it is of goethe's coinage, and he used it in the sense of an awe-inspiring being, almost in the sense of _unmensch_, to characterize faust, the titanic man of high aims and undaunted courage,--the man who would not be moved in the presence of hell and pursued his aspirations in spite of the forbidding countenance of god and the ugly grin of satan. but the same expression was used in its proper sense about two and a half millenniums ago in ancient china, where at the time of lao-tze the term _chiã¼n jen_ [chin. chars], "superior man," or _chiã¼n tse_, "superior sage," was in common usage. but the overman or _chiã¼n jen_ of lao-tze, of confucius and other chinese sages is not a man of power, not a napoleon, not an unprincipled tyrant, not a self-seeker of domineering will, not a man whose ego and its welfare is his sole and exclusive aim, but a christlike figure, who puts his self behind and thus makes his self--a nobler and better self--come to the front, who does not retaliate, but returns good for evil,[1] a man (as the greek sage describes him) who would rather suffer wrong than commit wrong.[2] this kind of higher man is the very opposite of nietzsche's overman, and it is the spirit of this nobler conception of a higher humanity which furnishes the best ideas of all the religions of the world, of lao-tze's taoism, of buddhism and of christianity. alexander tille, the english translator of nietzsche's _thus spake zarathustra_, translates the word _uebermensch_ by "beyond-man." but "beyond" means _jenseits_; and nietzsche wrote _ã¼ber_, i. e., superior to, over, or higher than, and the literal translation "overman" appears to be the best. it is certainly better than the barbaric combination of "superman" in which latin and saxon are mixed against one of the main rules for the construction of words. say "superhuman" and "overman," but not "overhuman" or "superman." emerson in a similar vein, when attempting to characterize that which is higher than the soul, invented the term "oversoul," and i can see no objection to the word "overman." the overman is the higher man, the superhuman man of the future, a higher, nobler, more powerful, a better being than the present man! what a splendid idea! since evolution has been accepted as a truth, we may fairly trust that we all believe in the overman. all our reformers believe in the possibility of realizing a higher mankind. we americans especially have faith in the coming of the kingdom of the overman, and our endeavor is concentrated in hastening his arrival. the question is only, what is the overman and how can we make this ideal of a higher development actual? happy nietzsche! you need not trouble yourself about consistency; you reject all ideals as superstitions, and then introduce an ideal of your own. "there you see," says an admirer of nietzsche, "what a splendid principle it is not to own any allegiance to logic, or rule, or consistency. the best thought of nietzsche's would never have been uttered if he had remained faithful to his own principles." however ingenious the idea of an overman may be, nietzsche carries his propositions to such extremes that in spite of many flashes of truth they become in the end ridiculous and even absurd. his ideal is good, but he utterly fails to comprehend its nature and also the mode in which alone the overman can be realized. nietzsche proclaims the coming of the "overman," but his overman is not superior by intellect, wisdom, or nobility of character, but by vigor, by strength, by an unbending desire for power and an unscrupulous determination. the blond barbarian of the north who tramples under foot the citizens of greece and rome, napoleon i, and the assyrian conqueror,--such are his heroes in whom this higher manhood formerly manifested itself. he saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction must set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people, would become subservient. the "herd animal" (so nietzsche called any one foolish enough to recognize morality and truth) is born to obey. he is destined to be trodden under foot by the overman who is strong, and also unscrupulous enough to use the herds and govern them. nietzsche was by no means under the illusion that the rule of the overman would be lasting, but he took comfort in the thought that though there would be periods in which the slaves would assert themselves and establish an era of the herd animals, the overman would nevertheless assert himself from time to time, and this was what he called his "doctrine of the eternal return"--the gospel of his philosophy. the highest summit of existence is reached in those phases of the denouement of human life when the overman has full control over the herds which are driven into the field, sheared and butchered for the sole benefit of him who knows the secret that this world has no moral significance beyond being a prey to his good pleasure. nietzsche's hope is certainly not desirable for the mass of mankind, but even the fate of the overman himself would appear as little enviable a condition as that of the tyrant dionysius under the sword of damocles, or the czar of russia living in constant fear of the anarchistic bomb. nietzsche, feeling that his thoughts were untimely, lived in the hope of "the coming of the great day" on which his views would find recognition. he looked upon the present as a rebellion against the spirit of strength and vigor; christianity especially, and its doctrine of humility and love for the down-trodden was hateful to him. he speaks of it as a rebellion of slaves and places in the same category the democraticism that now characterizes the tendency of human development which he denounces as a pseudo-civilization. he insists that the overman is beyond good and evil; and yet it is obvious that though he claims to be the first philosopher who maintained the principle of unmorality, he was only the first philosopher boldly to proclaim it. his maxim (or lack of maxims) has been stealthily and secretly in use among all those classes whom he calls "overmen," great and small. the great overmen are conquerors and tyrants, who meteorlike appear and disappear, the small ones are commonly characterized as the criminal classes; but there is this difference between the two, that the former, at least so far as they have succeeded, recognize the absolute necessity of establishing law and order, and though they may temporarily have infringed upon the rules of morality themselves, they have finally come always to the conclusion that in order to maintain their position they must enforce upon others the usual rules of morality. both alexander and cã¦sar were magnanimous at the right moment. they showed mercy to the vanquished, they exercised justice frequently against their own personal likes or dislikes, and were by no means men of impulse as nietzsche would have his overman be. the same is true of napoleon whose success is mainly due to making himself subservient to the needs of his age. as soon as he assumed the highest power in france, napoleon replaced the frivolous tone at his court, to which his first wife josephine had been accustomed, by an observance of so-called _bourgeois_ decency, and he enforced it against her inclinations and his own. further, napoleon served the interests of germany more than is commonly acknowledged by sweeping out of existence the mediã¦val system of innumerable sovereigns, ecclesiastical as well as secular, who in conformity with the conservative tenor of the german people had irremediably ensconced themselves in their hereditary rights to the disadvantage of the people. moreover, the _code napoleon_, the new law book, perhaps the most enduring work of napoleon, was compiled by the jurists of the time, not because napoleon cared for justice, but because he saw that the only way of establishing a stable government was by acknowledging rules of equity and by enforcing their recognition. it is true that napoleon made his service in the cause of right and justice a pedestal for himself, but in contrast to nietzsche's ideas we must notice that this recognition of principle was the only way of success to a man whose natural tendency was an unbounded egotism, an unlimited desire for power. in spite of his enthusiasm in announcing the advent of an overman, nietzsche would be a poor adviser for a rising usurper. he would be able to cause a great upheaval, to bring about a volcanic eruption, or to raise a thunderstorm wherever restlessness prevails, but his philosophy lacks the principle of using discretion, or advising self-discipline, of applying scientific methods--all of which is indispensable for success. he preaches boldness, not wisdom; and a hero after nietzsche's heart would be like a navigator who courageously ventures into the storm but scorns a chart and leaves the mariners' compass behind; he would steer not as circumstances demand but according to his own sweet will, and would be wrecked before ever reaching the harbor of overmanhood. how much greater is the ideal of the overman as taught by the ancient philosopher of china! he, the _chiã¼n jen_, the superior man, does not need power either political or financial to be great; he does not need a pedestal of oppressed slaves to stand on; he is great in himself, because he has a great compassionate heart and a broad comprehensive mind. he is simple, and, as we read in the _tao teh king_, "he wears wool [is not dressed in silk and purple] and wears his jewel concealed in his bosom." [1] _lao-tse's tao teh king_, chaps. 49 and 63. [2] for a collection of greek quotations on the ethics of returning good for evil, see _the open court_, vol. xv, 1901, pp. 9-12. zarathustra to those who have not the time to wade through the twelve volumes of nietzsche's works and yet wish to become acquainted with him at his best, we recommend a perusal of his book _thus spake zarathustra_. it is original and interesting, full of striking passages, sometimes flashes with deep truths, then again is sterile and unprofitable, or even tedious, and sometimes absurd; but at any rate it presents the embodiment of nietzsche's grandest thoughts in their most attractive and characteristic form. we need scarcely warn the reader that zarathustra is only another name for friedrich nietzsche and has nothing to do with the historical person of that name, the great iranian prophet, the founder of mazdaism. nietzsche's zarathustra is a hermit philosopher who, weary of his wisdom, leaves his cave and comes to mingle with men, to teach them the overman. he meets a saint who loves god, and zarathustra leaving him says: "is it possible? this old saint in his forest has not yet heard that god is dead!" [illustration: friedrich nietzsche in the prime of life.] zarathustra preaches to a crowd in the market: "i teach you the overman. man is a something that shall be surpassed. what have ye done to surpass him? "all beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide and rather revert to the animal than surpass man? "what with man is the ape? a joke or a sore shame. man shall be the same for the overman, a joke or a sore shame. "behold, i teach you the overman! "the overman is the significance of the earth. your will shall say; the overman shall be the significance of the earth. "i conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak unto you of superterrestrial hopes! poisoners they are whether they know it or not. "verily, a muddy stream is man. one must be the ocean to be able to receive a muddy stream without becoming unclean. "behold, i teach you the overman: he is that ocean, in him your great contempt can sink. "what is the greatest thing ye can experience? that is the hour of great contempt. the hour in which not only your happiness, but your reason and virtue as well, turn loathsome. "i love him who is of a free spirit and of a free heart: thus his head is merely the intestine of his heart, but his heart driveth him to destruction. "i love all those who are like heavy drops falling one by one from the dark cloud lowering over men: they announce the coming of the lightning and perish in the announcing. "behold, i am an announcer of the lightning and a heavy drop from the clouds; that lightning's name it the overman." zarathustra comes as an enemy of the good and the just. he says: "lo, the good and just! whom do they hate most? him who breaketh to pieces their tables of values,--the law-breaker, the criminal:--but he is the creator. "the destroyer of morality i am called by the good and just: my tale is immoral." [illustration: coins of ancient elis. each is worth two drachmã¦. one shows on the obverse a zeus head with a laurel wreath, the other a winged victory.] nietzsche's favorite animals are the proud eagle and the cunning serpent, the former because it typifies aristocracy, the latter as the wisest among all creatures of the earth. it is a strange and exceptional combination, for these two animals are commonly represented as enemies. the eagle and serpent was the emblem of ancient elis and is at present the coat-of-arms of mexico, but in both cases the eagle is interpreted to be the conqueror of the serpent, not its friend, carrying it as his prey in his claws. zarathustra's philosophy is a combination of the eagle's pride and the serpent's wisdom, which nietzsche describes thus: "lo! an eagle swept through the air in wide circles, a serpent hanging from it not like a prey, but like a friend: coiling round its neck. "they are mine animals,' said zarathustra and rejoiced heartily. "the proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun have set out to reconnoitre. "they wish to learn whether zarathustra still liveth. verily, do i still live. "more dangerous than among animals i found it among men. dangerous ways are taken by zarathustra. let mine animals lead me!" here is a sentence worth quoting: "of all that is written i love only that which the writer wrote with his blood. write with blood, and thou wilt learn that blood is spirit." in another chapter on the back-worlds-men nietzsche writes: "once zarathustra threw his spell beyond man, like all back-worlds-men. then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured god. "alas! brethren, that god whom i created was man's work and man's madness, like all gods! "man he was, and but a poor piece of man and the i. from mine own ashes and flame it came unto me, that ghost yea verily! it did not come unto me from beyond! "what happened, brethren? i overcame myself, the sufferer, and carrying mine own ashes unto the mountains invented for myself a brighter flame. and lo! the ghost departed from me! "now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and pain to believe in such ghosts: suffering it would be for me and humiliation. thus spake i unto the back-worlds-men." nietzsche's self is not ideal but material; it is not thought, not even the will, but the body. the following passage sounds like vedantism as interpreted by a materialist: "he who is awake and knoweth saith: body i am throughout, and nothing besides; and soul is merely a word for a something in body. "body is one great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a herdsman. "also thy little reason, my brother, which thou callest 'spirit'--it is a tool of thy body, a little tool and toy of thy great reason. "t, thou sayest and art proud of that word. but the greater thing is--which thou wilt not believe--thy body and its great reason. it doth not say t, but it is the acting 'i.' "the self ever listeneth and seeketh: it compareth, subdueth, conquereth, destroyeth. it ruleth and is the ruler of the 'i' as well. "behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, standeth a mighty lord, an unknown wise man--whose name is self. in thy body he dwelleth, thy body he is. "there is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom. and who can know why thy body needeth thy beat wisdom? "thy self laugheth at thine 'i' and its prancings: what are these boundings and flights of thought? it saith unto itself. a round-about way to my purpose. i am the leading-string of the i and the suggester of its concepts. "the creative self created for itself valuing and despising, it created for itself lust and woe. the creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand of its will." one of the best passages in zarathustra's sermons is nietzsche's command to love the overman, the man of the distant future: "i tell you, your love of your neighbor is your bad love of yourselves. "ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would fain make a virtue thereof; but i see through your unselfishness.' "the thou is older than the i; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but the i not yet; man thus thrusteth himself upon his neighbor. "do i counsel you to love your neighbor? i rather counsel you to flee from your neighbor and to love the most remote. "love unto the most remote future man is higher than love unto your neighbor. and i consider love unto things and ghosts to be higher than love unto men. "this ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou art. why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones? thou art afraid and fleest unto thy neighbor. "unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you and thus to gild you with his error. "my brethren, i counsel you not to love your neighbor; i counsel you to love those who are the most remote." in perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is nietzsche's view of marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought: "thou shalt build beyond thyself. but first thou must be built thyself square in body and soul. "thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate thyself upwards! therefore the garden of marriage may help thee! "thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel of self-rolling,--thou shalt create a creator. "marriage: thus i call the will of two to create that one which is more than they who created it i call marriage reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a will. "let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. but that which the much-too-many call marriage, those superfluous--alas, what call i that? "alas! that soul's poverty of two! alas! that soul's dirt of two! alas! that miserable ease of two! "marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in heaven. "well, i like it not that heaven of the superfluous!" nietzsche takes a schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the common condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, "you are not a woman, you are a friend." he says of woman: "too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman. therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship; she knoweth love only." nietzsche is not aware that the self changes and that it grows by the acquisition of truth. he treats the self as remaining the same, and truth as that which our will has made conceivable. truth to him is a mere creature of the self. here is zarathustra's condemnation of man's search for truth: "'will unto truth' ye call, ye wisest men, what inspireth you and maketh you ardent? "'will unto the conceivableness of all that is,'--thus i call your will! "all that is ye are going to make conceivable. for with good mistrust ye doubt whether it is conceivable. "but it hath to submit itself and bend before yourselves! thus your will willeth. smooth it shall become and subject unto spirit as its mirror and reflected image. "that is your entire will, ye wisest men, as a will unto power; even when ye speak of good and evil and of valuations. "ye will create the world before which to kneel down. thus it is your last hope and drunkenness." recognition of truth is regarded as submission: "to be true,--few are able to be so! and he who is able doth not want to be so. but least of all the good are able. "oh, these good people! _good men never speak the truth_. to be good in that way is a sickness for the mind. "they yield, these good men, they submit themselves; their heart saith what is said unto it, their foundation obeyeth. but whoever obeyeth doth not hear _himself_!" nietzsche despises science. he must have had sorry experiences with scientists who offered him the dry bones of scholarship as scientific truth. "when i lay sleeping, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath of my head,--ate and said eating: 'zarathustra is no longer a scholar.' "said it and went off clumsily and proudly. so a child told me. "this is the truth: i have departed from the house of scholars, and the door i have shut violently behind me. "too long sat my soul hungry at their table. not, as they, am i trained for perceiving as for cracking nuts. "freedom i love, and a breeze over a fresh soil. and i would rather sleep on ox-skins then on their honors and respectabilities. "i am too hot and am burnt with mine own thoughts, so as often to take my breath away. then i must go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms. "like millworks they work, and like corn-crushers. let folk only throw their grain into them! they know only too well how to grind corn and make white dust out of it. "they look well at each other's fingers and trust each other not over-much. ingenious in little stratagems, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet; like spiders they wait. "they also know how to play with false dice; and i found them playing so eagerly that they perspired from it. "we are strangers unto each other, and their virtues are still more contrary unto my taste than their falsehoods and false dice." even if all scientists were puny sciolists, the ideal of science would remain, and if all the professed seekers for truth were faithless to and unworthy of their high calling, truth itself would not be abolished. so far as we can see, nietzsche never became acquainted with any one of the exact sciences. he was a philologist who felt greatly dissatisfied with the loose methods of his colleagues, but he has not done much in his own specialty to attain to a greater exactness of results. his essays on homer, on the greek tragedy, and similar subjects, have apparently not received much recognition among philologists and historians. having gathered a number of followers in his cave, one of them, called the conscientious man, said to the others: "we seek different things, even up here, ye and i. for i seek more security. therefore have i come unto zarathustra. for he is the firmest tower and will- "fear--that is man's hereditary and fundamental feeling. by fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. out of fear also hath grown my virtue, which is called science. "such long, old fears, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, to-day, methinketh, it is called _science_." this conception of science is refuted by nietzsche in this fashion: "thus spake the conscientious one. but zarathustra, who had just returned into his cave and had heard the last speech and guessed its sense, threw a handful of roses at the conscientious one, laughing at his 'truths.' 'what?' he called. 'what did i hear just now? verily, methinketh, thou art a fool, or i am one myself. and thy "truth" i turn upside down with one blow, and that quickly.' "'for fear is our exception. but courage and adventure, and the joy of what is uncertain, what hath never been dared--courage, methinketh, is the whole prehistoric development of man. "'from the wildest, most courageous beasts he hath, by his envy and his preying, won all their virtues. only thus hath he become a man. "'_this_ courage, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, this human courage with an eagle's wings and a serpent's wisdom--it, methinketh, is called to-day--' "'_zarathustra_!' cried all who sat together there, as from one mouth making a great laughter withal." in spite of identifying the self with the body, which is mortal, nietzsche longs for the immortal. he says: "oh! how could i fail to be eager for eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of recurrence? "never yet have i found the woman by whom i should like to have had children, unless it be this woman i love--for i love thee, o eternity!" [illustration: nietzsche's handwriting.] the best known of nietzsche's poems forms the conclusion of thus spake zarathustra, the most impressive work of nietzsche, and is called by him "the drunken song." the thoughts are almost incoherent and it is difficult to say what is really meant by it. nothing is more characteristic of nietzsche's attitude and the vagueness of his fitful mode of thought. it has been illustrated by hans lindlof, in the same spirit in which richard strauss has written a musical composition on the theme of nietzsche's _thus spake zarathustra._ [illustration: nietzsche's drunken song--illustration by lindlof.] "the drunken song" reads in our translation as follows: "man, listen, pray! what the deep midnight has to say: 'i lay asleep, 'but woke from dreams deep and distraught the world is deep, 'e'en deeper than the day e'er thought. 'deep's the world's pain,- 'joy deeper still than heartache's burning. 'pain says, life's vain! 'but for eternity joy's yearning. 'for deep eternity joy's yearning!'" prof. william benjamin smith has translated this same song, and we think it will be interesting to our readers to compare his translation with our rendering. it reads as follows: "oh man! give ear! what saith the midnight deep and drear? 'from sleep, from sleep 'i woke as from a dream profound. 'the world is deep 'and deeper than the day can sound. 'deep is its woe,- 'joy, deeper still than heart's distress. 'woe saith, forego! 'but joy wills everlastingness,- 'wills deep, deep everlastingness.'" a protest against himself nietzsche is far from regarding his philosophy as timely. he was a proud and aristocratic character, spoiled from childhood by an unfaltering admiration on the part of both his mother and sister. it was unfortunate for him that his father had died before he could influence the early years of his son through wholesome discipline. not enjoying a vigorous constitution nietzsche was greatly impressed with the thought that a general decadence was overshadowing mankind. the truth was that his own bodily system was subject to many ailments which hampered his mental improvement. he was hungering for health, he envied the man of energy, he longed for strength and vigor, but all this was denied him, and so these very shortcomings of his own bodily strength--his own decadence--prompted in him a yearning for bodily health, for an unbounded exercise of energy, and for success. these were his dearest ideals, and his desire for power was his highest ambition. he saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people would become subservient. nietzsche's philosophy forms a strange contrast to his own habits of life. a model of virtue, he made himself the advocate of vice, and gloried in it. he encouraged the robber[1] to rob, but he himself was honesty incarnate; he incited the people to rebel against authority of all kinds, but he himself was a "model child" in the nursery, a "model scholar" in school, and a "model soldier" while serving in the german army. his teachers as well as the officers of his regiment fail to find words enough to _praise nietzsche's obedience_.[2] nietzsche's professors declare that he distinguished himself "_durch pã¼nktlichen gehorsam_" (p. 3); his sister tells us that she and her brother were "_ungeheuer artig, wahre musterkinder_" (p. 36). he makes a good soldier, and, in spite of his denunciations of posing, displays theatrical vanity in having himself photographed with drawn sword (the scabbard is missing). his martial mustache almost anticipates the tonsorial art of the imperial barber of the present kaiser; and yet his spectacled eyes and good-natured features betray the peacefulness of his intentions. he plays the soldier only, and would have found difficulty in killing even a fly. nietzsche disclaims ever having learned anything in any school, but there never was a more grateful german pupil in germany. he composed fervid poems on his school--the well known institution schulpforta, which on account of its severe discipline he praises, not in irony but seriously, as the "narrow gate."[3] [illustration: friedrich nietzsche as a volunteer in the german artillery, 1868.] nietzsche denounces the german character, german institutions, and the german language, his mother-tongue, and is extremely unfair in his denunciations. he takes pleasure in the fact that _deutsch_ (see ulfila's bible translation) originally means "pagans or heathen," and hopes that the dear german people will earn the honor of being called pagans. (_la gaya scienza_, p. 176.) a reaction against his patriotism set in immediately after the war, when he became acquainted with the brutality of some vulgar specimens of the victorious nation,--most of them non-combatants.[4] nietzsche not only wrote in german and made the most involved constructions, but when the war broke out he asked his adopted country switzerland, in which he had acquired citizenship after accepting a position as professor of classical languages at the university of basel, for leave of absence to join the german army. in the franco-prussian war he might have had a chance to live up to his theories of struggle, but unfortunately the swiss authorities did not allow him to join the army, and granted leave of absence only on condition that he would serve as a nurse. such is the irony of fate. while nietzsche stood up for a ruthless assertion of strength and for a suppression of sympathy which he denounced as a relic of the ethics of a negation of life, his own tender soul was so over-sensitive that his sister feels justified in tracing his disease back to the terrible impressions he received during the war. nietzsche speaks of the king as "the dear father of the country."[5] if there was a flaw in nietzsche's moral character, it was goody-goodyness; and his philosophy is a protest against the principles of his own nature. while boldly calling himself "the first unmoralist," justifying even license itself and defending the coarsest lust,[6] his own life might have earned him the name of sissy, and he shrank in disgust from moral filth wherever he met with it in practical life. nietzsche denounced pessimism, and yet his philosophy was, as he himself confesses, the last consequence of pessimism. hegel declared (says nietzsche in _morgenrã¶the_, p. 8), "contradiction moves the world, all things are self-contradictory"; "we (adds nietzsche) carry pessimism even into logic." he proposes to vivisect morality; "but (adds he) you cannot vivisect a thing without killing it." thus his "unmoralism" is simply an expression of his earnestness to investigate the moral problem, and he expresses the result in the terse sentence; _moral ist nothlã¼ge_ (_menschliches_, p. 63.) he preached struggle and hatred, and yet was so tender-hearted that in an hour of dejection he confessed to his sister with a sigh: "i was not at all made to hate or be an enemy."[7] the decadence which he imputes to mankind is a mere reflection of his own state of mind, and the strength which he praises is that quality in which he is most sorely lacking. nietzsche himself had the least possible connection with active life. he was unmarried, had no children, nor any interests beyond his ambition, and having served as professor of the classical languages for some time at the small university of basel, he was for the greater part of his life without a calling, without duties, without aims. he never ventured to put his own theories into practice. he did not even try to rise as a prophet of his own philosophy, and remained in isolation to the very end of his life. nietzsche must have felt the contradiction between his theories and his habits of life, and it appears that he suffered under it more than can be estimated by an impartial reader of his books. he was like the bird in the cage who sings of liberty, or an apoplectic patient who dreams of deeds of valor as a knight in tournament or as a wrestler in the prize ring. never was craving for power more closely united with impotence! it is characteristic of him that he said, "if there were a god, how should i endure not to be god?" and so his ambition impelled him at least to prophesy the coming of his ideal, i. e., robust health, full of bodily vigor and animal spirits, unchecked by any rule of morality, and an unstinted use of power. nietzsche had an exaggerated conception of his vocation and he saw in himself the mouthpiece of that grandest and deepest truth, viz., that man should dare to be himself without any regard of morality or consideration for his fellow beings. and here we have the tragic element of his life. nietzsche, the atheist, deemed himself a god incarnate, and the despiser of the crucified, suffered a martyr's fate in offering his own life to the cause of his hope. the earnestness with which he preached his wild and untenable doctrines appeals to us and renders his figure sympathetic, which otherwise would be grotesque. think of a man who in his megalomania preaches a doctrine that justifies an irresponsible desire for power! would he not be ridiculous in his impotence to actualize his dream? and on the other hand, if he were strong enough to practice what he preached, if like another napoleon, he would make true his dreams of enslaving the world, would not mankind in self-defense soon rise in rebellion and treat him as a criminal, rendering him and his followers incapable of doing harm? but nietzsche's personality, weak and impotent and powerless to appear as the overman and to subjugate the world to his will, suffered excruciating pains in his soul and tormented himself to death, which came to him in the form of decadence--a softening of the brain. poor nietzsche! what a bundle of contradictions! none of these contradictions are inexplicable. all of them are quite natural. they are the inevitable reactions against a prior enthusiasm, and he swings, according to the law of the pendulum, to the opposite extreme of his former position. how did nietzsche develop into an unmoralist? simply by way of reaction against the influence of schopenhauer in combination with the traditional christianity. nietzsche passed through three periods in his development. he was first a follower of schopenhauer and an admirer of wagner, but he shattered his idols and became a convert to auguste comte's positivism. schopenhauer was the master at whose feet nietzsche sat; from him he learned boldness of thought and atheism, that this world is a world of misery and struggle. he accepted for a time schopenhauer's pessimism but rebelled in his inmost soul against the ethical doctrine of the negation of the will. he retained schopenhauer's contempt for previous philosophers (presumably he never tried to understand them) yet he resented the thought of a negation of life and replaced it by a most emphatic assertion. he thus recognized the reactionary spirit of schopenhauer, whose system is a christian metaphysics. nietzsche denounces the ethics of a negation of the will as a disease, and since nature in the old system is regarded as the source of moral evil the idea dawns on him that he himself, trying to establish a philosophy of nature, is an immoralist. he now questions morality itself from the standpoint of an affirmation of the will, and at last goes so far as to speak of ideals as a symptom of shallowness.[8] [illustration: friedrich nietzsche as professor at basle.] nietzsche argued that our conception of truth and our ideal world is but a phantasmagoria, and the picture of the universe in our consciousness a distorted image of real life. our pleasures and pains, too, are both transient and subjective. accordingly it would be a gross mistake for us to exaggerate their importance. what does it matter if we endure a little more or less pain, or of what use are the pleasures in which we might indulge? the realities of life consist in power, and in our dominion over the forces that dominate life. knowledge and truth are of no use unless they become subservient to this realistic desire for power. they are mere means to an end which is the superiority of the overman, the representative of nietzsche's philosophy by whom the mass of mankind are to be enslaved. this view constitutes his third period, in which he wrote those works that are peculiarly characteristic of his own philosophy. nietzsche must not be taken too seriously. he was engaged with the deepest problems of life, and published his opinions as to their solution before he had actually attempted to investigate them. he criticised and attacked like the irishman who hits a head wherever he sees it. here are the first three rules of his philosophical warfare: "first: i attack only those causes which are victorious, sometimes i wait till they are victorious. secondly: i attack them only when i would find no allies, when i stand isolated, when i compromise myself alone. thirdly: i have never taken a step in public which did not compromise me. that is my criterion of right action." a man who adopts this strange criterion of right conduct must produce a strange philosophy. his soul is in an uproar against itself. says nietzsche in his _gã¶tzendã¤mmerung_, aphorism 45: "almost every genius knows as one phase of his development the 'catilinary existence,' so-called, which is a feeling of hatred, of vengeance, of revolution against everything that is, which no longer needs to become ... catiline--the form of cã¦sar's pre-existence." nietzsche changed his views during his life-time, and the unmoralist nietzsche originated in contradiction to his habitual moralism. he was a man of extremes. as soon as a new thought dawned on him, it took possession of his soul to the exclusion of his prior views, and his later self contradicts his former self. nietzsche says: "the serpent that cannot slough must die. in the same way, the spirits which are prevented from changing their opinions cease to be spirits." so we must expect that if nietzsche had been permitted to continue longer in health, he would have cast off the slough of his immoralism and the negative conceptions of his positivism. his _zarathustra_ was the last work of his pen, but it is only the most classical expression of the fermentation of his soul, not the final purified result of his philosophy; it is not the solution of the problem that stirred his heart. while writing his _unzeitgemã¤sse betrachtungen_, nietzsche characterizes his method of work thus: "that i proceed with my outpourings considerably like a dilettante and in an immature manner, i know very well, but i am anxious first of all to get rid of the whole polemico-negative material. i wish undisturbedly to sing off, up and down and truly dastardly, the whole gamut of my hostile feelings, 'that the vaults shall echo back.'[9] later on, i. e., within five years, i shall discard all polemics and bethink myself of a really 'good work,' but at present my breast is oppressed with disgust and tribulation. i must expectorate, decorously and indecorously, but radically and for good" [_endgã¼ltig_]. the writings of nietzsche will make the impression of a youthful immaturity upon any half-way serious reader. there is a hankering after originality which of necessity leads to aberrations and a sovereign contempt for the merits of the past. the world seems endangered, and yet any one who would seriously try to live up to nietzsche's ideal must naturally sober down after a while, and we may apply to him what mephistopheles says of the baccalaureus: "yet even from him we're not in special peril he will, ere long, to other thoughts incline. the must may foam absurdly in the barrel. nathless, it turns at last to wine." _tr. by bayard taylor._ nietzsche did not live long enough to experience a period of matured thought. he died before the fermentation of his mind had come to its normal close, and so his life will remain forever a great torso, without intrinsic worth, but suggestive and appealing only to the immature, including the "herd animal" who would like to be an overman. the very immaturity of nietzsche's view becomes attractive to immature minds. he wrote while his thoughts were still in a state of fermentation, and he died before the wine of his soul was clarified. nietzsche is an almost tragic figure that will live in art as a brooding thinker, a representative of the dissatisfied, a man of an insatiable love of life, with wild and unsteady looks, proud in his indomitable self-assertion, but broken in body and spirit. such he was in his last disease when his mind was wrapt in the eternal night of dementia, the oppressive consciousness of which made him exclaim in lucid moments the pitiable complaint. "_mutter, ich bin dumm_" as such he is represented in klein's statue,[10] which in its pathetic posture is a psychological masterpiece. [illustration: friedrich nietzsche--the latest portrait, after an oil painting by c. stoeving.] nietzsche's works are poetic effusions more than philosophical expositions and yet we would hesitate to call him a poet. his poems are not poetical in the usual sense. they lack poetry and yet they appeal not only to his admirers, but also to his critics and enemies. most of them are artificial yet they are so characteristic that they are interesting specimens of a peculiar kind of taste. they strike us as ingenious, because they reflect his eccentricities. in a poem entitled "ecce homo"[11] he characterizes himself: "yea, i know from whence i came! never satiate, like the flame glow i and consume me too into light turns what i find, cinders do i leave behind, flame am i, 'tis surely true." [1] e.g.: "bitte nie! lass dies gewimmer! nimm, ich bitte dich, nimm immer!" [2] compare _das leben friedrich nietzsche's_ by his sister, elisabeth fã¶rster-nietzsche. [3] leben, pp. 90-97. [4] (see, e. g., leben, ii., 1, pp. 108-111.) "nach dem kriege missfiel mir der luxus, die franzosenverachtung," etc., p. 108. "ich halte das jetzige preussen fã¼r eine der cultur hã¶chst gefã¤hrliche macht." nietzsche ridicules the german language as barbarous in sound (_la gaya scienza_, pp. 138-140), "wã¤lderhaft, heiser, wie aus rã¤ucherigen stuben und unhã¶flichen gegenden." unique is the origin of the standard style of modern high german from the bureaucratic slang, "kanzleimã¤ssig schreiben, das war etwas vornehmes" (_la gaya scienza_, p. 138), and at present the german changes into an "offizierdeutsch" (ibid., p. 139). nietzsche suspects, "the german depth," "die deutsche tiefe," to be a mere mental dyspepsia (see "jenseits von gut und bã¶se," p. 211), saying, "der deutsche verdaut seine ereignisse schlecht, or wird nie damit fertig; die deutsche tiefe ist oft nur eine schwere, zã¶gernde verdauung." nevertheless, he holds that the old-fashioned german depth is better than modern prussian "schneidigkeit und berliner witz und sand." he prefers the company of the swiss to that of his countrymen. (see also "was den deutschen abgeht," vol. 8, p. 108.) [5] "unser lieber kã¶nig," "der landesvater," etc. see _leben_, i., p. 24, and il, 1, p. 248, "unser lieber alter kaiser wilhelm," and "wir preussen waren wirklich stolz." these expressions occur in nietzsche's description of the emperor's appearance at bayreuth. [6] _e.g._, "auch der schã¤dlichste mensch ist vielleicht immer noch der allernã¼tzlichste in hinsicht auf erhaltung der art," etc. _la gaya scienza_, p. 3 ff. [7] "ich bin so gar nicht zum hassen und zum feind sein gemacht!" [8] see, e. g., _leben_, i., p. 135, where he speaks of a new "freigeisterei," denouncing the "libres penseurs" as "unverbesserliche flachkã¶pfe und hanswã¼rste," adding, "sie glauben allesammt noch an's 'ideal.'" [9] "dass das gewã¶lbe wiederhallt,"--a quotation from goethe's "faust." [10] reproduced as the frontispiece of this book. [11] "ja, ich weiss woher ich stamme! ungesã¤ttigt gleich der flamme, glã¼he und verzehr ich mich, licht wird alles was ich fasse, kohle alles was ich lasse: flamme bin ich sicherlich!" nietzsche's predecessor friedrich nietzsche, the author of _thus spake zarathustra_ and the inventor of the new ideal called the "overman," is commonly regarded as the most extreme egotist, to whom morality is non-existent and who glories in the coming of the day in which a man of his liking--the overman--would live au grand jour. his philosophy is an individualism carried to its utmost extreme, sanctioning egotism, denouncing altruism and establishing the right of the strong to trample the weak under foot. it is little known, however, that he followed another thinker, johann caspar schmidt, whose extreme individualism he adopted. but this forerunner who preached a philosophy of the sovereignty of self and an utter disregard of our neighbors' rights remained unheeded; he lived in obscurity, he died in poverty, and under the pseudonym "max stirner" he left behind a book entitled _der einzige und sein eigentum_. the historian lange briefly mentioned him in his _history of materialism_, and the novelist john henry mackay followed up the reference which led to the discovery of this lonely comet on the philosophical sky.[1] the strangest thing about this remarkable book consists in the many coincidences with friedrich nietzsche's philosophy. it is commonly deemed impossible that the famous spokesman of the overman should not have been thoroughly familiar with this failure in the philosophical book market; but while stirner was forgotten the same ideas transplanted into the volumes of the author of _thus spake zarathustra_ found an echo first in germany and soon afterwards all over the world. stirner's book has been englished by stephen t. byington with an introduction by j. l. walker at the instigation of benjamin r. tucker, the representative of american peaceful anarchism, under the title _the ego and his own_. they have been helped by mr. george schumm and his wife, mrs. emma heller schã¼mm. these five persons, all interested in this lonely and unique thinker, must have had much trouble in translating the german original and though the final rendering of the title is not inappropriate, the translator and his advisers agree that it falls short of the mark. for the accepted form mr. b. r. tucker is responsible, and he admits in the preface that it is not an exact equivalent of the german. _der einzige_ means "the unique man," a person of a definite individuality, but in the book itself our author modifies and enriches the meaning of the term. the unique man becomes the ego and an owner (_ein eigener_), a man who is possessed of property, especially of his own being. he is a master of his own and he prides himself on his ownhood, as well as his ownership. as such he is unique, and the very term indicates that the thinker who proposes this view-point is an extreme individualist. in stirner's opinion christianity pursued the ideal of liberty from the world; and in this sense christians speak of spiritual liberty. to become free from anything that oppresses us we must get rid of it, and so the christian to rid himself of the world becomes a prey to the idea of a contempt of the world. stirner declares that the future has a better lot in store for man. man shall not merely be free, which is a purely negative quality, but he shall be his own master; he shall become an owner of his own personality and whatever else he may have to control. his end and aim is he himself. there is no moral duty above him. stirner explains in the very first sentence of his book: "what is not supposed to be my concern! first and foremost, the good cause, then god's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of mind, and a thousand other causes. only my cause is never to be my concern. 'shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!" stirner undertakes to refute this satirical explanation in his book on the unique man and his own, and a french critic according to paul lauterbach (p. 5) speaks of his book as _un livre qu'on quitte monarque_, "a book which one lays aside a king." stirner is opposed to all traditional views. he is against church and state. he stands for the self-development of every individual, and insists that the highest duty of every one is to stand up for his ownhood. j. l. walker in his introduction contrasts stirner with nietzsche and gives the prize of superiority to the former, declaring him to be a genuine anarchist not less than josiah warren, the leader of the small band of new england anarchists. he says: "in stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty. his interest in the practical development of egoism to the dissolution of the state and the union of free men is clear and pronounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of josiah warren. allowing for difference of temperament and language, there is a substantial agreement between stirner and proudhon. each would be free, and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. but, on the other hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that nietzsche and proudhon march together in general aim and tendency--that they have anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine and sepulcher of superstition? "nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of stirner, and, owing to favorable cullings from nietzsche's writings, it has occurred that one of his books has been supposed to contain more sense than it really does--so long as one had read only the extracts. "nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. had he read everything, and not read stirner? "but nietzsche is as unlike stirner as a tight-rope performance is unlike an algebraic equation. "stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any and all men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust of power. democracy to him was sham liberty, egoism the genuine liberty. "nietzsche, on the contrary, pours out his contempt upon democracy because it is not aristocratic. he is predatory to the point of demanding that those who must succumb to feline rapacity shall be taught to submit with resignation. when he speaks of 'anarchistic dogs' scouring the streets of great civilized cities, it is true, the context shows that he means the communists; but his worship of napoleon, his bathos of anxiety for the rise of an aristocracy that shall rule europe for thousands of years, his idea of treating women in the oriental fashion, show that nietzsche has struck out in a very old path--doing the apotheosis of tyranny. we individual egoistic anarchists, however, may say to die nietzsche school, so as not to be misunderstood: we do not ask of the napoleons to have pity, nor of the predatory barons to do justice. they will find it convenient for their own welfare to make terms with men who have learned of stirner what a man can be who worships nothing, bears allegiance to nothing. to nietzsche's rhodomontade of eagles in baronial form, born to prey on industrial lambs, we rather tauntingly oppose the ironical question: where are your claws? what if the 'eagles' are found to be plain barnyard fowls on which more silly fowls have fastened steel spurs to hack the victims, who, however, have the power to disarm the sham 'eagles' between two suns? "stirner shows that men make their tyrants as they make their gods, and his purpose is to unmake tyrants. "nietzsche dearly loves a tyrant. "in style stirner's work offers the greatest possible contrast to the puerile, padded phraseology of nietzsche's _zarathustra_ and its false imagery. who ever imagined such an unnatural conjuncture as an eagle 'toting' a serpent in friendship? which performance is told of in bare words, but nothing comes of it. in stirner we are treated to an enlivening and earnest discussion addressed to serious minds, and every reader feels that the word is to him, for his instruction and benefit, so far as he has mental independence and courage to take it and use it the startling intrepidity of this book is infused with a whole-hearted love for all mankind, as evidenced by the fact that the author shows not one iota of prejudice or any idea of division of men into ranks. he would lay aside government, but would establish any regulation deemed convenient, and for this only _our_ convenience is consulted. thus there will be general liberty only when the disposition toward tyranny is met by intelligent opposition that will no longer submit to such a rule. beyond this the manly sympathy and philosophical bent of stirner are such that rulership appears by contrast a vanity, an infatuation of perverted pride. we know not whether we more admire our author or more love him. "stirner's attitude toward woman is not special. she is an individual if she can be, not handicapped by anything he says, feels, thinks, or plans. this was more fully exemplified in his life than even in this book; but there is not a line in the book to put or keep woman in an inferior position to man, neither is there anything of caste or aristocracy in the book." it is not our intention to enter here into a detailed criticism of stirner's book. we will only point out that society will practically remain the same whether we consider social arrangements as voluntary contracts or as organically developed social institutions, or as imposed upon mankind by the divine world-order, or even if czars and kings claim to govern "by the grace of god." whatever religious or natural sanction any government may claim to possess, the method of keeping order will be the same everywhere. wrongs have been done and in the future may still be committed in the name of right, and injustice may again and again worst justice in the name of the law. on the other hand, however, we can notice a progress throughout the world of a slow but steady improvement of conditions. any globe-trotter will find by experience that his personal safety, his rights and privileges are practically the same in all civilized countries, whether they are republics like switzerland, france and the united states, or monarchies like sweden, germany and italy. at the same time murders, robberies, thefts and other crimes are committed all over the world, even in the homes of those who pride themselves on being the most civilized nations. the world-conception lying behind our different social theories is the same wherever the same kind of civilization prevails. where social evils prevail, dissatisfaction sets in which produces theories and reform programs, and when they remain unheeded, a climax is reached which leads to revolution. stirner's book begins with a short exhortation headed with goethe's line, "my trust in nothingness is placed." he discusses the character of human life (chap. i) and contrasts men of the old and the new eras (chap. ii). he finds that the ancients idealized bodily existence while christianity incarnates the ideal. greek artists transfigure actual life; in christianity the divine takes abode in the world of flesh, god becomes incarnate in man. the greeks tried to go beyond the world and christianity came; christian thinkers are pressed to go beyond god, and there they find spirit. they are led to a contempt of the world and will finally end in a contempt of spirit. but stirner believes that the ideal and the real can never be reconciled, and we must free ourselves from the errors of the past. the truly free man is not the one who has become free, but the one who has come into his own, and this is the sovereign ego. as achilles had his homer so stirner found his prophet in a german socialist of scotch highlander descent, john henry mackay. the reading public should know that mackay belongs to the same type of restless reformers, and he soon became an egoistic anarchist, a disciple of stirner. his admiration is but a natural consequence of conditions. nevertheless mackay's glorification of stirner proves that in stirner this onesided world-conception has found its classical, its most consistent and its philosophically most systematic presentation. whatever we may have to criticize in anarchism, stirner is a man of uncommon distinction, the leader of a party, and the standard-bearer of a cause distinguished by the extremeness of its propositions which from the principle of individualism are carried to their consistent ends. mackay undertook the difficult task of unearthing the history of a man who, naturally modest and retired, had nowhere left deep impressions. no stone remained unturned and every clue that could reveal anything about his hero's life was followed up with unprecedented devotion. he published the results of his labors in a book entitled "max stirner, his life and his work."[2] the report is extremely touching not so much on account of the great significance of stirner's work which to impartial readers appears exaggerated, but through the personal tragedy of a man who towers high above his surroundings and suffers the misery of poverty and failure. mr. mackay describes stirner as of medium height, rather less so than more, well proportioned, slender, always dressed with care though without pretension, having the appearance of a teacher, and wearing silver-or steel-rimmed spectacles. his hair and beard were blonde with a tinge of red, his eyes blue and clear, but neither dreamy nor penetrating. his thin lips usually wore a sarcastic smile, which, however, had nothing of bitterness; his general appearance was sympathetic. no portrait of stirner is in existence except one pencil sketch which was made from memory in 1892 by the london socialist, friedrich engels, but the criticism is made by those who knew stirner that his features, especially his chin and the top of his head, were not so angular though nose and mouth are said to have been well portrayed, and mackay claims that stirner never wore a coat and collar of that type. [illustration: pencil sketch of max stirner. the only portrait in existence.] stirner was of purely frankish blood. his ancestors lived for centuries in or near baireuth. his father, albert christian heinrich schmidt of anspach, a maker of wind-instruments, died of consumption in 1807 at the age of 37, half a year after the birth of his son. his mother, sophie eleanora, nã©e reinlein of the city of erlangen, six months later married h. f. l. ballerstedt, the assistant in an apothecary shop in helmstedt, and moved with him to kulm on the vistula. in 1818 the boy was sent back to his native city where his childless god-father and uncle, johann caspar martin sticht, and his wife took care of him. young johann caspar passed through school with credit, and his schoolmates used to call him "stirner" on account of his high forehead (_stirn_) which was the most conspicuous feature of his face. this name clung to him throughout life. in fact his most intimate friends never called him by any other, his real name being almost forgotten through disuse and figuring only in official documents. stirner attended the universities of erlangen, berlin and kã¶nigsberg, and finally passed his examination for admission as a teacher in gymnasial schools. his stepfather died in the summer of 1837 in kulm at the age of 76. it is not known what became of his mother who had been mentally unsound for some time. neither father nor stepfather had ever been successful, and if stirner ever received any inheritance it must have been very small. on december 12 of 1837 stirner married agnes clara kunigunde burtz, the daughter of his landlady. their married life was brief, the young wife dying in a premature child-birth on august 29th. we have no indication of an ardent love on either side. he who wrote with passionate fire and with so much insistence in his philosophy, was calm and peaceful, subdued and quiet to a fault in real life. having been refused appointment in one of the public or royal schools stirner accepted a position in a girls' school october 1, 1839. during the political fermentation which preceded the revolutionary year of 1848, he moved in the circle of those bold spirits who called themselves _die freien_ and met at hippel's, among whom were ludwig buhl, meyen, friedrich engels, mussak, c. f. kã¶ppen, the author of a work on buddha, dr. arthur mã¼ller and the brothers bruno, egbert and edgar bauer. it was probably among their associates that stirner met marie dã¤hnhardt of gadebusch near schwerin, mecklenberg, the daughter of an apothecary, helmuth ludwig dã¤hnhardt. she was as different from stirner as a dashing emancipated woman can be from a gentle meek man, but these contrasts were joined together in wedlock on october 21, 1843. their happiness did not last long, for marie dã¤hnhardt left her husband at the end of three years. the marriage ceremony of this strange couple has been described in the newspapers and it is almost the only fact of stirner's life that stands out boldly as a well-known incident. that these descriptions contain exaggerations and distortions is not improbable, but it cannot be denied that much contained in the reports must be true. on the morning of october 21, a clergyman of extremely liberal views, rev. marot, a member of the consistory, was called to meet the witnesses of the ceremony at stirner's room. bruno bauer, buhl, probably also julius faucher, assessor kochius and a young english woman, a friend of the bride, were present. the bride was in her week-day dress. mr. marot asked for a bible, but none could be found. according to one version the clergyman was obliged to request herr buhl to put on his coat and to have the cards removed. when the rings were to be exchanged the groom discovered that he had forgotten to procure them, and according to wilhelm jordan's recollection bauer pulled out his knitted purse and took off the brass rings, offering them as a substitute during the ceremony. after the wedding a dinner with cold punch was served to which mr. marot was invited. but he refused, while the guests remained and the wedding carousal proceeded in its jolly course. in order to understand how this incident was possible we must know that in those pre-revolutionary years the times were out of joint and these heroes of the rebellion wished to show their disrespect and absolute indifference to a ceremony that to them had lost all its sanctity. stirner's married life was very uneventful, except that he wrote the main book of his life and dedicated it to his wife after a year's marriage, with the words, "meinem liebchen marie dã¤hnhardt." obviously this form which ignores the fact that they were married, and uses a word of endearment which in this connection is rather trivial, must be regarded as characteristic of their relation and their life principles. certain it is that she understood only the negative features of her husband's ideals and had no appreciation of the genius that stirred within him. lauterbach, the editor of the reclam edition of stirner's book, comments ironically on this dedication with the spanish motto _da dios almendras al que no tiene muelas_, "god gives almonds to those who have no teeth." marie dã¤hnhardt was a graceful blonde woman rather under-sized, with heavy hair which surrounded her head in ringlets according to the fashion of the time. she was very striking and became a favorite of the round table of the _freien_ who met at hippel's. she smoked cigars freely and sometimes donned male attire, in order to accompany her husband and his friends on their nightly excursions. it appears that stirner played the most passive part in these adventures, but true to his principle of individuality we have no knowledge that he ever criticized his wife. marie dã¤hnhardt had lost her father early and was in possession of a small fortune of 10,000 thalers, possibly more. at any rate it was considered quite a sum in the circle of stirner's friends, but it did not last long. having written his book, stirner gave up his position so as to prevent probable discharge and now they looked around for new resources. though stirner had studied political economy he was a most unpractical man; but seeing there was a dearth of milk-shops, he and his wife started into business. they made contracts with dairies but did not advertise their shop, and when the milk was delivered to them they had large quantities of milk on hand but no patrons, the result being a lamentable failure with debts. in the circle of his friends stirner's business experience offered inexhaustible material for jokes, while at home it led rapidly to the dissolution of his marriage. frau schmidt complained in later years that her husband had wasted her property, while no complaints are known from him. one thing is sure that they separated. she went to england where she established herself as a teacher under the protection of lady bunsen, the wife of the prussian ambassador. frau schmidt's later career is quite checkered. she was a well-known character in the colony of german exiles in london. one of her friends there was a lieutenant techow. when she was again in great distress she emigrated with other germans, probably in 1852 or 1853, to melbourne, australia. here she tasted the misery of life to the dregs. she made a living as a washerwoman and is reported to have married a day laborer. their bitter experiences made her resort to religion for consolation, and in 1870 or 1871 she became a convert to the catholic church. at her sister's death she became her heir and so restored her good fortune to some extent. she returned to london where mr. mackay to his great joy discovered that she was still alive at the advanced age of eighty. what a valuable resource her reminiscences would be for his inquiries! but she refused to give any information and finally wrote him a letter which literally reads as follows: "mary smith _solemnly avowes_ that she will have _no more_ correspondence on the subject, and authorizes mr. -------[3] to return all those writings to their owners. she is ill and prepares for death." the last period of stirner's life, from the time when his wife left him to his death, is as obscure as his childhood days. he moved from place to place, and since his income was very irregular creditors pressed him hard. his lot was tolerable because of the simple habits of his life, his only luxury consisting in smoking a good cigar. in 1853 we find him at least twice in debtor's prison, first 21 days, from march 5 to 26,1853, and then 36 days, from new year's eve until february 4 of the next year. in the meantime (september 7) he moved to philippstrasse 19. it was stirner's last home. he stayed with the landlady of this place, a kind-hearted woman who treated all her boarders like a mother, until june 25, 1856, when he died rather suddenly as the result of the bite of a poisonous fly. a few of his friends, among them bruno bauer and ludwig buhl, attended his funeral; a second-class grave was procured for one thaler 10 groats, amounting approximately to one american dollar. during this period stirner undertook several literary labors from which he possibly procured some remuneration. he translated the classical authors on political economy from the french and from the english, which appeared under the title _die national-oekonomen der franzosen und englã¤nder_ (leipsic, otto wigand, 1845-1847). he also wrote a history of the reaction which he explained to be a mere counter-revolution. this _geschichte der reaction_ was planned as a much more comprehensive work, but the two volumes which appeared were only two parts of the second volume as originally intended. the work is full of quotations, partly from auguste comte, partly from edmund burke. none of these works represent anything typically original or of real significance in the history of human thought. his real contribution to the world's literature remains his work _der einzige und sein eigentum_, the title of which is rendered in english _the ego and his own_, and this, strange to say, enthrones the individual man, the ego, every personality, as a sovereign power that should not be subject to morality, rules, obligations, or duties of any kind. the appeal is made so directly that it will convince all those unscientific and half-educated minds who after having surrendered their traditional faith find themselves without any authority in either religion or politics. god is to them a fable and the state an abstraction. ideas and ideals, such as truth, goodness, beauty, are mere phrases. what then remains but the concrete bodily personality of every man of which every one is the ultimate standard of right and wrong? [1] see also r. schellwien, _max stirner und friedrich nietzsche_; v. basch, _l'individualisme anarchiste, max stirner_, 1904. [2] _max stirner, sein leben und sein werk_. berlin, 1898. [3] the name of the gentleman she mentions is replaced by a dash at his express wish in the facsimile of her letter reproduced in mr. mackay's book (p. 255). ego-sovereignty strange that neither of these philosophers of individuality, nietzsche or stirner, ever took the trouble to investigate what an individual is! stirner halts before this most momentous question of his world-conception, and so he overlooks that his ego, his own individuality, this supreme sovereign standing beyond right and wrong, the ultimate authority of everything, is a hazy, fluctuating, uncertain thing which differs from day to day and anally disappears. the individuality of any man is the product of communal life. no one of us could exist as a rational personality were he not a member of a social group from which he has imbibed his ideas as well as his language. every word is a product of his intercourse with his fellow-beings. his entire existence consists in his relations toward others and finds expression in his attitude toward social institutions. we may criticize existent institutions but we can never do without any. a denial of either their existence or their significance proves an utter lack of insight into the nature of personality. we insert here a few characteristic sentences of stirner's views, and in order to be fair we follow the condensation of john henry mackay (pp. 135-192) than whom certainly we could find no more sympathetic or intelligent student of this individualistic philosophy. here are stirner's arguments: the ancients arrived at the conclusion that man was spirit. they created a world of spirit, and in this world of spirit christianity begins. but what is spirit? spirit has originated from nothing. it is its own creation and man makes it the center of the world. the injunction was given, thou shalt not live to thyself but to thy spirit, to thy ideas. spirit is the god, the ego and the spirit are in constant conflict. spirit dwells beyond the earth. it is in vain to force the divine into service here for i am neither god nor man, neither the highest being nor my being. the spirit is like a ghost whom no one has seen, but of whom there are innumerable creditable witnesses, such as grandmother can give account of. the whole world that surrounds thee is filled with spooks of thy imagination. the holiness of truth which hallows thee is a strange element. it is not thine own and strangeness is a characteristic of holiness. the specter is truly only in thine ownhood..... right is a spleen conferred by a spook; might, that is myself. i am the mighty one and the owner of might.... right is the royal will of society. every right which exists is created right. i am expected to honor it where i find it and subject myself to it. but what to me is the right of society, the right of all? what do i care for equality of right, for the struggle for right, for inalienable rights? right becomes word in law. the dominant will is the preserver of the states. my own will shall upset them. every state is a despotism. all right and all power is claimed to belong to the community of the people. i, however, shall not allow myself to be bound by it, for i recognize no duty even though the state may call crime in me what it considers right for itself. my relation to the state is not the relation of one ego to another ego. it is the relation of the sinner to the saint, but the saint is a mere fixed idea from which crimes originate (mackay, pages 154-5). it will sometimes be difficult to translate stirner's declarations in their true meaning; for instance: "i am the owner of mankind, i am mankind and shall do nothing for the benefit of another mankind. the property of mankind is mine. i do not respect the property of mankind. poverty originates when i can not utilize my own self as i want to. it is the state which hinders men from entering into a direct relation with others. on the mercy of right my private property depends. only within prescribed limits am i allowed to compete. only the medium of exchange, the money which the state makes, am i allowed to use. the forms of the state may change, the purpose of the state always remains the same. my property, however, is what i empower myself to. let violence decide, i expect all from my own. "you shall not lure me with love, nor catch me with the promise of communion of possessions, but the question of property will be solved only through a war of all against all, and what a slave will do as soon as he has broken his fetters we shall have to see. i know no law of love. as every one of my sentiments is my property, so also is love. i give it, i donate it, i squander it merely because it makes me happy. earn it if you believe you have a right to it. the measure of my sentiments can not be prescribed to me, nor the aim of my feelings determined. we and the world have only one relation toward each other, that of usefulness. yea, i use the world and men." (pp. 156-157.) as to promises made and confidence solicited stirner would not allow a limitation of freedom. he says: "in itself an oath is no more sacred than a lie is contemptible." stirner opposes the idea of communism. "the community of man creates laws for society. communism is a communion in equality." says stirner, "i prefer to depend on the egotism of men rather than on their compassion." he feels himself swelled into a temporary, transient, puny deity. no man expresses him rightly, no concept defines him; he, the ego, is perfect. stirner concludes his book: "owner i am of my own power and i am such only when i know myself as the only one. in the only one even the owner returns into his creative nothingness from which he was born. any higher being above, be it god or man, detracts from the feeling of my uniqueness and it pales before the sun of this consciousness. if i place my trust in myself, the only one, it will stand upon a transient mortal creator of himself, who feeds upon himself, and i can say, "_ich hab mein sach' auf nichts gestellt._" "my trust in nothingness is placed.'" we call attention to stirner's book, "the only one and his ownhood," not because we are strongly impressed by the profundity of his thought but because we believe that here is a man who ought to be answered, whose world-conception deserves a careful analysis which finally would lead to a justification of society, the state and the ideals of right and truth. society is not, as stirner imagines, an artificial product of men who band themselves together in order to produce a state for the benefit of a clique. society and state, as well as their foundation the family, are of a natural growth. all the several social institutions (kind of spiritual organisms) are as much organisms as are plants and animals. the co-operation of the state with religious, legal, civic and other institutions, are as much realities as are individuals, and any one who would undertake to struggle against them or treat them as nonentities will be implicated in innumerable struggles. stirner is the philosopher of individualism. to him the individual, this complicated and fluctuant being, is a reality, indeed the only true reality, while other combinations, institutions and social units are deemed to be mere nonentities. if from this standpoint the individualism of stirner were revised, the student would come to radically different conclusions, and these conclusions would show that not without good reasons has the individual developed as a by-product of society, and all the possessions, intellectual as well as material, which exist are held by individuals only through the assistance and with the permission of the whole society or its dominant factors. both socialism and its opposite, individualism, which is ultimately the same as anarchism, are extremes that are based upon an erroneous interpretation of communal life. socialists make society, and anarchists the individual their ultimate principle of human existence. neither socialism nor anarchism are principles; both are factors, and both factors are needed for preserving the health of society as well as comprehending the nature of mankind. by neglecting either of these factors, we can only be led astray and arrive at wrong conclusions. poor stirner wanted to exalt the ego, the sovereign individual, not only to the exclusion of a transcendent god and of the state or any other power, divine or social, but even to the exclusion of his own ideals, be it truth or anything spiritual; and yet he himself sacrificed his life for a propaganda of the ego as a unique and sovereign being. he died in misery and the recognition of his labors has slowly, very slowly, followed after his death. yea, even after his death a rival individualist, friedrich nietzsche, stole his thunder and reaped the fame which stirner had earned. certainly this noble-minded, modest, altruistic egotist was paid in his own coin. did stirner live up to his principle of ego sovereignty? in one sense he did; he recognized the right of every one to be himself, even when others infringed upon his own well-being. his wife fell out with him but he respected her sovereignty and justified her irregularities. apparently he said to himself, "she has as much right to her own personality as i have to mine." but in another sense, so far as he himself was concerned, he did not. what became of his own rights, his ownhood, and the sweeping claim that the world was his property, that he was entitled to use or misuse the world and all mankind as he saw fit; that no other human being could expect recognition, nay not even on the basis of contracts, or promises, or for the sake of love, or humaneness and compassion? did stirner in his poverty ever act on the principle that he was the owner of the world, that there was no tie of morality binding on him, no principle which he had to respect? nothing of the kind. he lived and died in peace with all the world, and the belief in the great ego sovereignty with its bold renunciation of all morality was a mere platonic idea, a tame theory which had not the slightest influence upon his practical life. men of stirner's type do not fare well in a world where the ego has come into its own. they will be trampled under foot, they will be bruised and starved, and they will die by the wayside. no, men of stirner's type had better live in the protective shadow of a state; the worst and most despotic state will be better than none, for no state means mob rule or the tyranny of the bulldozer, the ruffian, the brutal and unprincipled self-seeker. here friedrich nietzsche comes in. like stirner, nietzsche was a peaceful man; but unlike stirner, nietzsche had a hankering for power. being pathological himself, without energy, without strength and without a healthy appetite and a good stomach, nietzsche longed to play the part of a bulldozer among a herd of submissive human creatures whom he would control and command. this is nietzsche's ideal, and he calls it the "overman." here nietzsche modified and added his own notion to stirner's philosophy. individualistic philosophies are therefore based on an obvious error by misunderstanding the nature of the individual man, by forgetting the reality of society and its continued significance for the individual life. a careful investigation of the nature of the state as well as of our personality would have taught stirner that both the state and the individual are realities. the state and society exist as much as the individuals of which they are composed,[1] and no individual can ignore in his maxims of life the rules of conduct, the moral principles, or whatever you may call that something which constitutes the conditions of his existence, of his physical and social surroundings. the dignity and divinity of personality does not exclude the significance of super-personalities; indeed, the two, super personal presences with their moral obligations and concrete human persons with their rights and duties, co-operate with each other and produce thereby all the higher values of life. stirner is onesided but, within the field of his onesided view, consistent. nietzsche spurns consistency but accepts the field of notions created by stirner, and, glorying in the same extreme individualism, proclaims the gospel of that individual who on the basis of stirner's philosophy would make the best of a disorganized state of society, who by taking upon himself the functions of the state would utilize the advantages thus gained for the suppression of his fellow beings; and this kind of individual is dignified with the title "overman." nietzsche has been blamed for appropriating stirner's thoughts and twisting them out of shape from the self-assertion of every ego consciousness into the autocracy of the unprincipled man of power; but we must concede that the common rules of literary ethics can not apply to individualists who deny all and any moral authority. why should nietzsche give credit to the author from whom he drew his inspiration if neither acknowledges any rule which he feels obliged to observe? nietzsche uses stirner as stirner declares that it is the good right of every ego to use his fellows, and nietzsche shows us what the result would be--the rise of a political boss, a brute in human shape, the overman. nietzsche is a poet, not a philosopher, not even a thinker, but as a poet he exercises a peculiar fascination upon many people who would never think of agreeing with him. most admirers of nietzsche belong to the class which nietzsche calls the "herd animals," people who have no chance of ever asserting themselves, and become hungry for power as a sick man longs for health. individualism and anarchism continue to denounce the state, when they ought to reform it and improve its institutions. in the meantime the world wags on. the state exists, society exists, and innumerable social institutions exist. the individual grows under the influence of other individuals, his ideas--mere spooks of his brain--yet the factors of his life, right or wrong, guide him and determine his fate. there are as rare exceptions a few lawless societies in the wild west where a few outlaws meet by chance, revolver in hand, but even among them the state of anarchy does not last long, for by habit and precedent certain rules are established, and wherever man meets man, wherever they offer and accept one another's help, they co-operate or compete, they join hands or fight, they make contracts, form alliances, and establish rules, the result of which is society, the state, with all the institutions of the state, the administration, the legislature, the judiciary, with all the intricate machinery that regulates the interrelations of man to man. the truth is that man develops into a rational, human and humane being through society by his intercourse with other men. man is not really an individual in the sense of stirner and nietzsche, a being by himself and for himself, having no obligations to his fellows. man is a part of the society through which he originated and to which he belongs and to overlook, to neglect and to ignore his relations to society, not to recognize definite obligations or rules of conduct which we formulate as duties is the grossest mistake philosophers can make, and this becomes obvious if we consider the nature of man as a social being as aristotle has defined it. [1] see the author's _the nature of the state_, 1894, and _personality_, 1911. another nietzsche the assertion of selfhood and the hankering after originality make nietzsche the exponent of the absolute uniqueness of everything particular, and he goes to the extreme of denying all kinds of universality--even that of formal laws (the so-called uniformities of nature), reason, and especially its application in the field of practical life, morality. his ideal is "be thyself! be unique! be original!" properly speaking, we should not use the term ideal when speaking of nietzsche's maxims of life, for the conception of an ideal is based upon a recognition of some kind of universality, and nietzsche actually sneers at any one having ideals. the adherents of nietzsche speak of their master as "_der einzige_," i. e., "the unique one," and yet (in spite of the truth that every thing particular is in its way unique) the uniformities of nature are so real and unfailing that nietzsche is simply the representative of a type which according to the laws of history and mental evolution naturally and inevitably appears whenever the philosophy of nominalism reaches its climax. he would therefore not be unique even if he were the only one that aspires after a unique selfhood; but the fact is that there are a number of nietzsches, he happening to be the best known of his type. other advocates of selfhood, of course, will be different from nietzsche in many unimportant details, but they will be alike in all points that are essential and characteristic. one of these nietzsches is george moore, a britain who is scarcely familiar with the writings of his german double, but a few quotations from his book, _confessions of a young man_, will show that he can utter thoughts which might have been written by friedrich nietzsche himself. george moore says: "i was not dissipated, but i loved the abnormal" (p. 18). "i was a model young man indeed" (p. 20). "i boasted of dissipations" (p. 19). "i say again, let general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these pages if it be understood that brain-instincts have always been, and still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being" (p. 47). george moore, like nietzsche, is one of schopenhauer's disciples who has become sick of pessimism. he says: "that odious pessimism! how sick i am of it" (p. 310). when george moore speaks of god he thinks of him in the old-fashioned way as a big self, an individual and particular being. hence he denies him. god is as dead as any pagan deity. george moore says: "to talk to us, the legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the existence of god, strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof of the existence of jupiter ammon" (p. 137). george moore is coarse in comparison with nietzsche. nietzsche is no cynic; he is pure-hearted and noble by nature. moore is voluptuous and vulgar. both are avowed immoralists, and if the principle of an unrestrained egotism be right, george moore is as good as nietzsche, and any criminal given to the most abominable vices would not be worse than either. nietzsche feels the decadence of the age and longs for health; but he attributes the cause of his own decadence to the christian ideals of virtue, love, and sympathy with others. george moore cherishes the same views; he says: "we are now in a period of decadence, growing steadily more and more acute" (p. 239). "respectability ... continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating influence on literature" (p. 240). "pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. the great pagan world i love knew it not" (p. 200). "the philanthropist is the nero of modern times" (p. 185). both nietzsche and moore long for limitless freedom; but moore seems more consistent, for he lacks the ideal of the overman and extends freedom to the sex relation, saying: "marriage--what an abomination! love--yes, but not marriage...freedom limitless" (p. 168-169). moore loves art, but his view of art is cynical, and here too he is unlike nietzsche; he says: "art is not nature. art is nature digested. art is a sublime excrement" (p. 178). both believe in the coming of a great social deluge. george moore says: "the french revolution will compare with the revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. men will hang like pears on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of london, there will be an electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in chicago" (p. 343). ideals are regarded as superstitions, and belief in ideas is deemed hypocritical. george moore says: "in my heart of hearts i think myself a cut above you, because i do not believe in leaving the world better than i found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader, think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the world better than you found it" (p. 354). the deeds of a man, his thoughts and aspirations, which constitute his spiritual self, count for nothing; the body alone is supposed to be real, and thus after death a pig is deemed more useful than a socrates. continues moore: "the pig that is being slaughtered as i write this line will leave the world better than it found it, but you will leave only a putrid carcass fit for nothing but the grave" (p. 353). wrong is idealized: "injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice. "man would not be man but for injustice" (p. 203). "again i say that all we deem sublime in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if mankind does not relinquish at once and for ever, its vain, mad, and frantic dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism" (p. 205). george moore gives a moment's thought to the ideal of "a new art, based upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be it, as it were, a new creed in a new civilization ... that would continue to a more glorious and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets have begun"; but he turns his back upon it. it would be after all a product of development; it would be the tyranny of a past age, and he says, "as well drink the dregs of yesterday's champagne" (p. 128). nietzsche's disciples it is said that barking dogs do not bite, and this being true, we must look upon nietzsche's philosophy as a harmless display of words and a burning desire for power without making any attempt to practice what he preached. his philosophy, so far as he is concerned, is a purely platonic love of an unattainable star whose brilliance dazzled the imagination of a childlike peaceful weakling. suppose, however, for argument's sake, that nietzsche had been a man of robust health, and that he had been born at the time of great disturbances, offering unlimited chances to an unscrupulous ambition, would he under these circumstances have led the life he preached, and in case he had done so, would he have boldly and unreservedly admitted his principles while carrying out his plans? did ever cã¦sar or napoleon or any usurper, such as richard iii, who unscrupulously aspired for power, own that he would shrink from nothing to attain his aim? such a straightforward policy for any schemer would be the surest way of missing his aim. such men, on the contrary, have played hypocrites, and have pretended to cherish ideals generally approved by the large masses of the people whom nietzsche calls the herd. so it is obvious that the philosophy of nietzsche if it were ever practically applied, would have become a secret doctrine known only to the initiated few, while the broad masses would be misguided by some demonstrative show of moral principles that might be pleasing to the multitudes and yet at the same time conceal the real tendency of the overman to gain possession of his superior position. nietzsche's influence upon professional philosophers is comparatively weak. whenever mentioned by them, it is in criticism, and he is generally set aside as onesided, and perhaps justly, because he was truly no philosopher in the strict sense of the word. he was no reasoner, no logician, and we can not, properly speaking, look upon his philosophy as a system or even a systematized view of the world. nietzsche made himself the exponent of a tendency, and as such he has his followers among large masses of those very people whom he despised as belonging to the herds. as nietzsche idealized this very quality in which he was lacking, so his followers recruit themselves from the ranks of those people who more than all others would be opposed to the rule of the overman. his most ardent followers are among the nihilists of russia, the socialists and anarchists of all civilized countries. the secret reason of attraction, perhaps unknown to themselves, seems to be nietzsche's defense of the blind impulse and the privilege which he claims for the overman to be himself in spite of law and order and morality, and also his contempt for rules, religious, philosophical, ethical or even logical, that would restrict the great sovereign passion for power. nietzsche's philosophy has taken a firm hold of a number of souls who rebel against the social, the political, the religious, and even the scientific, conditions of our civilization. nietzsche is the philosopher of protest, and, strange to say, while he himself is aristocratic in his instincts, he appeals most powerfully to the masses of the people. nietzsche's disciples are not among the aristocrats, not among the scholars, not among the men of genius. his followers are among the people who believe in hatred and hail him as a prophet of the great deluge. his greatest admirers are anarchists, sometimes also socialists, and above all those geniuses who have failed to find recognition. nietzsche's thought will prove veritable dynamite if it should happen to reach the masses of mankind, the disinherited, the uneducated, the proletariat, the catilinary existences. nietzsche's philosophy is an intoxicant to those whom he despised most; they see in him their liberator, and rejoice in his invectives. invectives naturally appeal to those who are as unthinking as the brutes of the field, but feel the sufferings of existence as much as do the beasts of burden. they are impervious to argument, but being full of bitterness and envy they can be led most easily by any kind of denunciations of their betters. nietzsche hated the masses, the crowd of the common people, the herd. he despised the lowly and had a contempt for the ideals of democracy. nevertheless, his style of thought is such as to resemble the rant of the leaders of mobs, and it is quite probable that in the course of time he will become the philosopher of demagogues. a great number of nietzsche's disciples share their master's eccentricities and especially his impetuosity. having a contempt for philosophy as the work of the intellect, they move mainly in the field of political and social self-assertion; they are anarchists who believe that the overman is coming in labor troubles, strikes, and through a subversion of the authority of government in any form. the best known german expounders of nietzsche's philosophy have been rudolph steiner and alexander tille.[1] professor henri lichtenberger of the university of nancy was his interpreter in france,[2] and the former editor of the eagle and the serpent, known under the pseudonym of erwin mccall, in england. this periodical, which flourished for a short time only, characterized its own tendency as follows: "_the eagle and the serpent_ is a bi-monthly journal of egoistic philosophy and sociology which teaches that in social science altruism spells damnation and egoism spells salvation. in the war against their exploiters the exploited cannot hope to succeed till they act as a unit, an 'ego.'" a reader of _the eagle and the serpent_ humorously criticised the egoistic philosophy as follows: "dear eagle and serpent.--i am one of those unreasonable persons who see no irreconcilable conflict between egoism and altruism. the altruism of tolstoy is the shortest road to the egoism of whitman. the unbounded love and compassion of jesus made him conscious of being the son of god, and that he and the father were one. could egoism go further than this? i believe that true egoism and true altruism grow in precisely equal degree in the soul, and that the alleged qualities which bear either name and attempt to masquerade alone without their respective make-weights are shams and counterfeits. the real desideratum is balance, and that cannot be permanently preserved on one leg. however, you skate surprisingly well for the time being on one foot, and i have enjoyed the first performance so well that i enclose 60 cents for a season-ticket--ernest h. crosby. rhinebeck, n. y., u. s. a." a german periodical _der eigene_, i. e., "he who is his own," announced itself as "a journal for all and nobody," and sounded "the slogan of the egoists," by calling on them to "preserve their ownhood." another anarchistic periodical that stood under the influence of nietzsche appeared in budapest,[3] hungary, in german and hungarian under the name ohne staat, ("without government") as "the organ of ideal anarchists," under the editorship of karl krausz. perhaps the most worthy exponent of nietzsche in england to-day is his translator thomas common. he does not consider himself an orthodox nietzsche apostle but thinks that nietzsche has given the world a very important revelation and that his new philosophy of history and his explanation of the role of christianity are among the most wonderful discoveries since darwin. at the same time mr. common pronounces nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence "very foolish" and believes his use of the terms "good" and "evil" so perverted that he was frequently confused about them and so misled superficial readers. mr. common published at regular intervals during the years 1903 to 1909 ten numbers of a small periodical entitled variously _notes for good europeans and the good european point of view_, and expects to resume its publication soon. its motto is from nietzsche, "in a word--and it shall be an honorable word--we are good europeans ... the heirs of thousands of years of the european spirit." its purpose is expressed in its first number as follows: "our general purpose is to spread the best and most important knowledge relating to human well-being among those who are worthy to receive it, with a view to reducing the knowledge to practice, after some degree of unanimity has been attained.... as nietzsche's works, notwithstanding some limitations, exaggerations and minor errors, embody the foremost philosophical thought of the age, it will be one of our special objects to introduce these works to english readers." these numbers contain many bibliographical and other notes of interest to friends or critics of the nietzsche propaganda. mr. common has published selections from nietzsche's works under the title, _nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet_.[4] in america nietzsche's philosophy is represented by a book of ragnar redbeard, entitled _might is right, the survival of the fittest._[5] the author characterizes his work as follows: [illustration: bust of nietzsche, by klinger.] "this book is a reasoned negation of the ten commandments--the golden rule--the sermon on the mount--republican principles--christian principles--and principles' in general. "it proclaims upon scientific evolutionary grounds, the unlimited absolutism of might, and asserts that cut-and-dried moral codes are crude and immoral inventions, promotive of vice and vassalage." the author is a most ardent admirer of nietzsche, as may be learned from his verses made after the pattern of nietzsche's poetry. he sings: "there is no 'law' in heaven or earth that man must needs obey! take what you can, and all you can; and take it while you--may. "let not the jew-born christ ideal unnerve you in the fight. you have no 'rights,' except the rights you win by--might. "there is no justice, right, nor wrong; no truth, no good, no evil. there is no 'man's immortal soul,' no fiery, fearsome devil. "there is no 'heaven of glory:' no!--no 'hell where sinners roast' there is no 'god the father,' no!--no son, no 'holy ghost.' "this world is no nirvã¢na where joy forever flows. it is a grewsome butcher shop where dead 'lambs' hang in--rows. "man is the most ferocious of all the beasts of prey. he rangeth round the mountains, to love, and feast, and--slay. "he sails the stormy oceans, he gallops o'er the plains, and sucks the very marrow-bones of captives held in--chains. "death endeth all for every man,--for every 'son of thunder'; then be a lion (not a 'lamb') and--don't be trampled under." a valuable recent addition to the discussion of egoism is _the philosophy of egoism_ by james l. walker, (denver, 1905). we know of no american periodical which stands for nietzsche's views, except, perhaps, _the lion's paw_ (chicago) which claims to follow no one. in the last years of the nineteenth century clarence l. swartz published at wellesley, mass., an egoistic periodical called the _i_. this magazine is no longer in existence, but mr. swartz is very active in the international intelligence institute whose aims are universal language, universal nationality and universal peace. he still maintains the same philosophical view which he held as editor of the _i_, but his philosophical egoism has led him in far different paths from those of nietzsche--into the paths of peace and not of struggle. he expresses his present conception as follows: "in the last analysis there is no right but might. such is the common ordinary rule of every-day life, from which there is no escape, even were escape desirable. any attempt to overthrow or circumvent or even dispute the exercise of this prerogative of the mighty is but to assert or oppose a greater might. expediency always dictates how might should be exercised. politically, i hold that the non-coercion of the non-invasive individual is the part of wisdom. the individual is supreme, and should be preserved as against society, for in no other way can evolution perform its perfect work." _the free comrade_ edited by j. wm. lloyd and leonard abbott, an avowedly socialistic and individualistic paper, originally under the sole editorship of lloyd, stood for nietzsche and his egoism, but can no longer be said to do so. [1] a. tille, _von darwin bis nietzsche_. r. steiner, _wahrheit und wissenschaft_; _die philosophie der freiheit; and f. nietzsche, ein kã¤mpfer gegen seine zeit_. we have already mentioned the biography of nietzsche published by the philosopher's sister, frau e. fã¶rster-nietzsche. a characterization, disavowed by nietzsche's admirers, was written by frau lou andreas salome, under the title _f. nietzsche in seinen werken_. other works kindred in spirit are schellwien's _der geist der neueren philosophie_, 1895, and der darwinismus, 1896; also adolf gerecke, _die aussichtslosigkeit des moralismus_; schmitt, _an der grenzscheide zweier weltalter_; kã¡roly krausz, _nietzsche und seine weltanschauung._ [2] henri lichtenberger, _la philosophie de nietzsche_. paris, alcan, 1898 [3] we may mention incidentally that a contributor to _ohne staat_ reproduced one of the homilies of st chrysostom, in which he harangues after the fashion of the early christian preachers against wealth and power. the state's attorney, not versed in christian patristic literature, seized the issue and placed the man who quoted the old byzantine saint behind the prison bars. in the issue of nov., 1898, dr. eugen heinrich schmitt mentions the case and says: "thus we have an exact and historical proof that the liberty of speech and thought was incomparably greater in miserable, servile byzantium than it is now in the much more miserable and more servile despotism of modern europe." does not dr. schmitt overlook the fact that in the days of byzantine christianity the saints were protected by the mob, which was much feared by the imperial government and was kept at bay only by a nominal recognition of its claims and beliefs? [4] other recent english nietzschean literature is as follows: grace neal dolson, _the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche_, 1901; oscar levy, _the revival of aristocracy_, 1906; a. r. orage, _fried. nietzsche, the dionysion spirit of the age_, 1906; a. r. orage, _nietzsche in outline and alphorism_; henry l. mencken, _the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche_; m. a. mã¼gge, _friedrich nietzsche: his life and work_; anthony m. ludovici, _who is to be master of the world_? [5] published by adolph mueller, chicago. the principle of valuation it may be interesting in this connection to mention the case of an american equivalent to nietzsche's philosophy, which so far as i know has never yet seen publicity. some time ago the writer of this little book became acquainted with a journalist who has worked out for his own satisfaction a new system of philosophy which he calls "christian economics," the tendency of which would be to preach a kind of secret doctrine for the initiated few who would be clever enough to avail themselves of the good opportunity. he claims that the only thing worth while in life is the acquisition of power through the instrumentality of money. he who acquires millions can direct the destiny of mankind, and this tendency was first realized in the history of mankind in this christian nation of ours, whose ostensible faith is christianity. our religion, he argues, is especially adapted to serve as a foil to protect and conceal the real issue, and so he calls his world-conception, "christian economics." emperors and kings are mere puppets who are exhibited to general inspection, and so are presidents and all the magistrates in office. political government has to obey the behests of the financiers, and the most vital life of mankind resides in its economical conditions. the inventor of this new system of "christian economics" would allow no other valuation except that of making money, on the sole ground that science, art and the pleasures of life are nothing to man unless he is in control of power which can be had only through the magic charm of the almighty dollar. i shall not comment upon his view, but shall leave it to the reader, and am here satisfied to point out its similarity to nietzsche's philosophy. there is one point only which i shall submit here for criticism and that is the principle of valuation which is a weak point with both the originator of "christian economics" and with friedrich nietzsche. nietzsche proclaimed with great blast of trumpets, if we may so call his rhetorical display of phrases, that we need a revaluation of all values; but the best he could do was to establish a standard of valuation of his own. every man in this world attains his mode of judging values according to his character, which is formed partly by inherited tendencies, partly by education and is modified by his own reflections and experiences. there are but few persons in this world who are clearsighted enough to formulate the ultimately guiding motive of their conduct. most people follow their impulses blindly, but in all of them conduct forms a certain consistent system corresponding to their own idiosyncrasy. these impulses may sometimes be contradictory, yet upon the whole they will all agree, just as leaves and blossoms, roots and branches of the same tree will naturally be formed according to the secret plan that determines the growth of the whole organism. those who work out a specially pronounced system of moral conduct do not always agree in practical life with their own moral principle, sometimes because they wilfully misrepresent it and more frequently because their maxims of morality are such as they themselves would like to be, while their conduct is such as they actually are. such are the conditions of life and we will call that principle which as an ultimate _raison d'ãªtre_ determines the conduct of man, his standard of valuation. we will see at once that there is a different standard for each particular character. a scientist as a rule looks at the world through the spectacles of the scientist. his estimation of other people depends entirely on their accomplishments in his own line of science. artist, musician, or sculptor does the same. to a professional painter scarcely any other people exist except his pupils, his master, his rivals and especially art patrons. the rest of the world is as indifferent as if it did not exist; it forms the background, an indiscriminate mass upon which all other values find their setting. all the professions and vocations, and all the workers along the various lines of life are alike in that every man has his own standard of valuation. a napoleon or a cã¦sar might have preached the doctrine that the sciences, the arts and other accomplishments are of no value if compared with the acquisition of power, but i feel sure that it would not have been much heeded by the mass of mankind, for no one would change his standard of value. a financier might publicly declare that the only way to judge people is according to the credit they have in banking, but it would scarcely change the standard of judgment in society. beethoven knew as well as any other of his contemporaries the value of money and the significance of power, and yet he pursued his own calling, fascinated by his love for music. the same is true not only of every genius in all the different lines of art and science, but also of religious reformers and inventors of all classes. tom, dick and harry in their hankering for pleasure and frivolous amusement are not less under the influence of the conditions under which they have been born than the great men whose names are written in the book of fame. it is difficult for every one of us to create for himself a new standard of valuation, for what goethe says of man's destiny in a poem entitled _daimon_, is true:[1] "as on the day which has begotten thee the sun and planets stood in constellation, thus growest and remainest thou to be, for't is life's start lays down the regulation how thou must be. thyself thou canst not flee. such sibyl's is and prophet's proclamation. for truly, neither force nor time dissolveth, organic form as, living, it evolveth." the original reads thus: "wie an dem tag der dich der welt verliehen, die sonne stand zum grusse der planeten, bist alsobald and fort und fort gediehen nach dem gesetz, wonach du angetreten. so musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen, so sagten schon sibyllen, so propheten; und keine zeit und keine macht zerstã¼ckelt, geprã¤gte form, die lebend sich entwickelt." our attitude in life depends upon our character, and the basic elements of character are the product of the circumstances that gave birth to our being. our character enters unconsciously or consciously in the formulation of our standards of value which we will find to be the most significant factors of our destinies. now the question arises, is the standard of value which we set up, each one of us according to his character, purely subjective or is there any objective criterion of its worth? we must understand that to a great extent our choice of a profession and other preferences in our occupations or valuations are naturally different according to conditions; some men are fit to be musicians, or scholars, or traders, or farmers, or manufacturers, and others are not. the same profession would not be appropriate for every one. but there is a field common to all occupations which deals with man's attitude toward his fellow beings and, in fact, toward the whole universe in general. this it is with which we are mainly concerned in our discussion of a criterion of value because it is the field occupied by religion, philosophy and ethics. tradition has sanctioned definite views on this very subject which have been codified in certain rules of conduct different in many details in different countries according to religion, national and climatic conditions, and the type of civilization; yet, after all, they agree in most remarkable and surprising coincidences in all essential points. nietzsche, the most radical of radicals, sets up a standard of valuation of his own, placing it in the acquisition of power, and he claims that it alone is entitled to serve as a measure for judging worth because, says he, it alone deals with that which is real in the world; yet at the same time he disdains to recognize the existence of any objective criterion of the several standards of value. if he were consistent, he ought to give the palm of highest morality to the man who succeeds best in trampling under foot his fellowmen, and he does so by calling him the overman, but he does not call him moral. to be sure this would be a novel conception of morality and would sanction what is commonly execrated as one of the most devilish forms of immorality. nietzsche takes morality in its accepted meaning, and so in contradiction to himself denies its justification in general. considering that every one carries a standard of valuation in himself we propose the question, "is there no objective criterion of valuation, or are all valuations purely subjective?" this question means whether the constitution of the objective world in which we all live, is such as to favor a definite mode of action determined by some definite criterion of value. we answer that subjective standards of valuation may be regarded as endorsed through experience by the course of events in the world whenever they meet with success, and thus subjective judgments become objectively justified. they are seen to be in agreement with the natural course of the world, and those who adhere to them will in the long run be rewarded by survival. such an endorsement of standards can be determined by experience and has resulted in what is commonly called "morality." we may here take for granted that the moral valuation is a product of many millenniums and has been established, not only in one country and by one religion, nor in one kind of human society, but in perfect independence in many different countries, under the most varied conditions, and finds expression in the symbolism of the most divergent creeds. the beliefs of a christian, of a buddhist, of a mussulman in turkey, or a taoist in the celestial empire, of a parsee in bombay, or japanese shintoist, are all as unlike as they can be, but all agree as to the excellency of moral behavior which has been formulated in these different religions in sayings incorporated in their literature. we find very little if anything contradictory in their standards of valuation, and if there is any objective norm for the subjective valuation of man it is this moral consensus in which all the great religious prophets and reformers of mankind agree. a transvaluation of all values is certainly needed, and it is taking place now. in fact it has always taken place whenever and wherever mankind grows or progresses or changes the current world-conception. the old morality has been negative and we feel the need of positive ideals. the old doctrines are formulated in rules which forbid certain actions and our commandments begin with the words "thou shalt not...." those folk are esteemed moral who obey these restrictions or at least do not ostensibly infringe upon them, and this practically limits morality to mediocrity. how often have great and noble people been condemned as immoral because some irregularities would not fit the procrustean bed of customary respectability! think only of george eliot who had to suffer under the prejudices of sunday-school morality! we need a higher standard in which we may set aside the paltry views of the old morality without losing our ideals. we need a positive norm, the norm which counts in the actual world and in history, where man is measured not by his sins of omission but by his positive accomplishments; not by the errors he has or has not committed, but by his deeds, by the work with which he has benefited mankind. therefore the new morality does not waste much time with the several injunctions, "thou shalt not ..." but impresses the growing generation with the demand: "do something useful; show thyself efficient; be superior to others in nobility, in generosity, in energy; excel in one way or another"; and in this sense a transvaluation of the old values is being worked out at present. we will grant that nietzsche's demand of a transvaluation of all values may mean to criticize the narrow doctrines and views of the religion of his surroundings. but as he expresses himself and according to his philosophical principle he goes so far as to condemn not only the husk of all these religious movements, but also their spirit. in spite of his subjectivism which denies the existence of anything ideal, and goes so far as to deny the right even of truth to have an objective value, nietzsche establishes a new objectivism, and proposes his own, and indeed very crude, subjective standard of valuation as the only objective one worthy of consideration for the transvaluation of all values. nietzsche's real world, or rather what he deemed to be the real world, is a dream, the dream of a sick man, to whom nothing possesses value save the boons denied him, physical health, strength, power to dare and to do. the transvaluation of all values which nietzsche so confidently prophesied, will not take place, at least not in the sense that nietzsche believed. there is no reason to doubt that in the future as in the past history will follow the old conservative line of development in which different people according to their different characters will adopt their own subjective standards, and nature, by a survival of the fittest will select those for preservation who are most in agreement with this real world in which we live, a world from which nietzsche, according to the sickly condition of his constitution, was separated by a wide gulf. he thirsted for it in vain, and we believe that he had a wrong conception of the wealth of its possibilities and viewpoints. [1] so far as i know, these lines have never been translated before. individualism nietzsche is unquestionably a bold thinker, a faust-like questioner, and a titan among philosophers. he is a man who understands that the problem of all problems is the question, is there an authority higher than myself? and having discarded belief in god, he finds no authority except pretensions. nietzsche apparently is only familiar with the sanctions of morality and the criterion of good and evil as they are represented in the institutions and thoughts established by history, and seeing how frequently they serve as tools in the hands of the crafty for the oppression of the unsophisticated masses of the people, he discards them as utterly worthless. hence his truly magnificent wrath, his disgust, his contempt for underling man, for the masses, this muddy stream of present mankind. if nietzsche had dug deeper, he would have found that there is after all a deep significance in moral ideals, for there is an authority above the self by which the worth of the self must be measured. truth is not a mere creature of the self, but is the comprehension of the immutable eternal laws of being which constitute the norm of existence. our self, "that creating, willing, valuing 'i,' which (according to nietzsche) is the measure and value of all things," is itself measured by that eternal norm of being, the existence of which nietzsche does not recognize. what is true of nietzsche applies in all fundamental questions also to his predecessor, max stirner. it applies to individualism in any form if carried to its consistent and most extreme consequences. nietzsche is blind to the truth that there is a norm above the self, and that this norm is the source of duty and the object of religion; he therefore denies the very existence of duty, of conviction, of moral principles, of sympathy with the suffering, of authority in any shape, and yet he dares to condemn man in the shape of the present generation of mankind. what right has he, then, to judge the sovereign self of to-day and to announce the coming of another self in the overman? from the principles of his philosophical anarchism he has no right to denounce mankind of to-day, as an underling; for if there is no objective standard of worth, there is no sense in distinguishing between the underman of to-day and the overman of a nobler future. on this point, however, nietzsche deviates from his predecessor stirner. the latter is more consistent as an individualist, but the former appeals strongly to the egoism of the individual. nietzsche is a titan and he is truly titanic in his rebellion against the smallness of everything that means to be an incarnation of what is great and noble and holy. but he does not protest against the smallness of the representatives of truth and right, he protests against truth and right themselves, and thus he is not merely titanic, but a genuine titan,--attempting to take the heavens by storm, a monster, not superhuman but inhuman in proportions, in sentiment and in spirit. being ingenious, he is, in his way, a genius, but he is not evenly balanced; he is eccentric and, not recognizing the authority of reason and science, makes eccentricity his maxim. thus his grandeur becomes grotesque. the spirit of negation, the mischief-monger mephistopheles, says of faust with reference to his despair of reason and science: "reason and knowledge only thou despise, the highest strength in man that lies!... and i shall have thee fast and sure." --_tr. by bayard taylor._ being giant-like, the titan nietzsche has a sense only for things of large dimensions. he fails to understand the significance of the subtler relations of existence. he is clumsy like gargantua; he is coarse in his reasoning; he is narrow in his comprehension; his horizon is limited. he sees only the massive effects of the great dynamical changes brought about by brute force; he is blind to the quiet and slow but more powerful workings of spiritual forces. the molecular forces that are invisible to the eye transform the world more thoroughly than hurricanes and thunderstorms; yet the strongest powers are the moral laws, the curses of wrong-doing and oppression, and the blessings of truthfulness, of justice, of good-will. nietzsche sees them not; he ignores them. he measures the worth of the overman solely by his brute force. if nietzsche were right, the overman of the future who is going to take possession of the earth will not be nobler and better, wiser and juster than the present man, but more gory, more tiger-like, more relentless, more brutal. nietzsche has a truly noble longing for the advent of the overman, but he throws down the ladder on which man has been climbing up, and thus losing his foothold, he falls down to the place whence mankind started several millenniums ago. we enjoy the rockets of nietzsche's genius, we understand his faust-like disappointment as to the unavailableness of science such as he knew it; we sympathize with the honesty with which he offered his thoughts to the world; we recognize the flashes of truth which occur in his sentences, uttered in the tone of a prophet; but we cannot help condemning his philosophy as unsound in its basis, his errors being the result of an immaturity of comprehension. nietzsche has touched upon the problem of problems, but he has not solved it. he weighs the souls of his fellowmen and finds them wanting; but his own soul is not less deficient. his philosophy is well worth studying, but it is not a good guide through life. it is great only as being the gravest error, boldly, conscientiously, and seriously carried to its utmost extremes and preached as the latest word of wisdom. it has been customary that man should justify himself before the tribunal of morality, but nietzsche summons morality itself before his tribunal. morality justifies herself by calling on truth, but the testimony of truth is ruled out, for truth--objective truth--is denounced as a superstition of the dark ages. nietzsche knows truth only as a contemptible method of puny spirits to make existence conceivable--a hopeless task! nietzsche therefore finds morality guilty as a usurper and a tyrant, and he exhorts all _esprits forts_ to shake off the yoke. we grant that the self should not be the slave of morality; it should not feel the "ought" as a command; it should identify itself with it and make its requirements the object of its own free will. good-will on earth will render the law redundant; but when you wipe out the ideal of good-will itself together with its foundation, which is truth and the recognition of truth, the struggle for existence will reappear in its primitive fierceness, and mankind will return to the age of savagery. let the _esprits forts of nietzsche's_ type try to realize their master's ideal, and their attempts will soon lead to their own perdition. we read in _der arme teufel_,[1] a weekly whose radical editor would not have been prevented by conventional reasons from joining the new fad of nietzscheanism, the following satirical comment on some modern poet of original selfhood: "'i am against matrimony because i am a poet wife, children, family life,--well, well! they may be good enough for the man possessed of the herding instinct but i object to trivialities in my own life. i want something stimulating, sensation, poetry 1 a wife would be prosaic to me, simply on account of being my wife; and children who would call me papa would be disgusting. poetry i need! poetry!' thus he spoke to a friend, and when the latter was gone continued his letter reproaching a waitress for again asking for money and at the same time reflecting upon the purity of her relations to the bartender who, she pretended, was her cousin only...." if marriage relations were abolished to-day, would not in the course of time some new form of marriage be established? those who are too proud to utilize the experiences of past generations, will have to repeat them for themselves and must wade through their follies, sins, errors, and suffer all the consequences and undergo their penalties. nietzsche tries to produce a cã¦sar by teaching his followers to imitate the vices of a catiline; he would raise gods by begetting titans; he endeavors to give a nobler and better standard to mankind, not by lifting the people higher and rendering them more efficient, but by depriving them of all wisdom and making them more pretentious. if the ethics of nietzsche were accepted to-day as authoritative, and if people at large acted accordingly, the world would be benefited in one respect, viz., hypocrisy would cease, and the selfishness of mankind would manifest itself in all its nude bestiality. passions would have full sway; lust, robbery, jealousy, murder, and revenge would increase, and death in all forms of wild outbursts would reap a richer harvest than he ever did in the days of prehistoric savage life. the result would be a pruning on a grand scale, and after a few bloody decades those only would survive who either by nature or by hypocritical self-control deemed it best to keep the lower passions and the too prurient instincts of their selfhood in proper check, and then the old-fashioned rules of morality, which nietzsche declared antiquated, would be given a new trial in the new order of things. they might receive a different sanction, but they would find recognition. nietzsche forgets that the present social order originated from that general free-for-all fight which he commends, and that if we begin at the start we should naturally run through the same or a similar course of development to the same or very similar conditions. will it not be better to go on improving than to revert to the primitive state of savagery? there are superstitious notions about the nature of the sanction of ethics, but for that reason the moral ideals of mankind remain as firmly established as ever. the self is not the standard of measurement for good and evil, right and wrong, as nietzsche claims in agreement with the sophists of old; the self is only the condition to which and under which it applies. there is no good and evil in the purely physical world, there is no suffering, no pain, no anguish--all this originates with the rise of organized animal life which is endowed with sentiency; and further there is no goodness and badness, no morality until the animal rises to the height of comprehending the nature of evil. the tiger is in himself neither good nor bad, but he makes himself a cause of suffering to others; and thus he is by them regarded as bad. goodness and badness are relative, but they are not for that reason unreal. it is true that there is no "ought" in the world as an "ought"; nor are there metaphysical ghosts of divine commandments revealing themselves. but man learns the lesson how to avoid evil and reducing it to brief rules which are easily remembered, he calls them "commandments." buddha was aware that there is no metaphysical ghost of an "ought," and being the first positivist before positivism was ever thought of, his decalogue is officially called "avoiding the ten evils," not "the ten commandments," the latter being a popular term of later origin. granting that there is no metaphysical "ought" in the world and that it finds application only in the domain of animate life through the presence of the self or rather of many selves, we fail to see that the self is the creator of the norm of good and evil. granting also that there are degrees of comprehending the nature of evil and that different applications naturally result under different conditions, we cannot for that reason argue that ethics are purely subjective and that there is no objective norm that underlies the moral evolution of mankind and comes out in the progress of civilization more and more in its purity. nietzsche is like a schoolboy whose teacher is an inefficient pedant. he rebels against his authority and having had but poor instruction proclaims that the multiplication table is a mere superstition with which the old man tries to enslave the free minds of his scholars. are there not different solutions possible of the same example and has not every one to regard his own solution as the right solution? how can the teacher claim that he is the standard of truth? why, the very attempt at setting up a standard of any kind is tyranny and the recognition of it is a self-imposed slavery. there is no rightness save the rightness that can be maintained in a general hand-to-hand contest, for it is ultimately the fist that decides all controversies. nietzsche calls himself an atheist; he denies the existence of god in any form, and thus carries atheism to an extreme where it breaks down in self-contradiction. we understand by god (whether personal, impersonal, or superpersonal) that something which determines the course of life; the factors that shape the world, including ourselves; the law to which we must adjust our conduct. nietzsche enthrones the self in the place of god, but for all practical purposes his god is blunt success and survival of the fittest in the crude sense of the term; for according to his philosophy the self must heed survival in the struggle for existence alone, and that, therefore, is his god. nietzsche's god is power, i. e., overwhelming force, which allows the wolf to eat the lamb. he ignores the power of the still small voice, the effectiveness of law in the world which makes it possible that man, the over-brute, is not the most ferocious, the most muscular, or the strongest animal. nietzsche regards the cosmic order, in accommodation to which ethical codes have been invented, as a mere superstition. thus it will come to pass that nietzsche's type of the overman, should it really make its appearance on earth, would be wiped out as surely as the lion, the king of the beasts, the proud pseudo-overbrute of the animals, will be exterminated in course of time. the lion has a chance for survival only behind the bars of the zoã¶logical gardens or when he allows himself to be tamed by man, that weakling among the brutes whose power has been built up by a comprehension of the sway of the invisible laws of life, physical, mental and moral. what is the secret of nietzsche's success? while other men of greater consistency, among them his predecessor stirner, failed, he attained an unparalleled fame, and his philosophy exercised an extraordinary influence upon large classes of people not only in germany but also abroad, in russia, in france, in the united states and even in conservative england. we must concede that nietzsche possesses a poetic power of oratory; he appeals to sentiment; he is not much of a thinker, not a philosopher, but a leader and a prophet, and as such he stands for the most extreme egoism. nietzsche attempts to establish the absolute sovereignty of the individual and grants a most irresponsible freedom to the man who dares; and this principle of doing away with moral maxims has made him popular. the truth is that our moral sanctions are no longer accepted. people still believe in god, in the authority of church and state, but their belief is no longer a living faith. whatever they may think of god, the old god, the god of traditional dogmatism, is gone. he is no longer a living power in the hearts of the people; and so, large masses rejoice to have the proclamation frankly stated that god is dead, that they need no longer fear hell, and that the chains of their slavery are broken. nietzsche is consistent in his denial of the traditional sanctions. he understands not only that there are no gods, that the powers of nature as personifications do not exist, but that the laws of nature are mere abstract generalizations. we need no longer believe in hephaestos, the god of fire; there is no use to bow the knee to him or do homage to his divinity. nor is there any truth in the existence of a phlogiston, a metaphysical fire-stuff, or any fire essence; there are only scattered facts of burning. everything else is mere superstition. generalizations exist only in our imagination, and so we should get rid of the idea that there is any truth at all. science is a pretender which is apt to make cowards of us. that man is wise who is not hampered by scruple or doubt of any kind and simply follows the bent of his mind, subjecting to himself every thing he finds, including his fellow human beings. this bold and reckless proposition appeals to egoism and it seems so true that abstract formulas and generalizations are empty. weight exists; there is gravity; there are particular phenomena of masses in mutual attraction, but gravitation, the law of these actual happenings, is a mere formula, an imaginary quantity, a mere thought about which we need not worry. the law of gravitation is a human invention and has no real existence in the realm of facts. and the same would of course be true about the interrelations among human beings in their social intercourse, too. all the several maxims of conduct, which are called moral and constitute our code of ethics, are built upon generalizations. there is no sanction for them. the gods who were formerly supposed to be responsible for the several domains of facts have died long ago. the jewish deity called elohim, the lord, entered upon the inheritance of the ancient gods, but he too had to die. thereupon his place was taken by metaphysical essences, pale ghosts of a mysterious nature, but they too died and so the last shadow of anything authoritative is gone. we are _en face du rien_; therefore let us boldly enjoy our freedom. let us be ourselves; let our passions take their course; let us do wrong if it suits us; let us live without consideration of anything, just as we please. there is no sanction of moral maxims to be respected; there is no authority of conduct; there is no judge; there is no evil, no wrong. this seems pretty plausible to our modern generation raised in the traditions of nominalism, but would we really ignore the law of gravitation because the newtonian formula is a man-made abstraction and a mere generalization? yet, if we do not give heed to it we fall, and the same is true of any law of nature. our sciences are mental constructions; they are mind-made, and so far as they are built out of the material of our experience they tally with facts and we call them true. our social interrelations, too, constitute conditions observable in experience; they can be formulated in jaws and applied to practical life; they can be expressed in maxims of conduct and have received various sanctions successively, the sanctions of religion, the sanctions of metaphysics, the sanctions of science. in the age of savagery the sanction of moral maxims was offered us in a mythological dress. with the rise of monotheism our moral sanction came to us as the command of a supreme ruler of the universe; in the age of abstract philosophy as metaphysical principles, and in the age of science these should be recognized as lessons of experience. [1] may 13, 1809. detroit, 949 gratiot ave. conclusion. we will gladly grant that personifications are mythological fictions, that metaphysical entities are products of a philosophical imagination and that the scientific formulas are abstract generalizations, but we deny that generalizations are unmeaning; they signify some actual features of reality. abstract ideas are not purely fictitious; they denote significant qualities or occurrences, and the relations in life, the forms of things, combinations, or in general the non-material configurations, co-operations, combinations and functions are the most important and the most significant aspects of existence. indeed, matter and energy are only the clumsy conditions of being; they denote actuality and reality, but all things, all events, all facts are such as they are on account of their form--on account of that feature which is non-material and non-energetic. according to nietzsche the whole history of mankind, especially the development of reason, knowledge and science, is a great blunder, and the dawn of day begins with a radical break with the past. we see in the evolution of life a gradual ascent with a slow but constant approximation to truth. in the history of religion we see in the dawn of civilization the beginning of a comprehension of truth. mythology is not error pure and simple, not a conglomeration of superstitions; it is plainly characterized by a groping after great truths, and myths become foolish inventions only when the poetic character of the tale is misunderstood. so dogmas become dangerous errors when the symbol is taken literally, when the letter is exalted and the spirit forgotten. it is true that science has taken away the charm of many religious beliefs, but the great lesson of the doctrine of evolution is to show us that our onward march in the humanization of man does not stop, that the periods of mythology and dogma are stages in the progress of our recognition of the truth. there is no need to fear a collapse of past results but we may boldly build higher. we must search for truth and we shall have a clearer vision of it, and the future will bring new glories, new fulfilments of old hopes and grander realization of our fondest dreams. verily, the overman will come, although he is not quite so near at hand as one might wish. he is at hand though, but he will not come, as nietzsche announces him, in the storm of a catastrophe. the fire and the storm may precede the realization of a higher humanity; but the higher humanity will be found neither in the fire nor in the storm. the overman will be born of the present man, not by a contempt for the shortcomings of the present man, but by a recognition of the essential features of man's manhood, by developing and purifying the truly human by making man conform to the eternal norm of rationality, humaneness and rightness of conduct. what we need first is the standard of the higher man; and on this account we must purify our notions of the norm of truth and righteousness,--of god. let us find first the over-god, and the overman will develop naturally. the belief in an individual god-being is giving way to the recognition of a superpersonal god, the norm of scientific truth, the standard of right and wrong, the standard of worth by which we measure the value of our own being; and the kingdom of the genuine overman will be established by the spread of the scientific comprehension of the world, in matters physical, social, intellectual, moral, and religious. index abbott, leonard alexander all-too-human ambition; for originality; for power anacreon anarchism anarchists _ancilla voluntatis_, intellect animals superior to man aphorisms, no preference for aristocracy aristocratic tastes aristotle art; nature of assassins atheism authority of conduct average, the back-worlds-men ballerstedt, h. f. l. basch, v. bauer, bruno beethoven bergson, henri blood is spirit body, self is bruno, edgar and egbert buddha's decalogue; gospel of love buhl, ludwig burke, edmund burtz, agnes clara kunigunde byington, stephen t. cã¦sar carus, _foundation of mathematics_; _lao-tse's too teh king_; _the nature of the state,_; _personality_ catilinary existences catilene chaos, universe a change of views _chiã¼n jen_ christ, overman the christ's gospel of love christian economics christianity a rebellion of slaves classical taste commandments, negative common, thomas; _nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet_ comte, auguste confucius consistency, n. scorns; of n.; of stirner contempt for, democratic ideals; man; past; philosophy; the all-too-human; truth; world contradictions natural contrast between life and theory cosmic order cosmos, universe not a criterion of right action crosby, ernest h. cynic, n. not a dã¤hnhardt, helmuth ludwig dã¤hnhardt, marie damocles, sword of darwin decadence democracy _der arme teufel_ _der eigene_ _der wanderer und sein schatten_ deussen, paul; his opinion of n. _die freien_ dionysiac enthusiasm doctrine of the eternal return dolson, grace neal dream, n.'s real world a dreamers catching at shadows _drunken song_ duty not recognized eagle and serpent _eagle and the serpent, the_ eliot, george elis, coins of emerson emotional attitude engels, friedrich error, a liberator; mythology not eternal return eternity, love for ethics, denial of; denounced; identical; no sanction for; of the strong; result of n.'s; test of philosophy. see also s. v. "morality." evolution, defined; lesson of examination at school expediency faucher, julius faust fichte, _duties of the scholar_ financier, standard of _flatus vocis_ form, importance of forms in themselves fã¶rster-nietzsche, elisabeth, _das leben friedrich nietzsche's_ _free comrade_ freedom fettered by convictions; limitless love of; spiritual garden of marriage gargantua _genealogy of morals_ generalizations, abstract; not unmeaning genius not abnormal geometry gerecke, adolph german things, dislike of germany a philosophical storm center god, a poet's lie; authority of conduct; created by man; denial of; idea of; is dead; norm of truth; self in place of goethe; imitation of; quotations from, good, and evil; and evil, overman beyond; men never true _good europeans, notes for_ good will goody-goodyness _gã¶tzendã¤mmerung_ gravitation a human invention hammer and anvil health, n.'s desire for hegel herd animal (_heerdentier_) hero, overman the hippel's homer hypocrisy, plato accused of hypocrisy to obtain power _i_ ideal, christianity incarnates ideals are superstitions; needed, positive; significance in identical ethics; world-conceptions idols of the past shattered imaginary, scientist's world immature minds, influence on immaturity; appeal of; of n. immortality, desire for individual defined individualism; aristocratic; error of extreme; ineffective influence of n. insanity instinct higher than reason; n. the philosopher of; self a bundle of intellect _ancilla voluntatis_ international intelligence institute intoxicants ionian physicist james, william "joyful science" kant karma key to the universe, reason the kochius kã¶ppen, c. f. klein's statue kraust, kã¡roly _la gaya scienza_ lange, _history of materialism_ lao-tze lauterbach leasing levy, oscar lichtenberger, henri life, truth for the sake of lightning, overman the lion and lamb _lion's paw_ lindlof, hans lloyd, j. wm. logic untrue lombroso love, freedom of; not your neighbor; stirner's view of ludovici, anthony m. mccall, erwin (pseud.) mackay, john henry man, beast of prey; a muddy stream; a part of society; animals' opinion of; contempt for; his own master; humanization of; personality of marot marriage, a poet's objection to; an abomination; n.'s view of masses, are pragmatists; distinction for; enslaved by overman mathematics measure of truth mencken, henry l. mephistopheles messiah, overman the meyen meyer, a fellow student mill, john stuart moore, george, and n. compared; _confessions of a young man_ "_moral ist nothlã¼ge_," morality, denial of; immoral; limited to mediocrity; see also s. v. "ethics." _morgenrã¶the_ mozart mueller, adolph mã¼ller, dr. arthur mã¼gge, m. a. mussak mythology not an error napoleon nature, uniformities of negation, of will; spirit of negative, commandments neighbor, love not nietzsche, a model of virtue; a modern; a mystic; abnormal, not a genius; ancestors of; and george moore compared; and stirner compared; confirmation of; consistency of; contrast between life and theory; destroyer of morality; his doctrine of self; immaturity of; insanity of, not an accident; nominalistic tendencies of; philosophy of, agreement with; philosophy of, result of nominalism; religious character of; requiem composed by; subjectivity of; success of; tender-hearted nihilism _nomina_ nominalism, and realism; of lombroso; traditions of normal man the exception nothingness, trust in nurse, n. as a obedience objectivism, subjective objectivity of truth ocean, overman the _ohne staat_ _open court, the_ orage, a. r. order; cosmic originality; ambition for; hankering after overman love of; the true particularism patriotism personality of man pessimism philologist, n. a philosophy as a science; contempt for; three features of pig, usefulness of plato; accused of hypocrisy; ideal of; ideas of platonism pleasure and pain poet, god the lie of poet, n. a; n. not really a positive ideals needed positivism power, acquisition of; desire for; god is; hypocrisy to obtain; will for pragmatism pragmatists, masses are pride probability but no truth progress, evolution is; in epicycles; in the world protest, against himself; against truth; philosopher of; philosophy of proudhon quarrels at school real world realism and nominalism reason, a blunder; key to the universe; origin of; subjective; tool of body; universality of redbeard, ragnar, _might is right_ relativity religion, hatred of revaluation of values richard iii right but might, no rules of n.'s philosophical warfare salome, lou andreas sandwich, anecdote schellwien, r. schiller schlegel schmidt, albert christian heinrich schmidt, johann caspar. see stirner, max. schmitt, eugen heinrich schopenhauer schulpforta; a pupil at schã¼mm, george and mrs. emma h. science, a blunder; a means; a mental construction; a pretender; despised; for its own sake, 3; triumph of; unavailableness of; world of sciences of form, the scientist, standard of sebastopol, fall of self, an authority above; is body; sovereignty of; truth creature of self-assertion, right of, 24; the ethics of the strong serpent; eagle and slavism smith, william benjamin snuffing brotherhood socialism society; man a part of socrates soldier, n. as a sophists spectacles not the world spirit, blood is; stirner on spoiled child standard, of measurement; of valuation; of values needed state, a despotism; growth of steiner, rudolph sticht, johann caspar _stimmungsbild_ stirner, max, and nietzsche compared; arguments of; consistent; contrast between life and theory; death of; _der einzige und sein eigentum_; description of; life of; marriage of; pencil sketch of; the name; works of straus, richard subjective standard subjectivism subjectivity of n. superman superpersonal god superpersonalities swartz, clarence l. switzerland, a citizen of things in themselves three, features of philosophy; periods in n.'s development; rules of philosophical warfare _thus spake zarathustra_ tieck tille, alexander tolstoy tradition defied; opposed to; sanction of; sanction of denied tragic, element; figure transvaluation of values true world truth, as authority; creature of self; defined; existence of; flashes of; for the sake of life; need of; non-existent; objectivity of; probability but no; protests against tucker, benjamin r. _twilight of the idols_ tyrant, morality a; n. loves a; overman a ulfila's bible uniformities dominate existence universality of reason universe a chaos unmoralist; development into; the first unmoralism unmorality unseitgemã¤sse betrachtungen valuation, principle of vedantism interpreted by a materialist virtue, a model of wagner walker, james, l.; _the philosophy of egoism_ warren, josiah wenley, r. m. whitman will, ennoblement of; for power; intellect slave of; negation of woman; stirner's attitude toward world-conceptions identical zarathustra (images generously made available by the internet archive.) friedrich nietzsche by george brandes author of "william shakespeare," etc. london william heinemann 1914 [illustration: sculptor: j. davidson.--photo: a. langdon coburn.] i an essay on aristocratic radicalism[1] (1889) friedrich nietzsche appears to me the most interesting writer in german literature at the present time. though little known even in his own country, he is a thinker of a high order, who fully deserves to be studied, discussed, contested and mastered. among many good qualities he has that of imparting his mood to others and setting their thoughts in motion. during a period of eighteen years nietzsche has written a long series of books and pamphlets. most of these volumes consist of aphorisms, and of these the greater part, as well as the more original, are concerned with moral prejudices. in this province will be found his lasting importance. but besides this he has dealt with the most varied problems; he has written on culture and history, on art and women, on companionship and solitude, on the state and society, on life's struggle and death. he was born on october 15, 1844; studied philology; became in 1869 professor of philology at basle; made the acquaintance of richard wagner and became warmly attached to him, and associated also with the distinguished historian of the renaissance, jakob burkhardt. nietzsche's admiration and affection for burkhardt were lasting. his feeling for wagner, on the other hand, underwent a complete revulsion in the course of years. from having been wagner's prophet he developed into his most passionate opponent. nietzsche was always heart and soul a musician; he even tried his hand as a composer in his _hymn to life_ (for chorus and orchestra, 1888), and his intercourse with wagner left deep traces in his earliest writings. but the opera of parsifal, with its tendency to catholicism and its advancement of the ascetic ideals which had previously been entirely foreign to wagner, caused nietzsche to see in the great composer a danger, an enemy, a morbid phenomenon, since this last work showed him all the earlier operas in a new light. during his residence in switzerland nietzsche came to know a large circle of interesting people. he suffered, however, from extremely severe headaches, so frequent that they incapacitated him for about two hundred days in the year and brought him to the verge of the grave. in 1879 he resigned his professorship. from 1882 to 1888 his state of health improved, though extremely slowly. his eyes were still so weak that he was threatened with blindness. he was compelled to be extremely careful in his mode of life and to choose his place of residence in obedience to climatic and meteorological conditions. he usually spent the winter at nice and the summer at sils-maria in the upper engadine. the years 1887 and 1888 were astonishingly rich in production; they saw the publication of the most remarkable works of widely different nature and the preparation of a whole series of new books. then, at the close of the latter year, perhaps as the result of overstrain, a violent attack of mental disorder occurred, from which nietzsche never recovered. as a thinker his starting-point is schopenhauer; in his first books he is actually his disciple. but, after several years of silence, during which he passes through his first intellectual crisis, he reappears emancipated from all ties of discipleship. he then undergoes so powerful and rapid a development--less in his thought itself than in the courage to express his thoughts--that each succeeding book marks a fresh stage, until by degrees he concentrates himself upon a single fundamental question, the question of moral values. on his earliest appearance as a thinker he had already entered a protest, in opposition to david strauss, against any moral interpretation of the nature of the cosmos and assigned to our morality its place in the world of phenomena, now as semblance or error, now as artificial arrangement. and his literary activity reached its highest point in an investigation of the origin of the moral concepts, while it was his hope and intention to give to the world an exhaustive criticism of moral values, an examination of the value of these values (regarded as fixed once for all). the first book of his work, _the transvaluation of all values_, was completed when his malady declared itself. [1] "the expression 'aristocratic radicalism,' which you employ, is very good. it is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing i have yet read about myself,"--nietzsche, dec. 2, 1887. i. nietzsche first received a good deal of notice, though not much commendation, for a caustic and juvenile polemical pamphlet against david strauss, occasioned by the latter's book, _the old faith and the new_. his attack, irreverent in tone, is directed not against the first, warlike section of the book, but against the constructive and complementary section. the attack, however, is less concerned with the once great critic's last effort than with the mediocracy in germany, to which strauss's last word represented the last word of culture in general. a year and a half had elapsed since the close of the franco-german war. never had the waves of german self esteem run so high. the exultation of victory had passed into a tumultuous self-glorification. the universal view was that german culture had vanquished french. then this voice made itself heard, saying-admitting that this was really a conflict between two civilisations, there would still be no reason for crowning the victorious one; we should first have to know what the vanquished one was worth; if its value was very slight--and this is what is said of french culture--then there was no great honour in the victory. but in the next place there can be no question at all in this case of a victory of german culture; partly because french culture still persists, and partly because the germans, now as heretofore, are dependent on it. it was military discipline, natural bravery, endurance, superiority on the part of the leaders and obedience on the part of the led, in short, _factors that have nothing to do with culture_, which gave germany the victory. but finally and above all, german culture was not victorious for the good reason that germany as yet has nothing that can be called culture. it was then only a year since nietzsche himself had formed the greatest expectations of germany's future, had looked forward to her speedy liberation from the leading-strings of latin civilisation, and heard the most favourable omens in german music.[2] the intellectual decline, which seemed to him--rightly, no doubt--to date indisputably from the foundation of the empire, now made him oppose a ruthless defiance to the prevailing popular sentiment. he maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of artistic style running through every expression of a nation's life. on the other hand, the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is, as he points out, neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of culture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say, with want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles. and his contention is simply this, that with a culture consisting of hotchpotch it is impossible to subdue any enemy, above all an enemy like the french, who have long possessed a genuine and productive culture, whether we attribute a greater or a lesser value to it. he appeals to a saying of goethe to eckermann: "we germans are of yesterday. no doubt in the last hundred years we have been cultivating ourselves quite diligently, but it may take a few centuries yet before our countrymen have absorbed sufficient intellect and higher culture for it to be said of them that it is a long time since they were barbarians." to nietzsche, as we see, the concepts of culture and homogeneous culture are equivalent. in order to be homogeneous a culture must have reached a certain age and have become strong enough in its peculiar character to have penetrated all forms of life. homogeneous culture, however, is of course not the same thing as native culture. ancient iceland had a homogeneous culture, though its flourishing was brought about precisely by active intercourse with europe; a homogeneous culture existed in italy at the time of the renaissance, in england in the sixteenth, in france in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although italy built up her culture of greek, roman and spanish impressions, france hers of classical, celtic, spanish and italian elements, and although the english are the mixed race beyond all others. true, it is only a century and a half since the germans began to liberate themselves from french culture, and hardly more than a hundred years since they entirely escaped from the frenchmen's school, whose influence may nevertheless be traced even to-day: but still no one can justly deny the existence of a german culture, even if it is yet comparatively young and in a state of growth. nor will any one who has a sense for the agreement between german music and german philosophy, an ear for the harmony between german music and german lyrical poetry, an eye for the merits and defects of german painting and sculpture, which are the outcome of the same fundamental tendency that is revealed in the whole intellectual and emotional life of germany, be disposed in advance to deny germany a homogeneous culture. more precarious will be the state of such smaller countries whose dependence on foreign nations has not unfrequently been a dependence raised to the second power. to nietzsche, however, this point is of relatively small importance. he is convinced that the last hour of national cultures is at hand, since the time cannot be far off when it will only be a question of a european or european-american culture. he argues from the fact that the most highly developed people in every country already feel as europeans, as fellow-countrymen, nay, as confederates, and from the belief that the twentieth century must bring with it the war for the dominion of the world. when, therefore, from the result of this war a tempestuous wind sweeps over all national vanities, bending and breaking them, what will then be the question? the question will then be, thinks nietzsche, in exact agreement with the most eminent frenchmen of our day, whether by that time it has been possible to train or rear a sort of caste of pre-eminent spirits who will be able to grasp the central power. the real misfortune is, therefore, not that a country is still without a genuine, homogeneous and perfected culture, but that it thinks itself cultured. and with his eye upon germany nietzsche asks how it has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that between the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in actually possessing the only true one--and he finds the answer in the circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no former century has known, and to which (in 1873) he gave the name of "culture-philistines." the culture-philistine regards his own impersonal education as the real culture; if he has been told that culture presupposes a homogeneous stamp of mind, he is confirmed in his good opinion of himself, since everywhere he meets with educated people of his own sort, and since schools, universities and academies are adapted to his requirements and fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation. since he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect to religion, morality and literature, with respect to marriage, the family, the community and the state, he considers it demonstrated that this imposing homogeneity is culture. it never enters his head that this systematic and well-organised philistinism, which is set up in all high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any means made culture just because its organs are in concert. it is not even bad culture, says nietzsche; it is barbarism fortified to the best of its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of original barbarism; and he has many graphic expressions to describe culture-philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck fast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes. all of us are now born into the society of cultured philistinism, in it we all grow up. it confronts us with prevailing opinions, which we unconsciously adopt; and even when opinions are divided, the division is only into party opinions--public opinions. an aphorism of nietzsche's reads: "what is public opinion? it is private indolence." the dictum requires qualification. there are cases where public opinion is worth something: john morley has written a good book on the subject. in the face of certain gross breaches of faith and law, certain monstrous violations of human rights, public opinion may now and then assert itself as a power worthy to be followed. otherwise it is as a rule a factory working for the benefit of culture-philistinism. on entering life, then, young people meet with various collective opinions, more or less narrow-minded. the more the individual has it in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following a herd. but even if an inner voice says to him: "become thyself! be thyself!" he hears its appeal with despondency. has he a self? he does not know; he is not yet aware of it. he therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach him, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self. we had in denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his contemporaries to become individuals. but sören kierkegaard's appeal was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. for the goal was fixed. they were to become individuals, not in order to develop into free personalities, but in order by this means to become true christians. their freedom was only apparent; above them was suspended a "thou shalt believe!" and a "thou shalt obey!" even as individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the herd awaited them again--one flock, one shepherd. it is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an educator. he will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is expected to arrive. but he has an uneasy feeling that he is packed with dogmas. how is he to find himself in himself, how is he to dig himself out of himself? this is where the educator should help him. an educator can only be a liberator. it was a liberating educator of this kind that nietzsche as a young man looked for and found in schopenhauer. such a one will be found by every seeker in the personality that has the most liberating effect on him during his period of development. nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way. it is true that for nietzsche, as for any other aspirant, there remained one more step to be taken, that of liberating himself from the liberator. we find in his earliest writings certain favourite expressions of schopenhauer's which no longer appear in his later works. but the liberation is here a tranquil development to independence, throughout which he retains his deep gratitude; not, as in his relations with wagner, a violent revulsion which leads him to deny any value to the works he had once regarded as the most valuable of all. he praises schopenhauer's lofty honesty, beside which he can only place montaigne's, his lucidity, his constancy, and the purity of his relations with society, state and state-religion, which are in such sharp contrast with those of kant. with schopenhauer there is never a concession, never a dallying. and nietzsche is astounded by the fact that schopenhauer could endure life in germany at all. a modern englishman has said: "shelley could never have lived in england: a race of shelleys would have been impossible." spirits of this kind are early broken, then become melancholy, morbid or insane. the society of the culture-philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men. examples of this occur in plenty in the literature of every country, and the trial is constantly being made. we need only think of the number of talented men who sooner or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so as to be permitted to exist. but even in the strongest the vain and weary struggle with culture-philistinism shows itself in lines and wrinkles. nietzsche quotes the saying of the old diplomatist, who had only casually seen and spoken to goethe: "_voilà un homme qui a eu de grands chagrins_," and goethe's comment, when repeating it to his friends: "if the traces of our sufferings and activities are indelible even in our features, it is no wonder that all that survives of us and our struggles should bear the same marks." and this is goethe, who is looked upon as the favourite of fortune! schopenhauer, as is well known, was until his latest years a solitary man. no one understood him, no one read him. the greater part of the first edition of his work, _die welt als wille und vorstellung_, had to be sold as waste paper. in our day taine's view has widely gained ground, that the great man is entirely determined by the age whose child he is, that he unconsciously sums it up and ought consciously to give it expression.[3] but although, of course, the great man does not stand outside the course of history and must always depend upon predecessors, an idea nevertheless always germinates in a single individual or in a few individuals; and these individuals are not scattered points in the low-lying mass, but highly gifted ones who draw the mass to them instead of being drawn by it. what is called the spirit of the age originates in quite a small number of brains. nietzsche who, mainly no doubt through schopenhauer's influence, had originally been strongly impressed by the dictum that the great man is not the child of his age but its step-child, demands that the educator shall help the young to educate themselves _in opposition to the age_. it appears to him that the modern age has produced for imitation three particular types of man, one after the other. first rousseau's man; the titan who raises himself, oppressed and bound by the higher castes, and in his need calls upon holy nature. then goethe's man; not werther or the revolutionary figures related to him, who are still derived from rousseau, nor the original faust figure, but faust as he gradually develops. he is no liberator, but a spectator, of the world. he is not the man of action. nietzsche reminds us of jarno's words to wilhelm meister: "you are vexed and bitter, that is a very good thing. if you could be thoroughly angry for once, it would be better still." to become thoroughly angry in order to make things better, this, in the view of the nietzsche of thirty, will be the exhortation of schopenhauer's man. this man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth. his fundamental idea is this: a life of happiness is impossible; the highest a man can attain to is a heroic life, one in which he fights against the greatest difficulties for something which, in one way or another, will be for the good of all. to what is truly human, only true human beings can raise us; those who seem to have come into being by a leap in nature; thinkers and educators, artists and creators, and those who influence us more by their nature than by their activity: the noble, the good in a grand style, those in whom the genius of good is at work. these men are the aim of history. nietzsche formulates this proposition: "humanity must work unceasingly for the production of solitary great men--this and nothing else is its task." this is the same formula at which several aristocratic spirits among his contemporaries have arrived. thus renan says, almost in the same words: "in fine, the object of humanity is the production of great men ... nothing but great men; salvation will come from great men." and we see from flaubert's letters to george sand how convinced he was of the same thing. he says, for instance: "the only rational thing is and always will be a government of mandarins, provided that the mandarins can do something, or rather, can do much.... it matters little whether a greater or smaller number of peasants are able to read instead of listening to their priest, but it is infinitely important that many men like renan and littré may live and be heard. our salvation now lies in a real aristocracy."[4] both renan and flaubert would have subscribed to nietzsche's fundamental idea that a nation is the roundabout way nature goes in order to produce a dozen great men. yet, although the idea does not lack advocates, this does not make it a dominant thought in european philosophy. in germany, for instance, eduard von hartmann thinks very differently of the aim--of history. his published utterances on the subject are well known. in conversation he once hinted how his idea had originated in his mind: "it was clear to me long ago," he said, "that history, or, to use a wider expression, the world process, must have an aim, and that this aim could only be negative. for a golden age is too foolish a figment." hence his visions of a destruction of the world voluntarily brought about by the most gifted men. and connected with this is his doctrine that humanity has now reached man's estate, that is, has passed the stage of development in which geniuses were necessary. in the face of all this talk of the world process, the aim of which is annihilation or deliverance--deliverance even of the suffering godhead from existence--nietzsche takes a very sober and sensible stand with his simple belief that the goal of humanity is not to be infinitely deferred, but must be found in the highest examples of humanity itself. and herewith he has arrived at his final answer to the question, what is culture? for upon this relation depend the fundamental idea of culture and the duties culture imposes. it imposes on me the duty of associating myself by my own activity with the great human ideals. its fundamental idea is this: it assigns to every individual who wishes to work for it and participate in it, the task of striving to produce, within and without himself, the thinker and artist, the lover of truth and beauty, the pure and good personality, and thereby striving for the perfection of nature, towards the goal of a perfected nature. when does a state of culture prevail? when the men of a community are steadily working for the production of single great men. from this highest aim all the others follow. and what state is farthest removed from a state of culture? that in which men energetically and with united forces resist the appearance of great men, partly by preventing the cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius, partly by obstinately opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears amongst them. such a state is more remote from culture than that of sheer barbarism. but does such a state exist? perhaps some one will ask. most of the smaller nations will be able to read the answer in the history of their native land. it will there be seen, in proportion as "refinement" grows, that the refined atmosphere is diffused, which is unfavourable to genius. and this is all the more serious, since many people think that in modern times and in the races which now share the dominion of the world among them, a political community of only a few millions is seldom sufficiently numerous to produce minds of the very first order. it looks as if geniuses could only be distilled from some thirty or forty millions of people. norway with ibsen, belgium with maeterlinck and verhaeren are exceptions. all the more reason is there for the smaller communities to work at culture to their utmost capacity. in recent times we have become familiar with the thought that the goal to be aimed at is happiness, the happiness of all, or at any rate of the greatest number. wherein happiness consists is less frequently discussed, and yet it is impossible to avoid the question, whether a year, a day, an hour in paradise does not bring more happiness than a lifetime in the chimney-corner. but be that as it may: owing to our familiarity with the notion of making sacrifices for a whole country, a multitude of people, it appears unreasonable that a man should exist for the sake of a few other men, that it should be his duty to devote his life to them in order thereby to promote culture. but nevertheless the answer to the question of culture--how the individual human life may acquire its highest value and its greatest significance--must be: by being lived for the benefit of the rarest and most valuable examples of the human race. this will also be the way in which the individual can best impart a value to the life of the greatest number. in our day a so-called cultural institution means an organisation in virtue of which the "cultured" advance in serried ranks and thrust aside all solitary and obstinate men whose efforts are directed to higher ends; therefore even the learned are as a rule lacking in any sense for budding genius and any feeling for the value of struggling contemporary genius. therefore, in spite of the indisputable and restless progress in all technical and specialised departments, the conditions necessary to the appearance of great men are so far from having improved, that dislike of genius has rather increased than diminished. from the state the exceptional individual cannot expect much. he is seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain advantage it can give him is complete independence. only real culture will prevent his being too early tired out or used up, and will spare him the exhausting struggle against culture-philistinism. nietzsche's value lies in his being one of these vehicles of culture: a mind which, itself independent, diffuses independence and may become to others a liberating force, such as schopenhauer was to nietzsche himself in his younger days. [2] _the birth of tragedy_, p. 150 ff. (english edition). [3] the author of these lines has not made himself the advocate of this view, as has sometimes been publicly stated, but on the contrary has opposed it. after some uncertainty i pronounced against it as early as 1870, in _den franske æsthetik i vore dage_, pp. 105, 106, and afterwards in many other places. [4] nietzsche; _thoughts out of season_, ii., p. 155 f. (english edition). renan: _dialogues et fragments philosophiques_, p. 103. flaubert: _lettres à george sand_, p. 139 ff. 2. four of nietzsche's early works bear the collective title, _thoughts out of season_ (_unzeitgemässe betrachtungen_), a title which is significant of his early-formed determination to go against the stream. one of the fields in which he opposed the spirit of the age in germany is that of education, since he condemns in the most uncompromising fashion the entire historical system of education of which germany is proud, and which as a rule is everywhere regarded as desirable. his view is that what keeps the race from breathing freely and willing boldly is that it drags far too much of its past about with it, like a round-shot chained to a convict's leg. he thinks it is historical education that fetters the race both in enjoyment and in action, since he who cannot concentrate himself on the moment and live entirely in it, can neither feel happiness himself nor do anything to make others happy. without the power of feeling unhistorically, there is no happiness. and in the same way, forgetfulness, or rather, non-knowledge of the past is essential to all action. forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is as it were the enveloping air, the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. in order to understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. in both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist--and yet this state (the most unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every great deed is conceived and accomplished. now answering to this, says nietzsche, there exists a certain degree of historical knowledge which is destructive of a man's energy and fatal to the productive powers of a nation. in this reasoning we can hear the voice of the learned german philologist, whose observations have mostly been drawn from german scholars and artists. for it would be unreasonable to suppose that the commercial or peasant class, the soldiers or manufacturers of germany suffered from an excess of historical culture. but even in the case of german savants, authors and artists the evil here pointed out may be of such a nature as not to admit of remedy by simply abolishing historical education. those men whose productive impulse has been checked or killed by historical studies were already so impotent and ineffective that the world would not have been enriched by their productions. and moreover, what paralyses is not so much the heterogeneous mass of dead historical learning (about the actions of governments, political chess-moves, military achievements, artistic styles, etc.), as the knowledge of certain great minds of the past, by the side of whose production anything that can be shown by a man now living appears so insignificant as to make it a matter of indifference whether his work sees the light or not. goethe alone is enough to reduce a young german poet to despair. but a hero-worshipper like nietzsche cannot consistently desire to curtail our knowledge of the greatest. the want of artistic courage and intellectual boldness has certainly deeper-lying causes; above all, the disintegration of the individuality which the modern order of society involves. strong men can carry a heavy load of history without becoming incapacitated for living. but what is interesting and significant of nietzsche's whole intellectual standpoint is his inquiry as to how far life is able to make use of history. history, in his view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. without history the mountain chain of great men's great moments, which runs through milleniums, could not stand clearly and vividly before me. when one sees, that it only took about a hundred men to bring in the culture of the renaissance; it may easily be supposed, for example, that a hundred productive minds, trained in a new style, would be enough to make an end of culture-philistinism. on the other hand, history may have pernicious effects in the hands of unproductive men. thus young artists are driven into galleries instead of out into nature, and are sent, with minds still unformed, to centres of art, where they lose courage. and in all its forms history may render men unfit for life; in its _monumental_ form by evoking the illusion that there are such things as fixed, recurring historical conjunctions, so that what has once been possible is now, in entirely altered conditions, possible again; in its _antiquarian_ form by awakening a feeling of piety for ancient, bygone things, which paralyses the man of action, who must always outrage some piety or other; finally in its _critical_ form by giving rise to the depressing feeling that the very errors of the past, which we are striving to overcome, are inherited in our blood and impressed on our childhood, so that we live in a continual inner conflict between an old and a new nature. on this point, as on others already alluded to, nietzsche's quarrel is ultimately with the broken-winded education of the present day. that _education_ and _historical education_ have in our time almost become synonymous terms, is to him a mournful sign. it has been irretrievably forgotten that culture ought to be what it was with the greeks: a motive, a prompting to resolution; nowadays culture is commonly described as inwardness, because it is a dead internal lump, which does not stir its possessor. the most "educated" people are walking encyclopædias. when they act, they do so in virtue of a universally approved, miserable convention, or else from simple barbarism. with this reflection, no doubt of general application, is connected a complaint which was bound to be evoked by modern literary germany in particular; the complaint of the oppressive effect of the greatness of former times, as shown in the latter-day man's conviction that he is a latecomer, an after-birth of a greater age, who may indeed teach himself history, but can never produce it. even philosophy, nietzsche complains, with a side-glance at the german universities, has been more and more transformed into the history of philosophy, a teaching of what everybody has thought about everything; "a sort of harmless gossip between academic grey-beards and academic sucklings." it is boasted as a point of honour that freedom of thought exists in various countries. in reality it is only a poor sort of freedom. one may think in a hundred ways, but one may only act in one way--and that is the way that is called "culture" and is in reality "only a form, and what is more a bad form, a uniform." nietzsche attacks the view which regards the historically cultured person as the justest of all. we honour the historian who aims at pure knowledge, from which nothing follows. but there are many trivial truths, and it is a misfortune that whole battalions of inquirers should fling themselves upon them, even if these narrow minds belong to honest men. the historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. that man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. but only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts. as historical education is now conducted, the mass of impressions communicated is so great as to produce numbness, a feeling of being born old of an old stock--although less than thirty human lives, reckoned at seventy years each, divide us from the beginning of our era. and with this is connected the immense superstition of the value and significance of universal history. schiller's phrase is everlastingly repeated: "the history of the world is the tribunal of the world," as though there could be any other historical tribunal than thought; and the hegelian view of history as the ever-clearer self-revelation of the godhead has obstinately held its own, only that it has gradually passed into sheer admiration of success, an approval of any and every fact, be it never so brutal. but greatness has nothing to do with results or with success. demosthenes, who spoke in vain, is greater than philip, who was always victorious. everything in our day is thought to be in order, if only it be an accomplished fact; even when a man of genius dies in the fulness of his powers, proofs are forthcoming that he died at the right time. and the fragment of history we possess is entitled "the world process"; men cudgel their brains, like eduard von hartmann, in trying to find out its origin and final goal--which seems to be a waste of time. why you exist, says nietzsche with sören kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance; but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can. significant of nietzsche's aristocratic tendency, so marked later, is his anger with the deference paid by modern historians to the masses. formerly, he argues, history was written from the standpoint of the rulers; it was occupied exclusively with them, however mediocre or bad they might be. now it has crossed over to the standpoint of the masses. but the masses--they are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools. otherwise they are matter for statisticians to deal with, who find so-called historical laws in the instincts of the masses--aping, laziness, hunger and sexual impulse. what has set the mass in motion for any length of time is then called great. it is given the name of a historical power. when, for example, the vulgar mob has appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has defended it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator of that idea is called great. there is the testimony of thousands of years for it, we are told. but--this is nietzsche's and kierkegaard's idea--the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either at the moment or later. therefore the historical success of a religion, its toughness and persistence, witness against its founder's greatness rather than for it. when an instance is required of one of the few enterprises in history that have been completely successful, the reformation is commonly chosen. against the significance of this success nietzsche does not urge the facts usually quoted: its early secularisation by luther; his compromises with those in power; the interest of princes in emancipating themselves from the mastery of the church and laying hands on its estates, while at the same time securing a submissive and dependent clergy instead of one independent of the state. he sees the chief cause of the success of the reformation in the uncultured state of the nations of northern europe. many attempts at founding new greek religions came to naught in antiquity. although men like pythagoras, plato, perhaps empedocles, had qualifications as founders of religions, the individuals they had to deal with were far too diversified in their nature to be helped by a common doctrine of faith and hope. in contrast with this, the success of luther's reformation in the north was an indication that northern culture was behind that of southern europe. the people either blindly obeyed a watchword from above, like a flock of sheep; or, where conversion was a matter of conscience, it revealed how little individuality there was among a population which was found to be so homogeneous in its spiritual needs. in the same way, too, the original conversion of pagan antiquity was only successful on account of the abundant intermixture of barbarian with roman blood which had taken place. the new doctrine was forced upon the masters of the world by barbarians and slaves. the reader now has examples of the arguments nietzsche employs in support of his proposition that history is not so sound and strengthening an educational factor as is thought: only he who has learnt to know life and is equipped for action has use for history and is capable of applying it; others are oppressed by it and rendered unproductive by being made to feel themselves late-comers, or are induced to worship success in every field. nietzsche's contribution to this question is a plea against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts--of decadence. he preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a _tragic_ culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient greece might be born again. he rejects the pessimism of schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the greeks. he has developed this view in the learned and profound work of his youth, _the birth of tragedy, or hellenism and pessimism_, in which he introduced two new terms, _apollonian_ and _dionysian_. the two greek deities of art, apollo and dionysus, denote the antithesis between plastic art and music. the former corresponds to dreaming, the latter to drunkenness. in dreams the forms of the gods first appeared to men; dreams are the world of beauteous appearance. if, on the other hand, we look down into man's lowest depths, below the spheres of thought and imagination, we come upon a world of terror and rapture, the realm of dionysus. above reign beauty, measure and proportion; but underneath the profusion of nature surges freely in pleasure and pain. regarded from nietzsche's later standpoint, the deeper motive of this searching absorption in hellenic antiquity becomes apparent. even at this early stage he suspects, in what passes for morality, a disparaging principle directed against nature; he looks for its essential antithesis, and finds it in the purely artistic principle, farthest removed from christianity, which he calls dionysian. our author's main psychological features are now clearly apparent. what kind of a nature is it that carries this savage hatred of philistinism even as far as to david strauss? an artist's nature, obviously. what kind of a writer is it who warns us with such firm conviction against the dangers of historical culture? a philologist obviously, who has experienced them in himself, has felt himself threatened with becoming a mere aftermath and tempted to worship historical success. what kind of a nature is it that so passionately defines culture as the worship of genius? certainly no eckermann-nature, but an enthusiast, willing at the outset to obey where he cannot command, but quick to recognise his own masterful bias, and to see that humanity is far from having outgrown the ancient antithetical relation of commanding and obeying. the appearance of napoleon is to him, as to many others, a proof of this; in the joy that thrilled thousands, when at last they saw one who knew how to command. but in the sphere of ethics he is not disposed to preach obedience. on the contrary, constituted as he is, he sees the apathy and meanness of our modern morality in the fact that it still upholds obedience as the highest moral commandment, instead of the power of dictating to one's self one's own morality. his military schooling and participation in the war of 1870-71 probably led to his discovery of a hard and manly quality in himself, and imbued him with an extreme abhorrence of all softness and effeminacy. he turned aside with disgust from the morality of pity in schopenhauer's philosophy and from the romantic-catholic element in wagner's music, to both of which he had previously paid homage. he saw that he had transformed both masters according to his own needs, and he understood quite well the instinct of self preservation that was here at work. the aspiring mind creates the helpers it requires. thus he afterwards dedicated his book, human, all-too-human, which was published on voltaire's centenary, to the "free spirits" among his contemporaries; his dreams created the associates that he had not yet found in the flesh. the severe and painful illness, which began in his thirty-second year and long made him a recluse, detached him from all romanticism and freed his heart from all bonds of piety. it carried him far away from pessimism, in virtue of his proud thought that "a sufferer has no right to pessimism." this illness made a philosopher of him in a strict sense. his thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: this thing passes for a value. can we not turn it upside-down? this is regarded as good. is it not rather evil?--is not god refuted? but can we say as much of the devil?--are we not deceived? and deceived deceivers, all of us?... and then out of this long sickliness arises a passionate desire for health, the joy of the convalescent in life, in light, in warmth, in freedom and ease of mind, in the range and horizon of thought, in "visions of new dawns," in creative capacity, in poetical strength. and he enters upon the lofty self-confidence and ecstasy of a long uninterrupted production. 3. it is neither possible nor necessary to review here the long series of his writings. in calling attention to an author who is still unread, one need only throw his most characteristic thoughts and expressions into relief, so that the reader with little trouble may form an idea of his way of thinking and quality of mind. the task is here rendered difficult by nietzsche's thinking in aphorisms, and facilitated by his habit of emphasising every thought in such a way as to give it a startling appearance. english utilitarianism has met with little acceptance in germany; among more eminent contemporary thinkers eugen dühring is its chief advocate; friedrich paulsen also sides with the englishmen. eduard von hartmann has attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of simultaneously promoting culture and happiness. nietzsche finds new difficulties in an analysis of the concept of happiness. the object of utilitarianism is to procure humanity as much pleasure and as little of the reverse as possible. but what if pleasure and pain are so intertwined that he who wants all the pleasure he can get must take a corresponding amount of suffering into the bargain? clärchen's song contains the words: "_himmelhoch jauchzend, zum tode betrübt_" who knows whether the latter is not the condition of the former? the stoics believed this, and, wishing to avoid pain, asked of life the minimum of pleasure. probably it is equally unwise in our day to promise men intense joys, if they are to be insured against great sufferings. we see that nietzsche transfers the question to the highest spiritual plane, without regard to the fact that the lowest and commonest misfortunes, such as hunger, physical exhaustion, excessive and unhealthy labour, yield no compensation in violent joys. even if all pleasure be dearly bought, it does not follow that all pain is interrupted and counterbalanced by intense enjoyment. in accordance with his aristocratic bias he then attacks bentham's proposition: the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number. the ideal was, of course, to procure happiness for everybody; as this could not be done, the formula took the above shape. but why happiness for the greatest number? we might imagine it for the best, the noblest, the most gifted; and we may be permitted to ask whether moderate prosperity and moderate well-being are preferable to the inequality of lot which acts as a goad, forcing culture ever upward. then there is the doctrine of unselfishness. to be moral is to be unselfish. it is good to be so, we are told. but what does that mean--good? good for whom? not for the self-sacrificer, but for his neighbour. he who praises the virtue of unselfishness, praises something that is good for the community but harmful to the individual. and the neighbour who wants to be loved unselfishly is not himself unselfish. the fundamental contradiction in this morality is that it demands and commends a renunciation of the ego, for the benefit of another ego. at the outset the essential and invaluable element of all morality is, in nietzsche's view, simply this, that it is a prolonged constraint. as language gains in strength and freedom by the constraint of verse, and as all the freedom and delicacy to be found in plastic art, music and dancing is the result of arbitrary laws, so also does human nature only attain its development under constraint. no violence is thereby done to nature; this is the very nature of things. the essential point is that there should be obedience, for a long time and in the same direction. thou shalt obey, some one or something, and for a long time--otherwise thou wilt come to grief; this seems to be the moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither categorical (as kant thought), nor addressed to the individual (nature does not trouble about the individual), but seems to be addressed to nations, classes, periods, races--in fact, to mankind. on the other hand, all the morality that is addressed to the individual for his own good, for the sake of his own welfare, is reduced in this view to mere household remedies and counsels of prudence, recipes for curbing passions that might want to break out; and all this morality is preposterous in form, because it addresses itself to all and generalises what does not admit of generalisation. kant gave us a guiding rule with his categorical imperative. but this rule has failed us. it is of no use saying to us: act as others ought to act in this case. for we know that there are not and cannot be such things as identical actions, but that every action is unique in its nature, so that any precept can only apply to the rough outside of actions. but what of the voice and judgment of conscience? the difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. we can tell that the judgment of so-and-so's conscience has a past history in his instincts, his original sympathies or antipathies, his experience or want of experience. we can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values. and as regards the ethical teachers' preaching of morality for all, this is every bit as empty as the gossip of individual society people about each other's morals. nietzsche gives the moralists this good advice: that, instead of trying to educate the human race, they should imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person. but as a rule the moral ranters are themselves quite uneducated persons, and their children seldom rise above moral mediocrity. he who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. for one thing is needful: to give style to one's character. this art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law. only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others. for the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. they absorb poison from everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their hearts ever bum with envy of those who have become well balanced and can therefore enjoy life. for millenniums morality meant obedience to custom, respect for inherited usage. the free, exceptional man was immoral, because he broke with the tradition which the others regarded with superstitious fear. very commonly he took the same view and was himself seized by the terror he inspired. thus a popular morality of custom was unconsciously elaborated by all who belonged to the tribe; since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment--if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudoscience on a level with popular medicine, continually gained ground. manners and customs represented the experiences of bygone generations concerning what was supposed to be useful or harmful; the sense of morality, however, does not attach to these experiences as such, but only to their age, their venerability and consequent incontestability. in the state of war in which a tribe existed in old times, threatened on every side, there was no greater gratification, under the sway of the strictest morality of custom, than cruelty. cruelty is one of the oldest festal and triumphal joys of mankind. it was thought that the gods, too, might be gratified and festively disposed by offering them the sight of cruelties--and thus the idea insinuated itself into the world that voluntary self-torture, mortification and abstinence are also of great value, not as discipline, but as a sweet savour unto the lord. christianity as a religion of the past unceasingly practised and preached the torture of souls. imagine the state of the mediæval christian, when he supposed he could no longer escape eternal torment. eros and aphrodite were in his imagination powers of hell, and death was a terror. to the morality of cruelty has succeeded that of pity. the morality of pity is lauded as unselfish, by schopenhauer in particular. eduard von hartmann, in his thoughtful work, _phänomenologie des sittlichen bewusstseins_ (pp. 217-240), has already shown the impossibility of regarding pity as the most important of moral incentives, to say nothing of its being the only one, as schopenhauer would have it. nietzsche attacks the morality of pity from other points of view. he shows it to be by no means unselfish. another's misfortune affects us painfully and offends us--perhaps brands us as cowards if we do not go to his aid. or it contains a hint of a possible danger to ourselves; moreover, we feel joy in comparing our own state with that of the unfortunate, joy when we can step in as the stronger, the helper. the help we afford gives us a feeling of happiness, or perhaps it merely rescues us from boredom. pity in the form of actual fellow-suffering would be a weakness, nay, a misfortune, since it would add to the world's suffering. a man who seriously abandoned himself to sympathy with all the misery he found about him, would simply be destroyed by it. among savages the thought of arousing pity is regarded with horror. those who do so are despised. according to savage notions, to feel pity for a person is to despise him; but they find no pleasure in seeing a contemptible person suffer. on the other hand, the sight of an enemy's suffering, when his pride does not forsake him in the midst of his torment--that is enjoyment, that excites admiration. the morality of pity is often preached in the formula, love thy neighbour. nietzsche in the interests of his attack seizes upon the word _neighbour_. not only does he demand, with kierkegaard, a setting-aside of morality for the sake of the end in view, but he is exasperated that the true nature of morality should be held to consist in a consideration of the immediate results of our actions, to which we are to conform. to what is narrow and pettifogging in this morality he opposes another, which looks beyond these immediate results and aspires, even by means that cause our neighbour pain, to more distant objects; such as the advancement of knowledge, although this will lead to sorrow and doubt and evil passions in our neighbour. we need not on this account be without pity, but we may hold our pity captive for the sake of the object. and as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to consecrate it, it is equally so to hand over a series of actions to the evil conscience, merely because they have been maligned as egotistical. what has happened in recent times in this connection is that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice, everything altruistic, has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of morality. the english moralists, who at present dominate europe, explain the origin of ethics in the following way: unselfish actions were originally called _good_ by those who were their objects and who benefited by them; afterwards this original reason for praising them was forgotten, and unselfish actions came to be regarded as good in themselves. according to a statement of nietzsche himself it was a work by a german author with english leanings, dr. paul rée's _der ursprung der moralischen empfindungen_ (chemnitz, 1877), which provoked him to such passionate and detailed opposition that he had to thank this book for the impulse to clear up and develop his own ideas on the subject. the surprising part of it, however, is this: dissatisfaction with his first book caused rée to write a second and far more important work on the same subject--_die entstehung des gewissens_ (berlin, 1885)--in which the point of view offensive to nietzsche is abandoned and several of the leading ideas advanced by the latter against rée are set forth, supported by a mass of evidence taken from various authors and races of men. the two philosophers were personally acquainted. i knew them both, but had no opportunity of questioning either on this matter. it is therefore impossible for me to say which of the two influenced the other, or why nietzsche in 1887 alludes to his detestation of the opinions put forward by rée in 1877, without mentioning how near the latter had come to his own view in the work published two years previously. rée had already adduced a number of examples to show that the most diverse peoples of antiquity knew no other moral classification of men than that of nobles and common people, powerful and weak; so that the oldest meaning of good both in greece and iceland was noble, mighty, rich. nietzsche builds his whole theory on this foundation. his train of thought is this-the critical word _good_ is not due to those to whom goodness has been shown. the oldest definition was this: the noble, the mightier, higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be _good_--of the first rank--in contradistinction to everything low and low-minded. noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste, is the primary concept from which develops _good_ in the sense of spiritually aristocratic. the lowly are designated as _bad_ (not evil). bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later. in the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the german word _schlecht_ is identical with _schlicht_ (cf. _schlechtweg_ and _schlechterdings_). the ruling caste call themselves sometimes simply the mighty, sometimes the truthful; like the greek nobility, whose mouthpiece theognis was. with him beautiful, good and noble always have the sense of aristocratic. the aristocratic moral valuation proceeds from a triumphant affirmation, a yea-saying, which we find in the homeric heroes: we, the noble, beautiful and brave--we are the good, the beloved of the gods. these are strong men, charged with force, who delight in warlike deeds, to whom, in other words, happiness is activity. it is of course unavoidable that these nobles should misjudge and despise the plebeian herd they dominate. yet as a rule there may be traced in them a pity for the downtrodden caste, for the drudge and beast of burden, an indulgence towards those to whom happiness is rest, the sabbath of inactivity. among the lower orders, on the other hand, an image of the ruling caste distorted by hatred and spite is necessarily current. in this distortion there lies a revenge.[5] in opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful, happy, favoured by the gods) the slave morality then is this: the wretched alone are the _good_; those who suffer and are heavy laden, the sick and the ugly, they are the only pious ones. on the other hand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the _evil_, the cruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. whereas noble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem, a continual yea-saying, slave morality is a continual nay, a _thou shalt not_, a negation. to the noble valuation _good--bad_ (bad = worthless) corresponds the antithesis of slave morality, _good--evil_. and who are the evil in this morality of the oppressed? precisely the same who in the other morality were the good. let any one read the icelandic sagas and examine the morality of the ancient northmen, and then compare with it the complaints of other nations about the vikings' misdeeds. it will be seen that these aristocrats, whose conduct in many ways stood high, were no better than beasts of prey in dealing with their enemies. they fell upon the inhabitants of christian shores like eagles upon lambs. one may say they followed an eagle ideal. but then we cannot wonder that those who were exposed to such fearful attacks gathered round an entirely opposite moral ideal, that of the lamb. in the third chapter of his _utilitarianism_, stuart mill attempts to prove that the sense of justice has developed from the animal instinct of making reprisal for an injury or a loss. in an essay on "the transcendental satisfaction of the feeling of revenge" (supplement to the first edition of the _werth des lebens_) eugen dühring has followed him in trying to establish the whole doctrine of punishment upon the instinct of retaliation. in his _phänomenologie_ eduard von hartmann shows how this instinct strictly speaking never does more than involve a new suffering, a new offence, to gain external satisfaction for the old one, so that the principle of requital can never be any distinct principle. nietzsche makes a violent, passionate attempt to refer the sum total of false modern morality, not to the instinct of requital or to the feeling of revenge in general, but to the narrower form of it which we call spite, envy and _rancune_. what he calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. misery became a distinction; god chastens whom he loves. or it became a preparation, a trial and a training; even more--something that will one day be made good with interest, paid back in bliss. and the vilest underground creatures, swollen with hate and spite, were heard to say: we, the good, we are the righteous. they did not hate their enemies--they hated injustice, ungodliness. what they hoped for was not the sweets of revenge, but the victory of righteousness. those they had left to love on earth were their brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called their brothers and sisters in love. the future state they looked for was called the coming of their kingdom, of god's kingdom. until it arrives they live on in faith, hope and love. if nietzsche's design in this picture was to strike at historical christianity, he has given us--as any one may see--a caricature in the spirit and style of the eighteenth century. but that his description hits off a certain type of the apostles of spite-morality cannot be denied, and rarely has all the self-deception that may lurk beneath moral preaching been more vigorously unmasked. (compare _beyond good and evil_ and _the genealogy of morals_.)[6] [5] nietzsche supports his hypothesis by derivations, some doubtful, others incorrect; but their value is immaterial. [6] where nietzsche's words are quoted, in the course of this essay, considerable use has been made of the complete english translation of his works, edited by dr. oscar levy.--tr. 4. nietzsche would define man as an animal that can make and keep promises. he sees the real nobility of man in his capacity for promising something, answering for himself and undertaking a responsibility--since man, with the mastery of himself which this capacity implies, necessarily acquires in addition a mastery over external circumstances and over other creatures, whose will is not so lasting. the consciousness of this responsibility is what the sovereign man calls his conscience. what, then, is the past history of this responsibility, this conscience? it is a long and bloody one. frightful means have been used in the course of history to train men to remember what they have once promised or willed, tacitly or explicitly. for milleniums man was confined in the strait-jacket of the morality of custom, and by such punishments as stoning, breaking on the wheel or burning, by burying the sinner alive, tearing him asunder with horses, throwing him into the water with a stone on his neck or in a sack, by scourging, flaying and branding--by all these means a long memory for what he had promised was burnt into that forgetful animal, man; in return for which he was permitted to enjoy the advantages of being a member of society. according to nietzsche's hypothesis, the consciousness of guilt originates simply as consciousness of a debt. the relation of contract between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the earliest primitive forms of human intercourse in buying, selling, bartering, etc.--this is the relation that underlies it. the debtor (in order to inspire confidence in his promise of repayment) pledges something he possesses: his liberty, his woman, his life; or he gives his creditor the right of cutting a larger or smaller piece of flesh from his body, according to the amount of the debt. (the roman code of the twelve tables; again in _the merchant of venice_.) the logic of this, which has become somewhat strange to us, is as follows: as compensation for his loss the creditor is granted a kind of voluptuous sensation, the delight of being able to exercise his power upon the powerless. the reader may find evidence in rée (_op. cit_., p. 13 ff.) for nietzsche's dictum, that for milleniums this was the view of mankind: the sight of suffering does one good. the infliction of suffering on another is a feast at which the fortunate one swells with the joy of power. we may also find evidence in rée that the instincts of pity, fairness and clemency, which were afterwards glorified as virtues, were originally regarded almost everywhere as morally worthless, nay, as indications of weakness. buying and selling, as well as everything psychologically connected therewith and older than any form of social organisation, contain the germs, in nietzsche's view, of compensation, assessing, justice and duty. man soon became proud of himself as a being who measures values. one of the earliest generalisations was this: everything has its price. and the thought that everything can be paid for was the oldest and most naïve canon of justice. now the whole of society, as it gradually develops, stands in the same relation to its members as the creditor to the debtor. society protects its members; they are assured against the state of outlawry--on condition that they do not break their pledges to the community. he who breaks his word--the criminal--is relegated to the outlawry involved in exclusion from society. as nietzsche, who is so exclusively taken up by the psychological aspect, discards all accessories of scholarship, it is impossible to examine directly the accuracy of his assertions. the historical data will be found collected in rée's paragraphs on resentment and the sense of justice, and in his section on the buying-off of revenge, i. e. settlement by fines. other thinkers besides nietzsche (such as e. von hartmann and rée) have combated the view that the idea of justice has its origin in a state of resentment, and nietzsche has scarcely brought to light any fresh and convincing proof; but what is characteristic of him as a writer is the excess of personal passion with which he attacks this view, obviously because it is connected with the reasoning of modern democracy. in many a modern cry for justice there rings a note of plebeian spite and envy. involuntarily many a modern savant of middle-class or lower middle-class origin has attributed an unwarrantable importance to the atavistic emotions prevalent among those who have been long oppressed: hatred and rancour, spite and thirst for revenge. nietzsche does not occupy himself for an instant with the state of things in which revenge does duty as the sole punitive justice; for the death feud is not a manifestation of the thrall's hatred of his master, but of ideas of honour among equals. he dwells exclusively on the contrast between a ruling caste and a caste of slaves, and shows a constantly recurring indignation with doctrines which have caused the progressive among his contemporaries to look with indulgence on the instincts of the populace and with suspicion or hostility on master spirits. his purely personal characteristic, however, the unphilosophical and temperamental in him, is revealed in the trait that, while he has nothing but scorn and contempt for the down-trodden class or race, for the _slave morality_ resulting from its suppressed rancour, he positively revels in the ruling caste's delight in its power, in the atmosphere of healthiness, freedom, frankness and truthfulness in which it lives. its acts of tyranny he defends or excuses. the image it creates for itself of the slave caste is to him far less falsified than that which the latter forms of the master caste. nor can there be serious question of any real injustice committed by this caste. for there is no such thing as right or wrong in itself. the infliction of an injury, forcible subjection, exploitation or annihilation is not in itself a wrong, cannot be such, since life in its essence, in its primary functions, is nothing but oppression, exploitation and annihilation. conditions of justice can never be anything but exceptional conditions, that is, as limitations of the real desire of life, the object of which is power. nietzsche replaces schopenhauer's _will to life_ and darwin's _struggle for existence_ by the _will to power_. in his view the fight is not for life--bare existence--but for power. and he has a great deal to say--somewhat beside the mark--of the mean and paltry conditions those englishmen must have had in view who set up the modest conception of the struggle for life. it appears to him as if they had imagined a world in which everybody is glad if he can only keep body and soul together. but life is only an expression for the minimum. in itself life seeks, not self-preservation alone, but self-increase, and this is precisely the "will to power." it is therefore obvious that there is no difference of principle between the new catchword and the old; for the struggle for existence necessarily leads to the conflict of forces and the fight for power. now a system of justice, seen from this standpoint, is a factor in the conflict of forces. conceived as supreme, as a remedy for every kind of struggle, it would be a principle hostile to life and destructive of the future and progress of humanity. something similar was in the mind of lassalle, when he declared that the standpoint of justice was a bad standpoint in the life of nations. what is significant of nietzsche is his love of fighting for its own sake, in contrast to the modern humanitarian view. to nietzsche the greatness of a movement is to be measured by the sacrifices it demands. the hygiene which keeps alive millions of weak and useless beings who ought rather to die, is to him no true progress. a dead level of mediocre happiness assured to the largest possible majority of the miserable creatures we nowadays call men, would be to him no true progress. but to him, as to renan, the rearing of a human species higher and stronger than that which now surrounds us (the "superman"), even if this could only be achieved by the sacrifice of masses of such men as we know, would be a great, a real progress. nietzsche's visions, put forth in all seriousness, of the training of the superman and his assumption of the mastery of the world, bear so strong a resemblance to renan's dreams, thrown out half in jest, of a new asgard, a regular manufactory of æsir (_dialogues philosophiques_, 117), that we can scarcely doubt the latter's influence. but what renan wrote under the overwhelming impression of the paris commune, and, moreover, in the form of dialogue, allowing both _pro_ and _con_. to be heard, has crystallised in nietzsche into dogmatic conviction. one is therefore surprised and hurt to find that nietzsche never mentions renan otherwise than grudgingly. he scarcely alludes to the aristocratic quality of his intellect, but he speaks with repugnance of that respect for the gospel of the humble which renan everywhere discloses, and which is undeniably at variance with his hope of the foundation of a breeding establishment for supermen. renan, and after him taine, turned against the almost religious feelings which were long entertained in the new europe towards the first french revolution. renan regretted the revolution betimes on national grounds; taine, who began by speaking warmly of it, changed his mind on closer inquiry. nietzsche follows in their footsteps. it is natural for modern authors, who feel themselves to be the children of the revolution, to sympathise with the men of the great revolt; and certainly the latter do not receive their due in the present anti-revolutionary state of feeling in europe. but these authors, in their dread of what in political jargon is called cæsarism, and in their superstitious belief in mass movements, have overlooked the fact that the greatest revolutionaries and liberators are not the united small, but the few great; not the small ungenerous, but the great and generous, who are willing to bestow justice and well-being and intellectual growth upon the rest. there are two classes of revolutionary spirits: those who feel instinctively drawn to brutus, and those who equally instinctively are attracted by cæsar. cæsar is the great type; neither frederick the great nor napoleon could claim more than a part of his qualities. the modern poetry of the 'forties teems with songs in praise of brutus, but no poet has sung cæsar. even a poet with so little love for democracy as shakespeare totally failed to recognise his greatness; he gave us a pale caricature of his figure and followed plutarch in glorifying brutus at his expense. even shakespeare could not see that cæsar placed a very different stake on the table of life from that of his paltry murderer. cæsar was descended from venus; in his form was grace. his mind had the grand simplicity which is the mark of the greatest; his nature was nobility. he, from whom even to-day all supreme power takes its name, had every attribute that belongs to a commander and ruler of the highest rank. only a few men of the italian renaissance have reached such a height of genius. his life was a guarantee of all the progress that could be accomplished in those days. brutus's nature was doctrine, his distinguishing mark the narrowness that seeks to bring back dead conditions and that sees omens of a call in the accident of a name. his style was dry and laborious, his mind unfertile. his vice was avarice, usury his delight. to him the provinces were conquests beyond the pale. he had five senators of salamis starved to death because the town could not pay. and on account of a dagger-thrust, which accomplished nothing and hindered nothing of what it was meant to hinder, this arid brain has been made a sort of genius of liberty, merely because men have failed to understand what it meant to have the strongest, richest and noblest nature invested with supreme power. from what has been said above it will easily be understood that nietzsche derives justice entirely from the active emotions, since in his view revengeful feelings are always low. he does not dwell on this point, however. older writers had seen in the instinct of retaliation the origin of punishment. stuart mill, in his _utilitarianism_, derived justice from already established punitive provisions (_justum_ from _jussum_), which were precautionary measures, not reprisals. rée, in his book on the _origin of conscience_, defended the kindred proposition that punishment is not a consequence of the sense of justice, but _vice versa_. the english philosophers in general derive the bad conscience from punishment. the value of the latter is supposed to consist in awakening a sense of guilt in the delinquent. against this nietzsche enters a protest. he maintains that punishment only hardens and benumbs a man; in fact, that the judicial procedure itself prevents the criminal from regarding his conduct as reprehensible; since he is made to witness precisely the same kind of acts as those he has committed--spying, entrapping, outwitting and torturing--all of which are sanctioned when exercised against him in the cause of justice. for long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal's "sin"; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism with which the russians suffer to this day. in general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him "better." the bad conscience, then, is still unexplained. nietzsche proposes the following brilliant hypothesis: the bad conscience is the deep-seated morbid condition that declared itself in man under the stress of the most radical change he has ever experienced--when he found himself imprisoned in perpetuity within a society which was inviolable. all the strong and savage instincts such as adventurousness, rashness, cunning, rapacity, lust of power, which till then had not only been honoured, but actually encouraged, were suddenly put down as dangerous, and by degrees branded as immoral and criminal. creatures adapted to a roving life of war and adventure suddenly saw all their instincts classed as worthless, nay, as forbidden. an immense despondency, a dejection without parallel, then took possession of them. and all these instincts that were not allowed an outward vent, turned inwards on the man himself--feelings of enmity, cruelty, delight in change, in hazard, violence, persecution, destruction--and thus the bad conscience originated. when the state came into existence--not by a social contract, as rousseau and his contemporaries assumed--but by a frightful tyranny imposed by a conquering race upon a more numerous, but unorganised population, then all the latter's instinct of freedom turned inwards; its active force and will to power were directed against man himself. and this was the soil which bore such ideals of beauty as self-denial, self-sacrifice, unselfishness. the delight in self-sacrifice is in its origin a phase of cruelty; the bad conscience is a will for self-abuse. then by degrees guilt came to be felt as a debt, to the past, to the ancestors; a debt that had to be paid back in sacrifices--at first of nourishment in its crudest sense--in marks of honour and in obedience; for all customs, as the work of ancestors, are at the same time their commands.[7] there is a constant dread of not giving them enough; the firstborn, human and animal, are sacrificed to them. fear of the founder grows in proportion as the power of the race increases. sometimes he becomes transformed into a god, in which the origin of the god from fear is clearly seen. the feeling of owing a debt to the deity steadily grew through the centuries, until the recognition of the christian deity as universal god brought about the greatest possible outburst of guilty feeling. only in our day is any noticeable diminution of this sense of guilt to be traced; but where the consciousness of sin reaches its culminating point, there the bad conscience eats its way like a cancer, till the sense of the impossibility of paying the debt--atoning for the sin--is supreme and with it is combined the idea of eternal punishment. a curse is now imagined to have been laid upon the founder of the race (adam), and all sin becomes original sin. indeed, the evil principle is attributed to nature herself, from whose womb man has sprung--until we arrive at the paradoxical expedient in which tormented christendom has found a temporary consolation for two thousand years: god offers himself for the guilt of mankind, pays himself in his own flesh and blood. what has here happened is that the instinct of cruelty, which has turned inwards, has become self-torture, and all man's animal instincts have been reinterpreted as guilt towards god. every nay man utters to his nature, to his real being, he flings out as a yea, an affirmation of reality applied to god's sanctity, his capacity of judge and executioner, and in the next place to eternity, the "beyond," pain without end, eternal punishment in hell. in order rightly to understand the origin of ascetic ideals, we must, moreover, consider that the earliest generations of spiritual and contemplative natures lived under a fearful pressure of contempt on the part of the hunters and warriors. the unwarlike element in them was despicable. they had no other means of holding their own than that of inspiring fear. this they could only do by cruelty to themselves, mortification and self-discipline in a hermit's life. as priests, soothsayers and sorcerers they then struck superstitious terror into the masses. the ascetic priest is the unsightly larva from which the healthy philosopher has emerged. under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible. nevertheless the self-contradiction we find in asceticism--life turned _against_ life--is of course only apparent. in reality the ascetic ideal corresponds to a decadent life's profound need of healing and tending. it is an ideal that points to depression and exhaustion; by its help life struggles against death. it is life's device for self-preservation. its necessary antecedent is a morbid condition in the tamed human being, a disgust with life, coupled with the desire to be something else, to be somewhere else, raised to the highest pitch of emotion and passion. the ascetic priest is the embodiment of this very wish. by its power he keeps the whole herd of dejected, fainthearted, despairing and unsuccessful creatures, fast to life. the very fact that he himself is sick makes him their born herdsman. if he were healthy, he would turn away with loathing from all this eagerness to re-label weakness, envy, pharisaism and false morality as virtue. but, being himself sick, he is called upon to be an attendant in the great hospital of sinners--the church. he is constantly occupied with sufferers who seek the cause of their pain outside themselves; he teaches the patient that the guilty cause of his pain is himself. thus he diverts the rancour of the abortive man and makes him less harmful, by letting a great part of his resentment recoil on himself. the ascetic priest cannot properly be called a physician; he mitigates suffering and invents consolations of every kind, both narcotics and stimulants. the problem was to contend with fatigue and despair, which had seized like an epidemic upon great masses of men. many remedies were tried. first, it was sought to depress vitality to the lowest degree: not to will, not to desire, not to work, and so on; to become apathetic (pascal's _il faut s'abêtir_). the object was sanctification, a hypnotising of all mental life, a relaxation of every purpose, and consequently freedom from pain. in the next place, mechanical activity was employed as a narcotic against states of depression: the "blessing of labour." the ascetic priest, who has to deal chiefly with sufferers of the poorer classes, reinterprets the task of the unfortunate drudge for him, making him see in it a benefit. then again, the prescription of a little, easily accessible joy, is a favourite remedy for depression; such as gladdening others, helping them in love of one's neighbour. finally, the decisive cure is to organise all the sick into an immense hospital, to found a congregation of them. the disinclination that accompanies the sense of weakness is thereby combated, since the mass feels strong in its inner cohesion. but the chief remedy of the ascetic priest was, after all, his reinterpretation of the feeling of guilt as "sin." the inner suffering was a punishment. the sick man was the sinner. nietzsche compares the unfortunate who receives this explanation of his qualms with a hen round which a chalk circle has been drawn: he cannot get out. wherever we look, for century after century, we see the hypnotic gaze of the sinner, staring--in spite of job--at guilt as the only cause of suffering. everywhere the evil conscience and the scourge and the hairy shirt and weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the cry of "more pain! more pain!" everything served the ascetic ideal. and then arose epidemics like those of st. vitus's dance and the flagellants, witches' hysteria and the wholesale delirium of extravagant sects (which still lingers in otherwise beneficially disciplined bodies such as the salvation army). the ascetic ideal has as yet no real assailants; there is no decided prophet of a new ideal. inasmuch as since the time of copernicus science has constantly tended to deprive man of his earlier belief in his own importance, its influence is rather favourable to asceticism than otherwise. at present the only real enemies and underminers of the ascetic ideal are to be found in the charlatans of that ideal, in its hypocritical champions, who excite and maintain distrust of it. as the senselessness of suffering was felt to be a curse, the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning; a meaning which brought a new flood of suffering with it, but which was better than none. in our day a new ideal is in process of formation, which sees in suffering a condition of life, a condition of happiness, and which in the name of a new culture combats all that we have hitherto called culture. [7] compare lassalle's theory of the original religion of rome. g. brandes; _ferdinand lassalle_ (london and new york, 1911), pp. 76 ff. 5. among nietzsche's works there is a strange book which bears the title, _thus spake zarathustra_. it consists of four parts, written during the years 1883-85, each part in about ten days, and conceived chapter by chapter on long walks--"with a feeling of inspiration, as though each sentence had been shouted in my ear," as nietzsche wrote in a private letter. the central figure and something of the form are borrowed from the persian _avesta_. zarathustra is the mystical founder of a religion whom we usually call zoroaster. his religion is the religion of purity; his wisdom is cheerful and dauntless, as that of one who laughed at his birth; his nature is light and flame. the eagle and the serpent, who share his mountain cave, the proudest and the wisest of beasts, are ancient persian symbols. this work contains nietzsche's doctrine in the form, so to speak, of religion. it is the koran, or rather the avesta, which he was impelled to leave--obscure and profound, high-soaring and remote from reality, prophetic and intoxicated with the future, filled to the brim with the personality of its author, who again is entirely filled with himself. among modern books that have adopted this tone and employed this symbolic and allegorical style may be mentioned mickiewicz's _book of the polish pilgrims_, slowacki's anheli, and the words of a believer, by lamennais, who was influenced by mickiewicz. a newer work, known to nietzsche, is carl spitteler's prometheus and epimetheus (1881). but all these books, with the exception of spitteler's, are biblical in their language. zarathustra, on the other hand, is a book of edification for free spirits. nietzsche himself gave this book the highest place among his writings. i do not share this view. the imaginative power which sustains it is not sufficiently inventive, and a certain monotony is inseparable from an archaistic presentment by means of types. but it is a good book for those to have recourse to who are unable to master nietzsche's purely speculative works; it contains all his fundamental ideas in the form of poetic recital. its merit is a style that from the first word to the last is full-toned, sonorous and powerful; now and then rather unctuous in its combative judgments and condemnations; always expressive of self-joy, nay, self-intoxication, but rich in subtleties as in audacities, sure, and at times great. behind this style lies a mood as of calm mountain air, so light, so ethereally pure, that no infection, no bacteria can live in it--no noise, no stench, no dust assails it, nor does any path lead up. clear sky above, open sea at the mountain's foot, and over all a heaven of light, an abyss of light, an azure bell, a vaulted silence above roaring waters and mighty mountain-chains. on the heights zarathustra is alone with himself, drawing in the pure air in full, deep breaths, alone with the rising sun, alone with the heat of noon, which does not impair the freshness, alone with the voices of the gleaming stars at night. a good, deep book it is. a book that is bright in its joy of life, dark in its riddles, a book for spiritual mountain-climbers and dare-devils and for the few who are practised in the great contempt of man that loathes the crowd, and in the great love of man that only loathes so deeply because it has a vision of a higher, braver humanity, which it seeks to rear and train. zarathustra has sought the refuge of his cave out of disgust with petty happiness and petty virtues. he has seen that men's doctrine of virtue and contentment makes them ever smaller: their goodness is in the main a wish that no one may do them any harm; therefore they forestall the others by doing them a little good. this is cowardice and is called virtue. true, they are at the same time quite ready to attack and injure, but only those who are once for all at their mercy and with whom it is safe to take liberties. this is called bravery and is a still baser cowardice. but when zarathustra tries to drive out the cowardly devils in men, the cry is raised against him, "zarathustra is godless." he is lonely, for all his former companions have become apostates; their young hearts have grown old, and not old even, only weary and slothful, only commonplace--and this they call becoming pious again. "around light and liberty they once fluttered like gnats and young poets, and already are they mystifiers, and mumblers and mollycoddles." they have understood their age. they chose their time well. "for now do all night-birds again fly abroad. now is the hour of all that dread the light." zarathustra loathes the great city as a hell for anchorites' thoughts. "all lusts and vices are here at home; but here are also the virtuous, much appointable and appointed virtue. much appointable virtue with scribe-fingers and hardy sitting-flesh and waiting-flesh, blessed with little breast-stars and padded, haunchless daughters. here is also much piety and much devout spittle-licking and honey-slavering before the god of hosts. for 'from on high' drippeth the star and the gracious spittle; and upward longeth every starless bosom." and zarathustra loathes the state, loathes it as henrik ibsen did and more profoundly than he. to him the state is the coldest of all cold monsters. its fundamental lie is that it is the people. no; creative spirits were they who created the people and gave it a faith and a love; thus they served life; every people is peculiar to itself, but the state is everywhere the same. the state is to zarathustra that "where the slow suicide of all is called life." the state is for the many too many. only where the state leaves oft does the man who is not superfluous begin; the man who is a bridge to the superman. from states zarathustra has fled up to his mountain, into his cave. in forbearance and pity lay his greatest danger. rich in, the little lies of pity he dwelt among men. "stung from head to foot by poisonous flies and hollowed out like a stone by many drops of malice, thus did i sit among them, saying to myself: innocent is everything petty of its pettiness. especially they who call themselves the good, they sting in all innocence, they lie in all innocence; how could they be just towards me? "he who dwelleth among the good, him teacheth pity to lie. pity breedeth bad air for all free souls. for the stupidity of the good is unfathomable. "their stiff wise men did i call wise, not stiff. their grave-diggers did i call searchers and testers--thus did i learn to confound speech. the grave-diggers dig for themselves diseases. from old refuse arise evil exhalations. upon the mountains one should live." and with blessed nostrils he breathes again the freedom of the mountains. his nose is now released from the smell of all that is human. there sits zarathustra with old broken tables of the law around him and new half-written tables, awaiting his hour; the hour when the lion shall come with the flock of doves, strength in company with gentleness, to do homage to him. and he holds out to men a new table, upon which such maxims as these are written-spare not thy neighbour! my great love for the remotest ones commands it. thy neighbour is something that must be surpassed. say not: i will do unto others as i would they should do unto me. what _thou_ doest, that can no man do to thee again. there is no requital. do not believe that thou mayst not rob. a right which thou canst seize upon, shalt thou never allow to be given thee. beware of good men. they never speak the truth. for all that they call evil--the daring venture, the prolonged distrust, the cruel nay, the deep disgust with men, the will and the power to cut into the quick--all this must be present where a truth is to be born. all the past is at man's mercy. but, this being so, it might happen that the rabble became master and drowned all time in its shallow waters, or that a tyrant usurped it all. therefore we need a new nobility, to be the adversary of all rabble and all tyranny, and to inscribe on new tables the word "noble." certainly not a nobility that can be bought, nor a nobility whose virtue is love of country. no, teaches zarathustra, exiles shall ye be from your fatherlands and forefatherlands. not the land of your fathers shall ye love, but your children's land. this love is the new nobility--love of that new land, the undiscovered, far-off country in the remotest sea. to your children shall ye make amends for the misfortune of being your fathers' children. thus shall ye redeem all the past. zarathustra is full of lenity. others have said: thou shalt not commit adultery. zarathustra teaches: the honest should say to each other, "let us see whether our love continue; let us fix a term, that we may find out whether we desire a longer term." what cannot be bent, will be broken. a woman said to zarathustra, "indeed, i broke the marriage, but first did the marriage break me." zarathustra is without mercy. it has been said: push not a leaning waggon. but zarathustra says: that which is ready to fall, shall ye also push. all that belongs to our day is falling and decaying. no one can preserve it, but zarathustra will even help it to fall faster. zarathustra loves the brave. but not the bravery that takes up every challenge. there is often more bravery in holding back and passing by and reserving one's self for a worthier foe. zarathustra does not teach: ye shall love your enemies, but: ye shall not engage in combat with enemies ye despise. why so hard? men cry to zarathustra. he replies: why so hard, once said the charcoal to the diamond; are we not near of kin? the creators are hard. their blessedness it is to press their hand upon future centuries as upon wax. no doctrine revolts zarathustra more than that of the vanity and senselessness of life. this is in his eyes ancient babbling, old wives' babbling. and the pessimists who sum up life with a balance of aversion, and assert the badness of existence, are the objects of his positive loathing. he prefers pain to annihilation. the same extravagant love of life is expressed in the _hymn to life_, written by his friend, lou von salomé, which nietzsche set for chorus and orchestra. we read here-"so truly loves a friend his friend as i love thee, o life in myst'ry hidden! if joy or grief to me thou send; if loud i laugh or else to weep am bidden, yet love i thee with all thy changeful faces; and should'st thou doom me to depart, so would i tear myself from thy embraces, as comrade from a comrade's heart." and the poem concludes-"and if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me. lead on i thou hast thy sorrow still!"[8] when achilles chose to be a day-labourer on earth rather than a king in the realm of the shades, the expression was a weak one in comparison with this passionate outburst, which paradoxically thirsts even for the cup of pain. eduard von hartmann believes in a beginning and end of the "world process." he concludes that no eternity can lie behind us; otherwise everything possible must already have happened, which--according to his contention--is not the case. in sharp contrast to him, on this point as on others, zarathustra teaches, with, be it said, a somewhat shallow mysticism--which is derived from the ancient pythagoreans' idea of the circular course of history and is influenced by cohelet's hebrew philosophy of life--the eternal recurrence; that is to say, that all things eternally return and we ourselves with them, that we have already existed an infinite number of times and all things with us. the great clock of the universe is to him an hour-glass, which is constantly turned and runs out again and again. this is the direct antithesis of hartmann's doctrine of universal destruction, and curiously enough it was put forward at about the same time by two french thinkers: by blanqui in _l'éternité par les astres_ (1871), and by gustave le bon in _l'homme et les sociétés_ (1881). at his death zarathustra will say: now i disappear and die; in a moment i shall be nothing, for the soul is mortal as the body; but the complex of causes in which i am involved will return, and it will continually reproduce me. at the close of the third part of _zarathustra_ there is a chapter headed "the second dance song." dance, in nietzsche's language, is always an expression for the lofty lightness of mind, which is exalted above the gravity of earth and above all stupid seriousness. this song, extremely remarkable in its language, is a good specimen of the style of the work, when it soars into its highest flights of poetry. life appears to zarathustra as a woman; she strikes her castanets and he dances with her, flinging out all his wrath with life and all his love of life. "lately looked i into thine eyes, o life! gold saw i gleaming in thy night-eye--my heart stood still with the joy of it. "a golden skiff saw i gleaming upon shadowy waters, a sinking, drinking, reblinking, golden swinging-skiff. "at my foot, dancing-mad, didst thou cast a glance, a laughing, questioning, melting, swinging-glance. "twice only did thy little hands strike the castanets --then was my foot swinging in the madness of the dance. ********************************************************* "i fear thee near, i love thee far; thy flight allureth me, thy seeking secureth me; i suffer, but for thee, what would i not gladly bear! "for thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred mis-leadeth, whose flight enchaineth, whose mockery pleadeth! "who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress, temptress, seekress, findress! who would not love thee, thou innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!" in this dialogue between the dancers, life and her lover, these words occur: o zarathustra, thou art far from loving me as dearly as thou sayest; thou art not faithful enough to me. there is an old, heavy booming-clock; it boometh by night up to thy cave. when thou hearest this clock at midnight, then dost thou think until noon that soon thou wilt forsake me. and then follows, in conclusion, the song of the old midnight clock. but in the fourth part of the work, in the section called "the sleepwalker's song," this short strophe is interpreted line by line; in form half like a mediæval watchman's chant, half like the hymn of a mystic, it contains the mysterious spirit of nietzsche's esoteric doctrine concentrated in the shortest formula- midnight is drawing on, and as mysteriously, as terribly, and as cordially as the midnight bell speaketh to zarathustra, so calleth he to the higher men: at midnight many a thing is heard which may not be heard by day; and the midnight speaketh: _o man, take heed_! whither hath time gone? have i not sunk into deep wells? the world sleepeth. and shuddering it asketh: who is to be master of the world? _what saith the deep midnight_? the bell boometh, the wood-worm burroweth, the heart-worm gnaweth: _ah! the world is deep_. but the old bell is like a sonorous instrument; all pain hath bitten into its heart, the pain of fathers and forefathers; and all joy hath set it swinging, the joy of fathers and forefathers--there riseth from the bell an odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, golden-wine perfume of old happiness, and this song: the world is deep, _and deeper than the day had thought_. i am too pure for the rude hands of the day. the purest shall be masters of the world, the unacknowledged, the strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper than any day. _deep is its woe_. but joy goeth deeper than heart's grief. for grief saith: break, my heart! fly away, my pain! _woe saith: begone_! but, ye higher men, said ye ever yea to a single joy, then said ye also yea unto all woe. for joy and woe are linked, enamoured, inseparable. and all beginneth again, all is eternal. _all joys desire eternity, deep, deep, eternity_. this, then, is the midnight song- "oh mensch! gieb acht! was spricht die tiefe mitternacht? 'ich schlief, ich schlief- aus tiefem traum bin ich erwacht:- die welt ist tief, und tiefer als der tag gedacht. tief ist ihr weh- lust--tiefer noch als herzeleid: weh spricht: vergeh! doch alle lust will ewigkeit- --will tiefe, tiefe ewigkeit!'" [8] translated by herman scheffauer. text and pianoforte score are given in vol. xvii (_ecce homo_) of the english edition of nietzsche's works. 6. such is he, then, this warlike mystic, poet and thinker, this immoralist who is never tired of preaching. coming to him fresh from the english philosophers, one feels transported to another world. the englishmen are all patient spirits, whose natural bent is towards the accumulation and investigation of a mass of small facts in order thereby to discover a law. the best of them are aristotelian minds. few of them fascinate us personally or seem to be of very complex personality. their influence lies more in what they do than in what they are. nietzsche, on the other hand, like schopenhauer, is a guesser, a seer, an artist, less interesting in what he does than in what he is. little as he feels himself a german, he nevertheless continues the metaphysical and intuitive tradition of german philosophy and has the german thinker's profound dislike of any utilitarian point of view. in his passionate aphoristical form he is unquestionably original; in the substance of his thought he reminds one here and there of many another writer, both of contemporary germany and of france; but he evidently regards, it as perfectly absurd that he should have to thank a contemporary for anything, and storms like a german at all those who resemble him in any point. i have already mentioned how strongly he reminds one of ernest renan in his conception of culture and in his hope of an aristocracy of intellect that could seize the dominion of the world. nevertheless he has not one appreciative word to say for renan. i have also alluded to the fact that eduard von hartmann was his predecessor in his fight against schopenhauer's morality of pity. in this author, whose talent is indisputable, even though his importance may not correspond with his extraordinary reputation, nietzsche, with the uncritical injustice of a german university professor, would only see a charlatan. hartmann's nature is of heavier stuff than nietzsche's. he is ponderous, self-complacent, fundamentally teutonic, and, in contrast to nietzsche, entirely unaffected by french spirit and southern sunshine. but there are points of resemblance between them, which are due to historical conditions in the germany that reared them both. in the first place, there was something analogous in their positions in life, since both as artillerymen had gone through a similar schooling; and in the second place, in their culture, inasmuch as the starting-point of both is schopenhauer and both nevertheless retain a great respect for hegel, thus uniting these two hostile brothers in their veneration. they are further in agreement in their equally estranged attitude to christian piety and christian morality, as well as in their contempt, so characteristic of modern germany, for every kind of democracy. nietzsche resembles hartmann in his attacks on socialists and anarchists, with the difference that hartmann's attitude is here more that of the savant, while nietzsche has the bad taste to delight in talking about "anarchist dogs," expressing in the same breath his own loathing of the state. nietzsche further resembles hartmann in his repeated demonstration of the impossibility of the ideals of equality and of peace, since life is nothing but inequality and war: "what is good? to be brave is good. i do not say, the good cause sanctifies war, but the good war sanctifies every cause." like his predecessor, he dwells on the necessity of the struggle for power and on the supposed value of war to culture. in both these authors, comparatively independent as they are, the one a mystical natural philosopher, the other a mystical immoralist, is reflected the all-dominating militarism of the new german empire. hartmann approaches on many points the german snobbish national feeling. nietzsche is opposed to it on principle, as he is to the statesman "who has piled up for the germans a new tower of babel, a monster in extent of territory and power and for that reason called great," but something of bismarck's spirit broods nevertheless over the works of both. as regards the question of war, the only difference between them is that nietzsche does not desire war for the sake of a fantastic redemption of the world, but in order that manliness may not become extinct. in his contempt for woman and his abuse of her efforts for emancipation nietzsche again agrees with hartmann, though only in so far as both here recall schopenhauer, whose echo hartmann is in this connection. but whereas hartmann is here only a moralising doctrinaire with a somewhat offensive dash of pedantry, one can trace beneath nietzsche's attacks on the female sex that subtle sense of woman's dangerousness which points to painful experience. he does not seem to have known many women, but those he did know, he evidently loved and hated, but above all despised. again and again he returns to the unfitness of the free and great spirit for marriage. in many of these utterances there is a strongly personal note, especially in those which persistently assert the necessity of a solitary life for a thinker. but as regards the less personal arguments about woman, old-world germany here speaks through the mouth of nietzsche, as through that of hartmann; the germany whose women, in contrast to those of france and england, have for centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life. we may recognise in these german writers generally that they have an eye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes, which stuart mill neither saw nor understood. but the injustice to man and the rather tame fairness to woman, in which mill's admirable emancipatory attempt occasionally results, is nevertheless greatly to be preferred to nietzsche's brutal unfairness, which asserts that in our treatment of women we ought to return to "the vast common sense of old asia." finally, in his conflict with pessimism nietzsche had eugen dühring (especially in his _werth des lebens_) as a forerunner, and this circumstance seems to have inspired him with so much ill-will, so much exasperation indeed, that in a polemic now open, now disguised, he calls dühring his ape. dühring is a horror to him as a plebeian, as an antisemite, as the apostle of revenge, and as the disciple of the englishmen and of comte; but nietzsche has not a word to say about dühring's very remarkable qualities, to which such epithets as these do not apply. but we can easily understand, taking nietzsche's own destiny into consideration, that dühring, the blind man, the neglected thinker who despises official scholars, the philosopher who teaches outside the universities, who, in spite of being so little pampered by life, loudly proclaims his love of life--should appear to nietzsche as a caricature of himself. this was, however, no reason for his now and then adopting dühring's abusive tone. and it must be confessed that, much as nietzsche wished to be what, for that matter, he was--a polish _szlachcic_, a european man of the world and a cosmopolitan thinker--in one respect he always remained the german professor: in the rude abuse in which his uncontrolled hatred of rivals found vent; and, after all, his only rivals as a modern german philosopher were hartmann and dühring. it is strange that this man, who learned such an immense amount from french moralists and psychologists like la rochefoucauld, chamfort and stendhal, was able to acquire so little of the self-control of their form. he was never subjected to the restraint which the literary tone of france imposes upon every writer as regards the mention and exhibition of his own person. for a long time he seems to have striven to discover himself and to become completely himself. in order to find himself he crept into his solitude, as zarathustra into his cave. by the time he had succeeded in arriving at full independent development and felt the rich flow of individual thought within him, he had lost all external standards for measuring his own value; all bridges to the world around him were broken down. the fact that no recognition came from without only aggravated his self-esteem. the first glimmer of recognition further exalted this self-esteem. at last it closed above his head and darkened this rare and commanding intellect. as he stands disclosed in his incompleted life-work, he is a writer well worth studying. my principal reason for calling attention to him is that scandinavian literature appears to me to have been living quite long enough on the ideas that were put forward and discussed in the last decade. it looks as though the power of conceiving great ideas were on the wane, and even as though receptivity for them were fast vanishing; people are still busy with the same doctrines, certain theories of heredity, a little darwinism, a little emancipation of woman, a little morality of happiness, a little freethought, a little worship of democracy, etc. and as to the culture of our "cultured" people, the level represented approximately by the revue des deux mondes threatens to become the high-water mark of taste. it does not seem yet to have dawned on the best among us that the finer, the only true culture begins on the far side of the _revue des deux mondes_ in the great personality, rich in ideas. the intellectual development of scandinavia has advanced comparatively rapidly in its literature. we have seen great authors rise above all orthodoxy, though they began by being perfectly simple-hearted believers. this is very honourable, but in the case of those who cannot rise higher still, it is nevertheless rather meagre. in the course of the 'seventies it became clear to almost all scandinavian authors that it would no longer do to go on writing on the basis of the augsburg confession. some quietly dropped it, others opposed it more or less noisily; while most of those who abandoned it entrenched themselves against the public, and to some extent against the bad conscience of their own childhood, behind the established protestant morality; now and then, indeed, behind a good, everyday soup-stock morality--i call it thus because so many a soup has been served from it. but be that as it may, attacks on existing prejudices and defence of existing institutions threaten at present to sink into one and the same commonplace familiarity. soon, i believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average mediocrity, any more than with remnants of the old' catechisms; but that great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most individual personalities of contemporary thought, in exceptionality, in independence, in defiance and in aristocratic self-supremacy. ii december 1899 more than ten years have gone by since i first called attention to friedrich nietzsche. my essay on "aristocratic radicalism" was the first study of any length to be devoted, in the whole of europe, to this man, whose name has since flown round the world and is at this moment one of the most famous among our contemporaries. this thinker, then almost unknown and seldom mentioned, became, a few years later, the fashionable philosopher in every country of europe, and this while the great man, to whose lot had suddenly fallen the universal fame he had so passionately desired, lived on without a suspicion of it all, a living corpse cut off from the world by incurable insanity. beginning with his native land, which so long as he retained his powers never gave him a sign of recognition, his writings have now made their way in every country. even in france, usually so loth to admit foreign, and especially german, influence, his character and his doctrine have been studied and expounded again and again. in germany, as well as outside it, a sort of school has been formed, which appeals to his authority and not unfrequently compromises him, or rather itself, a good deal. the opposition to him is conducted sometimes (as by ludwig stein) on serious and scientific lines, although from narrow pedagogic premises; sometimes (as by herr max nordau) with sorry weapons and with the assumed superiority of presumptuous mediocrity. interesting articles and books on nietzsche have been written by peter gast and lou von salomé in german and by henri lichtenberger in french; and in addition nietzsche's sister, frau elisabeth förster-nietzsche, has not only published an excellent edition of his collected works (including his youthful sketches), but has written his life (and published his correspondence). my old essay on nietzsche has thus long ago been outstripped by later works, the writers of which were able to take a knowledge of nietzsche's work for granted and therefore to examine his writings without at the same time having to acquaint the reader with their contents. that essay, it may be remembered, occasioned an exchange of words between prof. höffding and myself, in the course of which i had the opportunity of expressing my own views more clearly and of showing what points they had in common with nietzsche's, and where they diverged from his.[1] as, of course, these polemical utterances of mine were not translated into foreign languages, no notice was taken of them anywhere abroad. the first essay itself, on the other hand, which was soon translated, brought me in a number of attacks, which gradually acquired a perfectly stereotyped formula. in an article by a germanised swede, who wanted to be specially spiteful, i was praised for having in that essay broken with my past and resolutely renounced the set of liberal opinions and ideas i had hitherto championed. whatever else i might be blamed for, it had to be acknowledged that twice in my life i had been the spokesman of german ideas, in my youth of hegel's and in my maturer years of nietzsche's. in a book by a noisy german charlatan living in paris, herr nordau, it was shortly afterwards asserted that if danish parents could guess what i was really teaching their children at the university of copenhagen, they would kill me in the street--a downright incitement to murder, which was all the more comic in its pretext, as admission to my lectures has always been open to everybody, the greater part of these lectures has appeared in print, and, finally, twenty years ago the parents used very frequently to come and hear me. it was repeated in the same quarter that after being a follower of stuart mill, i had in that essay turned my back on my past, since i had now appeared as an adherent of nietzsche. this last statement was afterwards copied in a very childish book by a viennese lady who, without a notion of the actual facts, writes away, year in, year out, on scandinavian literature for the benefit of the german public. this nonsense was finally disgorged once more in 1899 by mr. alfred ipsen, who contributed to the london _athenæum_ surveys of danish literature, among the virtues of which impartiality did not find a place. in the face of these constantly repeated assertions from abroad, i may be permitted to make it clear once more--as i have already shown in _tilskueren_ in 1890 (p. 259)--that my principles have not been in the slightest way modified through contact with nietzsche. when i became acquainted with him i was long past the age at which it is possible to change one's fundamental view of life. moreover, i maintained many years ago, in reply to my danish opponents, that my first thought with regard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what it contains is right or wrong: "i go straight through the book to the man behind it. and my first question is this: what is the value of this man, is he interesting, or not? if he is, then his books are undoubtedly worth knowing. questions of right or wrong are seldom applicable in the highest intellectual spheres, and their answering is not unfrequently of relatively small importance. the first lines i wrote about nietzsche were therefore to the effect that he deserved to be studied and _contested_. i rejoiced in him, as i rejoice in every powerful and uncommon individuality." and three years later i replied to the attack of a worthy and able swiss professor, who had branded nietzsche as a reactionary and a cynic, in these words, amongst others: "no mature reader studies nietzsche with the latent design of adopting his opinions, still less with that of propagating them. we are not children in search of instruction, but sceptics in search of men, and we rejoice when we have found a man--the rarest thing there is." it seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent, and that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as regards my renunciation of ideas. it is a nuisance to be forced now and then to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated against one year by year in the european press; but when others never write a sensible word about one, it becomes an obligation at times to stand up for one's self. my personal connection with nietzsche began with his sending me his book, _beyond good and evil_. i read it, received a strong impression, though not a clear or decided one, and did nothing further about it--for one reason, because i receive every day far too many books to be able to acknowledge them. but as in the following year _the genealogy of morals_ was sent me by the author, and as this book was not only much clearer in itself, but also threw new light on the earlier one, i wrote nietzsche a few lines of thanks, and this led to a correspondence which was interrupted by nietzsche's attack of insanity thirteen months later. the letters he sent me in that last year of his conscious life appear to me to be of no little psychological and biographical interest. [1] see _tilskueren_ (copenhagen) for august and november-december 1889, january, february-march, april and may 1890. correspondence between friedrich nietzsche and george brandes 1. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, nov. 26, 1887. dear sir, a year ago i received through your publisher your work _beyond good and evil_; the other day your latest book reached me in the same way. of your other books i have _human, all-too-human_. i had just sent the two volumes i possess to the binder, when _the genealogy of morals_ arrived, so that i have not been able to compare it with the earlier works, as i mean to do. by degrees i shall read everything of yours attentively. this time, however, i am anxious to express at once my sincere thanks for the book sent. it is an honour to me to be known to you, and known in such a way that you should wish to gain me as a reader. a new and original spirit breathes to me from your books. i do not yet fully understand what i have read; i cannot always see your intention. but i find much that harmonises with my own ideas and sympathies, the depreciation of the ascetic ideals and the profound disgust with democratic mediocrity, your aristocratic radicalism. your contempt for the morality of pity is not yet clear to me. there were also in the other work some reflections on women in general which did not agree with my own line of thought. your nature is so absolutely different from mine that it is not easy for me to feel at home. in spite of your universality you are very german in your mode of thinking and writing. you are one of the few people with whom i should enjoy a talk. i know nothing about you. i see with astonishment that you are a professor and doctor. i congratulate you in any case on being intellectually so little of a professor. i do not know what you have read of mine. my writings only attempt the solution of modest problems. for the most part they are only to be had in danish. for many years i have not written german. i have my best public in the slavonic countries, i believe. i have lectured in warsaw for two years in succession, and this year in petersburg and moscow, in french. thus i endeavour to break through the narrow limits of my native land. although no longer young, i am still one of the most inquisitive of men and one of the most eager to learn. you will therefore not find me closed against your ideas, even when i differ from you in thought and feeling. i am often stupid, but never in the least narrow. let me have the pleasure of a few lines if you think it worth the trouble. yours gratefully, george brandes. 2. nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, dec. 2, 1887. my dear sir, a few readers whom one honours and beyond them no readers at all--that is really what i desire. as regards the latter part of this wish, i am bound to say my hope of its realisation is growing less and less. all the more happy am i _in satis sunt pauci_, that the _pauci_ do not fail and have never failed me. of the living amongst them i will mention (to name only those whom you are certain to know) my distinguished friend jakob burkhardt, hans von bülow, h. taine, and the swiss poet keller; of the dead, the old hegelian bruno bauer and richard wagner. it gives me sincere pleasure that so good a european and missionary of culture as yourself will in future be numbered amongst them; i thank you with all my heart for this proof of your goodwill. i am afraid you will find it a difficult position. i myself have no doubt that my writings in one way or another are still "very german." you will, i am sure, feel this all the more markedly, being so spoilt by yourself; i mean, by the free and graceful french way in which you handle the language (a more familiar way than mine). with me a great many words have acquired an incrustation of foreign salts and taste differently on my tongue and on those of my readers. on the scale of my experiences and circumstances the predominance is given to the rarer, remoter, more attenuated tones as against the normal, medial ones. besides (as an old musician, which is what i really am), i have an ear for quarter-tones. finally--and this probably does most to make my books obscure--there is in me a distrust of dialectics, even of reasons. what a person already holds "true" or has not yet acknowledged as true; seems to me to depend mainly on his courage, on the relative strength of his courage (i seldom have the courage for what i really know). the expression _aristocratic radicalism_, which you employ, is very good. it is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing i have yet read about myself. how far this mode of thought has carried me already, how far it will carry me yet--i am almost afraid to imagine. but there are certain paths which do not allow one to go backward and so i go forward, because i _must_. that i may not neglect anything on my part that might facilitate your access to my cave--that is, my philosophy--my leipzig publisher shall send you all my older books _en bloc_. i recommend you especially to read the new prefaces to them (they have nearly all been republished); these prefaces, if read in order, will perhaps throw some light upon me, assuming that i am not obscurity in itself (obscure in myself) as _obscurissimus obscurorum virorum_. for that is quite possible. are you a musician? a work of mine for chorus and orchestra is just being published, a "hymn to life." this is intended to represent my music to posterity and one day to be sung "in my memory"; assuming that there is enough left of me for that. you see what posthumous thoughts i have. but a philosophy like mine is like a grave--it takes one from among the living. _bene vixit qui bene latuit_--was inscribed on descartes' tombstone. what an epitaph, to be sure! i too hope we may meet some day, yours, nietzsche. n.b.--i am staying this winter at nice. my summer address is sils-maria, upper-engadine, switzerland--i have resigned my professorship at the university. i am three parts blind. 3. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, dec. 15, 1887. my dear sir, the last words of your letter are those that have made most impression on me; those in which you tell me that your eyes are seriously affected. have you consulted good oculists, the best? it alters one's whole psychological life if one cannot see well. you owe it to all who honour you to do everything possible for the preservation and improvement of your sight. i have put off answering your letter because you announced the sending of a parcel of books, and i wished to thank you for them at the same time. but as the parcel has not yet arrived i will send you a few words to-day. i have your books back from the binder and have gone into them as deeply as i was able amid the stress of preparing lectures and all kinds of literary and political work. december 17. i am quite willing to be called a "good european," less so to be called a "missionary of culture." i have a horror of all missionary effort--because i have come across none but moralising missionaries--and i am afraid i do not altogether believe in what is called culture. our culture as a whole cannot inspire enthusiasm, can it? and what would a missionary be without _enthusiasm_! in other words, i am more isolated than you think. all i meant by being german was that you write more for yourself, think more of yourself in writing, than for the general public; whereas most non--german writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of style, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to keep to himself his most intimate and best individuality, the anonymous in him. i have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my inmost self is more than hinted at in my writings. i am no connoisseur in music. the arts of which i have some notion are sculpture and painting; i have to thank them for my deepest artistic impressions. my ear is undeveloped. in my young days this was a great grief to me. i used to play a good deal and worked at thorough-bass for a few years, but nothing came of it. i can enjoy good music keenly, but still am one of the uninitiated. i think i can trace in your works certain points of agreement with my own taste: your predilection for beyle, for instance, and for taine; but the latter i have not seen for seventeen years. i am not so enthusiastic about his work on the revolution as you seem to be. he deplores and harangues an earthquake. i used the expression "aristocratic radicalism" because it so exactly defines my own political convictions. i am a little hurt, however, at the offhand and impetuous pronouncements against such--phenomena as socialism and anarchism in your works. the anarchism of prince kropotkin, for instance, is no stupidity. the name, of course, is nothing. your intellect, which is usually so dazzling, seems to me to fall a trifle short where truth is to be found in a nuance. your views on the origin of the moral ideas interest me in the highest degree. you share--to my delighted astonishment--a certain repugnance which i feel for herbert spencer. with us he passes for the god of philosophy. however, it is as a rule a distinct merit with these englishmen that their not very high-soaring intellect shuns hypotheses, whereas hypothesis has destroyed the supremacy of german philosophy. is not there a great deal that is hypothetical in your ideas of caste distinctions as the source of various moral concepts? i know rée whom you attack, have met him in berlin; he was a quiet man, rather distinguished in his bearing, but a somewhat dry and limited intellect. he was living--according to his own account, as brother and sister--with a quite young and intelligent russian lady, who published a year or two ago a book called _der kampf um gott_, but this gives no idea of her genuine gifts. i am looking forward to receiving the books you promise me. i hope in future you will not lose sight of me. yours, george brandes. 4. nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, jan. 8, 1888. you should not object to the expression "missionary of culture." what better way is there of being one in our day than that of "missionising" one's disbelief in culture? to have understood that our european culture is a vast problem and by no means a solution--is not such a degree of introspection and self-conquest nowadays culture itself? i am surprised my books have not yet reached you. i shall not omit to send a reminder to leipzig. at christmas time messieurs the publishers are apt to lose their heads. meanwhile may i be allowed to bring to your notice a daring curiosity over which no publisher has authority, an _ineditum_ of mine that is among the most personal things i can show. it is the fourth part of my _zarathustra_; its proper title, with regard to what precedes and follows it, should be-_zarathustra's temptation_ an interlude. perhaps this is my best answer to your question about my problem of pity. besides which, there are excellent reasons for gaining admission to "me" by this particular secret door; provided that one crosses the threshold with your eyes and ears. your essay on zola reminded me once more, like everything i have met with of yours (the last was an essay in the goethe year-book), in the most agreeable way of your natural tendency towards every kind of psychological optics. when working out the most difficult mathematical problems of the _âme moderne_ you are as much in your element as a german scholar in such case is apt to be out of his. or do you perhaps think more favourably of present-day germans? it seems to me that they become year by year more clumsy and rectangular _in rebus psychologicis_ (in direct contrast to the parisians, with whom everything is becoming _nuance_ and mosaic), so that all events below the surface escape their notice. for example, my _beyond good and evil_--what an awkward position it has put them in! not one intelligent word has reached me about this book, let alone an intelligent sentiment. i do not believe even the most well-disposed of my readers has discovered that he has here to deal with the logical results of a perfectly definite philosophical _sensibility_, and not with a medley of a hundred promiscuous paradoxes and heterodoxies. nothing of the kind has been "experienced"; my readers do not bring to it a thousandth part of the passion and suffering that is needed. an "immoralist!" this does not suggest anything to them. by the way, the goncourts in one of their prefaces claim to have invented the phrase _document humain_. but for all that m. taine may well be its real originator. you are right in what you say about "haranguing an earthquake "; but such quixotism is among the most honourable things on this earth. with the greatest respect, yours, nietzsche. 5. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, jan. 11, 1888. my dear sir, your publisher has apparently forgotten to send me your books, but i have to-day received your letter with thanks. i take the liberty of sending you herewith one of my books in proof (because unfortunately i have no other copy at hand), a collection of essays intended for _export_, therefore not my best wares. they date from various times and are all too polite, too laudatory, too idealistic in tone. i never really say all i think in them. the paper on ibsen is no doubt the best, but the translation of the verses, which i had done for me, is unfortunately wretched. there is one scandinavian writer whose works would interest you, if only they were translated: _sören kierkegaard_; he lived from 1813 to 1855, and is in my opinion one of the profoundest psychologists that have ever existed. a little book i wrote about him (translated, leipzig, 1879) gives no adequate idea of his genius, as it is a sort of polemical pamphlet written to counteract his influence. but in a psychological respect it is, i think, the most subtle thing i have published. the essay in the goethe year-book was unfortunately shortened by more than a third, as the space had been reserved for me. it is a good deal better in danish. if you happen to read polish, i will send you a little book that i have published only in that language. i see the new _rivista contemporanea_ of florence has printed a paper of mine on danish literature. you must not read it. it is full of the most ridiculous mistakes. it is translated from the russian, i must tell you. i had allowed it to be translated into russian from my french text, but could not check this translation; now it appears in italian from the russian with fresh absurdities; amongst others in the names (on account of the russian pronunciation), g for h throughout. i am glad you find in me something serviceable to yourself. for the last four years i have been the most detested man in scandinavia. every day the papers rage against me, especially since my last long quarrel with björnson, in which the moral german papers all took part against me. i dare say you know his absurd play, _a gauntlet_, his propaganda for male virginity and his covenant with the spokeswomen of "the demand for equality in morals." anything like it was certainly unheard of till now. in sweden these insane women have formed great leagues in which they vow "only to marry virgin men." i suppose they get a guarantee with them, like watches, only the guarantee for the future is not likely to be forthcoming. i have read the three books of yours that i know again and again. there are two or three bridges leading from my inner world to yours: cæsarism, hatred of pedantry, a sense for beyle, etc., but still most of it is strange to me. our experiences appear to be so infinitely dissimilar. you are without doubt the most suggestive of all german writers. your german literature! i don't know what is the matter with it. i fancy all the brains must go into the general staff or the administration. the whole life of germany and all your institutions are spreading the _most hideous uniformity_, and even authorship is stifled by publishing. your obliged and respectful, george brandes. 6. nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, feb. 19, 1888. you have laid me under a most agreeable obligation with your contribution to the idea of "modernity," for it happens that this winter i am circling round this paramount problem of values, very much from above and in the manner of a bird, and with the best intention of looking down upon the modern world with as unmodern an eye as possible. i admire--let me confess it--the tolerance of your judgment, as much as the moderation of your sentences. how you suffer these "little children" to come unto you! even heyse! on my next visit to germany i propose to take up the psychological problem of kierkegaard and at the same time to renew acquaintance with your older literature. it will be of use to me in the best sense of the word--and will serve to restore good humour to my own severity and arrogance of judgment. my publisher telegraphed to me yesterday that the books had gone to you. i will spare you and myself the story of why they were delayed. now, my dear sir, may you put a good face on a bad bargain, i mean on this nietzsche literature. i myself cherish the notion of having given the "new germans" the richest, most actual and most independent books of any they possess; also of being in my own person a capital event in the crisis of the determination of values. but this may be an error; and, what is more, a piece of foolishness--i do not want to have to believe anything [of the sort] about myself. one or two further remarks: they concern my firstlings (the _juvenilia_ and _juvenalia_). the pamphlet against strauss, the wicked merrymaking of a "very free spirit" at the expense of one who thought himself such, led to a terrific scandal; i was already a _professor ordinarius_ at the time, therefore in spite of my twenty-seven years a kind of authority and something acknowledged. the most unbiassed view of this affair, in which almost every "notability" took part for or against me, and in which an insane quantity of paper was covered with printer's ink, is to be found in karl hillebrand's _zeiten, völker und menschen_, second volume. the trouble was not that i had jeered at the senile bungling of an eminent critic, but that i had caught german taste _in flagranti_ in compromising tastelessness; for in spite of all party differences of religion and theology it had unanimously admired strauss's _alten und neuen glauben_ as a masterpiece of freedom and subtlety of thought (even the style!). my pamphlet was the first onslaught on german culture (that "culture" which they imagined to have gained the victory over france). the word "culture-philistine," which i then invented, has remained in the language as a survival of the raging turmoil of that polemic. the two papers on schopenhauer and richard wagner appear to me to-day to contain self-confessions, above all promises to myself, rather than any real psychology of those two masters, who are at the same time profoundly related and profoundly antagonistic to me--(i was the first to distill a sort of unity out of them both; at present this superstition is much to the fore in german culture--that all wagnerites are followers of schopenhauer. it was otherwise when i was young. then it was the last of the hegelians who adhered to wagner, and "wagner and hegel" was still the watchword of the 'fifties). between _thoughts out of season_ and _human, all-too-human_ there lies a crisis and a skin-casting. physically too: i lived for years in extreme proximity to death. this was my great good fortune: i forgot myself, i outlived myself ... i have performed the same trick once again. so now we have each presented gifts to the other: two travellers, it seems to me, who are glad to have met. i remain, yours most sincerely, nietzsche. 7. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, march 7, 1888. my dear sir, i imagine you to be living in fine spring weather; up here we are buried in abominable snowdrifts and have been cut off from europe for several days. to make things worse, i have this evening been talking to some hundred imbeciles, and everything looks grey and dreary around me, so to revive my spirits a little i will thank you for your letter of february 19 and your generous present of books. as i was too busy to write to you at once, i sent you a volume on german romanticism which i found on my shelves. i should be very sorry, however, that you should interpret my sending it otherwise than as a silent expression of thanks. the book was written in 1873 and revised in 1886; but my german publisher has permitted himself a number of linguistic and other alterations, so that the first two pages, for instance, are hardly mine at all. wherever he does not understand my meaning, he puts something else, and declares that what i have written is not german. moreover, the man promised to buy the rights of the old translation of my book, but from very foolish economy has not done so; the consequence is that the german courts have suppressed my book in two instances as pirated(!)--because i had included in it fragments of the old translation--while the real pirate is allowed to sell my works freely. the probable result of this will be that i shall withdraw entirely from german literature. i sent that volume because i had no other. but the first one on the _émigrés_, the fourth on the english and the fifth on the french romanticists are all far, far better; written _con amore_. the title of the book, _moderne geister_, is fortuitous. i have written some twenty volumes. i wanted to put together for abroad a volume on personalities whose names would be familiar. that is how it came about. some things in it have cost a good deal of study, such as the paper on tegnér, which tells the truth about him for the first time. ibsen will certainly interest you as a personality. unfortunately as a man he does not stand on the same level that he reaches as a poet. intellectually he owes much to kierkegaard, and he is still strongly permeated by theology. björnson in his latest phase has become just an ordinary lay-preacher. for more than three years i have not published a book; i felt too unhappy. these three years have been among the hardest of my life, and i see no sign of the approach of better times. however, i am now going to set about the publication of the sixth volume of my work and another book besides. it will take a deal of time. i was delighted with all the fresh books, turning them over and reading them. the youthful books are of great value to me; they make it far easier to understand you; i am now leisurely ascending the steps that lead up to your intellect. with _zarathustra_ i began too precipitately. i prefer to advance upwards rather than to dive head first as though into a sea. i knew hillebrand's essay and read years ago some bitter attacks on the book about strauss. i am grateful to you for the word culture-philistine; i had no idea it was yours. i take no offence at the criticism of strauss, although i have feelings of piety for the old gentleman. yet he was always the tübingen collegian. of the other works i have at present only studied _the dawn of day_ at all closely. i believe i understand the book thoroughly, many of its ideas have also been mine, others are new to me or put into a new shape, but not on that account _strange_ to me. one solitary remark, so as not to make this letter too long. i am delighted with the aphorism on the hazard of marriage (aphorism 150). but why do you not _dig_ deeper here? you speak somewhere with a certain reverence of marriage, which by implying an emotional ideal has idealised emotion--here, however, you are more blunt and forcible. why not for once say the _full_ truth about it? i am of opinion that the institution of marriage, which may have been very useful in taming brutes, causes more misery to mankind than even the church has done. church, monarchy, marriage, property, these are to my mind four old venerable institutions which mankind will have to reform _from the foundations_ in order to be able to breathe freely. and of these marriage alone kills the individuality, paralyses liberty and is the embodiment of a paradox. but the shocking thing about it is that humanity is still too coarse to be able to shake it off. the most emancipated writers, so called, still speak of marriage with a devout and virtuous air which maddens me. and they gain their point, since it is impossible to say what one could put in its place for the mob. there is nothing else to be done but slowly to transform opinion. what do you think about it? i should like very much to hear how it is with your eyes. i was glad to see how plain and clear your writing is. externally, i suppose, you lead a calm and peaceful life down there? mine is a life of conflict which wears one out. in these realms i am even more hated now than i was seventeen years ago; this is not pleasant in itself, though it is gratifying in so far as it proves to me that i have not yet lost my vigour nor come to terms on any point with sovereign mediocrity. your attentive and grateful reader, george brandes. 8. nietzsche to brandes. _nice_, march 27, 1888. my dear sir, i should much have liked to thank you before this for so rich and thoughtful a letter: but my health has been troubling me, so that i have fallen badly into arrears with all good things. in my eyes, i may say in passing, i have a dynamometer for my general state; since my health in the main has once more improved, they have become stronger than i had ever believed possible--they have put to shame the prophecies of the very best german oculists. if messieurs gräfe _et hoc genus omne_ had turned out right, i should long ago have been blind. as it is, i have come to no. 3 spectacles--bad enough!--_but i still see_. i speak of this worry because you were sympathetic enough to inquire about it, and because during the last few weeks my eyes have been particularly weak and irritable. i feel for you in the north, now so wintry and gloomy; how does one manage to keep one's soul erect there? i admire almost every man who does not lose faith in himself under a cloudy sky, to say nothing of his faith in "humanity," in "marriage," in "property," in the "state." ... in petersburg i should be a nihilist: here i believe as a plant believes, in the sun. the sun of nice--you cannot call that a prejudice. we have had it at the expense of all the rest of europe. god, with the cynicism peculiar to him, lets it shine upon us idlers, "philosophers" and sharpers more brightly than upon the far worthier military heroes of the "fatherland." but then, with the instinct of the northerner, you have chosen the strongest of all stimulants to help you to endure life in the north: war, the excitement of aggression, the viking raid. i divine in your writings the practised soldier; and not only "mediocrity," but perhaps especially the more independent or individual characters of the northern mind may be constantly challenging you to fight. how much of the "parson," how much theology is still left behind in all this idealism!... to me it would be still worse than a cloudy sky, to have to make oneself angry over things _which do not concern one_. so much for this time; it is little enough. your _german romanticism_ has set me thinking, how this whole movement actually only reached its goal as music (schumann, mendelssohn, weber, wagner, brahms); as literature it remained a great promise. the french were more fortunate. i am afraid i am too much of a musician not to be a romanticist. without music life to me would be a mistake. with cordial and grateful regards i remain, dear sir, yours, nietzsche. 9. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, april 3, 1888. my dear sir, you have called the postman the medium of ill-mannered invasions. that is very true as a rule, and should be _sat. sapienti_ not to trouble you. i am not an intruder by nature, so little in fact that i lead an almost isolated life, am indeed loth to write letters and, like all authors, loth to write at all. yesterday, however, when i had received your letter and taken up one of your books, i suddenly felt a sort of vexation at the idea that nobody here in scandinavia knew anything about you, and i soon determined to make you known at a stroke. the newspaper cutting will tell you that (having just finished a series of lectures on russia) i am announcing fresh lectures on your writings. for many years i have been obliged to repeat all my lectures, as the university cannot hold the audiences; that is not likely to be the case this time, as your name is so absolutely new, but the people who will come and get an impression of your works will not be of the dullest. as i should very much like to have an idea of your appearance, _i beg you to give me a portrait of yourself_. i enclose my last photograph. i would also ask you to tell me quite briefly when and where you were born and in what years you published (or better, wrote) your works, as they are not dated. if you have any newspaper that contains these details, there will be no need to write. i am an unmethodical person and possess neither dictionaries of authors nor other books of reference in which your name might be found. the youthful works--the _thoughts out of season_--have been very useful to me. how young you were and enthusiastic, how frank and naïve i there is much in the maturer books that i do not yet understand; you appear to me often to hint at or generalise about entirely intimate, personal data, giving the reader a beautiful casket without the key. but most of it i understand. i was enchanted by the youthful work on schopenhauer; although personally i owe little to schopenhauer, it seemed to speak to me from the soul. one or two pedantic corrections: _joyful wisdom_, p. 116. the words quoted are not chamfort's last, they are to be found in his _caractères et anecdotes_: dialogue between m. d. and m. l. in explanation of the sentence: _peu de personnes et pen de choses m'intéressent, mais rien ne m'intéresse moins que moi_. the concluding words are: en vivant et _en voyant les hommes, il faut que le cour se brise ou se bronze_. on p. 118 you speak of the elevation "in which shakespeare places cæsar." i find shakespeare's cæsar pitiable. an act of high treason. and this glorification of the miserable fellow whose only achievement was to plunge a knife into a great man! _human, all-too-human_, ii, p. 59. a holy lie. "it is the only holy lie that has become famous." no, desdemona's last words are perhaps still more beautiful and just as famous, often quoted in germany at the time when jacobi was writing on lessing. am i not right? these trifles are only to show you that i read you attentively. of course, there are very different matters that i might discuss with you, but a letter is not the place for them. if you read danish, i should like to send you a handsomely got-up little book on holberg, which will appear in a week. let me know whether you understand our language. if you read swedish, i call your attention to sweden's only genius, august strindberg. when you write about women you are very like him. i hope you will have nothing but good to tell me of your eyes. yours sincerely, george brandes. 10. nietzsche to brandes. _torino (italia) ferma in posta_, april 10, 1888. but, my dear sir, what a surprise is this!--where have you found the courage to propose to speak in public of a _vir obscurissimus_?... do you imagine that i am known in the beloved fatherland? they treat me there as if i were something singular and absurd, something that for the present need not be _taken seriously_.... evidently they have an inkling that i do not take them seriously either: and how could i, nowadays, when "german intellect" has become a _contradictio in adjecto_!--my best thanks for the photograph. unfortunately i have none to send in return: my sister, who is married and lives in south america, took with her the last portraits i possessed. enclosed is a little _vita_, the first i have ever written. as regards the dates of composition of the different books, they are to be found on the back of the cover of _beyond good and evil_. perhaps you no longer have this cover. _the birth of tragedy_ was written between the summer of 1870 and the winter of 1871 (finished at lugano, where i was living with the family of field-marshal moltke). the _thoughts out of season_ between 1872 and the summer of 1875 (there were to have been thirteen; luckily my health said no!). what you say about schopenhauer as educator gives me great pleasure. this little work serves me as a touchstone; he to whom it says nothing personal has probably nothing to do with me either. in reality it contains the whole plan according to which i have hitherto lived; it is a rigorous promise. _human, all-too-human_, with its two continuations, summer of 1876-1879. _the dawn of day_, 1880. _the joyful wisdom_, january 1882. _zarathustra_, 1883-1885 (each part in about ten days. perfect state of "inspiration." all conceived in the course of rapid walks: absolute certainty, as though each sentence were shouted to one. while writing the book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power). _beyond good and evil_, summer of 1885 in the upper engadine and the following winter at nice. _the genealogy_ decided on, carried out and sent ready for press to the printer at leipzig, all between july 10 and 30, 1887. (of course there are also _philologica_ of mine, but they do not concern you and me.) i am now making an experiment with turin; i shall stay here till june 5 and then go to the engadine. the weather so far is wintry, harsh and unpleasant. but the town superbly calm and favourable to my instincts. the finest pavement in the world. sincere greetings from yours gratefully, nietzsche. a pity i understand neither danish nor swedish. _vita_.--i was born on october 15, 1844, on the battlefield of lützen. the first name i heard was that of gustavus adolphus. my ancestors were polish noblemen (niëzky); it seems the type has been well maintained, in spite of three generations of german mothers. abroad i am usually taken for a pole; this very winter the visitors' list at nice entered me _comme polonais_. i am told my head occurs in matejko's pictures. my grandmother belonged to the schiller-goethe circles of weimar; her brother was herder's successor in the position of general superintendent at weimar. i had the good fortune to be a pupil of the venerable pforta school, from which so many who have made a name in german literature have proceeded (klopstock, fichte, schlegel, ranke, etc., etc.). we had masters who would have (or have) done honour to any university. i studied at bonn, afterwards at leipzig; old ritschl, then the first philologist in germany, singled me out almost from the first. at twenty-two i was a contributor to the _litterarisches centralblatt_ (zarncke). the foundation of the philological society of leipzig, which still exists, is due to me. in the winter of 1868-1869 the university of basle offered me a professorship; i was as yet not even a doctor. the university of leipzig afterwards conferred the doctor's degree on me, in a very honourable way, without any examination, and even without a dissertation. from easter 1869 to 1879 i was at basle; i was obliged to give up my rights as a german subject, since as an officer (horse artillery) i should have been called up too frequently and my academic duties would have been interfered with. i am none the less master of two weapons, the sabre and the cannon--and perhaps of a third as well.... at basle everything went very well, in spite of my youth; it sometimes happened, especially with candidates for the doctor's degree, that the examinee was older than the examiner. i had the great good fortune to form a cordial friendship with jakob burkhardt, an unusual thing with that very hermit-like and secluded thinker. a still greater piece of good fortune was that from the earliest days of my basle existence an indescribably close intimacy sprang up between me and richard and cosima wagner, who were then living on their estate of triebschen, near lucerne, as though on an island, and were cut off from all former ties. for some years we had everything, great and small, in common, a confidence without bounds. (you will find printed in volume vii of wagner's complete works a "message" to me, referring to _the birth of tragedy_.) as a result of these relations i came to know a large circle of persons (and "personesses"), in fact pretty nearly everything that grows between paris and petersburg. by about 1876 my health became worse. i then spent a winter at sorrento, with my old friend, baroness meysenbug (_memoirs of an idealist_) and the sympathetic dr. rée. there was no improvement. i suffered from an extremely painful and persistent headache, which exhausted all my strength. this went on for a number of years, till it reached such a climax of habitual suffering, that at that time i had 200 days of torment in the year. the trouble must have been due entirely to local causes, there is no neuropathic basis for it of any sort. i have never had a symptom of mental disturbance; not even of fever, nor of fainting. my pulse was at that time as slow as that of the first napoleon (= 60). my speciality was to endure extreme pain, _cru, vert_, with perfect clarity, for two or three consecutive days, accompanied by constant vomiting of bile. the report has been put about that i was in a madhouse (and indeed that i died there). nothing is further from the truth. as a matter of fact my intellect only came to maturity during that terrible time: witness the _dawn of day_, which i wrote in 1881 during a winter of incredible suffering at genoa, away from doctors, friends or relations. this book serves me as a sort of "dynamometer": i composed it with a minimum of strength and health. from 1882 on i went forward again, very slowly, it is true: the crisis was past (my father died very young, just at the age at which i was myself so near to death). i have to use extreme care even to-day; certain conditions of a climatic and meteorological order are indispensable to me. it is not from choice but from necessity that i spend the summer in the upper engadine and the winter at nice.... after all, my illness has been of the greatest use to me: it has released me, it has restored to me the courage to be myself.... and, indeed, in virtue of my instincts, i am a brave animal, a military one even. the long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride. am i a philosopher, do you ask?--but what does that matter!... 11. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, april 29, 1888. my dear sir, the first time i lectured on your works, the hall was not quite full, an audience of perhaps a hundred and fifty, since no one knew who and what you are. but as an important newspaper reported my first lecture, and as i have myself written an article on you, interest was roused, and next time the hall was full to bursting. some three hundred people listened with the greatest attention to my exposition of your works. nevertheless, i have not ventured to repeat the lectures, as has been my practice for many years, since the subject is hardly of a popular nature. i hope the result will be to get you some good readers in the north. your books now stand on one of my shelves, very handsomely bound. i should be very glad to possess everything you have published. when, in your first letter, you offered me a musical work of yours, a _hymn to life_, i declined the gift from modesty, being no great judge of music. now i think i have deserved the work through my interest in it and should be much obliged if you would have it sent to me. i believe i may sum up the impression of my audience in the feeling of a young painter, who said to me: "what makes this so interesting is that it has not to do with books, _but with life_." if any objection is taken to your ideas, it is that they are "too out-and-out." it was unkind of you not to send me a photograph; i really only sent mine to put you under an obligation. it is so little trouble to sit to a photographer for a minute or two, and one knows a man far better when one has an idea of his appearance. yours very sincerely, george brandes. 12. nietzsche to brandes. _turin_, may 4, 1888. my dear sir, what you tell me gives me great pleasure and--let me confess it--still more surprise. be sure i shall owe you for it: you know, hermits are not given to forgetting. meanwhile i hope my photograph will have reached you. it goes without saying that i took steps, not exactly to be photographed (for i am extremely distrustful of haphazard photographs), but to abstract a photograph from somebody who had one of me. perhaps i have succeeded; i have not yet heard. if not, i shall avail myself of my next visit to munich (this autumn probably) to be taken again. _the hymn to life_ will start on its journey to copenhagen one of these days. we philosophers are never more grateful than when we are mistaken for artists. i am assured, moreover, by the best judges that the hymn is thoroughly fit for performance, singable, and sure in its effect (--clear in form; this praise gave me the greatest pleasure). mottl, the excellent court conductor at carlsruhe (the conductor of the bayreuth festival performances, you know), has given me hopes of a performance. i have just heard from italy that the point of view of my second _thought out of season_ has been very honourably mentioned in a survey of german literature contributed by the viennese scholar, dr. von zackauer, at the invitation of the _archivio storico_ of florence. he concludes his paper with it. these last weeks at turin, where i shall stay till june 5, have turned out better than any i have known for years, above all more philosophic. almost every day for one or two hours i have reached such a pitch of energy as to be able to view my whole conception from top to bottom; so that the immense multiplicity of problems lies spread out beneath me, as though in relief and clear in its outlines. this requires a maximum of strength, for which i had almost given up hope. it all hangs together; years ago it was already on the right course; one builds one's philosophy like a beaver, one is forced to and does not know it: but one has to _see_ all this, as i have now seen it, in order to believe it. i am so relieved, so strengthened, in such good humour--i hang a little farcical tail on to the most serious things. what is the reason of all this? have i not the good _north winds_ to thank for it, the north winds which do not always come from the alps?--they come now and then even from _copenhagen_! with greetings, your gratefully devoted, nietzsche. 13. nietzsche to brandes. _turin_, may 23, 1888. my dear sir, i should not like to leave turin without telling you once more what a great share you have had in my first _successful_ spring. the history of my springs, for the last fifteen years at least, has been, i must tell you, a tale of horror, a fatality of decadence and infirmity. places made no difference; it was as though no prescription, no diet, no climate could change the essentially depressing character of this time of year. but behold, turin! and the first good news, _your_ news, my dear sir, which proved to me that i am alive.... for i am sometimes apt to forget that i am alive. an accident, a question reminded me the other day that one of life's leading ideas is positively quenched in me, the idea of the _future_. no, wish, not the smallest cloudlet of a wish before me! a bare expanse! why should not a day from my seventieth year be exactly like my day to-day? have i lived too long in proximity to death to be able any longer to open my eyes to fair possibilities. --but certain it is that i now limit myself to thinking from day to day--that i settle to-day what is to be done to-morrow--and not for a single day beyond it! this may be irrational, unpractical, perhaps also unchristian--that preacher on the mount forbade this very "taking thought for the morrow"--but it seems to me in the highest degree philosophical. i gained more respect for myself than i had before:--i understood that i had unlearnt how to wish, without even wanting to do so. these weeks i have employed in "transvaluing values."--you understand this trope?--after all, the alchemist is the most deserving kind of man there is! i mean the man who makes of what is base and despised something valuable, even gold. he alone confers wealth, the others merely give change. my problem this time is rather a curious one: i have asked myself what hitherto has been best hated, feared, despised by mankind--and of that and nothing else i have made my "gold".... if only i am not accused of false-coining! or rather; that is what will happen. has my photograph reached you? my mother has shown me the great kindness of relieving me from the appearance of ungratefulness in such a special case. it is to be hoped the leipzig publisher, e. w. fritzsch, has also done his duty and sent off the hymn. in conclusion i confess to a feeling of curiosity. as it was denied me to listen at the crack of the door to learn something about myself, i should like to hear something in another way. three words to characterise the subjects of your different lectures--how much should i learn from three words! with cordial and devoted greetings, your nietzsche. 14. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_ may 23, 1888. my dear sir, for letter, portrait and music i send you my best thanks. the letter and the music were an unqualified pleasure, the portrait might have been better. it is a profile taken at _naumburg_, characteristic in its attitude, but with too little expression. you _must_ look different from this; the writer of _zarathustra_ must have many more secrets written in his own face. i concluded my lectures on fr. nietzsche before whitsuntide. they ended, as the papers say, in applause "which took the form of an ovation." the ovation is yours almost entirely. i take the liberty of communicating it to you herewith in writing. for i can only claim the credit of reproducing, clearly and connectedly, and intelligibly to a northern audience, what you had originated. i also tried to indicate your relation to various contemporaries, to introduce my hearers into the workshop of your thought, to put forward my own favourite ideas, where they coincided with yours, to define the points on which i differed from you, and to give a psychological portrait of nietzsche the author. thus much i may say without exaggeration: your name is now very popular in all intelligent circles in copenhagen, and all over scandinavia it is at least _known_. you have nothing to thank me for; it has been a _pleasure_ to me to penetrate into the world of your thoughts. my lectures are not worth printing, as i do not regard pure philosophy as my special province and am unwilling to print anything dealing with a subject in which i do not feel sufficiently competent. i am very glad you feel so invigorated physically and so well disposed mentally. here, after a long winter, we have mild spring weather. we are rejoicing in the first green leaves and in a very well-arranged northern exhibition that has been opened at copenhagen. all the french artists of eminence (painters and sculptors) are also exhibiting here. nevertheless, i am longing to get away, but have to stay. but this cannot interest you. i forgot to tell you: if you do not know the icelandic sagas, you must study them. you will find there a great deal to confirm your hypotheses and theories about the morality of a master race. in one trifling detail you seem to have missed the mark. _gothic_ has certainly nothing to do with _good_ or _god_. it is connected with giessen, he who emits the seed, and means stallion, man. on the other hand, our philologists here think your suggestion of _bonus--duonus_ is much to the point. i hope that in future we shall never become entirely strangers to one another. i remain your faithful reader and admirer, george brandes. 15. nietzsche to brandes. (post-card.) _turin_, may 27, 1888. what eyes you have! you are right, the nietzsche of the photograph is not yet the author of _zarathustra_--he is a few years too young for that. i am very grateful for the etymology of _goth_; it is simply godlike. i presume you are reading another letter of mine to-day. your gratefully attached n. 16. nietzsche to brandes. _sils-maria_, sept. 13, 1888. my dear sir, herewith i do myself a pleasure--that of recalling myself to your memory, by sending you a wicked little book, but one that is none the less very seriously meant; the product of the _good_ days of turin. for i must tell you that since then there have been _evil_ days in superfluity; such a decline in health, courage and "will to life," to talk schopenhauer, that the little spring idyll scarcely seemed credible any longer. fortunately i still possessed a document belonging to it, the _case of wagner. a musician's problem_. spiteful tongues will prefer to call it _the fall of wagner_. much as you may disclaim music (--the most importunate of all the muses), and with however good reason, yet pray look at this piece of musician's psychology. you, my dear mr. cosmopolitan, are far too european in your ideas not to hear in it a hundred times more than my so-called countrymen, the "musical" germans. after all, in this case i am a connoisseur _in rebus et personis_--and, fortunately, enough of a musician by instinct to see that in this ultimate question of values, the problem is accessible and _soluble_ through music. in reality this pamphlet is almost written in french--i dare say it would be easier to translate it into french than into german. could you give me one or two more russian or french addresses to which there would be some _sense_ in sending the pamphlet? in a month or two something _philosophical_ may be expected; under the very inoffensive title of _leisure hours of à psychologist_ i am saying agreeable and disagreeable things to the world at large--including that intelligent nation, the germans. but all this is in the main nothing but recreation beside the main thing: the name of the latter is _transvaluation of all values_. europe will have to discover a new siberia, to which to consign the author of these experiments with values. i hope this high-spirited letter will find you in one of your usual _resolute_ moods. with kind remembrances, yours, dr. nietzsche. address till middle of november: torino (italia) ferma in posta. 17. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, oct. 6, 1888. my dear sir, your letter and valued gift found me in a raging fever of work. this accounts for my delay in answering. the mere sight of your handwriting gave me pleasurable excitement. it is sad news that you have had a bad summer. i was foolish enough to think that you had already got over all your physical troubles. i have read the pamphlet with the greatest attention and much enjoyment. i am not so unmusical that i cannot enter into the fun of it. i am merely not an expert. a few days before receiving the little book i heard a very fine performance of _carmen_; what glorious music! however, at the risk of exciting your wrath i confess that wagner's _tristan und isolde_ made an indelible impression on me. i once heard this opera in berlin, in a despondent, altogether shattered state of mind, and i felt every note. i do not know whether the impression was so deep because i was so ill. do you know bizet's widow? you ought to send her the pamphlet. she would like it. she is the sweetest, most charming of women, with a nervous _tic_ that is curiously becoming, but perfectly genuine, perfectly sincere and full of fire. only she has married again (an excellent man, a barrister named straus, of paris). i believe she knows some german. i could get you her address, if it does not put you against her that she has not remained true to her god--any more than the virgin mary, mozart's widow or marie louise. bizet's child is ideally beautiful and charming.--but i am gossiping. i have given a copy of the book to the greatest of swedish writers, august strindberg, whom i have entirely won over to you. he is a true genius, only a trifle mad like most geniuses (and non-geniuses). the other copy i shall also place with care. paris i am not well acquainted with now. but send a copy to the following address: madame la princesse anna dmitrievna ténicheff, quai anglais 20, petersburg. this lady is a friend of mine; she is also acquainted with the musical world of petersburg and will make you known there. i have asked her before now to buy your works, but they were all forbidden in russia, even _human, all-too-human_. it would also be as well to send a copy to prince urussov (who is mentioned in turgeniev's letters). he is greatly interested in everything german, and is a man of rich gifts, an intellectual gourmet. i do not remember his address for the moment, but can find it out. i am glad that in spite of all bodily ills you are working so vigorously and keenly. i am looking forward to all the things you promise me. it would give me great pleasure to be read by you, but unfortunately you do not understand my language. i have produced an enormous amount this summer. i have written two long new books (of twenty-four and twenty-eight sheets), _impressions of poland and impressions of russia_, besides entirely rewriting one of my oldest books, _æsthetic studies_, for a new edition and correcting the proofs of all three books myself. in another week or so i shall have finished this work; then i give a series of lectures, writing at the same time another series in french, and leave for russia in the depth of winter to revive there. that is the plan i propose for my winter campaign. may it not be a russian campaign in the bad sense. i hope you will continue your friendly interest in me. i remain, your faithfully devoted, george brandes. 18. nietzsche to brandes. _turin_, oct. 20, 1888. my dear sir, once more your letter brought me a pleasant wind from the north; it is in fact so far the only letter that puts a "good face," or any face at all on my attack on wagner. for people do not write to me. i have irreparably offended even my nearest and dearest. there is, for instance, my old friend, baron seydlitz of munich, who unfortunately happens to be president of the munich wagner society; my still older friend, _justizrath_ krug of cologne, president of the local wagner society; my brother-in-law, dr. bernhard förster in south america, the not unknown anti--semite, one of the keenest contributors to the _bayreuther blätter_--and my respected friend, malwida von meysenbug, the authoress of _memoirs of an idealist_, who continues to confuse wagner with michel angelo.... on the other side i have been given to understand that i must be on my guard against the female wagnerite: in certain cases she is said to be without scruple. perhaps bayreuth will defend itself in the german imperial manner, by the prohibition of my writings--as "dangerous to public morals"; for here the emperor is a party to the case. my dictum, "we all know the inæsthetic concept of the christian _junker_," might even be interpreted as _lèse-majesté_. your intervention on behalf of bizet's widow gave me great pleasure. please let me have her address; also that of prince urussov. a copy has been sent to your friend, the princess dmitrievna ténicheff. when my next book is published, which will be before very long (the title is now _the twilight of the idols. or, how to philosophise with the hammer_), i should much like to send a copy to the swede you introduce to me in such laudatory terms. but i do not know where he lives. this book is my philosophy _in nuce_--radical to the point of criminality.... as to the effect of _tristan_, i, too, could tell strange tales. a regular dose of mental anguish seems to me a splendid tonic before a wagnerian repast. the _reichsgerichtsrath_ dr. wiener of leipzig gave me to understand that a carlsbad cure was also a good thing.... ah, how industrious you are! and idiot that i am, not to understand danish! i am quite willing to take your word for it that one can "revive" in russia better than elsewhere; i count any russian book, above all dostoievsky (translated into french, for heaven's sake not german!!) among my greatest sources of relief. cordially and, with good reason, gratefully, yours, nietzsche. 19. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen,_ nov. 16, 1888. my dear sir, i have waited in vain for an answer from paris to learn the address of madame bizet. on the other hand, i now have the address of prince urussov. he lives in petersburg, sergievskaia 79. my three books are now out. i have begun my lectures here. curious it is how something in your letter and in your book about dostoievsky coincides with my own impressions of him. i have mentioned you, too, in my work on russia, when dealing with dostoievsky. he is a great poet, but an abominable creature, quite christian in his emotions and at the same time quite _sadique_. his whole morality is what you have baptised slave-morality. the mad swede's name is august strindberg; he lives here. his address is holte, near copenhagen. he is particularly fond of you, because he thinks he finds in you his own hatred of women. on this account he calls you "modern" (irony of fate). on reading the newspaper reports of my spring lectures, he said: "it is an astonishing thing about this nietzsche; much of what he says is just what i might have written." his drama, _père_, has appeared in french with a preface by zola. i feel mournful whenever i think of germany. what a development is now going on there! how sad to think that to all appearance one will never in one's lifetime be a historical witness of the smallest good thing. what a pity that so learned a philologist as you should not understand danish. i am doing all i can to prevent my books on poland and russia being translated, so that i may not be expelled, or at least refused the right of speaking when i next go there. hoping that these lines will find you still at turin or will be forwarded to you, i am, yours very sincerely, george brandes. 20. nietzsche to brandes. _torino, via carlo alberto_, 6, iii. nov. 20, 1888. my dear sir, forgive me for answering at once. curious things are now happening in my life, things that are without precedent. first the day before yesterday; now again. ah, if you knew what i had just written when your letter paid me its visit. with a cynicism that will become famous in the world's history, i have now related myself. the book is called _ecce homo_, and is an attack on the crucified without the slightest reservation; it ends in thunders and lightnings against everything that is christian or infected with christianity, till one is blinded and deafened. i am in fact the first psychologist of christianity and, as an old artilleryman, can bring heavy guns into action, the existence of which no opponent of christianity has even suspected. the whole is the prelude to the _transvaluation of all values_, the work that lies ready before me: i swear to you that in two years we shall have the whole world in convulsions. i am a fate. guess who come off worst in _ecce homo_? messieurs the germans! i have told them terrible things.... the germans, for instance, have it on their conscience that they deprived the last _great_ epoch of history, the renaissance, of its meaning--at a moment when the christian values, the _décadence_ values, were worsted, when they were conquered in the instincts even of the highest ranks of the clergy by the opposite instincts, the instincts of life. to _attack_ the church--that meant to re-establish christianity. (cesare borgia as pope--that would have been the meaning of the renaissance, its proper symbol.) you must not be angry either, to find yourself brought forward at a critical passage in the book--i wrote it just now--where i stigmatise the conduct of my german friends towards me, their absolute leaving me in the lurch as regards both fame and philosophy. then you suddenly appear, surrounded by a halo.... i believe implicitly what you say about dostoievsky; i esteem him, on the other hand, as the most valuable psychological material i know--i am grateful to him in an extraordinary way, however antagonistic he may be to my deepest instincts. much the same as my relation to pascal, whom i almost love, since he has taught me such an infinite amount; the only _logical_ christian. the day before yesterday i read, with delight and with a feeling of being thoroughly at home, les mariés, by herr august strindberg. my sincerest admiration, which is only prejudiced by the feeling that i am admiring myself a little at the same time. turin is still my residence. your nietzsche, now a monster. where may i send you the _twilight of the idols_? if you will be at copenhagen another fortnight, no answer is necessary. 21. brandes to nietzsche. _copenhagen_, nov. 23, 1888. my dear sir, your letter found me to-day in full fever of work; i am lecturing here on goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for three quarters of an hour in the square before the university to get standing-room. it amuses me to study the greatest of the great before so many. i must stay here till the end of the year. but on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that--as i am informed--one of my old books, lately translated into russian, has been condemned in russia to be publicly _burnt_ as "irreligious." i already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on poland and russia; now i must try to set in motion all the influence i can command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in russia this winter. to make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are now confiscated. there is great anxiety since the disaster at borki. it was just the same shortly after the famous attempts. every letter was snapped up. it gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through so much. believe me, i spread your propaganda wherever i can. so late as last week i earnestly recommended henrik ibsen to study your works. with him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant kinship. great and strong and unamiable, but yet _worthy_ of love, is this singular person. strindberg will be glad to hear of your appreciation. i do not know the french translation you mention; but they say here that all the best things in _giftas_ (_mariés_) have been left out, especially the witty polemic against ibsen. but read his drama _père_; there is a great scene in it. i am sure he would gladly send it you. but i see him so seldom; he is so shy on account of an extremely unhappy marriage. imagine it, he abhors his wife _intellectually_ and cannot get away from her _physically_. he is a monogamous misogynist! it seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in you. in my early days i was passionately polemical; now i can only expound; silence is my only weapon of offence. i should as soon think of attacking christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves, i mean against the belief in werewolves. but i see we understand one another. i too _love_ pascal. but even as a young man i was _for_ the jesuits against pascal (in the _provinciales_). the worldly-wise, they were right, of course; he did not understand them; but they understood him and--what a master-stroke of impudence and sagacity!--they themselves published his _provinciales_ with notes. the best edition is that of the jesuits. luther against the pope, there we have the same collision. victor hugo in the preface to the _feuilles d'automne_ has this fine saying: _on convoque la diète de worms mais on peint la chapelle sixtine. il y a luther, mais il y a michel-ange ... et remarquons en passant que luther est dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que michel-ange n'y est pas._ study the face of dostoievsky: half a russian peasant's face, half a criminal physiognomy, flat nose, little piercing eyes under lids quivering with nervousness, this lofty and well-formed forehead, this expressive mouth that speaks of torments innumerable, of abysmal melancholy, of unhealthy appetites, of infinite pity, passionate envy! an epileptic genius, whose exterior alone speaks of the stream of gentleness that filled his spirit, of the wave of acuteness almost amounting to madness that mounted to his head, and finally of the ambition, the immense effort, and of the ill-will that results from pettiness of soul. his heroes are not only poor and pitiable creatures, but simple-minded sensitive ones, noble strumpets, often victims of hallucination, gifted epileptics, enthusiastic candidates for martyrdom--just those types which we should suspect in the apostles and disciples of the early days of christianity. certainly nothing could be farther removed from the renaissance. i am excited to know how i can come into your book. i remain your faithfully devoted george brandes. 22. unstamped. without further address, undated. written in a large hand on a piece of paper (not note-paper) ruled in pencil, such as children use. post-mark: turin, january 4, 1889. to the friend georg when once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me: the difficulty now is to get rid of me ... _the crucified_. as herr max nordau has attempted with incredible coarseness to brand nietzsche's whole life-work as the production of a madman, i call attention to the fact that signs of powerful exaltation only appear in the last letter but one, and that insanity is only evident in the last letter of all, and then not in an unqualified form. but at the close of the year 1888 this dear and masterly mind began to be deranged. his self-esteem, which had always been very great, acquired a morbid character. his light and delicate self-irony, which appears not unfrequently in the letters here given, gave place to constantly recurring outbursts of anger with the german public's failure to appreciate the value of his works. it ill became a man of nietzsche's intellect, who only a year before (see letter no. 2) had desired a small number of intelligent readers, to take such offence at the indifference of the mob. he now gave expression to the most exalted ideas about himself. in his last book but one he had said: "i have given the germans the profoundest books of any they possess "; in his last he wrote: "i have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses." at the same time he yielded to an impulse to describe the fame he hoped to attain in the future as already his. as the reader will see, he had asked me to furnish him with the addresses of persons in paris and petersburg who might be able to make his name known in france and russia. i chose them to the best of my judgment. but even before the books he sent had reached their destinations, nietzsche wrote in a german review: "and thus i am treated in germany, i who am already _studied_ in petersburg and paris." that his sense of propriety was beginning to be deranged was already shown when sending the book to princess ténicheff (see letter no. 18). this lady wrote to me in astonishment, asking what kind of a strange friend i had recommended to her: he had been sufficiently wanting in taste to give the sender's name on the parcel itself as "the antichrist." some time after i had received the last deranged and touching letter, another was shown me, which nietzsche had presumably sent the same day, and in which he wrote that he intended to summon a meeting of sovereigns in rome to have the young german emperor shot there; this was signed "nietzsche-cæsar." the letter to me was signed "the crucified." it was thus evident that this great mind in its final megalomania had oscillated between attributing to itself the two greatest names in history, so strongly contrasted. it was exceedingly sad thus to witness the change that in the course of a few weeks reduced a genius without equal to a poor helpless creature, in whom almost the last gleam of mental life was extinguished for ever. iii (august 1900) it sometimes happens that the death of a great individual recalls a half-forgotten name to our memory, and we then disinter for a brief moment the circumstances, events, writings or achievements which gave that name its renown. although friedrich nietzsche in his silent madness had survived himself for eleven and a half years, there is no need at his death to resuscitate his works or his fame. for during those very years in which he lived on in the night of insanity, his name has acquired a lustre unsurpassed by any contemporary reputation, and his works have been translated into every language and are known all over the world. to the older among us, who have followed nietzsche from the time of his arduous and embittered struggle against the total indifference of the reading world, this prodigiously rapid attainment of the most absolute and world-wide renown has in it something in the highest degree surprising. no one in our time has experienced anything like it. in the course of five or six years nietzsche's intellectual tendency --now more or less understood, now misunderstood, now involuntarily caricatured--became the ruling tendency of a great part of the literature of france, germany, england, italy, norway, sweden and russia. note, for example, the influence of this spirit on gabriele d'annunzio. to all that was tragic in nietzsche's life was added this--that, after thirsting for recognition to the point of morbidity, he attained it in an altogether fantastic degree when, though still living, he was shut out from life. but certain it is that in the decade 1890-1900 no one engaged and impressed the minds of his contemporaries as did this son of a north german clergyman, who tried so hard to be taken for a polish nobleman, and whose pride it was that his works were conceived in french, though written in german. the little weaknesses of his character were forgotten in the grandeur of the style he imparted to his life and his production. to be able to explain nietzsche's rapid and overwhelming triumph, one would want the key to the secret of the psychological life of our time. he bewitched the age, though he seems opposed to all its instincts. the age is ultra-democratic; he won its favour as an aristocrat. the age is borne on a rising wave of religious reaction; he conquered with his pronounced irreligion. the age is struggling with social questions of the most difficult and far-reaching kind; he, the thinker of the age, left all these questions on one side as of secondary importance. he was an enemy of the humanitarianism of the present day and of its doctrine of happiness; he had a passion for proving how much that is base and mean may conceal itself beneath the guise of pity, love of one's neighbour and unselfishness; he assailed pessimism and scorned optimism; he attacked the ethics of the philosophers with the same violence as the thinkers of the eighteenth century had attacked the dogmas of the theologians. as he became an atheist from religion, so did he become an immoralist from morality. nevertheless the voltairians of the age could not claim him, since he was a mystic; and contemporary anarchists had to reject him as an enthusiast for rulers and castes. for all that, he must in some hidden way have been in accord with much that is fermenting in our time, otherwise it would not have adopted him as it has done. the fact of having known nietzsche, or having been in any way connected with him, is enough at present to make an author famous--more famous, sometimes, than all his writings have made him. what nietzsche, as a young man admired more than anything else in schopenhauer and richard wagner was "the indomitable energy with which they maintained their self-reliance in the midst of the hue and cry raised against them by the whole cultured world." he made this self-reliance his own, and this was no doubt the first thing to make an impression. in the next place the artist in him won over those to whom the aphorisms of the thinker were obscure. with all his mental acuteness he was a pronounced lyricist. in the autumn of 1888 he wrote of heine: "how he handled german! one day it will be said that heine and i were without comparison the supreme artists of the german language." one who is not a german is but an imperfect judge of nietzsche's treatment of language; but in our day all german connoisseurs are agreed in calling him the greatest stylist of german prose. he further impressed his contemporaries by his psychological profundity and abstruseness. his spiritual life has its abysses and labyrinths. self-contemplation provides him with immense material for investigation. and he is not content with self-contemplation. his craving for knowledge is a passion; covetousness he calls it: "in this soul there dwells no unselfishness; on the contrary, an all-desiring self that would see by the help of many as with its own eyes and grasp as with its _own_ hands; this soul of mine would even choose to bring back all the past and not lose anything that might belong to it. what a flame is this covetousness of mine!" the equally strong development of his lyrical and critical qualities made a fascinating combination. but it was the cause of those reversals of his personal relations which deprive his career (in much the same way as sören kierkegaard's) of some of the dignity it might have possessed. when a great personality crossed his path he called all his lyricism to arms and with clash of sword on shield hailed the person in question as a demigod or a god (schopenhauer and richard wagner). when later on he discovered the limitations of his hero, his enthusiasm was apt to turn to hatred, and this hatred found vent without the smallest regard to his former worship. this characteristic is offensively conspicuous in nietzsche's behaviour to wagner. but who knows whether this very lack of dignity has not contributed to increase the number of nietzsche's admirers in an age that is somewhat undignified on this point! in the last period of his life nietzsche appeared rather as a prophet than as a thinker. he predicts the superman. and he makes no attempt at logical proof, but proceeds from a reliance on the correctness and sureness of his instinct, convinced that he himself represents a life-promoting principle and his opponents one hostile to life. to him the object of existence is, everywhere the production of genius. the higher man in our day is like a vessel in which the future of the race is fermenting in an impenetrable way, and more than one of these vessels is burst or broken in the process. but the human race is not ruined by the failure of a single creature. man, as we know him, is only a bridge, a transition from the animal to the superman. what the ape is in relation to man, a laughingstock or a thing of shame, that will man be to the superman. hitherto every species has produced something superior to itself. nietzsche teaches that man too will and must do the same. he has drawn a conclusion from darwinism which darwin himself did not see. in the last decade of the nineteenth century nietzsche and tolstoy appeared as the two opposite poles. nietzsche's morality is aristocratic as tolstoy's is popular, individualistic as tolstoy's is evangelical; it asserts the self-majesty of the individual, where tolstoy's proclaims the necessity of self-sacrifice. in the same decade nietzsche and ibsen were sometimes compared. ibsen, like nietzsche, was a combative spirit and held entirely aloof from political and practical life. a first point of agreement between them is that they both laid stress on not having come of small folk. ibsen made known to me in a letter that his parents, both on the father's and the mother's side, belonged to the most esteemed families of their day in skien in norway, related to all the patrician families of the place and country. skien is no world-city, and the aristocracy of skien is quite unknown outside it; but ibsen wanted to make it clear that his bitterness against the upper class in norway was in no wise due to the rancour and envy of the outsider. nietzsche always made it known to his acquaintances that he was descended from a polish noble family, although he possessed no pedigree. his correspondents took this for an aristocratic whim, all the more because the name given out by him, niëzky, by its very spelling betrayed itself as not polish. but the fact is otherwise. the true spelling of the name is nicki, and a young polish admirer of nietzsche, mr. bernard scharlitt, has succeeded in proving nietzsche's descent from the nicki family, by pointing out that its crest is to be found in a signet which for centuries has been an heirloom in the family of nietzsche. perhaps not quite without reason, scharlitt therefore sees in nietzsche's master-morality and his whole aristocratising of the view of the world an expression of the szlachcic spirit inherited from polish ancestors. nietzsche and ibsen, independently of each other but like renan, have sifted the thought of breeding moral aristocrats. it is the favourite idea of ibsen's rosmer; it remains dr. stockmann's. thus nietzsche speaks of the higher man as the preliminary aim of the race, before zarathustra announces the superman. they meet now and then on the territory of psychology. ibsen speaks in _the wild duck_ of the necessity of falsehood to life. nietzsche loved life so greatly that even truth appeared to him of worth only in the case of its acting for the preservation and advancement of life. falsehood is to him an injurious and destructive power only in so far as it is life-constricting. it is not objectionable where it is necessary to life. it is strange that a thinker who abhorred jesuitism as nietzsche did should arrive at this standpoint, which leads directly to jesuitism. nietzsche agrees here with many of his opponents. ibsen and nietzsche were both solitary, even if they were not at all careless as to the fate of their works. it is the strongest man, says dr. stockmann, who is most isolated. who was most isolated, ibsen or nietzsche? ibsen, who held back from every alliance with others, but exposed his work to the masses of the theatre-going public, or nietzsche, who stood alone as a thinker but as a man continually--even if, as a rule, in vain--spied after the like-minded and after heralds, and whose works, in the time of his conscious life, remained unread by the great public, or in any case misunderstood. decision does not fall lightly to one who, by a whim of fate, was regarded by both as an ally. still more difficult is the decision as to which of them has had the deepest effect on the contemporary mind and which will longest retain his fame. but this need not concern us. wherever nietzsche's teaching extends, and wherever his great and rare personality is mastered, its attraction and repulsion will alike be powerful; but everywhere it will contribute to the development and moulding of the individual personality. iv (1909) since the publication of nietzsche's collected works was completed, frau förster-nietzsche has allowed the insel-verlag of leipzig to issue, at a high price and for subscribers only, friedrich nietzsche's posthumous work _ecce homo_, which has been lying in manuscript for more than twenty years, and which she herself had formerly excluded from his works, considering that the german reading public was not ripe to receive it in the proper way--which we may doubtless interpret as a fear on her part that the attitude of the book towards germanism and christianity would raise a terrible outcry. now that nietzsche holds undisputed sway over german minds and exercises an immense influence in the rest of europe and in america, it will certainly be read with emotion and discreetly criticised. it gives us an autobiography, written during nietzsche's last productive months, almost immediately before the collapse of his powers, between october 15 and november 4, 1888; and in the course of this autobiography each of his books is briefly characterised. here as elsewhere nietzsche's thoughts are centred on the primary conceptions of ascent and descent, growth and decay. bringing himself into relation with them, he finds that, as the victim of stubborn illness and chronically recurring pain, he is a decadent; but at the same time, as one who in his inmost self is unaffected by his illness, nay, whose strength and fulness of life even increase during its attacks, he is the very reverse of a decadent, a being who is in process of raising himself to a higher form of life. he once more emphasises the fact that the years in which his vitality was lowest were just those in which he threw off all melancholy and recovered his joy in life, his enthusiasm for life, since he had a keen sense that a sick man has no right to pessimism. he begins by giving us plain, matter-of-fact information about himself, speaking warmly and proudly of his father. the latter had been tutor to four princesses of altenburg before he was appointed to his living. out of respect-for friedrich wilhelm iv. he gave his son the hohenzollern names of friedrich wilhelm, and he felt the events of 1848 very keenly. his father only reached the age of thirty-six, and nietzsche lost him when he was himself five years old. but he ascribes to paternal heredity his ability to feel at home in a world of high and delicate things (_in einer welt hoher und zarter dinge_). for all that, nietzsche does not forget to bring in, here as elsewhere, the supposition of his descent from polish noblemen; but he did not know this for a fact, and it was only established by scharlitt's investigation of the family seal. he describes himself as what we should call a winning personality. he has "never understood the art of arousing ill-feeling against himself." he can tame every bear; he even makes clowns behave decently. however out of tune the instrument "man" may be, he can coax a pleasing tone out of it. during his years of teaching, even the laziest became diligent under him. whatever offence has been done him, has not been the result of ill-will. the pitiful have wounded him more deeply than the malicious. nor has he given vent to feelings of revenge or rancour. his conflict with christianity is only one instance among many of his antagonism to resentful feelings. it is an altogether different matter that his very nature is that of a warrior. but he confers distinction on the objects of his attacks, and he has never waged war on private individuals, only on types; thus in strauss he saw nothing but the culture-philistine. he attributes to himself an extremely vivid and sensitive instinct of cleanliness. at the first contact the filth lying at the base of another's nature is revealed to him. the unclean are therefore ill at ease in his presence; nor does the sense of being seen through make them any more fragrant. and with true psychology he adds that his greatest danger--he means to his spiritual health and balance--is loathing of mankind. the loathing of mankind is doubtless the best modern expression for what the ancients called misanthropy. no one knows what it is till he has experienced it. when we read, for instance, in our youth of frederick the great that in his later years he was possessed and fettered by contempt for men, this appears to us an unfortunate peculiarity which the king ought to have overcome; for of course he must have seen other men about him besides those who flattered him for the sake of advantage. but the loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed in subconsciousness. one only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares. nietzsche cannot be said to have overcome it; he fled from it, took refuge in solitude, and lived outside the world of men, alone in the mountains among cold, fresh springs. and even if he felt no loathing for individuals, his disgust with men found a collective outlet, since he entertained, or rather worked up, a positive horror of his countrymen, so powerful that at last it breaks out in everything he writes. it reminds us dimly of byron's dislike of englishmen, stendhal's of frenchmen, and heine's of germans. but it is of a more violent character than stendhal's or heine's, and it has a pathos and contempt of its own. he shows none of it at the outset. in his first book, _the birth of tragedy_, he is no less partial to germany than heine was in his first, romantically teutonic period. but nietzsche's development carried him with a rush away from germanism, and in this last book of his the word "german" has become something like his worst term of abuse. he believes only in french culture; all other culture is a misunderstanding. it makes him angry to see those frenchmen he values most, infected by german spirit. thus taine is, in his opinion, corrupted by hegel's influence. this impression is right in so far as hegel deprived taine of some of the essentially french element which he originally possessed, and of which certain of his admirers before now have painfully felt the loss. but he overlooks the effect of the study of hegel in promoting at the same time what one might call the extension of taine's intellectual horizon. and nietzsche is satisfied with no narrower generalisation of the case than this: wherever germany extends, she ruins culture. as though to make sure of wounding german national pride, he declares that heinrich heine (not goethe) gave him the highest idea of lyric poetry, and that as concerns byron's _manfred_, he has no words, only a look, for those who in the presence of this work dare to utter the name of _faust_. the germans, he maintains in connection with _manfred_, are incapable of any conception of greatness. so uncritical has he become that he puts _manfred_ above _faust_. in his deepest instincts nietzsche is now, as he asserts, so foreign to everything german, that the mere presence of a german "retards his digestion." german intellect is to him indigestion; it can never be finished with anything. if he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion to wagner, if he still regards his intimate relationship with wagner as the most profound refreshment of his life, this was because in wagner he honoured the foreigner, because in him he saw the incarnate protest against all german virtues. in his book, _the case of wagner_, he had already hinted that richard wagner, the glory of german nationalism, was of jewish descent, since his real father seems to have been the step-father, geyer. i could not have survived my youth without wagner, he says; i was condemned to the society of germans and had to take a counter-poison; wagner was the counter-poison. here, by way of exception, he generalises his feeling. we who were children in the 'fifties, he says, necessarily became pessimists in regard to the concept "german." we cannot be anything else than revolutionaries. and he explains this expression thus: we can assent to no state of affairs which allows the canting bigot to be at the top. (höffding's protest against the use of the word "radicalism" applied to nietzsche, in _moderne filosofer_, is thus beside the mark.) wagner was a revolutionary; he fled from the germans. and, nietzsche adds, as an artist, a man has no other home than paris--the city which, strangely enough, he was never, to see. he ranks wagner among the later masters of french romanticism--delacroix, berlioz, baudelaire--and wisely says nothing about the reception of wagnerian opera in paris under the empire. in everything nietzsche now adopts the french stand-point--the old and narrow french standpoint--that, for instance, of the elderly voltaire towards shakespeare. he declares here, as he has done before, that his artist's taste defends molière, corneille and racine, not without bitterness (_nicht ohne ingrimm_) against such a wild (_wüstes_) genius as shakespeare. strangely enough he repeats here his estimate of shakespeare's cæsar as his finest creation, weak as it is: "my highest formula for shakespeare is that he conceived the type of cæsar." it must be added that here again nietzsche assents to the unhappy delusion that shakespeare never wrote the works that bear his name. nietzsche is "instinctively" certain that they are due to bacon, and, ignoring repeated demonstrations of the impossibility of this fatuous notion, he supports his conjecture by the grotesque assertion that if he himself had christened his zarathustra by a name not his own--by wagner's, for instance--the acumen of two thousand years would not have sufficed to guess who was its originator; no one would have believed it possible that the author of _human, all-too-human_ had conceived the visions of zarathustra. he allows the germans no honour as philosophers: leibniz and kant were "the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of europe." just when a perfectly scientific attitude of mind had been attained, they managed to find byways back to "the old ideal." and no less passionately does he deny to the germans all honour as musicians: "a german _cannot_ know what music is. the men who pass as german musicians are foreigners, slavs, croats, italians, dutchmen or jews. i am pole enough to give up all other music for chopin--except wagner's _siegfried-idyll_, some things of liszt, and the italians rossini and pietro gasti" (by this last name he appears to mean his favourite disciple, köselitz, who wrote under the pseudonym of peter gast). he abhors the germans as "idealists." all idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity. he finds a pernicious idealism in henrik ibsen too, "that typical old maid," as well, as in others whose object it is to poison the clean conscience, the natural spirit, of sexual love. and he gives us a clause of his moral code, in which, under the head of vice, he combats every kind of opposition to nature, or if fine words are preferred, every kind of idealism. the clause runs: "preaching of chastity is a public incitement to unnatural practices. all, depreciation of the sexual life, all sullying of it with the word 'impure,' is a crime against life itself--is the real sin against the holy spirit of life." finally he attacks what he calls the "licentiousness" of the germans in historical matters. german historians, he declares, have lost all eye for the values of culture; in fact, they have put this power of vision under the ban of the empire. they claim that a man must in the first place be a german, must belong to the race. if he does, he is in a position to determine values or their absence: the germans are thus the "moral order of the universe" in history; compared with the power of the roman empire they are the champions of liberty; compared with the eighteenth century they are the restorers of morality and of the categorical imperative. "history is actually written on imperial german and antisemitic lines--and herr von treitschke is not ashamed of himself." the germans have on their conscience every crime against culture committed in the last four centuries. as nietzsche in his later years was never tired of asserting, they deprived the renaissance of its meaning, they wrecked it by the reformation; that is, by luther, an impossible monk who, owing to his impossibility, attacked the church and in so doing restored it. the catholics would have every reason to honour luther's name. and when, upon the bridge between two centuries of decadence, a _force majeure_ of genius and will revealed itself, strong enough to weld europe into political and economic unity, the germans finally, with their "wars of liberation," robbed europe of the meaning of napoleon's existence, a prodigy of meaning. thus they have upon their conscience all that followed, nationalism, the _névrose nationale_ from which europe is suffering, and the perpetuation of the system of little states, of petty politics. last of all, the germans have upon their conscience their attitude to himself, their indifference, their lack of recognition, the silence in which they buried his life's work. the germans are bad company. and although his autobiography ends with a poem in which he affects a scorn of fame, "that coin in which the whole world pays, but which he receives with gloved hands and tramples underfoot with loathing "--yet his failure to win renown in germany during his lifetime contributed powerfully to foster his antipathy. the exaltation that marks the whole tone of the work, the unrestrained self-esteem which animates it and is ominous of the near approach of madness, have not deprived _ecce homo_ of its character of surpassing greatness. [ transcriber's notes: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. some corrections of spelling have been made. they are listed at the end of the text. italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ] prophets of dissent books by otto heller henrik ibsen: plays and problems studies in modern german literature lessing's "minna von barnhelm" in english prophets of dissent: essays on maeterlinck, strindberg, nietzsche and tolstoy by otto heller professor of modern european literature in washington university (st. louis) is there a thing in this world that can be separated from the inconceivable? maeterlinck, "our eternity" new york mcmxviii alfred a knopf copyright, 1918, by alfred a. knopf printed in united states of america to hellen sears staunchest of friends preface the collocation of authors so widely at variance in their moral and artistic aims as are those assembled in this little book may be defended by the safe and simple argument that all of these authors have exerted, each in his own way, an influence of singular range and potency. by fairly general consent they are the foremost literary expositors of important modern tendencies. it is, therefore, of no consequence whether or not their ways of thinking fit into our particular frame of mind; what really matters is that in this small group of writers more clearly perhaps than in any other similarly restricted group the basic issues of the modern struggle for social transformation appear to be clearly and sharply joined. that in viewing them as indicators of contrarious ideal currents due allowance must be made for peculiarities of temperament, both individual and racial, and, correspondingly, for the purely "personal equation" in their spiritual attitudes, does not detract to any material degree from their generic significance. in any case, there are those of us who in the vortical change of the social order through which we are whirling, feel a desire to orient ourselves through an objective interest in letters among the embattled purposes and policies which are now gripped in a final test of strength. in a crisis that makes the very foundations of civilization quake, and at a moment when the salvation of human liberty seems to depend upon the success of a united stand of all the modern forces of life against the destructive impact of the most primitive and savage of all the instincts, would it not be absurdly pedantic for a critical student of literature to resort to any artificial selection and co-ordination of his material in order to please the prudes and the pedagogues? and is it not natural to seek that material among the largest literary apparitions of the age? it is my opinion, then, that the four great authors discussed in the following pages stand, respectively, for the determining strains in a great upsetting movement, and that in the aggregate they bring to view the composite mental and moral impulsion of the times. through such forceful articulations of current movements the more percipient class of readers have for a long time been enabled to foresense, in a manner, the colossal reconstruction of society which needs must follow this monstrous, but presumably final, clash between the irreconcilable elements in the contrasted principles of right and might, the masses and the monarchs. however, the gathering together of maeterlinck, nietzsche, strindberg, and tolstoy under the hospitality of a common book-cover permits of a supplementary explanation on the ground of a certain fundamental likeness far stronger than their only too obvious diversities. they are, one and all, radicals in thought, and, with differing strength of intention, reformers of society, inasmuch as their speculations and aspirations are relevant to practical problems of living. and yet what gives them such a durable hold on our attention is not their particular apostolate, but the fact that their artistic impulses ascend from the subliminal regions of the inner life, and that their work somehow brings one into touch with the hidden springs of human action and human fate. this means, in effect, that all of them are mystics by original cast of mind and that notwithstanding any difference, however apparently violent, of views and theories, they follow the same introspective path towards the recognition and interpretation of the law of life. from widely separated ethical premises they thus arrive at an essentially uniform appraisal of personal happiness as a function of living. to those readers who are not disposed to grant the validity of the explanations i have offered, perhaps equality of rank in artistic importance may seem a sufficient criterion for the association of authors, and, apart from all sociologic and philosophic considerations, they may be willing to accept my somewhat arbitrary selection on this single count. o. h. april, 1918. contents page i maurice maeterlinck: a study in mysticism 3 ii august strindberg: a study in eccentricity 71 iii friedrich nietzsche: a study in exaltation 109 iv leo tolstoy: a study in revivalism 161 i the mysticism of maurice maeterlinck under the terrific atmospheric pressure that has been torturing the civilization of the entire world since the outbreak of the greatest of wars, contemporary literature of the major cast appears to have gone into decline. even the comparatively few writers recognized as possessing talents of the first magnitude have given way to that pressure and have shrunk to minor size, so that it may be seriously questioned, to say the least, whether during the past forty months or so a single literary work of outstanding and sustained grandeur has been achieved anywhere. that the effect of the universal embattlement upon the art of letters should be, in the main, extremely depressing, is quite natural; but the conspicuous loss of breadth and poise in writers of the first order seems less in accordance with necessity,--at least one might expect a very superior author to rise above that necessity. in any case it is very surprising that it should be a belgian whose literary personality is almost unique in having remained exempt from the general abridgment of spiritual stature. it is true that maurice maeterlinck, the most eminent literary figure in his sadly stricken country and of unsurpassed standing among the contemporary masters of french letters, has, since the great catastrophe, won no new laurels as a dramatist; and that in the other field cultivated by him, that of the essay, his productiveness has been anything but prolific. but in his case one is inclined to interpret reticence as an eloquent proof of a singularly heroic firmness of character at a time when on both sides of the great divide which now separates the peoples, the cosmopolitan trend of human advance has come to a temporary halt, and the nations have relapsed from their laboriously attained degree of world-citizenship into the homelier, but more immediately virtuous, state of traditional patriotism. it is a military necessity as well as a birthright of human nature that at a time like the present the patriot is excused from any pharisaical profession of loving his enemy. before the war, maeterlinck's writings were animated by humanitarian sympathies of the broadest catholicity. he even had a peculiar affection for the germans, because doubtless he perceived the existence of a strong kinship between certain essential traits in his spiritual composition and the fundamental tendencies of german philosophy and art. but when belgium was lawlessly invaded, her ancient towns heinously destroyed, her soil laid waste and drenched with the blood of her people, maeterlinck, as a son of belgium, learned to hate the germans to the utmost of a wise and temperate man's capacity for hatred, and in his war papers collected in _les débris de la guerre_, (1916),(1) which ring with the passionate impulse of the patriot, his outraged sense of justice prevails over the disciplined self-command of the stoic. (1) "the wrack of the storm," 1916. he refuses to acquiesce in the lenient discrimination between the guilty government of germany and her innocent population: "it is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and guilty, or degrees of guilt. they stand on one level, all those who have taken part in it.... it is, very simply, the german, from one end of his country to the other, who stands revealed as a beast of prey which the firm will of our planet finally repudiates. we have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant king who alone is responsible. nations have the government which they deserve, or rather, the government which they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.... no nation can be deceived that does not wish to be deceived; and it is not intelligence that germany lacks.... no nation permits herself to be coerced to the one crime that man cannot pardon. it is of her own accord that she hastens towards it; her chief has no need to persuade, it is she who urges him on."(2) (2) "the wrack of the storm," pp. 16-18. such a condemnatory tirade against the despoilers of his fair homeland was normally to be expected from a man of maeterlinck's depth of feeling. the unexpected thing that happened not long after was that the impulsive promptings of justice and patriotism put themselves into harmony with the guiding principles of his entire moral evolution. the integrity of his philosophy of life, the sterling honesty of his teachings, were thus loyally sealed with the very blood of his heart.--"before closing this book," he says in the epilogue,(3) "i wish to weigh for the last time in my conscience the words of hatred and malediction which it has made me speak in spite of myself." and then, true prophet that he is, he speaks forth as a voice from the future, admonishing men to prepare for the time when the war is over. what saner advice could at this critical time be given the stay-at-homes than that they should follow the example of the men who return from the trenches? "they detest the enemy," says he, "but they do not hate the man. they recognize in him a brother in misfortune who, like themselves, is submitting to duties and laws which, like themselves, he too believes lofty and necessary." on the other hand, too, not many have sensed as deeply as has maeterlinck the grandeur to which humanity has risen through the immeasurable pathos of the war. "setting aside the unpardonable aggression and the inexpiable violation of the treaties, this war, despite its insanity, has come near to being a bloody but magnificent proof of greatness, heroism, and the spirit of sacrifice." and from his profound anguish over the fate of his beloved belgium this consolation is wrung: "if it be true, as i believe, that humanity is worth just as much as the sum total of latent heroism which it contains, then we may declare that humanity was never stronger nor more exemplary than now and that it is at this moment reaching one of its highest points and capable of braving everything and hoping everything. and it is for this reason that, despite our present sadness, we are entitled to congratulate ourselves and to rejoice." altogether, maeterlinck's thoughts and actions throughout this yet unfinished mighty fate-drama of history challenge the highest respect for the clarity of his intellect and the profoundness of his humanity. (3) in the english translation this is the chapter preceding the last one and is headed "when the war is over," p. 293 ff.; it is separately published in _the forum_ for july, 1916. the appalling disaster that has befallen the belgian people is sure to stamp their national character with indelible marks; so that it is safe to predict that never again will the type of civilization which before the war reigned in the basins of the meuse and the scheldt reëstablish itself in its full peculiarity and distinctiveness which was the result of a unique coagency of germanic and romanic ingredients of culture. yet in the amalgam of the two heterogeneous elements a certain competitive antithesis had survived, and manifested itself, in the individual as in the national life at large, in a number of unreconciled temperamental contrasts, and in the fundamental unlikeness exhibited in the material and the spiritual activities. witness the contrast between the bustling aggressiveness in the province of practical affairs and the metaphysical drift of modern flemish art. to any one familiar with the visible materialism of the population in its external mode of living it may have seemed strange to notice how sedulously a numerous set among the younger artists of the land were facing away from their concrete environment, as though to their over-sensitive nervous system it were irremediably offensive. the vigorous solidity of constantin meunier, the great plastic interpreter of the "black country" of belgium, found but few wholehearted imitators among the sculptors, while among the painters that robust terrestrialism of which the work of a rubens or teniers and their countless disciples was the artistic upshot, was almost totally relinquished, and linear firmness and colorful vitality yielded the day to pallid, discarnately decorative artistry even, in a measure, in the "applied art" products of a henri van de velde. it is in the field of literature, naturally enough, that the contrast is resolved and integrated into a characteristic unity. very recently professor a. j. carnoy has definitely pointed out(4) the striking commixture of the realistic and imaginative elements in the work of the flemish symbolists. "the vision of the flemings"--quoting from his own _précis_ of his paper--"is very concrete, very exact in all details and gives a durable, real, and almost corporeal presence to the creations of the imagination. all these traits are exhibited in the reveries of the flemish mystics, ancient and modern. one finds them also no less plainly in the poetic work of belgian writers of the last generation: maeterlinck, verhaeren, rodenbach, van lerberghe, le roy, elskamp, etc." (4) in a paper read by title before the modern language association of america at yale university, december 29, 1917. if we take into account this composite attitude of the flemish mind we shall be less surprised at the remarkable evolution of a poet-philosopher whose creations seem at first blush to bear no resemblance to the outward complexion of his own age; who seems as far removed temperamentally from his locality and time as were his lineal spiritual ancestors: the dutchman ruysbroeck, the scandinavian swedenborg, the german novalis, and the american emerson--and who in the zenith of his career stands forth as an ardent advocate of practical action while at the same time a firm believer in the transcendental. maeterlinck's romantic antipathy towards the main drift of the age was a phenomenon which at the dawn of our century could be observed in a great number of superior intelligences. those fugitives from the dun and sordid materialism of the day were likely to choose between two avenues of escape, according to their greater or lesser inner ruggedness. the more aggressive type would engage in multiform warfare for the reconstruction of life on sounder principles; whereas the more meditative professed a real or affected indifference to practical things and eschewed any participation in the world's struggle for progress. and of the quiescent rather than the insurgent variety of the romantic temper maurice maeterlinck was the foremost exponent. the "romantic longing" seems to have come into the world in the company of the christian religion with which it shares its partly outspoken, partly implied repugnance for the battle of life. romantic periods occur in the history of civilization whenever a sufficiently influential set of artistically minded persons have persuaded themselves that, in quite a literal sense of the colloquial phrase, they "have no use" for the world; a discovery which would still be true were it stated obversely. the romantic world-view, thus fundamentally oriented by world-contempt, entails, at least in theory, the repudiation of all earthly joys--notably the joy of working--and the renouncement of all worldly ambition; it scorns the cooperative, social disposition, invites the soul to a progressive withdrawal into the inner ego, and ends in complete surrender to one sole aspiration: the search of the higher vision, the vision, that is, of things beyond their tangible reality. to such mystical constructions of the inner eye a certain group of german writers who flourished in the beginning of the nineteenth century and were known as the romantics, darkly groped their way out of the confining realities of their own time. the most modern spell of romanticism, the one through which our own generation was but yesterday passing, measures its difference from any previous romantic era by the difference between earlier states of culture and our own. life with us is conspicuously more assertive and aggressive in its social than in its individual expressions, which was by no means always so, and unless the romantic predisposition adapted itself to this important change it could not relate itself at all intimately to our interests. our study of maeterlinck should help us, therefore, to discover possibly in the new romantic tendency some practical and vital bearings. we find that in the new romanticism esthetic and philosophical impulses are inextricably mixed. hence the new movement is also playing an indispensable rôle in the modern re-foundation of art. for while acting as a wholesome offset to the so-called naturalism, in its firm refusal to limit inner life to the superficial realities, it at the same time combines with naturalism into a complete recoiling, both of the intellect and the emotions, from any commonplace, or pusillanimous, or mechanical practices of artistry. this latter-day romanticism, moreover, notwithstanding its sky-aspiring outstretch, is akin to naturalism in that, after all, it keeps its roots firmly grounded in the earth; that is to say, it seeks for its ulterior sanctions not in realms high beyond the self; rather it looks within for the "blue flower" of contentedness. already to the romantics of old the mystic road to happiness was not unknown. it is, for instance, pointed by novalis: "inward leads the mysterious way. within us or nowhere lies eternity with its worlds; within us or nowhere are the past and the future." viewed separately from other elements of romanticism, this passion for retreating within the central ego is commonly referred to as mysticism; it has a strong hold on many among the moderns, and maurice maeterlinck to be properly understood has to be understood as the poet _par excellence_ of modern mysticism. by virtue of this special office he deals mainly in concepts of the transcendental, which puzzles the ordinary person accustomed to perceive only material and ephemeral realities. maeterlinck holds that nothing matters that is not eternal and that what keeps us from enjoying the treasures of the universe is the hereditary resignation with which we tarry in the gloomy prison of our senses. "in reality, we live only from soul to soul, and we are gods who do not know each other."(5) it follows from this metaphysical foundation of his art that instead of the grosser terminology suitable to plain realities, maeterlinck must depend upon a code of subtle messages in order to establish between himself and his audience a line of spiritual communication. this makes it somewhat difficult for people of cruder endowment to appreciate his meaning, a grievance from which in the beginning many of them sought redress in facile scoffing. obtuse minds are prone to claim a right to fathom the profound meanings of genius with the same ease with which they expect to catch the meaning of a bill of fare or the daily stock market report. (5) maeterlinck, "on emerson." * * * * * it must be confessed, however, that even those to whom maeterlinck's sphere of thought is not so utterly sealed, enter it with a sense of mixed perplexity and apprehension. they feel themselves helplessly conducted through a world situated beyond the confines of their normal consciousness, and in this strange world everything that comes to pass appears at first extremely impracticable and unreal. the action seems "wholly dissevered from common sense and ordinary uses;" the figures behave otherwise than humans; the dialogue is "poised on the edge of a precipice of bathos." it is clear that works so far out of the common have to be approached from the poet's own point of view. "let the reader move his standpoint one inch nearer the popular standpoint," thus we are warned by mr. g. k. chesterton, "and his attitude towards the poet will be harsh, hostile, unconquerable mirth." there are some works that can be appreciated for their good story, even if we fail to realize the author's moral attitude, let alone to grasp the deeper content of his work. "but if we take a play by maeterlinck we shall find that unless we grasp the particular fairy thread of thought the poet rather lazily flings to us, we cannot grasp anything whatever. except from one extreme poetic point of view, the thing is not a play; it is not a bad play, it is a mass of clotted nonsense. one whole act describes the lovers going to look for a ring in a distant cave when they both know they have dropped it down the well. seen from some secret window on some special side of the soul's turret, this might convey a sense of faerie futility in our human life. but it is quite obvious that unless it called forth that one kind of sympathy, it would call forth nothing but laughter. in the same play, the husband chases his wife with a drawn sword, the wife remarking at intervals, 'i am not gay.' now there may really be an idea in this; the idea of human misfortune coming most cruelly upon the opportunism of innocence; that the lonely human heart says, like a child at a party, 'i am not enjoying myself as i thought i should.' but it is plain that unless one thinks of this idea, and of this idea only, the expression is not in the least unsuccessful pathos,--it is very broad and highly successful farce!" and so the atmosphere of maeterlinck's plays is impregnated throughout with oppressive mysteries, and until the key of these mysteries is found there is very little meaning to the plays. moreover, these mysteries, be they never so stern and awe-inspiring, are irresistibly alluring. the reason is, they are our own mysteries that have somehow escaped our grasp, and that we fain would recapture, because there dwells in every human breast a vague assent to the immortal truth of goethe's assertion: "the thrill of awe is man's best heritage."(6) (6) "_das schaudern ist der menschheit bestes teil._" the imaginative equipment of maeterlinck's dramaturgy is rather limited and, on its face value, trite. in particular are his dramatis personae creatures by no means calculated to overawe by some extraordinary weirdness or power. and yet we feel ourselves touched by an elemental dread and by an overwhelming sense of our human impotence in the presence of these figures who, without seeming supernatural, are certainly not of common flesh and blood; they impress us as surpassingly strange mainly because somehow they are instinct with a life fundamentally more real than the superficial reality we know. for they are the mediums and oracles of the fateful powers that stir human beings into action. the poet of mysticism, then, delves into the mystic sources of our deeds, and makes us stand reverent with him before the unknowable forces by which we are controlled. naturally he is obliged to shape his visions in dim outline. his aim is to shadow forth that which no naked eye can see, and it may be said in passing that he attains this aim with a mastery and completeness incomparably beyond the dubious skill displayed more recently by the grotesque gropings of the so-called futurist school. perhaps one true secret of the perturbing strangeness of maeterlinck's figures lies in the fact that the basic principle of their life, the one thoroughly vital element in them, if it does not sound too paradoxical to say so, is the idea of death. maeterlinck's mood and temper are fully in keeping with the religious dogma that life is but a short dream--with goethe he believes that "all things transitory but as symbols are sent," and apparently concurs in the creed voiced by one of arthur schnitzler's characters,--that death is the only subject in life worthy of being pondered by the serious mind. "from our death onwards," so he puts it somewhere, "the adventure of the universe becomes our own adventure." * * * * * it will be useful to have a bit of personal information concerning our author. he started his active career as a barrister; not by any means auspiciously, it seems, for already in his twenty-seventh year he laid the toga aside. experience had convinced him that in the forum there were no laurels for him to pluck. the specific qualities that make for success at the bar were conspicuously lacking in his make-up. far from being eloquent, he has at all times been noted for an unparalleled proficiency in the art of self-defensive silence. he shuns banal conversation and the sterile distractions of promiscuous social intercourse, dreads the hubbub of the city, and has an intense dislike for travel, to which he resorts only as a last means of escape from interviewers, reporters, and admirers. maeterlinck, it is seen, is anything but _multorum vir hominum_. in order to preserve intact his love of humanity, he finds it expedient to live for the most part by himself, away from the throng "whose very plaudits give the heart a pang;" his fame has always been a source of annoyance to him. the only company he covets is that of the contemplative thinkers of bygone days,--the mystics, gnostics, cabalists, neo-platonists. swedenborg and plotinus are perhaps his greatest favorites. that the war has produced a mighty agitation in the habitual calm of the great belgian poet-philosopher goes without saying. his love of justice no less than his love of his country aroused every red corpuscle in his virile personality to violent resentment against the invader. since the war broke out, however, he has published nothing besides a number of ringingly eloquent and singularly pathetic articles and appeals,--so that the character portrait derived from the body of his work has not at this time lost its application to his personality. in cast of mind, maeterlinck is sombrously meditative, and he has been wise in framing his outer existence so that it would accord with his habitual detachment. the greater part of his time used to be divided between his charming retreat at _quatre chemins_, near grasse, and the grand old abbey of st. wandrille in normandy, which he managed to snatch in the very nick of time from the tightening clutch of a manufacturing concern. with the temperament of a hermit, he has been, nevertheless, a keen observer of life, though one preferring to watch the motley spectacle from the aristocratic privacy of his box, sheltered, as it were, from prying curiosity. well on in middle age, he is still an enthusiastic out-of-doors man,--gardener, naturalist, pedestrian, wheelman, and motorist, and commands an extraordinary amount of special knowledge in a variety of sports and sciences. in "the double garden" he discusses the automobile with the authority of an expert watt-man and mechanician. in one of his other books he evinces an extraordinary erudition in all matters pertaining to the higher education of dogs; and his work on "the life of the bee" passes him beyond question with high rank among "thirty-third degree" apiculturists. one of the characteristics that seem to separate his books, especially those of the earlier period, from the literary tendencies of his age, is their surprising inattention to present social struggles. his metaphysical bias makes him dwell almost exclusively, and with great moral and logical consistency, on aspects of life that are slightly considered by the majority of men yet which he regards as ulteriorly of sole importance. when men like maeterlinck are encountered in the world of practical affairs, they are bound to impress us as odd, because of this inversion of the ordinary policies of behavior. but before classing them as "cranks," we might well ask ourselves whether their appraisal of the component values of life does not, after all, correspond better to their true relativity than does our own habitual evaluation. with the average social being, the transcendental bearing of a proposition is synonymous with its practical unimportance. but in his essay on "the invisible goodness" maeterlinck quite properly raises the question: "is visible life alone of consequence, and are we made up only of things that can be grasped and handled like pebbles in the road?" throughout his career maeterlinck reveals himself in the double aspect of poet and philosopher. in the first period his philosophy, as has already been amply hinted, is characterized chiefly by aversion from the externalities of life, and by that tense introversion of the mind which forms the mystic's main avenue to the goal of knowledge. but if, in order to find the key to his tragedies and puppet plays, we go to the thirteen essays representing the earlier trend of his philosophy and issued in 1896 under the collective title, "the treasure of the humble," we discover easily that his cast of mysticism is very different from that of his philosophic predecessors and teachers in the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, in particular from the devotional mysticism of the "admirable" john ruysbroeck, and friedrich von hardenberg-novalis. maeterlinck does not strive after the so-called "spiritual espousals," expounded by the "doctor ecstaticus," ruysbroeck, in his celebrated treatise where christ is symbolized as the divine groom and human nature as the bride glowing with desire for union with god. maeterlinck feels too modernly to make use of that ancient sensuous imagery. the main thesis of his mystical belief is that there are divine forces dormant in human nature; how to arouse and release them, constitutes the paramount problem of human life. his doctrine is that a life not thus energized by its own latent divineness is, and must remain, humdrum and worthless. it will at once be noticed that such a doctrine harmonizes thoroughly with the romantic aspiration. both mystic and romantic teach that, in the last resort, the battlefield of our fate lies not out in the wide world but that it is enclosed in the inner self, within the unknown quantity which we designate as our soul. the visible life, according to this modern prophet of mysticism, obeys the invisible; happiness and unhappiness flow exclusively from the inner sources. maeterlinck's speculations, despite their medieval provenience, have a practical orientation. he firmly believes that it is within the ability of mankind to raise some of the veils that cover life's central secret. in unison with some other charitable students of society, he holds to the faith that a more highly spiritualized era is dawning, and from the observed indications he prognosticates a wider awakening of the sleepbound soul of man. and certainly some of the social manifestations that appeared with cumulative force during the constructive period before the war were calculated to justify that faith. the revival of interest in the metaphysical powers of man which expressed itself almost epidemically through such widely divergent cults as theosophy and christian science, was indubitable proof of spiritual yearnings in the broader masses of the people. and it had a practical counterpart in civic tendencies and reforms that evidenced a great agitation of the social conscience. and even to-day, when the great majority feel that the universal embroilment has caused civilized man to fall from his laboriously achieved level, this sage in his lofty solitude feels the redeeming spiritual connotation of our great calamity. "humanity was ready to rise above itself, to surpass all that it had hitherto accomplished. it has surpassed it.... never before had nations been seen that were able as a whole to understand that the happiness of each of those who live in this time of trial is of no consequence compared with the honor of those who live no more or the happiness of those who are not yet alive. we stand on heights that had not been attained before." but even for those many who find themselves unable to build very large hopes on the spiritual uplift of mankind through disaster, maeterlinck's philosophy is a wholesome tonic. in the essay on "the life profound" in "the treasure of the humble," we are told: "every man must find for himself in the low and unavoidable reality of common life his special possibility of a higher existence." the injunction, trite though it sound, articulates a moral very far from philistine. for it urges the pursuit of the transcendental self through those feelings which another very great idealist, friedrich schiller, describes in magnificent metaphor as ... "der dunklen gefühle gewalt, die im herzen wunderbar schliefen." in the labyrinth of the subliminal consciousness there lurks, however, a great danger for the seeker after the hidden treasures: the paralyzing effect of fatalism upon the normal energies. maeterlinck was seriously threatened by this danger during his earlier period. how he eventually contrived his liberation from the clutch of fatalism is not made entirely clear by the progress of his thought. at all events, an era of greater intellectual freedom, which ultimately was to create him the undisputed captain of his soul and master of his fate, was soon to arrive for him. it is heralded by another book of essays: "wisdom and destiny." but, as has been stated, we may in his case hardly hope to trace the precise route traveled by the mind between the points of departure and arrival. * * * * * so closely are the vital convictions in this truthful writer linked with the artistic traits of his work that without some grasp of his metaphysics even the technical peculiarities of his plays cannot be fully appreciated. to the mystic temper of mind, all life is secretly pregnant with great meaning, so that none of its phenomena can be deemed inconsequential. thus, while maeterlinck is a poet greatly preoccupied with spiritual matters yet nothing to him is more wonderful and worthy of attention than the bare facts and processes of living. real life, just like the theatre which purports to represent it, manipulates a multiform assortment of stage effects, now coarse and obvious and claptrap, now refined and esoteric, to suit the diversified taste and capacity of the patrons. to the cultured esthetic sense the tragical tendency carries more meaning than the catastrophic finale; our author accordingly scorns, and perhaps inordinately, whatsoever may appear as merely adventitious in the action of plays. "what can be told," he exclaims, "by beings who are possessed of a fixed idea and have no time to live because they have to kill off a rival or a mistress?" the internalized action in his plays is all of one piece with the profound philosophical conviction that the inner life alone matters; that consequently the small and unnoticed events are more worthy of attention than the sensational, cataclysmic moments. "why wait ye," he asks in that wonderful rhapsody on "silence"(7) "for heaven to open at the strike of the thunderbolt? ye should attend upon the blessed hours when it silently opens--and it is incessantly opening." (7) "the treasure of the humble." his purpose, then, is to reveal the working of hidden forces in their intricate and inseparable connection with external events; and in order that the _vie intérieure_ might have the right of way, drama in his practice emancipates itself very far from the traditional realistic methods. "poetry," he maintains, "has no other purpose than to keep open the great roads that lead from the visible to the invisible." to be sure, this definition postulates, rather audaciously, a widespread spiritual susceptibility. but in maeterlinck's optimistic anthropology no human being is spiritually so deadened as to be forever out of all communication with the things that are divine and infinite. he fully realizes, withal, that for the great mass of men there exists no intellectual approach to the truly significant problems of life. it is rather through our emotional capacity that our spiritual experience brings us into touch with the final verities. anyway, the poet of mysticism appeals from the _impasse_ of pure reasoning to the voice of the inner oracles. but how to detect in the deepest recesses of the soul the echoes of universal life and give outward resonance to their faint reverberations? that is the artistic, and largely technical, side of the problem. obvious it is that if the beholder's collaboration in the difficult enterprise is to be secured, his imagination has to be stirred to a super-normal degree. once a dramatist has succeeded in stimulating the imaginative activity, he can dispense with a mass of descriptive detail. but he must comply with two irremissible technical demands. in the first place, the "_vie intérieure_" calls forth a _dialogue intérieur_; an esoteric language, i would say, contrived predominantly for the "expressional" functions of speech, as differenced from its "impressional" purposes. under swedenborg's fanciful theory of "correspondences" the literal meaning of a word is merely a sort of protective husk for its secret spiritual kernel. it is this inner, essential meaning that maeterlinck's dialogue attempts to set free. by a fairly simple and consistent code of intimations the underlying meaning of the colloquy is laid bare and a basis created for a more fundamental understanding of the dramatic transactions. maeterlinck going, at first, to undue lengths in this endeavor, exposed the diction of his dramas to much cheap ridicule. the extravagant use of repetition, in particular, made him a mark for facile burlesque. the words of the queen in _princesse maleine_: "_mais ne répetez pas toujours ce que l'on dit_," were sarcastically turned against the poet himself. as a result of the extreme simplicity of his dialogue, maeterlinck was reproached with having invented the "monosyllabic theatre," the "theatre without words," and with having perpetrated a surrogate sort of drama, a hybrid between libretto and pantomime. the fact, however, is, his characters speak a language which, far from being absurd, as it was at first thought to be by many of his readers, is instinct with life and quite true to life--to life, that is, as made articulate in the intense privacy of dreams, or hallucinations, or moments of excessive emotional perturbation. the other principal requisite for the attainment of the inner dramatic vitalness in drama is a pervasive atmospheric mood, a sustained _stimmung_. this, in the case of maeterlinck, is brought about by the combined employment of familiar and original artistic devices. the grave and melancholy mood that so deeply impregnates the work of maeterlinck is tinged in the earlier stage, as has been pointed out, with the sombre coloring of fatalism. in the first few books, in particular, there hovers a brooding sense of terror and an undefinable feeling of desolation. through _serres chaudes_ ("hot houses"), his first published book, (1889), there runs a tenor of weariness, of ideal yearnings overshadowed by the hopelessness of circumstances. even in this collection of poems, where so much less necessity exists for a unity of mood than in the plays, maeterlinck's predilection for scenic effects suggestive of weirdness and superstitious fear became apparent in the recurrent choice of sombre scenic motifs: oppressive nocturnal silence,--a stagnant sheet of water,--moonlight filtered through green windows, etc. the diction, too, through the incessant use of terms like _morne_, _las_, _pâle_, _désire_, _ennui_, _tiède_, _indolent_, _malade_, exhales as it were a lazy resignation. temporarily, then, the fatalistic strain is uppermost both in the philosophy and the poetry of the rising young author; and to make matters worse, his is the fatalism of pessimistic despair: fate is forsworn against man. the objective point of life is death. we constantly receive warnings from within, but the voices are not unequivocal and emphatic enough to save us from ourselves. probing the abysses of his subliminal self, the mystic may sense, along with the diviner promptings of the heart, the lurking demons that undermine happiness,--"the malignant powers,"--again quoting schiller--"whom no man's craft can make familiar"--that element in human nature which in truth makes man "his own worst enemy." it is a search which at this stage of his development maeterlinck, as a mystic, cannot bring himself to relinquish, even though, pessimistically, he anticipates that which he most dreads to find; in this way, fatalism and pessimism act as insuperable barriers against his artistic self-assertion. his fixed frame of mind confines him to the representation of but one elemental instinct, namely, that of fear. the rustic in the german fairy tale who sallied forth to learn how to shudder,--_gruseln_,--would have mastered the art to his complete satisfaction if favored with a performance or two of such plays as "princess maleine," "the intruder," or "the sightless." perhaps no other dramatist has ever commanded a similarly well-equipped arsenal of thrills and terrible foreshadowings. the commonest objects are fraught with ominous forebodings: a white gown lying on a _prie-dieu_, a curtain suddenly set swaying by a puff of air, the melancholy soughing of a clump of trees,--the simplest articles of daily use are converted into awful symbols that make us shiver by their whisperings of impending doom. nor in the earlier products of maeterlinck are the cruder practices of melodrama scorned or spared,--the crash and flash of thunder and lightning, the clang of bells and clatter of chains, the livid light and ghastly shadows, the howling hurricane, the ominous croaking of ravens amid nocturnal solitude, trees illumined by the fiery eyes of owls, bats whirring portentously through the gloom,--so many harbingers of dread and death. and the prophetic import of these tokens and their sort is reinforced by repeated assertions from the persons in the action that never before has anything like this been known to occur. to such a fearsome state are we wrought up by all this uncanny apparatus that at the critical moment a well calculated knock at the door is sufficient to make our flesh creep and our hair stand on end. thus, the _vie intérieure_ would seem to prerequire for its externalization a completely furnished chamber of horrors. and when it is added that the scene of the action is by preference a lonely churchyard or a haunted old mansion, a crypt, a cavern, a silent forest or a solitary tower, it is easy to understand why plays like "princess maleine" could be classed by superficial and unfriendly critics with the gruesome ebullitions of that fantastic quasi-literary occupation to which we owe a well known variety of "water-front" drama and, in fiction, the "shilling shocker." their immeasurably greater psychological refinement could not save them later on from condemnation at the hands of their own maker. and yet they are not without very great artistic merits. octave mirbeau, in his habitual enthusiasm for the out-of-the-ordinary, hailed maeterlinck, on the strength of "princess maleine," as the belgian shakespeare, evidently because maeterlinck derived some of his motifs from "hamlet": mainly the churchyard scene, and prince hjalmar's defiance of the queen, as well as his general want of decision. as a matter of fact, maeterlinck has profoundly studied, not shakespeare alone, but the minor elizabethans as well. he has made an admirable translation of "macbeth." early in his career he even translated one of john ford's plays, "'tis pity she's a whore," one of the coarsest works ever written for the stage, but to which he was attracted by the intrinsic human interest that far outweighs its offensiveness. as for any real kinship of maeterlinck with shakespeare, the resemblance between the two is slight. they differ philosophically in the fundamental frame of mind, ethically in the outlook upon life, dramaturgically in the value attached to external action, and humanly,--much to the disadvantage of the belgian,--in their sense of humor. for unfortunately it has to be confessed that this supreme gift of the gods has been very sparingly dispensed to maeterlinck. altogether, whether or no he is to be counted among the disciples of shakespeare, his works show no great dependence on the master. with far better reason might he be called a debtor to germanic folklore, especially in its fantastic elements. a german fairy world it is to which we are transported by maeterlinck's first dramatic attempt, "princess maleine," (1889), a play refashioned after grimm's tale of the maid maleen; only that in the play all the principals come to a harrowing end and that in it an esoteric meaning lies concealed underneath the primitive plot. the action, symbolically interpreted, illustrates the fatalist's doctrine that man is nothing but a toy in the hands of dark and dangerous powers. practical wisdom does not help us to discern the working of these powers until it is too late. neither can we divine their presence, for the prophetic apprehension of the future resides not in the expert and proficient, but rather in the helpless or decrepit,--the blind, the feeble-minded, and the stricken in years, or again in young children and in dumb animals. take the scene in "princess maleine" where the murderers, having invaded the chamber, lie there in wait, with bated breath. in the corridor outside, people are unconcernedly passing to and fro, while the only creatures who, intuitively, sense the danger, are the little prince and a dog that keeps anxiously scraping at the door. in _l'intruse_ ("the intruder"), (1890), a one-act play on a theme which is collaterally developed later on in _les aveugles_ ("the sightless"), and in _l'intérieur_ ("home"), the arriving disaster that cannot be shut out by bolts or bars announces itself only to the clairvoyant sense of a blind old man. the household gathered around the table is placidly waiting for the doctor. only the blind grandfather is anxious and heavy-laden because he alone knows that death is entering the house, he alone can feel his daughter's life withering away under the breath of the king of terror: the sightless have a keener sensitiveness than the seeing for what is screened from the physical eye. it would hardly be possible to name within the whole range of dramatic literature another work so thoroughly pervaded with the chilling horror of approaching calamity. the talk at the table is of the most commonplace,--that the door will not shut properly, and they must send for the carpenter to-morrow. but from the mechanism of the environment there comes cumulative and incremental warning that something extraordinary and fatal is about to happen. the wind rises, the trees shiver, the nightingales break off their singing, the fishes in the pond grow restive, the dogs cower in fear,--an unseen presence walks through the garden. then the clanging of a scythe is heard. a cold current of air rushes into the room. nearer and nearer come the steps. the grandfather insists that a stranger has seated himself in the midst of the family. the lamp goes out. the bell strikes midnight. the old man is sure that somebody is rising from the table. then suddenly the baby whose voice has never been heard starts crying. through an inner door steps a deaconess silently crossing herself: the mother of the house is dead. these incidents in themselves are not necessarily miraculous. there are none of them but might be accounted for on perfectly natural grounds. in fact, very plausible explanations do offer themselves for the weirdest things that come to pass. so, especially, it was a real, ordinary mower that chanced to whet his scythe; yet the apparition of the old reaper in person could not cause the chilling consternation produced by this trivial circumstance coming as it does as the climax of a succession of commonplace happenings exaggerated and distorted by a fear-haunted imagination. to produce an effect like that upon an audience whose credulity refuses to be put to any undue strain is a victorious proof of prime artistic ability. _les aveugles_ ("the sightless"), (1891), is pitched in the same psychological key. the atmosphere is surcharged with unearthly apprehension. a dreary twilight--in the midst of a thick forest--on a lonely island; twelve blind people fretting about the absence of their guardian. he is gone to find a way out of the woods--what can have become of him? from moment to moment the deserted, helpless band grows more fearstricken. the slightest sound becomes the carrier of evil forebodings: the rustling of the foliage, the flapping of a bird's wings, the swelling roar of the nearby sea in its dash against the shore. the bell strikes twelve--they wonder is it noon or night? then questions, eager and calamitous, pass in whispers among them: has the leader lost his way? will he never come back? has the dam burst apart and will they all be swallowed by the ocean? the pathos is greatly heightened by an extremely delicate yet sure individuation of the figures, as when at the mention of heaven those not sightless from birth raise their countenance to the sky. and where in the meanwhile is the lost leader? he is seated right in their midst, but smitten by death. they learn it at last through the actions of the dog; besides whom--in striking parallel to "princess maleine"--the only other creature able to see is a little child. the horror-stricken unfortunates realize that they can never get home, and that they must perish in the woods. in _les sept princesses_ ("the seven princesses"), (1891), although it is one of maeterlinck's minor achievements, some of the qualities that are common to all his work become peculiarly manifest. this is particularly true of the skill shown in conveying the feeling of the story by means of suitable scenic devices. most of his plays depend to a considerable degree for their dark and heavy nimbus of unreality upon a studied combination of paraphernalia in themselves neither numerous nor far-sought. in fact, the resulting scenic repertory, too, is markedly limited: a weird forest, a deserted castle with marble staircase and dreamy moonlit terrace, a tower with vaulted dungeons, a dismal corridor flanked by impenetrable chambers, a lighted interior viewed from the garden, a landscape bodefully crêped with twilight--the list nearly exhausts his store of "sets." the works mentioned so far are hardly more than able exercises preparatory for the ampler and more finished products which were to succeed them. yet they represent signal steps in the evolution of a new dramatic style, designed, as has already been intimated, to give palpable form to emotional data descried in moments anterior not only to articulation but even to consciousness itself; and for this reason, the plane of the dramatic action lies deep below the surface of life, down in the inner tabernacle where the mystic looks for the hidden destinies. in his style, maeterlinck had gradually developed an unprecedented capacity for bringing to light the secret agencies of fate. a portion of the instructed public had already learned to listen in his writings for the finer reverberations that swing in the wake of the uttered phrase, to heed the slightest hints and allusions in the text, to overlook no glance or gesture that might betray the mind of the acting characters. it is true that art to be great must be plain, but that does not mean that the sole test of great art is the response of the simple and apathetic. in maeterlinck's first masterpiece, _pélléas et mélisande_, (1892), the motives again are drawn up from the lower regions of consciousness; once more the plot is born of a gloomy fancy, and the darkling mood hovering over scene and action attests the persistence of fatalism in the poet. the theory of old king arkel, the spokesman of the author's personal philosophy, is that one should not seek to be active; one should ever wait on the threshold of fate. even the younger people in the play are infected by the morbid doctrine of an inevitable necessity for all things that happen to them: "we do not go where we would go. we do not do that which we would do." perhaps, however, these beliefs are here enounced for the last time with the author's assent or acquiescence. in artistic merit "pélléas and mélisande" marks a nearer approach to mastery, once the integral peculiarities of the form and method have been granted. despite a noticeable lack of force, directness, and plasticity in the characterization, the _vie intérieure_ is most convincingly expressed. in one of the finest scenes of the play we see the principals at night gazing out upon a measureless expanse of water dotted with scattered lights. the atmosphere is permeated with a reticent yearning of love. the two young creatures, gentle, shy, their souls tinged with melancholy, are drawn towards one another by an ineluctable mutual attraction. yet, though their hearts are filled to overflowing, not a word of affection is uttered. their love reveals itself to us even as to themselves, without a loud and jarring declaration, through its very speechlessness, as it were. the situation well bears out the _roi sage_ in _alladine et palomides_: "there is a moment when souls touch one another and know everything without a need of our opening the lips." there are still other scenes in this play so tense with emotion that words would be intrusive and dissonant. there is that lovely picture of mélisande at the window; pélléas cannot reach up to her hand, but is satisfied to feel her loosened hair about his face. it is a question whether even that immortal love duet in "romeo and juliet" casts a poetic spell more enchanting than this. at another moment in the drama, we behold the lovers in maeterlinck's beloved half-light, softly weeping as they stare with speechless rapture into the flames. and not until the final parting does any word of love pass their lips. in another part of the play goland, mélisande's aging husband, who suspects his young stepbrother, pélléas, of loving mélisande, conducts him to an underground chamber. we are not told why he has brought him there, and why he has led him to the brink of the pitfall from which there mounts a smell of death. if it be a heinous deed he is brooding, why does he pause in its execution? his terrible struggle does not reveal itself through speech, yet it is eloquently expressed in the wildness of his looks, the trembling of his voice, and the sudden anguished outcry: "pélléas! pélléas!" evidently maeterlinck completely achieves the very purpose to which the so-called futurists think they must sacrifice all traditional conceptions of art; and achieves it without any brutal stripping and skinning of the poetic subject, without the hideous exhibition of its _disjecta membra_, and above all, without that implied disqualification for the higher artistic mission which alone could induce a man to limit his service to the dishing-up of chunks and collops, "cubic" or amorphous. in recognition of a certain tendency towards mannerism that lay in his technique, maeterlinck, in a spirit of self-persiflage, labeled the book of one-act plays which he next published, (1894), _trois petits drames pour marionettes_ ("three little puppet plays"). they are entitled, severally: _alladine et palomides_, _intérieur_, and _la mort de tintagiles_. while in motifs and materials as well as in the principal points of style these playlets present a sort of epitome of his artistic progression up to date, they also display some new and significant qualities. of the three the first named is most replete with suggestive symbolism and at the same time most remindful of the older plays, especially of "pélléas and mélisande." king ablamore is in character and demeanor clearly a counterpart of king arkel. to be sure he makes a temporary stand against the might of fate, but his resistance is meek and futile, and his wisdom culminates in the same old fatalistic formula: "_je sais qu'on ne fait pas ce que l'on voudrait faire._" _l'intérieur_ ("home") handles a theme almost identical with that of _l'intruse_: life and death separated only by a thin pane of glass,--the sudden advent of affliction from a cloudless sky. in this little tragedy a family scene, enacted in "dumb show," is watched from the outside. the play is without suspense in the customary use of the term, since after the first whispered conversation between the bringers of the fateful tidings the audience is fully aware of the whole story:--the daughter of the house, for whose return the little group is waiting, has been found dead in the river. the quiescent mood is sustained to the end; no great outburst of lamentation; the curtain drops the instant the news has been conveyed. but the poignancy of the tragic strain is only enhanced by the repression of an exciting climax. "the death of tintagiles" repeats in a still more harrowing form the fearful predicament of a helpless child treated with so much dramatic tension in maeterlinck's first tragedy. again, as in "princess maleine," the action of this dramolet attains its high point in a scene where murderous treachery is about to spring the trap set for an innocent young prince. intuitively he senses the approach of death, and in vain beats his little fists against the door that imprisons him. the situation is rendered more piteous even than in the earlier treatment of the motif, because the door which bars his escape also prevents his faithful sister ygraine from coming to the rescue. we have observed in all the plays so far a marked simplicity of construction. _aglavaine et selysette_, (1896), denotes a still further simplification. here the scenic apparatus is reduced to the very minimum, and the psychological premises are correspondingly plain. the story presents a "triangular" love entanglement strangely free from the sensual ingredient; two women dream of sharing, in all purity, one lover--and the dream ends for one of them in heroic self-sacrifice brought to secure the happiness of the rival. however, more noteworthy than the structure of the plot is the fact that the philosophic current flowing through it has perceptibly altered its habitual direction. the spiritual tendency is felt to be turning in its course, and even though fatalism still holds the rule, with slowly relaxing grip, yet a changed ethical outlook is manifest. also, this play for the first time proclaims, though in no vociferous manner, the duty of the individual toward himself, the duty so emphatically proclaimed by two of maeterlinck's greatest teachers, ralph waldo emerson and henrik ibsen. * * * * * the inner philosophic conflict was but of short duration. in 1898 _la sagesse et la destinée_ ("wisdom and destiny") saw the light. the metaphor might be taken in a meaning higher and more precise than the customary, for, coming to this book from those that preceded is indeed like emerging from some dark and dismal cave into the warm and cheering light of the sun. "wisdom and destiny" is a collection of essays and aphorisms which stands to this second phase of maeterlinck's dramaturgy in a relation closely analogous to that existing between "the treasure of the humble" and the works heretofore surveyed. without amounting to a wholesale recantation of the idea that is central in the earlier set of essays, the message of the newer set is of a very different kind. the author of "wisdom and destiny" has not changed his view touching the superiority of the intuitional function over the intellectual. the significant difference between the old belief and the new consists simply in this: the latent force of life is no longer imagined as an antagonistic agency; rather it is conceived as a benign energy that makes for a serene acceptance of the world that is. of this turn in the outlook, the philosophic affirmation of life and the consent of the will to subserve the business of living are the salutary concomitants. wisdom, in expanding, has burst the prison of fatalism and given freedom to vision. the world, beheld in the light of this emancipation, is not to be shunned by the wise man. let fortune bring what she will, he can strip his afflictions of their terrors by transmuting them into higher knowledge. therefore, pain and suffering need not be feared and shirked; they may even be hailed with satisfaction, for, as is paradoxically suggested in _aglavaine et selysette_, they help man "_être heureux en devenant plus triste_,"--to be happy in becoming sadder. the poet, who till now had clung to the conviction that there can be no happy fate, that all our destinies are guided by unlucky stars, now on the contrary persuades us to consider how even calamity may be refined in the medium of wisdom in such fashion as to become an asset of life, and warns us against recoiling in spirit from any reverse of our fortunes. he holds that blows and sorrows cannot undo the sage. fate has no weapons save those we supply, and "wise is he for whom even the evil must feed the pyre of love." in fine, fate obeys him who dares to command it. after all, then, man has a right to appoint himself the captain of his soul, the master of his fate. yet, for all that, the author of "wisdom and destiny" should not be regarded as the partizan and apologist of sadness for the sake of wisdom. if sorrow be a rich mine of satisfaction, joy is by far the richer mine. this new outlook becomes more and more optimistic because of the increasing faculty of such a philosophy to extract from the mixed offerings of life a more near-at-hand happiness than sufferings can possibly afford; not perchance that perpetual grinning merriment over the comicality of the passing spectacle which with so many passes for a "sense of humor," but rather a calm and serious realization of what is lastingly beautiful, good, and true. a person's attainment of this beatitude imposes on him the clear duty of helping others to rise to a similar exalted level of existence. and this duty maeterlinck seeks to discharge by proclaiming in jubilant accents the concrete reality of happiness. _l'oiseau bleu_ ("the blue bird"), above all other works, illustrates the fact that human lives suffer not so much for the lack of happiness as for the want of being clearly conscious of the happiness they possess. it is seen that the seed of optimism in "the treasure of the humble" has sprouted and spread out, and at last triumphantly shot forth through the overlaying fatalism. the newly converted, hence all the more thoroughgoing, optimist, believing that counsel and consolation can come only from those who trust in the regenerative power of hope, throws himself into a mental attitude akin to that of the christian scientist, and confidently proceeds to cure the ills of human kind by a categorical denial of their existence. or perhaps it would be more just to say of maeterlinck's latter-day outlook, the serenity of which even the frightful experience of the present time has failed to destroy, that instead of peremptorily negating evil, he merely denies its supremacy. all about him he perceives in the midst of the worst wrongs and evils many fertile germs of righteousness; vice itself seems to distil its own antitoxin. together with maeterlinck's optimistic strain, his individualism gains an unexpected emphasis. "before one exists for others, one must exist for one's self. the egoism of a strong and clear-sighted soul is of a more beneficent effect than all the devotion of a blind and feeble soul." here we have a promulgation identical in gist with emerson's unqualified declaration of moral independence when he says: "whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. he who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. no law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."(8) (8) "self-reliance." his attitude of countenancing the positive joys of living causes maeterlinck in his later career to reverse his former judgment, and to inveigh, much in the manner of nietzsche, against the "parasitical virtues." "certain notions about resignation and self-sacrifice sap the finest moral forces of mankind more thoroughly than do great vices and even crimes. the alleged triumphs over the flesh are in most cases only complete defeats of life." when to such rebellious sentiments is joined an explicit warning against the seductions and intimidations held out by the official religions--their sugar plums and dog whips, as maeterlinck puts it--one can only wonder how his writings escaped as long as they did the attention of the authorities that swing the power of imprimatur and anathema. maeterlinck may not be classed unreservedly as a radical individualist. for whereas a philosophy like that of nietzsche takes no account of the "much-too-many," who according to that great fantasist do not interest anybody except the statistician and the devil, maeterlinck realizes the supreme importance of the great mass as the ordained transmitters of civilization. the gulf between aristocratic subjectivism, devoted single-mindedly to the ruthless enforcement of self-interest, and, on the other hand, a self-forgetful social enthusiasm, is bridged in maeterlinck by an extremely strong instinct for justice and, moreover, by his firm belief--at least for the time being--that the same strong instinct exists universally as a specific trait of human nature. by such a philosophy justice, then, is discerned not as a supra-natural function, but as a function of human nature as distinguished from nature at large. the restriction is made necessary by our knowledge of the observable operations of nature. in particular would the principle of heredity seem to argue against the reign of justice in the administration of human destinies, inasmuch as we find ourselves quite unable to recognize in the apportionment of pleasure and pain anything like a due ratio of merit. and yet maeterlinck realizes that perhaps nature measures life with a larger standard than the individual's short span of existence, and warns us in his essay on "justice" not to indulge our self-conceit in a specious emulation of ways that are utterly beyond our comprehension. after all, then, our poet-philosopher succeeds _foro conscientiæ_ in reconciling his cult of self with devotion to the common interest. morality, in that essay, is defined as the co-ordination of personal desire to the task assigned by nature to the race. and is it not true that a contrary, that is, ascetic concept of morality reduces itself to absurdity through its antagonism to that primal human instinct that makes for the continuity of life? * * * * * from the compromise effected between two fairly opposite ethical principles, there emerges in the works of this period something akin to a socialistic tendency. it is organically related to the mystical prepossession of the author's manner of thinking. maeterlinck gratefully acknowledges that by the search-light of science the uppermost layers of darkness have been dispelled; but realizes also that the deep-seated central enigma still remains in darkness: as much as ever are the primordial causes sealed against a glimpse of finite knowledge. we have changed the names, not the problems. instead of god, providence, or fate, we say nature, selection, and heredity. but in reality do we know more concerning life than did our ancestors? what, then, questions the persevering pursuer of the final verities, shall we do in order that we may press nearer to truth? may we not perchance steep our souls in light that flows from another source than science? and what purer light is there to illumine us than the halo surrounding a contented worker performing his task, not under coercion, but from a voluntary, or it may be instinctive, submission to the law of life? if such subordination of self constitutes the basis of rational living, we shall do well to study its workings on a lowlier and less complicated plane than the human; for instance, in the behavior of the creature that is proverbial for its unflagging industry. for this industry is not motivated by immediate or selfish wants; it springs from instinctive self-dedication to the common cause. some people expected from _la vie des abeilles_ ("the life of the bee"), (1901), much brand-new information about matters of apiculture. but in spite of his twenty-five years' experience, maeterlinck had no startling discoveries to convey to his fellow-hivers. his book on bees is not primarily the result of a specialist's investigations but a poetical record of the observations made by a mind at once romantic and philosophical and strongly attracted to the study of this particular form of community life, because by its organization on a miniature scale it spreads before the student of society a synoptic view of human affairs. of the great change that had by now taken place in his conception of life, maeterlinck was fully cognizant, and made no concealment of it. in the essay on "justice" he says, with reference to his earlier dramas: "the motive of these little plays was the fear of the unknown by which we are constantly surrounded," and passes on to describe his religious temper as a sort of compound of the christian idea of god with the antique idea of fate, immersed in the profound gloom of hopeless mystery. "the unknown took chiefly the aspect of a power, itself but blindly groping in the dark, yet disposing with inexorable unfeelingness of the fates of men." evidently those same plays are passed once more in self-critical review in _ardiane et barbe-bleue_ ("ardiane and blue-beard"), (1899), notwithstanding the fact that the author disclaims any philosophic purpose and presents his work as a mere libretto. we cannot regard it as purely accidental that of blue-beard's terror-stricken wives, four,--selysette, mélisande, ygraine, alladine,--bear the names of earlier heroines, and, besides, that each of these retains with the name also the character of her namesake. the symbolism is too transparent. the child-wives of the cruel knight, forever in a state of trembling fear, are too passive to extricate themselves from their fate, whereas ardiane succeeds instantly in breaking her captivity, because she has the spirit and strength to shatter the window and let in the light and air. the contrast between her resolute personality and those five inert bundles of misery undoubtedly connotes the difference between the author's paralyzing fatalism in the past and his present dynamic optimism. a like contrast between dejection and resilience would be brought to light by a comparison of the twelve lyric poems, _douze chansons_, (1897), with the _serres chaudes_. the mood is still greatly subdued; the new poetry is by no means free from sadness and a strain of resignation. but the half-stifled despair that cries out from the older book returns no dissonant echo in the new. even his dramatic technique comes under the sway of maeterlinck's altered view of the world. the far freer use of exciting and eventful action testifies to increased elasticity and force. this is a marked feature of _soeur beatrice_ ("sister beatrice"), (1900), a miracle play founded on the old story about the recreant nun who, broken from sin and misery, returns to the cloister and finds that during the many years of her absence her part and person have been carried out by the holy virgin herself. equally, the three other dramas of this epoch--_aglavaine et selysette_, _monna vanna_, and _joyzelle_--are highly available for scenic enactment. of the three, _monna vanna_, (1902), in particular is conspicuous for a wholly unexpected aptitude of characterization, and for the unsurpassed intensity of its situations, which in this isolated case are not cast in a single mood as in the other plays, but are individually distinct and full of dramatic progress, whereas everywhere else the action moves rather sluggishly. "monna vanna" is one of the most brilliantly actable plays of modern times, despite its improbability. a certain incongruity between the realistic and the romantic aspects in the behavior of the principals is saved from offensiveness by a disposition on the part of the spectator to refer it, unhistorically, to the provenience of the story. but as a matter of fact the actors are not fifteenth century renaissance men and women at all, but mystics, modern mystics at that, both in their reasoning and their morality. it is under a cryptical soul-compulsion that giovanna goes forth to the unknown condottiere prepared to lay down her honor for the salvation of her people, and that her husband at last conquers his repugnance to her going. prinzivalle, guido, marco, are mystics even to a higher degree than vanna. the poignant actualism of "monna vanna" lies, however, in the author's frank sympathy with a distinctively modern zest for freedom. the situation between husband and wife is reminiscent of "a doll's house" in the greedily possessive quality of guido's affection, with which quality his tyrannous unbelief in prinzivalle's magnanimity fully accords. but maeterlinck here goes a step beyond ibsen. in her married life with guido, vanna was meekly contented, "at least as happy as one can be when one has renounced the vague and extravagant dreams which seem beyond human life." when the crisis arrives she realizes that "it is never too late for one who has found a love that can fill a life." her final rebellion is sanctioned by the author, who unmistakably endorses the venerable marco's profession of faith that life is always in the right. "joyzelle," (1903), inferior to "monna vanna" dramaturgically, and in form the most distinctly fantastic of all maeterlinck's productions, is still farther removed from the fatalistic atmosphere. this play sounds, as the author himself has stated, "the triumph of will and love over destiny or fatality," as against the converse lesson of _monna vanna_. the idea is symbolically expressed in the temptations of lanceor and in the liberation of joyzelle and her lover from the power of merlin and his familiar, arielle, who impersonates the secret forces of the heart. _aglavaine et selysette_, _monna vanna_, and _joyzelle_ mark by still another sign the advent of a new phase in maeterlinck's evolution; namely, by the characterization of the heroines. previously, the women in his plays were hardly individualized and none of them can be said to possess a physiognomy strictly her own. maeterlinck had returned with great partiality again and again to the same type of woman: languid and listless, without stamina and strength, yet at the same time full of deep feeling, and capable of unending devotion--pathetic incorporeal figures feeling their way along without the light of self-consciousness, like some pre-raphaelite species of somnambulists. in the new plays, on the contrary, women of a courageous and venturesome spirit and with a self-possessive assurance are portrayed by preference and with unmistakable approval. as the technique in the more recent creations of maeterlinck, so the diction, too, accommodates itself to altered tendencies. whereas formerly the colloquy was abrupt and fragmentary, it is now couched in cadenced, flowing language, which, nevertheless, preserves the old-time simplicity. the poet himself has criticized his former dialogue. he said it made those figures seem like deaf people walking in their sleep, whom somebody is endeavoring to arouse from a heavy dream. * * * * * for the limited purpose of this sketch it is not needful to enter into a detailed discussion of maeterlinck's latest productions, since such lines as they add to his philosophical and artistic physiognomy have been traced beforehand. his literary output for the last dozen years or so is embodied in six or seven volumes: about two years to a book seems to be his normal ratio of achievement, the same as was so regularly observed by henrik ibsen, and one that seems rather suitable for an author whose reserve, dictated by a profound artistic and moral conscience, like his actual performance, calls for admiration and gratitude. during the war he has written, or at least published, very little. it is fairly safe to assume that the emotional experience of this harrowing period will control his future philosophy as its most potent factor; equally safe is it to predict, on the strength of his published utterances, that his comprehensive humanity, that has been put to such a severe test, will pass unscathed through the ordeal. of the last group of maeterlinck's works only two are dramas, namely, "the blue bird," (1909), and "mary magdalene," (1910). the baffling symbolism of "the blue bird" has not stood in the way of a tremendous international stage success; the fact is due much less to the simple line of thought that runs through the puzzle than to the exuberant fancy that gave rise to it and its splendid scenical elaboration. probably mr. henry rose is right, in his helpful analysis of "the blue bird," in venturing the assertion that "by those who are familiar with swedenborg's teaching 'the blue bird' must be recognized as to a very large extent written on lines which are in accordance with what is known as the science of correspondences--a very important part of swedenborg's teachings." but the understanding of this symbolism in its fullness offers very great difficulties. that a definite and consistent meaning underlies all its features will be rather felt than comprehended by the great majority who surely cannot be expected to go to the trouble first of familiarizing themselves with maeterlinck's alleged code of symbols and then of applying it meticulously to the interpretation of his plays. "mary magdalene," judged from the dramatic point of view, is a quite impressive tragedy, yet a full and sufficient treatment of the very suggestive scriptural legend it is not. the converted courtezan is characterized too abstractly. instead of presenting herself as a woman consumed with blazing sensuality but in whom the erotic fire is transmuted into religious passion, she affects us like an enacted commentary upon such a most extraordinary experience. finally, there are several volumes of essays, to some of which reference has already been made.(9) _le temple enseveli_ ("the buried temple"), (1902), consists of six disquisitions, all dealing with metaphysical subjects: justice, the evolution of mystery, the reign of matter, the past, chance, the future. _le double jardin_ ("the double garden"), (1904), is much more miscellaneous in its makeup. these are its heterogeneous subjects: the death of a little dog, monte carlo, a ride in a motor car, dueling, the angry temper of the bees, universal suffrage, the modern drama, the sources of spring, death and the crown (a discussion upon the fatal illness of edward vii), a view of rome, field flowers, chrysanthemums, old-fashioned flowers, sincerity, the portrait of woman, and olive branches (a survey of certain now, alas, obsolete ethical movements of that day). _l'intelligence des fleurs_ (in the translation it is named "life and flowers," in an enlarged issue "the measure of the hours," both 1907), takes up, besides the theme of the general caption, the manufacture of perfumes, the various instruments for measuring time, the psychology of accident, social duty, war, prize-fighting, and "king lear." in 1912, three essays on emerson, novalis, and ruysbroeck appeared collectively, in english, under the title "on emerson and other essays." these originally prefaced certain works of those writers translated by maeterlinck in his earlier years. (9) considerable liberty has been taken by maeterlinck in the grouping and naming of his essay upon their republication in the several collections. the confusion caused thereby is greatly increased by the deviation of some of the translated editions from the original volumes as to the sequence of articles, the individual and collective titles, and even the contents themselves. maeterlinck's most recent publications are _la mort_ (published in english in a considerably extended collection under the title "our eternity"), (1913), "the unknown guest," (1914), and _les débris de la guerre_ ("the wrack of the storm"), (1916).(10) the two first named, having for their central subject death and the great concomitant problem of the life beyond, show that the author has become greatly interested in psychical research; he even goes so far as to affirm his belief in precognition. in these essays, theosophy and spiritism and kindred occult theories are carefully analyzed, yet ingenious as are the author's speculations, they leave anything like a solution of the perplexing riddles far afield. on the whole he inclines to a telepathic explanation of the psychical phenomena, yet thinks they may be due to the strivings of the cosmic intelligence after fresh outlets, and believes that a careful and persistent investigation of these phenomena may open up hitherto undreamt of realms of reality. in general, we find him on many points less assertive than he was in the beginning and inclined to a general retrenchment of the dogmatic element in his philosophic attitude. a significant passage in "the buried treasure" teaches us not to deplore the loss of fixed beliefs. "one should never look back with regret to those hours when a great belief abandons us. a faith that becomes extinct, a means that fails, a dominant idea that no longer dominates us because we think it is our turn to dominate it--these things prove that we are living, that we are progressing, that we are using up a great many things because we are not standing still." of the gloomy fatalism of his literary beginnings hardly a trace is to be found in the maeterlinck of to-day. his war-book, "the wrack of the storm," breathes a calm optimism in the face of untold disaster. the will of man is put above the power of fate. "is it possible that fatality--by which i mean what perhaps for a moment was the unacknowledged desire of the planet--shall not regain the upper hand? at the stage which man has reached, i hope and believe so.... everything seems to tell us that man is approaching the day whereon, seizing the most glorious opportunity that has ever presented itself since he acquired a consciousness, he will at last learn that he is able, when he pleases, to control his whole fate in this world."(11) his faith in humanity is built on the heroic virtues displayed in this war. "to-day, not only do we know that these virtues exist: we have taught the world that they are always triumphant, that nothing is lost while faith is left, while honor is intact, while love continues, while the soul does not surrender." ... death itself is now threatened with extinction by our heroic race: "the more it exercises its ravages, the more it increases the intensity of that which it cannot touch; the more it pursues its phantom victories, the better does it prove to us that man will end by conquering death." (10) "the light beyond" (1917) is not a new work at all, but merely a combination of parts from "our eternity" and "the wrack of the storm." (11) "the wrack of the storm," p. 144 f. in the concluding chapter of "our eternity," the romantic modification of maeterlinck's mysticism is made patent in his confession regarding the problem of knowledge: "i have added nothing to what was already known. i have simply tried to separate what may be true from that which is assuredly not true.... perhaps through our quest for that undiscoverable truth we shall have accustomed our eyes to pierce the terror of the last hour by looking it full in the face.... we need have no hope that any one will utter on this earth the word that shall put an end to our uncertainties. it is very probable, on the contrary, that no one in this world, nor perhaps in the next, will discover the great secret of the universe. and ... it is most fortunate that it should be so. we have not only to resign ourselves to living in the incomprehensible, but to rejoice that we cannot get out of it. if there were no more insoluble questions ... infinity would not be infinite; and then we should have forever to curse the fate that placed us in a universe proportionate to our intelligence. the unknown and the unknowable are necessary and will perhaps always be necessary to our happiness. in any case, i would not wish my worst enemy, were his understanding a thousandfold loftier and a thousandfold mightier than mine, to be condemned eternally to inhabit a world of which he had surprised an essential secret...."(12) (12) quoted from the excellent translation by a. t. de mattos. so the final word of maeterlinck's philosophy, after a lifetime of ardent search, clears up none of the tantalizing secrets of our existence. and yet somehow it bears a message that is full of consolation. the value of human life lies in the perpetual movement towards a receding goal. whoever can identify himself with such a philosophy and accept its great practical lesson, that we shall never reach knowledge but acquire wisdom in the pursuit, should be able to envisage the veiled countenance of truth without despair, and even to face with some courage the eternal problem of our being, its reason and its destination. ii the eccentricity of august strindberg one cannot speak of august strindberg with much _gusto_. the most broadminded critic will find himself under necessity to disapprove of him as a man and to condemn so many features of his production that almost one might question his fitness as a subject of literary discussion. nevertheless, his importance is beyond dispute and quite above the consideration of personal like or dislike, whether we view him in his creative capacity,--as an intellectual and ethical spokesman of his time,--or in his human character,--as a typical case of certain mental and moral maladies which somehow during his time were more or less epidemic throughout the lettered world. we have it on excellent authority that at his début in the literary theatre he made the stage quake with the elemental power of his personality. gigantic rebels like ibsen, bjoernson, nietzsche, and tolstoy, we are told, dwindled to normal proportions beside his titanic stature. he aimed to conquer and convert the whole world by his fanatical protest against the rotten civilization of his time. the attempt proved an utter failure. he never could grow into a world-figure, because he lacked the courage as well as the cosmopolitan adaptability needed for intellectual expatriation. hence, in great contrast to ibsen, he remained to europe at large the uncouth scandinavian, while in the eyes of scandinavia he was specifically the swede; and his country-men, even though they acknowledged him their premier poet, treated him, because of his eccentricity, as a national gazing-stock rather than as a genuine national asset. yet for all that, he ranks as the foremost writer of his country and one of the representative men of the age. his poetic genius is admitted by practically all the critics, while the greatest among them, george brandes, pronounces him in addition an unsurpassed master in the command of his mother tongue. but his position as a writer is by no means limited to his own little country. for his works have been translated into all civilized languages, and if the circulation of literary products is a safe indication of their influence, then several of strindberg's books at least must be credited with having done something toward shaping the thought of our time upon some of its leading issues. in any case, the large and durable interest shown his productions marks strindberg as a literary phenomenon of sufficient consequence to deserve some study. readers of strindberg who seek to discover the reason why criticism should have devoted so much attention to an author regarded almost universally with strong disapproval and aversion, will find that reason most probably in the extreme subjectiveness that dominates everything he has written; personal confession, novels, stories, and plays alike share this equality, and even in his historical dramas the figures, despite the minute accuracy of their delineation, are moved by the author's passion, not their own. rarely, if ever, has a writer of eminence demonstrated a similar incapacity to reproduce the thoughts and feelings of other people. it has been rightly declared that all his leading characters are merely the outward projections of his own sentiments and ideas,--that at bottom he, august strindberg, is the sole protagonist in all his dramaturgy and fiction. strindberg was a man with an omnivorous intellectual curiosity, and he commanded a vast store of knowledge in the fields of history, science, and languages. his "history of the swedish people" is recognized by competent judges as a very brilliant and scholarly performance. before he was launched in his literary career, and while still obscurely employed as minor assistant at a library, he earned distinction as a student of the chinese language, and one product of his research work in that field was even deemed worthy of being read before the _académie des inscriptions et belles lettres_. in geology, chemistry, botany, he was equally productive. but the taint of eccentricity in his mental fibre prevented his imposing scientific accomplishments from maintaining him in a state of intellectual equilibrium. he laid as much store by things of which he had a mere smattering as by those on which he was an authority, and his resultant unsteadiness caused him to oscillate between opposite scientific enthusiasms even as his self-contradictory personal character involved him in abrupt changes of position, and made him jump from one extreme of behavior to the other. * * * * * strindberg first attracted public notice by the appearance in 1879 of a novel named "the red room." its effect upon a country characterized by so keen an observer as george brandes as perhaps the most conservative in europe resembled the excitement caused by schiller's "the robbers" almost precisely one hundred years before. it stirred up enough dust to change, though not to cleanse, the musty atmosphere of philistia. for here was instantly recognized the challenge of a radical spirit uprisen in full and ruthless rebellion against each and every time-hallowed usage and tradition. the recollection of that hot-spur agitator bent with every particle of his strength to rouse the world up from its lethargy by his stentorian "j'accuse" and to pass sentence upon it by sheer tremendous vociferation, is almost entirely obliterated to-day by the remembrance of quite another strindberg:--the erstwhile stormy idealist changed into a leering cynic; a repulsive embodiment of negation, a grimacing mephistopheles who denies life and light or anything that he cannot comprehend, and to whom the face of the earth appears forever covered with darkness and filth and death and corruption. indeed this final depictment of august strindberg, whether or no it be accurately true to life, is a terrible example of what life can make of a man, or a man of his life, if he is neither light enough to be borne by the current of his time, nor strong enough to set his face against the tide and breast it. the question is, naturally, was strindberg sincere in the fanatical insurgency of his earlier period, or was his attitude merely a theatrical pose and his social enthusiasm a ranting declamation? in either case, there opens up this other question: have we reason to doubt the sincerity of the mental changes that were yet to follow,--the genuineness of his pessimism, occultism, and, in the final stage, of his religious conversion? his unexampled hardihood in reversing his opinions and going dead against his convictions could be illustrated in nearly every sphere of thought. at one time a glowing admirer of rousseau and loudly professing his gospel of nature, he forsook this allegiance, and chose as his new idol rousseau's very antipode, voltaire. for many years he was a democrat of the purest water, identified himself with the proletarian cause, and acted as the fiery champion of the poor labor-driven masses against their oppressors; but one fine day, no matter whether it came about directly through his contact with nietzsche or otherwise, he repudiated socialism, scornfully denouncing it as a tattered remnant of his cast-off christianity, and arrayed himself on the side of the elect, or self-elect, against the "common herd," the "much-too-many." license for the best to govern the rest, became temporarily his battle-cry; and his political ideal suggested nothing less completely absurd than a republic presided over by an oligarchy of autocrats. his unsurpassed reputation as an anti-feminist would hardly prepare us to find his earlier works fairly aglow with sympathy for the woman cause. he held at one time, as did tolstoy, that art and poetry have a detrimental effect upon the natural character; for which reason the peasant is a more normal being than the lettered man. especially was he set against the drama, on the ground that it throws the public mind into confusion by its failure to differentiate sharply between the author's own opinions and those of the characters. literature, he held, should pattern itself after a serious newspaper: it should seek to influence, not entertain. not only did he drop this pedantic restriction of literature in the end, but in his own practice he had always defied it, because, despite his fierce campaign against art, he could not overcome the force of his artistic impulses. and so in other provinces of thought, too, he reversed his judgment with a temerity and swiftness that greatly offended the feelings and perplexed the intelligence of his followers for the time being and justified the question whether strindberg had any principles at all. in politics he was by quick turns anarchist and socialist, radical and conservative, republican and aristocrat, communist and egoist; in religion, pietist, protestant, deist, atheist, occultist, and roman catholic. and yet unquestionably he was honest. to blame him merely because he changed his views, and be it never so radically, would be blaming a man for exercising his right to develop. in any man of influence, an unalterable permanency of opinion would be even more objectionable than a frequent shift of his point of view. in recent times the presumable length of a person's intellectual usefulness has been a live subject of discussion which has resulted in some legislation of very questionable wisdom, for instance the setting of an arbitrary age limit for the active service of high-grade teachers. in actual experience men are too old to teach, or through any other function to move the minds of younger people in a forward direction, whenever they have lost the ability to change their own mind. yet at all events, an eminent author's right of self-reversal must not be exercised at random; he should refrain from the propagation of new opinions that have not ripened within himself. which is the same as saying that he should stick to his old opinions until he finds himself inwardly compelled to abandon them. but as a matter of fact, a man like strindberg, propelled by an unbridled imagination, alert with romantic tendencies, nervously overstrung, kept constantly under a strain by his morbidly sensitive temperament,--and whose brain is consequently a seething chaos of conflicting ideas, is never put to the necessity of changing his mind; his mind keeps changing itself. it must be as difficult for the literary historian to do strindberg full justice as it was for the great eccentric himself; when in taking stock, as it were, of his mental equipment, during one of his protracted periods of despondency, he summed himself up in the following picturesque simile: "a monstrous conglomeration, changing its forms according to the observer's point of view and possessing no more reality than the rainbow that is visible to the eyes and yet does not exist." his evolution may be tracked, however, in the detailed autobiography in which he undertook, by a rigorous application of hippolyte taine's well-known theory and method, to account for his temperamental peculiarities on the basis of heredity and the milieu and to describe the gradual transformation of his character through education and the external pressure of contemporary intellectual movements. this remarkable work is like a picture book of ideals undermined, hollowed, and shattered; a perverse compound of cynicism and passion, it is unspeakably loathsome to the sense of beauty and yet, in the last artistic reckoning, not without great beauty of its own. it divides the story of strindberg's life into these consecutive parts: the son of the servant; the author; the evolution of a soul; the confession of a fool; inferno; legends; the rupture; alone. the very titles signalize the brutal frankness, or, shall we say, terrible sincerity of a tale that rummages without piety among the most sacred privacies, and drags forth from intimate nooks and corners sorrow and squalor and shame enough to have wrecked a dozen average existences. there is no mistaking or evading the challenge hurled by this story: see me as i am, stripped of conventional lies and pretensions! look upon my naked soul, covered with scars and open sores. behold me in my spasms of love and hate, now in demoniacal transports, now prostrate with anguish! and if you want to know how i came to be what i am, consider my ancestry, my bringing up, my social environment, and be sure also to pocket your own due share of the blame for my destruction!--certainly strindberg's autobiography is not to be recommended as a graduation gift for convent-bred young ladies, or as a soothing diversion for convalescents, but if accepted in a proper sense, it will be found absorbing, informative, and even helpful. strindberg never forgave his father for having married below his station. he felt that the good blood of the strindbergs,--respectable merchants and ministers and country gentlemen,--was worsened by the proletarian strain imported into it through a working girl named eleonore ulrike norling, the mother of august strindberg and his eleven brothers and sisters. during august's childhood the family lived in extremely straitened circumstances. when a dozen people live cooped up in three rooms, some of them are more than likely to have the joy of youth crushed out of them and crowded from the premises. here was the first evil that darkened strindberg's life: he simply was cheated out of his childhood. school was no happier place for him than home. his inordinate pride, only sharpened by the consciousness of his parents' poverty which bordered on pauperism, threw him into a state of perpetual rebellion against comrades and teachers. and all this time his inner life was tossed hither and thither by a general intellectual and emotional restlessness due to an insatiable craving for knowledge. at fifteen years of age he had reached a full conviction on the irredeemable evilness of life; and concluded, in a moment of religious exaltation, to dedicate his own earthly existence to the vicarious expiation of universal sin through the mortification of the flesh. then, of a sudden, he became a voracious reader of rationalistic literature, and turned atheist with almost inconceivable dispatch, but soon was forced back by remorse into the pietistic frame of mind,--only to pass through another reaction immediately after. at this time he claims that earthly life is a punishment or a probation; but that it lies in man's power to make it endurable by freeing himself from the social restraints. he has become a convert to the fantastic doctrine of jean jacques rousseau, that man is good by nature but has been depraved by civilization. now in his earliest twenties, he embraces communism with all its implications,--free love, state parenthood, public ownership of utilities, equal division of the fruits of labor, and so forth,--as the sole and sure means of salvation for humanity. in the "swiss stories," subtitled "utopias in reality,"(13) strindberg demonstrated to his own satisfaction the smooth and practical workings of that doctrine. it was difficult for him to understand why the major part of the world seemed so hesitant about adopting so tempting and equitable a scheme of living. yet, for his own person, too, he soon disavowed socialism, because under a socialistic régime the individual would be liable to have his ideas put into uniform, and the remotest threat of interference with his freedom of thought was something this fanatical apostle of liberty could not brook. (13) the stories deal among other things with the harmonious communal life in godin's _phalanstère_. strindberg wrote two descriptions of it, one before, the other after visiting the colony. in the preface to the "utopias," he had referred to himself as "a convinced socialist, like all sensible people"; whereas now he writes: "idealism and socialism are two maladies born of laziness." having thus scientifically diagnosed the disease and prescribed the one true specific for it, namely--how simple!--the total abolition of the industries, he resumes the preaching of rousseauism in its simon-pure form, orders every man to be his maid-of-all-work and jack-of-all-trades, puts the world on a vegetarian diet, and then wonders why the socialists denounce and revile him as a turncoat and an apostate. * * * * * the biography throws an especially vivid light on strindberg's relation to one of the most important factors of socialism, to wit, the question of woman's rights. his position on this issue is merely a phase of that extreme and practically isolated position in regard to woman in general that has more than any other single element determined the feeling of the public towards him and by consequence fixed his place in contemporary literature. that this should be so is hardly unfair, because no other element has entered so deeply into the structure and fibre of his thought and feeling. strindberg, as has been stated, was not from the outset, or perchance constitutionally, an anti-feminist. in "the red room" he preaches equality of the sexes even in marriage. the thesis of the book is that man and woman are not antagonistic phenomena of life, rather they are modifications of the same phenomenon, made for mutual completion; hence, they can only fulfill their natural destiny through close coöperative comradeship. but there were two facts that prevented strindberg from proceeding farther along this line of thought. one was his incorrigible propensity to contradiction, the other his excessive subjectiveness which kept him busy building up theories on the basis of personal experience. the prodigious feminist movement launched in scandinavia by ibsen and bjoernson was very repugnant to him, because he felt, not without some just reason, that the movement was for a great many people little more than a fad. so long as art and literature are influenced by fashion, so long there will be and should be revolts against the vogue. moreover, strindberg felt that the movement was being carried too far. he was prepared to accompany ibsen some distance on the way of reform, but refused to subscribe to his verdict that the whole blame for our crying social maladjustments rests with the unwillingness of men to allot any rights whatsoever to women. strindberg's play, "sir bengt's wife," printed in 1882, but of much earlier origin, is interpreted by brandes as a symbolical portrayal of feminine life in scandinavia during the author's early manhood. the leading feminine figure, a creature wholly incapable of understanding or appreciating the nobler traits in man, is nevertheless treated with sympathy, on the whole. she is represented,--like selma bratsberg in ibsen's "the league of youth," and nora helmer, in "a doll's house,"--as the typical and normal victim of a partial and unfair training. her faults of judgment and errors of temper are due to the fact so forcefully descanted upon by selma, that women are not permitted to share the interests and anxieties of their husbands. we are expressly informed by strindberg that this drama was intended, in the first place, as an attack upon the romantic proclivities of feminine education; in the second, as an illustration of the power of love to subdue the will; in the third, as a defense of the thesis that woman's love is of a higher quality than man's; and lastly, as a vindication of the right of woman to be her own master. again, in "married" he answers the query, shall women vote? distinctly in the affirmative, although here the fixed idea about the congenital discordance between the sexes, and the identification of love with a struggle for supremacy, has already seized hold of him. to repeat, there was at first nothing absolutely preposterous about strindberg's position in regard to the woman movement. on the contrary, his view might have been endorsed as a not altogether unwholesome corrective for the ruling fashion of dealing with the issue by the advocacy of extremes. but by force of his supervening personal grievance against the sex, strindberg's anti-feminism became in the long run the fixed pole about which gravitated his entire system of social and ethical thought. his campaign against feminism, which otherwise could have served a good purpose by curbing wild militancy, was defeated by its own exaggerations. granting that feminists had gone too far in the denunciation of male brutality and despotism, strindberg went still farther in the opposite direction, when he deliberately set out to lay bare the character of woman by dissecting some of her most diabolical incarnations. as has already been said, he was utterly incapable of objective thinking, and under the sting of his miseries in love and marriage, dislike of woman turned into hatred and hatred into frenzy. henceforth, the entire spectacle of life presented itself to his distorted vision as a perpetual state of war between the sexes: on the one side he saw the male, strong of mind and heart, but in the generosity of strength guileless and over-trustful; on the other side, the female, weak of body and intellect, but shrewd enough to exploit her frailness by linking iniquity to impotence and contriving by her treacherous cunning to enslave her natural superior:--it is the story of samson and delilah made universal in its application. love is shown up as the trap in which man is caught to be shorn of his power. the case against woman is classically drawn up in "the father," one of the strangest and at the same time most powerful tragedies of strindberg. the principals of the plot stand for the typical character difference between the sexes as strindberg sees it; the man being kind-hearted, good-natured, and aspiring, whereas the woman, setting an example for all his succeeding portraits of women, is cunning, though unintelligent and coarse-grained, soulless, yet insanely ambitious and covetous of power. in glaring contrast to the situation made so familiar by ibsen, we here see the man struggling away from the clutches of a woman who declares frankly that she has never looked at a man without feeling conscious of her superiority over him. in this play the man, a person of ideals and real ability, who is none other than strindberg himself in one of his matrimonial predicaments, fails to extricate himself from the snare, and ends--both literally and figuratively--by being put into the straitjacket. without classing strindberg as one of the great world dramatists, it would be narrow-minded, after experiencing the gripping effect of some of his plays, to deny them due recognition, for indeed they would be remarkable for their perspicacity and penetration, even if they were devoid of any value besides. they contain the keenest analyses ever made of the vicious side of feminine character, obtained by specializing, as it were, on the more particularly feminine traits of human depravity. assuredly the procedure is onesided, but the delineation of a single side of life is beyond peradventure a legitimate artistic enterprise as long as it is not palmed upon us as an accurate and complete picture. unfortunately, strindberg's abnormal vision falsifies the things he looks at, and, being steeped in his insuperable prejudice, his pictures of life, in spite of the partial veracity they possess, never rise above the level of caricatures. he was incompetent to pass judgment upon an individual woman separately; to him all women were alike, and that means, all unmitigatedly bad! to the objection raised by one of the characters in "the father": "oh, there are so many kinds of women," the author's mouthpiece makes this clinching answer: "modern investigation has pronounced that there is only one kind." the autobiography of strindberg is largely inspired by his unreasoning hatred of women; the result, in the main, of his three unfortunate ventures into the uncongenial field of matrimony. in its first part, the account of his life is not without some traces of healthy humor, but as the story progresses, his entire philosophy of life becomes more and more aberrant under the increasing pressure of that obsession. he gets beside himself at the mere mention of anything feminine, and blindly hits away, let his bludgeon land where it will; logic, common sense, and common decency go to the floor before his vehement and brutal assault. every woman is a born liar and traitor. her sole aim in life is to thrive parasitically upon the revenue of her favors. since marriage and prostitution cannot provide a living for all, the oversupply now clamor for admission to the work-mart; but they are incompetent and lazy, and inveterate shirkers of responsibility. with triumphant malice he points to the perfidious readiness of woman to perform her tasks by proxy, that is, to delegate them to hired substitutes: her children are tended and taught by governesses and teachers; her garments are made by dressmakers and seamstresses; the duties of her household she unloads on servants,--and from selfish considerations of vanity, comfort, and love of pleasure, she withdraws even from the primary maternal obligation and lets her young be nourished at the breast of a stranger. strindberg in his rage never stops to think that the deputies in these cases,--cooks and housemaids and nurses and so forth,--themselves belong to the female sex, by which fact the impeachment is in large part invalidated. the play bearing the satirical title "comrades" makes a special application of the theory about the pre-established antagonism of the sexes. in a situation similar to that in "the father," husband and wife are shown in a yet sharper antithesis of character: a man of sterling character and ability foiled by a woman in all respects his inferior, yet imperiously determined to dominate him. at first she seems to succeed in her ambition, and in the same measure as she assumes a more and more mannish demeanor, the husband's behavior grows more and more effeminate. but the contest leads to results opposite to those in "the father." here, the man, once he is brought to a full realization of his plight, arouses himself from his apathy, reasserts his manhood, and, in the ensuing fight for supremacy, routs the usurper and comes into his own. the steps by which he passes through revolt from subjection to self-liberation, are cleverly signaled by his outward transformation, as he abandons the womanish style of dressing imposed on him by his wife's whim and indignantly flings into a corner the feminine costume which she would make him wear at the ball. * * * * * leaving aside, then, all question as to their artistic value, strindberg's dramas are deserving of attention as experiments in a fairly unexplored field of analytic psychology. they are the first literary creations of any great importance begotten by such bitter hatred of woman. the anti-feminism of strindberg's predecessors, not excepting that arch-misogynist, arthur schopenhauer himself, sprang from contempt, not from abhorrence and abject fear. in strindberg, misogyny turns into downright gynophobia. to him, woman is not an object of disdain, but the cruel and merciless persecutor of man. in order to disclose the most dangerous traits of the feminine soul, strindberg dissects it by a method that corresponds closely to ibsen's astonishing demonstration of masculine viciousness. the wide-spread dislike for strindberg's dramas is due, in equal parts, to the detestableness of his male characters, and to the optimistic disbelief of the general public in the reality of womanhood as he represents it. strindberg's portraiture of the sex appears as a monstrous slander, principally because no other painter has ever placed the model into the same disadvantageous light, and the authenticity of his pictures is rendered suspicious by their abnormal family resemblance. he was obsessed with the petrifying vision of a uniform cruel selfishness staring out of every woman's face: countess, courtezan, or kitchen maid, all are cast in the same gorgon mold. strindberg's aversion towards women was probably kindled into action, as has already been intimated, by his disgust at the sudden irruption of woman worship into literature; but, as has also been made clear, only the disillusionments and grievances of his private experience hardened that aversion into implacable hatred. at first he simply declined to ally himself with the feminist cult, because the women he knew seemed unworthy of being worshipped,--little vain dolls, frivolous coquettes, and pedants given to domestic tyranny, of such the bulk was made up. under the maddening spur of his personal misfortunes, his feeling passed from weariness to detestation, from detestation to a bitter mixture of fear and furious hate. he conceived it as his supreme mission and central purpose in life to unmask the demon with the angel's face, to tear the drapings from the idol and expose to view the hideous ogress that feeds on the souls of men. woman, in strindberg's works, is a bogy, constructed out of the vilest ingredients that enter into the composition of human nature, with a kind of convulsive life infused by a remnant of great artistic power. and this grewsome fabric of a diseased imagination, like frankenstein's monster, wreaks vengeance on its maker. his own mordant desire for her is the lash that drives him irresistibly to his destruction. it requires no profound psychologic insight to divine in this odious chimera the deplorable abortion of a fine ideal. the distortion of truth emanates in strindberg's work, as it does in any significant satire or caricature, from indignation over the contrast between a lofty conception and a disappointing reality. what, after all, can be the mission of this hard-featured gallery of females,--peevish, sullen, impudent, grasping, violent, lecherous, malignant, and vindictive,--if it is not to mark pravity and debasement with a stigma in the name of a pure and noble womanhood? * * * * * it should not be left unmentioned that we owe to august strindberg some works of great perfection fairly free from the black obsession and with a constructive and consistently idealistic tendency: splendid descriptions of a quaint people and their habitat, tinged with a fine sense of humor, as in "the hemsoe-dwellers"; charming studies of landscape and of floral and animal life, in the "portraits of flowers and animals"; the colossal work on the swedish people, once before referred to, a history conceived and executed in a thoroughly modern scientific spirit; two volumes of "swedish fortunes and adventures"; most of his historic dramas also are of superior order. but these works lie outside the scope of the more specific discussion of strindberg as a mystic and an eccentric to which this sketch is devoted. we may conclude by briefly considering the final phases of strindberg's checkered intellectual career, and by summing up his general significance for the age. it will be recalled that during the middle period of his life, (in 1888), strindberg came into personal touch with nietzsche. the effect of the latter's sensational philosophy is clearly perceptible in the works of that period, notably in "tschandala" and "by the open sea." evidently, nietzsche, at first, was very congenial to him. for both men were extremely aristocratic in their instincts. for a while, strindberg endorsed unqualifiedly the heterodox ethics of the towering paranoiac. for one thing, that philosophy supplied fresh food and fuel to his burning rage against womankind, and that was enough to bribe him into swallowing, for the time being, the entire substance of nietzsche's fantastic doctrine. he took the same ground as nietzsche, that the race had deteriorated in consequence of its sentimentality, namely through the systematic protection of physical and mental inferiority and unchecked procreation of weaklings. he seconded nietzsche's motion that society should exterminate its parasites, instead of pampering them. mankind can only be reinvigorated if the strong and healthy are helped to come into their own. the dreams of the pacifists are fatal to the pragmatic virtues and to the virility of the race. the greatest need is an aggressive campaign for the moral and intellectual sanitation of the world. so let the brain rule over the heart,--and so forth in the same strain. very soon, however, strindberg passed out of the sphere of nietzsche's influence. the alienation was due as much to his general instability as to the disparity between his pessimistic temper and the joyous exaltation of zarathustra-ism. his striking reversion to orthodoxy was by no means illogical. between pessimism and faith there exists a relation that is not very far to seek. when a person has forfeited his peace of soul and cannot find grace before his own conscience, he might clutch as a last hope the promise of vicarious redemption. extending the significance of his own personal experience to everything within his horizon, and erecting a dogmatic system upon this tenuous generalisation, strindberg reached the conviction that the purpose of living is to suffer, a conviction that threw his philosophy well into line with the religious and ethical ideas of the middle age. yet even at this juncture his cynicism did not desert him, as witness this comment of his: "religion must be a punishment, because nobody gets religion who does not have a bad conscience." this avowal preceded his saltatory approach to roman catholicism. in the later volumes of his autobiography he minutely describes the successive crises through which he passed in his agonizing search for certitude and salvation before his spirit found rest in the idea of destiny which formerly to him was synonymous with fate and now became synonymous with providence. "inferno" pictures his existence as a protracted and unbroken nightmare. he turned determinist, then fatalist, then mystic. the most trifling incidents of his daily life were spelt out according to swedenborg's "science of correspondences" and thereby assumed a deep and terrifying significance. in the most trivial events, such as the opening or shutting of a door, or the curve etched by a raindrop on a dusty pane of glass, he perceived intimations from the occult power that directed his life. into the most ordinary occurrence of the day he read a divine order, or threat, or chastisement. he was tormented by terrible dreams and visions; in the guise of ferocious beasts, his own sins agonized his flesh. and in the midst of all these tortures he studied and practised the occult arts: magic, astrology, necromancy, alchemy; he concocted gold by hermetical science! to all appearances utterly deranged, he was still lucid enough at intervals to carry on chemical, botanical, and physiological experiments of legitimate worth. then his reason cleared up once again and put a sudden end to an episode which he has described in these words: "to go in quest of god and to find the devil,--that is what happened to me." he took leave of swedenborg as he had taken leave of nietzsche, yet retained much gratitude for him; the great scandinavian seer had brought him back to god, so he averred, even though the conversion was effected by picturings of horror. "legends," the further continuation of his self-history, shows him vividly at his closest contact with the catholic church. but the most satisfactory portion of the autobiography from a human point of view, and from a literary point perhaps altogether the best thing strindberg has done, is the closing book of the series, entitled "alone." he wrote it at the age of fifty, during a period of comparative tranquillity of mind, and that fact is manifested by the composure and moderation of its style. now at last his storm-tossed soul seems to have found a haven. he accepts his destiny, and resigns himself to believing, since knowledge is barred. but even this state of serenity harbored no permanent peace; it signified merely a temporary suspension of those terrific internal combats. in strindberg's case, religious conversion is not an edifying, but on the contrary a morbid and saddening spectacle; it is equal to a declaration of complete spiritual bankruptcy. he turns to the church after finding all other pathways to god blocked. his type of christianity does not hang together with the labors and struggles of his secular life. a break with his past can be denied to no man; least of all to a leader of men. only, if he has deserted the old road, he should be able to lead in the new; he must have a new message if he sees fit to cancel the old. strindberg, however, has nothing to offer at the end. he stands before us timorous and shrinking, the accuser of his fellows turned self-accuser, a beggar stretching forth empty, trembling hands imploring forgiveness of his sins and the salvation of his soul through gracious mediation. his moral asseverations are either blank truisms, or intellectual aberrations. strindberg has added nothing to the stock of human understanding. a preacher, of course, is not in duty bound to generate original thought. indeed if such were to be exacted, our pulpits would soon be as sparsely peopled as already are the pews. ministers who are wondering hard why so many people stay away from church might well stop to consider whether the reason is not that a large portion of mankind has already secured, theoretically, a religious or ethical basis of life more or less identical with the one which churches content themselves with offering. the greatest religious teacher of modern times, leo tolstoy, was not by any means a bringer of new truths. the true secret of the tremendous power which nevertheless he wielded over the souls of men was that he extended the practical application of what he believed. if, therefore, we look for a lesson in strindberg's life as recited by himself, we shall not find it in his religious conversion. * * * * * taken in its entirety, his voluminous yet fragmentary life history is one of the most painful human documents on record. one can hardly peruse it without asking: was strindberg insane? it is a question which he often put to himself when remorse and self-reproach gnawed at his conscience and when he fancied himself scorned and persecuted by all his former friends. "why are you so hated?" he asks himself in one of his dialogues, and this is his answer: "i could not endure to see mankind suffer, and so i said and wrote: 'free yourselves, i shall help.' and so i said to the poor: 'do not let the rich suck your blood.' and to woman: 'do not let man oppress you.' and to the children: 'do not obey your parents if they are unjust.' the consequences,--well, they are quite incomprehensible; for of a sudden i had both sides against me, rich and poor, men and women, parents and children; add to that sickness and poverty, disgraceful pauperism, my divorce, lawsuits, exile, loneliness, and now, to top the climax,--do you believe that i am insane?" from his ultra-subjective point of view, the explanation here given of the total collapse of his fortunes is fairly accurate, at least in the essential aspects. still, many great men have been pursued by a similar conflux of calamities. overwhelming misfortunes are the surest test of manhood. how high a person bears up his head under the blows of fate is the best gage of his stature. but strindberg, in spite of his colossal physique, was not cast in the heroic mold. the breakdown of his fortunes caused him to turn traitor to himself, to recant and destroy his intellectual past. whether he was actually insane is a question for psychiaters to settle; normal he certainly was not. in medical opinion his modes of reacting to the obstructions and difficulties of the daily life were conclusively symptomatic of neurasthenia. certain obsessive ideas and idiosyncracies of his, closely bordering upon phobia, would seem to indicate grave psychic disorder. his temper and his world-view were indicative of hypochondria: he perceived only the hostile, never the friendly, aspects of events, people, and phenomena. dejectedly he declares: "there is falseness even in the calm air and the sunshine, and i feel that happiness has no place in my lot." destiny had assembled within him all the doubts and pangs of the modern soul, but had neglected to counterpoise them with positive and constructive convictions; so that when his small store of hopes and prospects was exhausted, he broke down from sheer hollowness of heart. he died a recluse, a penitent, and a renegade to all his past ideas and persuasions. evidently, with his large assortment of defects both of character and of intellect, strindberg could not be classed as one of the great constructive minds of our period. viewed in his social importance, he will interest future students of morals chiefly as an agitator, a polemist, and in a fashion, too, as a prophet; by his uniquely aggressive veracity, he rendered a measure of valuable service to his time. but viewed as a creative writer, both of drama and fiction, he has an incontestable claim to our lasting attention. his work shows artistic ability, even though it rarely attains to greatness and is frequently marred by the bizarre qualities of his style. presumably his will be a permanent place in the history of literature, principally because of the extraordinary subjective animation of his work. and perhaps in times less depressed than ours its gloominess may act as a valuable antidote upon the popular prejudice against being serious. his artistic profession of faith certainly should save him from wholesale condemnation. he says in one of his prefaces: "some people have accused my tragedy of being too sad, as though one desired a merry tragedy. people clamor for enjoyment as though enjoyment consisted in being foolish. i find enjoyment in the powerful and terrible struggles of life; and the capability of experiencing something, of learning something, gives me pleasure." the keynote to his literary productions is the cry of the agony of being. every line of his works is written in the shadow of the sorrow of living. in them, all that is most dismal and terrifying and therefore most tragical, becomes articulate. they are propelled by an abysmal pessimism, and because of this fact, since pessimism is one of the mightiest inspiring forces in literature, august strindberg, its foremost spokesman, deserves to be read and understood. iii the exaltation of friedrich nietzsche in these embattled times it is perfectly natural to expect from any discourse on nietzsche's philosophy first of all a statement concerning the relation of that troublesome genius to the origins of the war; and this demand prompts a few candid words on that aspect of the subject at the start. for more than three years the public has been persistently taught by the press to think of friedrich nietzsche mainly as the powerful promoter of a systematic national movement of the german people for the conquest of the world. but there is strong and definite internal evidence in the writings of nietzsche against the assumption that he intentionally aroused a spirit of war or aimed in any way at the world-wide preponderance of germany's type of civilization. nietzsche had a temperamental loathing for everything that is brutal, a loathing which was greatly intensified by his personal contact with the horrors of war while serving as a military nurse in the campaign of 1870. if there were still any one senseless enough to plead the erstwhile popular cause of pan-germanism, he would be likely to find more support for his argument in the writings of the de-gallicized frenchman, count joseph arthur gobineau, or of the germanized englishman, houston stewart chamberlain, than in those of the "hermit of maria-sils," who does not even suggest, let alone advocate, german world-predominance in a single line of all his writings. to couple friedrich nietzsche with heinrich von treitschke as the latter's fellow herald of german ascendancy is truly preposterous. treitschke himself was bitterly and irreconcilably set against the creator of zarathustra,(14) in whom ever since "unzeitgemässe betrachtungen" he had divined "the good european,"--which to the author of the _deutsche geschichte_ meant the bad prussian, and by consequence the bad german. (14) as is convincingly pointed out in a footnote of j. a. cramb's "germany and england." as a consummate individualist and by the same token a cosmopolite to the full, nietzsche was the last remove from national, or strictly speaking even from racial, jingoism. even the imputation of ordinary patriotic sentiments would have been resented by him as an insult, for such sentiments were to him a sure symptom of that gregarious disposition which was so utterly abhorrent to his feelings. in his german citizenhood he took no pride whatsoever. on every occasion that offered he vented in mordant terms his contempt for the country of his birth, boastfully proclaiming his own derivation from alien stock. he bemoaned his fate of having to write for germans; averring that people who drank beer and smoked pipes were hopelessly incapable of understanding him. of this extravagance in denouncing his countrymen the following account by one of his keenest american interpreters gives a fair idea. "no epithet was too outrageous, no charge was too farfetched, no manipulation or interpretation of evidence was too daring to enter into his ferocious indictment. he accused the germans of stupidity, superstitiousness, and silliness; of a chronic weakness of dodging issues, a fatuous 'barn-yard' and 'green-pasture' contentment, of yielding supinely to the commands and exactions of a clumsy and unintelligent government; of degrading education to the low level of mere cramming and examination passing; of a congenital inability to understand and absorb the culture of other peoples, and particularly the culture of the french; of a boorish bumptiousness, and an ignorant, ostrichlike complacency; of a systematic hostility to men of genius, whether in art, science, or philosophy; of a slavish devotion to the two great european narcotics, alcohol and christianity; of a profound beeriness, a spiritual dyspepsia, a puerile mysticism, an old-womanish pettiness, and an ineradicable liking for the obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded."(15) it certainly requires a violent twist of logic to hold this catalogue of invectives responsible for the transformation of a sluggish and indolent bourgeoisie into a "volk in waffen" unified by an indomitable and truculent rapacity. (15) h. l. mencken, "the mailed fist and its prophet." _atlantic monthly_, november, 1914. neither should nietzsche's general condemnation of mild and tender forbearance--on the ground that it blocks the purpose of nature--be interpreted as a call to universal militancy. by his ruling it is only supermen that are privileged to carry their will through. but undeniably he does teach that the world belongs to the strong. they may grab it at any temporary loss to the common run of humanity and, if need be, with sanguinary force, since their will is, ulteriorly, identical with the cosmic purpose. of course this is preaching war of some sort, but nietzsche was not in favor of war on ethnic or ethical grounds, like that fanatical militarist, general von bernhardi, whom the great mass of his countrymen in the time before the war would have bluntly rejected as their spokesman. anyway, nietzsche did not mean to encourage germany to subjugate the rest of the world. he even deprecated her victory in the bloody contest of 1870, because he thought that it had brought on a form of material prosperity of which internal decay and the collapse of intellectual and spiritual ideals were the unfortunate concomitants. at the same time, the universal decrepitude prevented the despiser of his own people from conceiving a decided preference for some other country. he held that all european nations were progressing in the wrong direction,--the deadweight of exaggerated and misshapen materialism dragged them back and down. english life he deemed almost irredeemably clogged by utilitarianism. even france, the only modern commonwealth credited by nietzsche with an indigenous culture, was governed by what he stigmatizes as the life philosophy of the shopkeeper. nietzsche is destitute of national ideals. in fact he never thinks in terms of politics. he aims to be "a good european, not a good german." in his aversion to the extant order of society he never for a moment advocates, like rousseau or tolstoy, a breach with civilization. cataclysmic changes through anarchy, revolution, and war were repugnant to his ideals of culture. for two thousand years the races of europe had toiled to humanize themselves, school their character, equip their minds, refine their tastes. could any sane reformer have calmly contemplated the possible engulfment in another saturnian age of the gains purchased by that enormous expenditure of human labor? according to nietzsche's conviction, the new dispensation could not be entered in a book of blank pages. a higher civilization could only be reared upon a lower. so it seems that he is quite wrongly accused of having been an "accessory before the deed," in any literal or legal sense, to the stupendous international struggle witnessed to-day. and we may pass on to consider in what other way he was a vital factor of modern social development. for whatever we may think of the political value of his teachings, it is impossible to deny their arousing and inspiriting effect upon the intellectual, moral, and artistic faculties of his epoch and ours. * * * * * it should be clearly understood that the significance of nietzsche for our age is not to be explained by any weighty discovery in the realm of knowledge. nietzsche's merit consists not in any unriddling of the universe by a metaphysical key to its secrets, but rather in the diffusion of a new intellectual light elucidating human consciousness in regard to the purpose and the end of existence. nietzsche has no objective truths to teach, indeed he acknowledges no truth other than subjective. nor does he put any faith in bare logic, but on the contrary pronounces it one of mankind's greatest misfortunes. his argumentation is not sustained and progressive, but desultory, impressionistic, and freely repetitional; slashing aphorism is its most effective tool. and so, in the sense of the schools, he is not a philosopher at all; quite the contrary, an implacable enemy of the _métier_. and yet the formative and directive influence of his vaticinations, enunciated with tremendous spiritual heat and lofty gesture, has been very great. his conception of life has acted upon the generation as a moral intoxicant of truly incalculable strength. withal his published work, amounting to eighteen volumes, though flagrantly irrational, yet does contain a perfectly coherent doctrine. only, it is a doctrine to whose core mere peripheric groping will never negotiate the approach. its essence must be caught by flashlike seizure and cannot be conveyed except to minds of more than the average imaginative sensibility. for its central ideas relate to the remotest ultimates, and its dominant prepossession, the _overman_, is, in the final reckoning, the creature of a utopian fancy. to be more precise, nietzsche extorts from the darwinian theory of selection a set of amazing connotations by means of the simultaneous shift from the biological to the poetic sphere of thought and from the averagely socialized to an uncompromisingly self-centred attitude of mind. this doubly eccentric position is rendered feasible for him by a whole-souled indifference to exact science and an intense contempt for the practical adjustments of life. he is, first and last, an imaginative schemer, whose visions are engendered by inner exuberance; the propelling power of his philosophy being an intense temperamental enthusiasm at one and the same time lyrically sensitive and dramatically impassioned. it is these qualities of soul that made his utterance ring with the force of a high moral challenge. all the same, he was not any more original in his ethics than in his theory of knowledge. in this field also his receptive mind threw itself wide open to the flow of older influences which it encountered. the religion of personal advantage had had many a prophet before nietzsche. among the older writers, machiavelli was its weightiest champion. in germany, nietzsche's immediate predecessor was "max stirner,"(16) and as regards foreign thinkers, nietzsche declared as late as 1888 that to no other writer of his own century did he feel himself so closely allied by the ties of congeniality as to ralph waldo emerson. (16) his real name was kaspar schmidt; he lived from 1806-1856. the most superficial acquaintance with these writers shows that nietzsche is held responsible for certain revolutionary notions of which he by no means was the originator. of the connection of his doctrine with the maxims of "the prince" and of "the ego and his own" (_der einzige und sein eigentum_)(17) nothing further need be said than that to them nietzsche owes, directly or indirectly, the principle of "non-morality." however, he does not employ the same strictly intellectual methods. they were logicians rather than moralists, and their ruler-man is in the main a construction of cold reasoning, while the ruler-man of nietzsche is the vision of a genius whose eye looks down a much longer perspective than is accorded to ordinary mortals. that a far greater affinity of temper should have existed between nietzsche and emerson than between him and the two classic non-moralists, must bring surprise to the many who have never recognized the concord sage as an exponent of unfettered individualism. yet in fact emerson goes to such an extreme of individualism that the only thing that has saved his memory from anathema is that he has not many readers in his after-times, and these few do not always venture to understand him. and emerson, though in a different way from nietzsche's, was also a rhapsodist. in his poetry, where he articulates his meaning with far greater unrestraint than in his prose, we find without any difficulty full corroboration of his spiritual kinship with nietzsche. for instance, where may we turn in the works of the latter for a stronger statement of the case of power versus pity than is contained in "the world soul"? "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." from such a world-view what moral could proceed more logically than that of zarathustra: "and him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach--how to fall quicker"? (17) by machiavelli and stirner, respectively. but after all, the intellectual origin of nietzsche's ideas matters but little. wheresoever they were derived from, he made them strikingly his own by raising them to the splendid elevation of his thought. and if nevertheless he has failed to take high rank and standing among the sages of the schools, this shortage in his professional prestige is more than counterbalanced by the wide reach of his influence among the laity. what might the re-classification, or perchance even the re-interpretation, of known facts about life have signified beside nietzsche's lofty apprehension of the sacredness of life itself? for whatever may be the social menace of his reasoning, his commanding proclamation to an expectant age of the doctrine that progress means infinite growth towards ideals of perfection has resulted in a singular reanimation of the individual sense of dignity, served as a potent remedy of social dry-rot, and furthered our gradual emergence from the impenetrable darkness of ancestral traditions. in seeking an adequate explanation of his power over modern minds we readily surmise that his philosophy draws much of its vitality from the system of science that underlies it. and yet while it is true enough that nietzsche's fundamental thesis is an offshoot of the darwinian theory, the violent individualism which is the driving principle of his entire philosophy is rather opposed to the general orientation of darwinism, since that is social. not to the author of the "descent of man" directly is the modern ethical glorification of egoism indebted for its measure of scientific sanction, but to one of his heterodox disciples, namely to the bio-philosopher w. h. rolph, who in a volume named "biologic problems," with the subtitle, "an essay in rational ethics,"(18) deals definitely with the problem of evolution in its dynamical bearings. the question is raised, why do the extant types of life ascend toward higher goals, and, on reaching them, progress toward still higher goals, to the end of time? under the reason as explained by darwin, should not evolution stop at a definite stage, namely, when the object of the competitive struggle for existence has been fully attained? self-preservation naturally ceases to act as an incentive to further progress, so soon as the weaker contestants are beaten off the field and the survival of the fittest is abundantly secured. from there on we have to look farther for an adequate causation of the ascent of species. unless we assume the existence of an absolutistic teleological tendency to perfection, we are logically bound to connect upward development with favorable external conditions. by substituting for the darwinian "struggle for existence" a new formula: "struggle for surplus," rolph advances a new fruitful hypothesis. in all creatures the acquisitive cravings exceed the limit of actual necessity. under darwin's interpretation of nature, the struggle between individuals of the same species would give way to pacific equilibrium as soon as the bare subsistence were no longer in question. yet we know that the struggle is unending. the creature appetites are not appeased by a normal sufficiency; on the contrary, "_l'appetit vient en mangeant_"; the possessive instinct, if not quite insatiable, is at least coextensive with its opportunities for gratification. whether or not it be true--as carlyle claims--that, after all, the fundamental question between any two human beings is, "can i kill thee, or canst thou kill me?"--at any rate in civilized human society the contest is not waged merely for the naked existence, but mainly for life's increments in the form of comforts, pleasures, luxuries, and the accumulation of power and influence; and the excess of acquisition over immediate need goes as a residuum into the structure of civilization. in plain words, then, social progress is pushed on by individual greed and ambition. at this point rolph rests the case, without entering into the moral implicates of the subject, which would seem to obtrude themselves upon the attention. (18) _biologische probleme, zugleich als versuch einer rationellen ethik._ leipzig, 1882. now to a believer in progressive evolution with a strong ethical bent such a theory brings home man's ulterior responsibility for the betterment of life, and therefore acts as a call to his supreme duty of preparing the ground for the arrival of a higher order of beings. the argument seems simple and clinching. living nature through a long file of species and genera has at last worked up to the _homo sapiens_ who as yet does not even approach the perfection of his own type. is it a legitimate ambition of the race to mark time on the stand which it has reached and to entrench itself impregnably in its present mediocrity? nietzsche did not shrink from any of the inferential conclusions logically to be drawn from the biologic argument. if growth is in the purpose of nature, then once we have accepted our chief office in life, it becomes our task to pave the way for a higher genus of man. and the only force that makes with directness for that object is the will to power. to foreshadow the resultant human type, nietzsche resurrected from goethe's vocabulary the convenient word _übermensch_--"overman." * * * * * any one regarding existence in the light of a stern and perpetual combat is of necessity driven at last to the alternative between making the best of life and making an end of it; he must either seek lasting deliverance from the evil of living or endeavor to wrest from the world by any means at his command the greatest sum of its gratifications. it is serviceable to describe the two frames of mind respectively as the optimistic and the pessimistic. but it would perhaps be hasty to conclude that the first of these attitudes necessarily betokens the greater strength of character. friedrich nietzsche's philosophy sprang from pessimism, yet issued in an optimism of unheard-of exaltation; carrying, however, to the end its plainly visible birthmarks. he started out as an enthusiastic disciple of arthur schopenhauer; unquestionably the adherence was fixed by his own deep-seated contempt for the complacency of the plebs. but he was bound soon to part company with the grandmaster of pessimism, because he discovered the root of the philosophy of renunciation in that same detestable debility of the will which he deemed responsible for the bovine lassitude of the masses; both pessimism and philistinism came from a lack of vitality, and were symptoms of racial degeneracy. but before nietzsche finally rejected schopenhauer and gave his shocking counterblast to the undermining action of pessimism, he succumbed temporarily to the spell of another gigantic personality. we are not concerned with richard wagner's musical influence upon nietzsche, who was himself a musician of no mean ability; what is to the point here is the prime principle of wagner's art theory. the key to the wagnerian theory is found, also, in schopenhauer's philosophy. wagner starts from the pessimistic thesis that at the bottom of the well of life lies nothing but suffering,--hence living is utterly undesirable. in one of his letters to franz liszt he names as the duplex root of his creative genius the longing for love and the yearning for death. on another occasion, he confesses his own emotional nihilism in the following summary of _tristan und isolde_: "_sehnsucht, sehnsucht, unstillbares, ewig neu sich gebärendes verlangen--schmachten und dursten; einzige erlösung: tod, sterben, untergehen,--nichtmehrerwachen._"(19) but from the boundless ocean of sorrow there is a refuge. it was wagner's fundamental dogma that through the illusions of art the individual is enabled to rise above the hopelessness of the realities into a new cosmos replete with supreme satisfactions. man's mundane salvation therefore depends upon the ministrations of art and his own artistic sensitiveness. the glorification of genius is a natural corollary of such a belief. (19) "longing, longing, unquenchable desire, reproducing itself forever anew--thirst and drought; sole deliverance: death, dissolution, extinction,--and no awaking." nietzsche in one of his earliest works examines wagner's theory and amplifies it by a rather casuistic interpretation of the evolution of art. after raising the question, how did the greeks contrive to dignify and ennoble their national existence? he points, by way of an illustrative answer, not perchance to the periclean era, but to a far more primitive epoch of hellenic culture, when a total oblivion of the actual world and a transport into the realm of imagination was universally possible. he explains the trance as the effect of intoxication,--primarily in the current literal sense of the word. such was the significance of the cult of dionysos. "through singing and dancing," claims nietzsche, "man manifests himself as member of a higher community. walking and talking he has unlearned, and is in a fair way to dance up into the air." that this supposititious dionysiac phase of hellenic culture was in turn succeeded by more rational stages, in which the impulsive flow of life was curbed and dammed in by operations of the intellect, is not permitted by nietzsche to invalidate the argument. by his arbitrary reading of ancient history he was, at first, disposed to look to the forthcoming _universal-kunstwerk_(20) as the complete expression of a new religious spirit and as the adequate lever of a general uplift of mankind to a state of bliss. but the typical disparity between wagner and nietzsche was bound to alienate them. wagner, despite all appearance to the contrary, is inherently democratic in his convictions,--his earlier political vicissitudes amply confirm this view,--and fastens his hope for the elevation of humanity through art upon the sort of genius in whom latent popular forces might combine to a new summit. nietzsche on the other hand represents the extreme aristocratic type, both in respect of thought and of sentiment. "i do not wish to be confounded with and mistaken for these preachers of equality," says he. "for within _me_ justice saith: men are not equal." his ideal is a hero of coercive personality, dwelling aloft in solitude, despotically bending the gregarious instincts of the common crowd to his own higher purposes by the dominating force of his will to might. (20) work of all arts. the concept of the overman rests, as has been shown, upon a fairly solid substructure of plausibility, since at the bottom of the author's reasoning lies the notion that mankind is destined to outgrow its current status; the thought of a humanity risen to new and wondrous heights of power over nature is not necessarily unscientific for being supremely imaginative. the overman, however, cannot be produced ready made, by any instantaneous process; he must be slowly and persistently willed into being, through love of the new ideal which he is to embody: "all great love," speaketh zarathustra, "seeketh to create what it loveth. _myself_ i sacrifice into my love, and _my neighbor_ as myself, thus runneth the speech of all creators." only the fixed conjoint purpose of many generations of aspiring men will be able to create the overman. "could you create a god?--then be silent concerning all gods! but ye could very well create beyond-man. not yourselves perhaps, my brethren! but ye could create yourselves into fathers and fore-fathers of beyond-man; and let this be your best creating. but all creators are hard." nietzsche's startlingly heterodox code of ethics coheres organically with the overman hypothesis, and so understood is certain to lose some of its aspect of absurdity. the racial will, as we have seen, must be taught to aim at the overman. but the volitional faculty of the generation, according to nietzsche, is so debilitated as to be utterly inadequate to its office. hence, advisedly to stimulate and strengthen the enfeebled will power of his fellow men is the most imperative and immediate task of the radical reformer. once the power of willing, as such, shall have been,--regardless of the worthiness of its object,--brought back to active life, it will be feasible to give the will to might a direction towards objects of the highest moral grandeur. unfortunately for the race as a whole, the throng is ineligible for partnership in the auspicious scheme of co-operative procreation: which fact necessitates a segregative method of breeding. the overman can only be evolved by an ancestry of master-men, who must be secured to the race by a rigid application of eugenic standards, particularly in the matter of mating. of marriage, nietzsche has this definition: "marriage, so call i the will of two to create one who is more than they who created him." for the bracing of the weakened will-force of the human breed it is absolutely essential that master-men, the potential progenitors of the superman, be left unhampered to the impulse of "living themselves out" (_sich auszuleben_),--an opportunity of which under the regnant code of morals they are inconsiderately deprived. since, then, existing dictates and conventions are a serious hindrance to the requisite autonomy of the master-man, their abolishment might be well. yet on the other hand, it is convenient that the _vielzuviele_, the "much-too-many," i. e. the despised generality of people, should continue to be governed and controlled by strict rules and regulations, so that the will of the master-folk might the more expeditiously be wrought. would it not, then, be an efficacious compromise to keep the canon of morality in force for the general run, but suspend it for the special benefit of master-men, prospective or full-fledged? from the history of the race nietzsche draws a warrant for the distinction. his contention is that masters and slaves have never lived up to a single code of conduct. have not civilizations risen and fallen according as they were shaped by this or that class of nations? history also teaches what disastrous consequences follow the loss of caste. in the case of the jewish people, the domineering type or morals gave way to the servile as a result of the babylonian captivity. so long as the jews were strong, they extolled all manifestations of strength and energy. the collapse of their own strength turned them into apologists of the so-called "virtues" of humility, long-suffering, forgiveness,--until, according to the judæo-christian code of ethics, being good came to mean being weak. so races may justly be classified into masters and slaves, and history proves that to the strong goes the empire. the ambitions of a nation are a sure criterion of its worth. "i walk through these folk and keep mine eyes open. they have become _smaller_ and are becoming ever smaller. _and the reason of that is their doctrine of happiness and virtue._ for they are modest even in their virtue; for they are desirous of ease. but with ease only modest virtue is compatible. true, in their fashion they learn how to stride and to stride forward. that i call their _hobbling_. thereby they become an offense unto every one who is in a hurry. and many a one strideth on and in doing so looketh backward, with a stiffened neck. i rejoice to run against the stomachs of such. foot and eyes shall not lie, nor reproach each other for lying. but there is much lying among small folk. some of them _will_, but most of them _are willed_ merely. some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors. there are unconscious actors among them, and involuntary actors. the genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors. here is little of man; therefore women try to make themselves manly. for only he who is enough of a man will save the woman in woman. and this hypocrisy i found to be worst among them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve. 'i serve, thou servest, we serve.' thus the hypocrisy of the rulers prayeth. and, alas, if the highest lord be merely the highest servant! alas! the curiosity of mine eye strayed even unto their hypocrisies, and well i divined all their fly-happiness and their humming round window panes in the sunshine. so much kindness, so much weakness see i. so much justice and sympathy, so much weakness. round, honest, and kind are they towards each other, as grains of sand are round, honest, and kind unto grains of sand. modestly to embrace a small happiness--they call 'submission'! and therewith they modestly look sideways after a new small happiness. at bottom they desire plainly one thing most of all: to be hurt by nobody. thus they oblige all and do well unto them. but this is _cowardice_; although it be called 'virtue.' and if once they speak harshly, these small folk,--i hear therein merely their hoarseness. for every draught of air maketh them hoarse. prudent are they; their virtues have prudent fingers. but they are lacking in clenched fists; their fingers know not how to hide themselves behind fists. for them virtue is what maketh modest and tame. thereby they have made the wolf a dog and man himself man's best domestic animal. 'we put our chair in the midst'--thus saith their simpering unto me--'exactly as far from dying gladiators as from happy swine.' this is mediocrity; although it be called moderation."(21) (21) "thus spake zarathustra," pp. 243-245. the only law acknowledged by him who would be a master is the bidding of his own will. he makes short work of every other law. whatever clogs the flight of his indomitable ambition must be ruthlessly swept aside. obviously, the enactment of this law that would render the individual supreme and absolute would strike the death-knell for all established forms and institutions of the social body. but such is quite within nietzsche's intention. they are noxious agencies, ingeniously devised for the enslavement of the will, and the most pernicious among them is the christian religion, because of the alleged divine sanction conferred by it upon subserviency. christianity would thwart the supreme will of nature by curbing that lust for domination which the laws of nature as revealed by science sanction, nay prescribe. nietzsche's ideas on this subject are loudly and over-loudly voiced in _der antichrist_ ("the anti-christ"), written in september 1888 as the first part of a planned treatise in four instalments, entitled _der wille zur macht. versuch einer umwertung aller werte_. ("the will to power. an attempted transvaluation of all values".) * * * * * the master-man's will, then, is his only law. that is the essence of _herrenmoral_. and so the question arises, whence shall the conscience of the ruler-man derive its distinctions between the right and the wrong? the arch-iconoclast brusquely stifles this naïve query beforehand by assuring us that such distinctions in their accepted sense do not exist for personages of that grander stamp. heedless of the time-hallowed concepts that all men share in common, he enjoins mastermen to take their position uncompromisingly outside the confining area of conventions, in the moral independence that dwells "beyond good and evil." good and evil are mere denotations, devoid of any real significance. right and wrong are not ideals immutable through the ages, nor even the same at any time in all states of society. they are vague and general notions, varying more or less with the practical exigencies under which they were conceived. what was right for my great-grandfather is not _ipso facto_ right for myself. hence, the older and better established a law, the more inapposite is it apt to be to the living demands. why should the ruler-man bow down to outworn statutes or stultify his self-dependent moral sense before the artificial and stupidly uniform moral relics of the dead past? good is whatever conduces to the increase of my power,--evil is whatever tends to diminish it! only the weakling and the hypocrite will disagree. unmistakably this is a straightout application of the "pragmatic" criterion of truth. nietzsche's unconfessed and cautious imitators, who call themselves pragmatists, are not bold enough to follow their own logic from the cognitive sphere to the moral. they stop short of the natural conclusion to which their own premises lead. morality is necessarily predicated upon specific notions of truth. so if truth is an alterable and shifting concept, must not morality likewise be variable? the pragmatist might just as well come out at once into the broad light and frankly say: "laws do not interest me in the abstract, or for the sake of their general beneficence; they interest me only in so far as they affect me. therefore i will make, interpret, and abolish them to suit myself." to nietzsche the "quest of truth" is a palpable evasion. truth is merely a means for the enhancement of my subjective satisfaction. it makes not a whit of difference whether an opinion or a judgment satisfies this or that scholastic definition. i call true and good that which furthers my welfare and intensifies my joy in living; and,--to vindicate my self-gratification as a form, indeed the highest, of "social service,"--the desirable thing is that which matters for the improvement of the human stock and thereby speeds the advent of the superman. "oh," exclaims zarathustra, "that ye would understand my word: be sure to do whatever ye like,--but first of all be such as _can will_! be sure to love your neighbor as yourself,--but first of all be such as _love themselves_,--as love themselves with great love, with contempt. thus speaketh zarathustra, the ungodly." by way of throwing some light upon this phase of nietzsche's moral philosophy, it may be added that ever since 1876 he was an assiduous student of herbert spencer, with whose theory of social evolution he was first made acquainted by his friend, paul rée, who in two works of his own, "psychologic observations," (1875), and "on the origin of moral sentiments," (1877), had elaborated upon the spencerian theory about the genealogy of morals. the best known among all of nietzsche's works, _also sprach zarathustra_ ("thus spake zarathustra"), is the magna charta of the new moral emancipation. it was composed during a sojourn in southern climes between 1883 and 1885, during the convalescence from a nervous collapse, when after a long and critical depression his spirit was recovering its accustomed resilience. nietzsche wrote his _magnum opus_ in solitude, in the mountains and by the sea. his mind always was at its best in settings of vast proportions, and in this particular work there breathes an exaltation that has scarcely its equal in the world's literature. style and diction in their supreme elation suit the lofty fervor of the sentiment. from the feelings, as a fact, this great rhapsody flows, and to the feelings it makes its appeal; its extreme fascination must be lost upon those who only know how to "listen to reason." the wondrous plastic beauty of the language, along with the high emotional pitch of its message, render "zarathustra" a priceless poetic monument; indeed its practical effect in chastening and rejuvenating german literary diction can hardly be overestimated. its value as a philosophic document is much slighter. it is not even organized on severely logical lines. on the contrary, the four component parts are but brilliant variations upon a single generic theme, each in a different clef, but harmoniously united by the incremental ecstasy of the movement. the composition is free from monotony, for down to each separate aphorism every part of it has its special lyric nuance. the whole purports to convey in the form of discourse the prophetic message of zarathustra, the hermit sage, an idealized self-portrayal of the author. in the first book the tone is calm and temperate. zarathustra exhorts and instructs his disciples, rails at his adversaries, and discloses his superiority over them. in the soliloquies and dialogues of the second book he reveals himself more fully and freely as the superman. the third book contains the meditations and rhapsodies of zarathustra now dwelling wholly apart from men, his mind solely occupied with thought about the eternal return of the present. in the fourth book he is found in the company of a few chosen spirits whom he seeks to imbue with his perfected doctrine. in this final section of the work the deep lyric current is already on the ebb; it is largely supplanted by irony, satire, sarcasm, even buffoonery, all of which are resorted to for the pitiless excoriation of our type of humanity, deemed decrepit by the sage. the author's intention to present in a concluding fifth division the dying zarathustra pronouncing his benedictions upon life in the act of quitting it was not to bear fruit. "zarathustra"--nietzsche's terrific assault upon the fortifications of our social structure--is too easily mistaken by facile cavilers for the ravings of an unsound and desperate mind. to a narrow and superficial reading, it exhibits itself as a wholesale repudiation of all moral responsibility and a maniacal attempt to subvert human civilization for the exclusive benefit of the "glorious blonde brute, rampant with greed for victory and spoil." yet those who care to look more deeply will detect beneath this chimerical contempt of conventional regulations no want of a highminded philanthropic purpose, provided they have the vision necessary to comprehend a love of man oriented by such extremely distant perspectives. at all events they will discover that in this rebellious propaganda an advancing line of life is firmly traced out. the indolent and thoughtless may indeed be horrified by the appalling dangers of the gospel according to zarathustra. but in reality there is no great cause for alarm. society may amply rely upon its agencies, even in these stupendous times of universal war, for protection from any disastrous organic dislocations incited by the teachings of zarathustra, at least so far as the immediate future is concerned--in which alone society appears to be interested. moreover, our apprehensions are appeased by the sober reflection that by its plain unfeasibleness the whole supersocial scheme of nietzsche is reduced to colossal absurdity. its limitless audacity defeats any formulation of its "war aims." for what compels an ambitious imagination to arrest itself at the goal of the superman? why should it not run on beyond that first terminal? in one of mr. g. k. chesterton's labored extravaganzas a grotesque sort of super-overman _in spe_ succeeds in going beyond unreason when he contrives this lucid self-definition: "i have gone where god has never dared to go. i am above the silly supermen as they are above mere men. where i walk in the heavens, no man has walked before me, and i am alone in a garden." it is enough to make one gasp and then perhaps luckily recall goethe's consoling thought that under the care of providence the trees will not grow into the heavens. ("_es ist dafür gesorgt, dass die bäume nicht in den himmel wachsen._") as matter of fact, the ideas promulgated in _also sprach zarathustra_ need inspire no fear of their winning the human race from its venerable idols, despite the fact that the pull of natural laws and of elemental appetites seems to be on their side. the only effect to be expected of such a philosophy is that it will act as an antidote for moral inertia which inevitably goes with the flock-instinct and the lazy reliance on the accustomed order of things. nietzsche's ethics are not easy to valuate, since none of their standards are derived from the orthodox canon. his being a truly personalized form of morality, his principles are strictly cognate to his temperament. to his professed ideals there attaches a definite theory of society. and since his philosophy is consistent in its sincerity, its message is withheld from the man-in-the-street, deemed unworthy of notice, and delivered only to the _élite_ that shall beget the superman. to nietzsche the good of the greatest number is no valid consideration. the great stupid mass exists only for the sake of an oligarchy by whom it is duly exploited under nature's decree that the strong shall prey upon the weak. let, then, this favored set further the design of nature by systematically encouraging the elevation of their own type. * * * * * we have sought to dispel the fiction about the shaping influence of nietzsche upon the thought and conduct of his nation, and have accounted for the miscarriage of his ethics by their fantastic impracticability. yet it has been shown also that he fostered in an unmistakable fashion the class-consciousness of the aristocrat, born or self-appointed. to that extent his influence was certainly malign. yet doubtless he did perform a service to our age. the specific nature of this service, stated in the fewest words, is that to his great divinatory gift are we indebted for an unprecedented strengthening of our hold upon reality. in order to make this point clear we have to revert once more to nietzsche's transient intellectual relation to pessimism. we have seen that the illusionism of schopenhauer and more particularly of wagner exerted a strong attraction on his high-strung artistic temperament. nevertheless a certain realistic counter-drift to the ultra-romantic tendency of wagner's theory caused him in the long run to reject the faith in the power of art to save man from evil. almost abruptly, his personal affection for the "master," to whom in his eventual mental eclipse he still referred tenderly at lucid moments, changed to bitter hostility. henceforth he classes the glorification of art as one of the three most despicable attitudes of life: philistinism, pietism, and estheticism, all of which have their origin in _cowardice_, represent three branches of the ignominious road of escape from the terrors of living. in three extended diatribes nietzsche denounces wagner as the archetype of modern decadence; the most violent attack of all is delivered against the point of juncture in which wagner's art gospel and the christian religion culminate: the promise of redemption through pity. to nietzsche's way of thinking pity is merely the coward's acknowledgment of his weakness. for only insomuch as a man is devoid of fortitude in bearing his own sufferings is he unable to contemplate with equanimity the sufferings of his fellow creatures. since religion enjoins compassion with all forms of human misery, we should make war upon religion. and for the reason that wagner's crowning achievement, his _parsifal_, is a veritable sublimation of mercy, there can be no truce between its creator and the giver of the counsel: "be hard!" perhaps this notorious advice is after all not as ominous as it sounds. it merely expresses rather abruptly nietzsche's confidence in the value of self-control as a means of discipline. if you have learned calmly to see others suffer, you are yourself able to endure distress with manful composure. "therefore i wash the hand which helped the sufferer; therefore i even wipe my soul." but, unfortunately, such is the frailty of human nature that it is only one step from indifference about the sufferings of others to an inclination to exploit them or even to inflict pain upon one's neighbors for the sake of personal gain of one sort or another. why so hard? said once the charcoal unto the diamond, are we not near relations? why so soft? o my brethren, thus i ask you. are ye not my brethren? why so soft, so unresisting, and yielding? why is there so much disavowal and abnegation in your hearts? why is there so little fate in your looks? and if ye are not willing to be fates, and inexorable, how could ye conquer with me someday? and if your hardness would not glance, and cut, and chip into pieces--how could ye create with me some day? for all creators are hard. and it must seem blessedness unto you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,- blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,--harder than brass, nobler than brass. the noblest only is perfectly hard. this new table, o my brethren, i put over you: become hard!(22) (22) "thus spake zarathustra," p. 399, sec. 29. the repudiation of wagner leaves a tremendous void in nietzsche's soul by depriving his enthusiasm of its foremost concrete object. he loses his faith in idealism. when illusions can bring a man like wagner to such an odious outlook upon life, they must be obnoxious in themselves; and so, after being subjected to pitiless analysis, they are disowned and turned into ridicule. and now, the pendulum of his zeal having swung from one emotional extreme to the other, the great rhapsodist finds himself temporarily destitute of an adequate theme. however, his fervor does not long remain in abeyance, and soon it is absorbed in a new object. great as is the move it is logical enough. since illusions are only a hindrance to the fuller grasp of life which behooves all free spirits, nietzsche energetically turns from self-deception to its opposite, self-realization. in this new spiritual endeavor he relies far more on intuition than on scientific and metaphysical speculation. from his own stand he is certainly justified in doing this. experimentation and ratiocination at the best are apt to disassociate individual realities from their complex setting and then proceed to palm them off as illustrations of life, when in truth they are lifeless, artificially preserved specimens. "encheiresin naturae nennt's die chemie, spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie."(23) nietzsche's realism, by contrast, goes to the very quick of nature, grasps all the gifts of life, and from the continuous flood of phenomena extracts a rich, full-flavored essence. it is from a sense of gratitude for this boon that he becomes an idolatrous worshiper of experience, "_der grosse jasager_,"--the great sayer of yes,--and the most stimulating optimist of all ages. to nietzsche reality is alive as perhaps never to man before. he plunges down to the very heart of things, absorbs their vital qualities and meanings, and having himself learned to draw supreme satisfaction from the most ordinary facts and events, he makes the common marvelous to others, which, as was said by james russell lowell, is a true test of genius. no wonder that deification of reality becomes the dominant _motif_ in his philosophy. but again that onesided aristocratic strain perverts his ethics. to drain the intoxicating cup at the feast of life, such is the divine privilege not of the common run of mortals but only of the elect. they must not let this or that petty and artificial convention, nor yet this or that moral command or prohibition, restrain them from the exercise of that higher sense of living, but must fully abandon themselves to its joys. "since man came into existence he hath had too little joy. that alone, my brethren, is our original sin."(24) the "much-too-many" are doomed to inanity by their lack of appetite at the banquet of life: such folk sit down unto dinner and bring nothing with them, not even a good hunger. and now they backbite: "all is vanity!" but to eat well and drink well, o my brethren, is, verily, no vain art! break, break the tables of those who are never joyful!(25) (23) goethe's _faust_, ii, ll. 1940-1. bayard taylor translates: _encheiresin naturae_, this chemistry names, nor knows how herself she banters and blames! (24) "thus spake zarathustra," p. 120. (25) _ibid._, p. 296, sec. 13. the will to live holds man's one chance of this-worldly bliss, and supersedes any care for the remote felicities of any problematic future state. yet the nietzschean cult of life is not to be understood by any means as a banal devotion to the pleasurable side of life alone. the true disciple finds in every event, be it happy or adverse, exalting or crushing, the factors of supreme spiritual satisfaction: joy and pain are equally implied in experience, the will to live encompasses jointly the capacity to enjoy and to suffer. it may even be paradoxically said that since man owes some of his greatest and most beautiful achievements to sorrow, it must be a joy and a blessing to suffer. the unmistakable sign of heroism is _amor fati_, a fierce delight in one's destiny, hold what it may. consequently, the precursor of the superman will be possessed, along with his great sensibility to pleasure, of a capacious aptitude for suffering. "ye would perchance abolish suffering," exclaims nietzsche, "and we,--it seems that we would rather have it even greater and worse than it has ever been. the discipline of suffering,--tragical suffering,--know ye not that only this discipline has heretofore brought about every elevation of man?" "spirit is that life which cutteth into life. by one's own pain one's own knowledge increaseth;--knew ye that before? and the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and consecrated by tears as a sacrificial animal;--knew ye that before?" and if, then, the tragical pain inherent in life be no argument against joyfulness, the zest of living can be obscured by nothing save the fear of total extinction. to the disciple of nietzsche, by whom every moment of his existence is realized as a priceless gift, the thought of his irrevocable separation from all things is unbearable. "'was this life?' i shall say to death. 'well, then, once more!'" and--to paraphrase nietzsche's own simile--the insatiable witness of the great tragi-comedy, spectator and participant at once, being loath to leave the theatre, and eager for a repetition of the performance, shouts his endless _encore_, praying fervently that in the constant repetition of the performance not a single detail of the action be omitted. the yearning for the endlessness not of life at large, not of life on any terms, but of _this my life_ with its ineffable wealth of rapturous moments, works up the extreme optimism of nietzsche to its stupendous _a priori_ notion of infinity, expressed in the name _die ewige wiederkehr_ ("eternal recurrence"). it is a staggeringly imaginative concept, formed apart from any evidential grounds, and yet fortified with a fair amount of logical armament. the universe is imagined as endless in time, although its material contents are not equally conceived as limitless. since, consequently, there must be a limit to the possible variety in the arrangement and sequence of the sum total of data, even as in the case of a kaleidoscope, the possibility of variegations is not infinite. the particular co-ordination of things in the universe, say at this particular moment, is bound to recur again and again in the passing of the eons. but under the nexus of cause and effect the resurgence of the past from the ocean of time is not accidental nor is the configuration of things haphazard, as is true in the case of the kaleidoscope; rather, history, in the most inclusive acceptation of the term, is predestined to repeat itself; this happens through the perpetual progressive resurrection of its particles. it is then to be assumed that any aspect which the world has ever presented must have existed innumerable millions of times before, and must recur with eternal periodicity. that the deterministic strain in this tremendous _vorstellung_ of a cyclic rhythm throbbing in the universe entangles its author's fanatical belief in evolution in a rather serious self-contradiction, does not detract from its spiritual lure, nor from its wide suggestiveness, however incapable it may be of scientific demonstration. from unfathomed depths of feeling wells up the pæan of the prophet of the life intense. o mensch! gib acht! was spricht die tiefe mitternacht? ich schlief, ich schlief--, aus tiefem traum bin ich erwacht:- die welt ist tief, und tiefer als der tag gedacht. tief ist ihr weh--, lust--tiefer noch als herzeleid: weh spricht: vergeh! doch alle lust will ewigkeit- will tiefe, tiefe ewigkeit!(26) (26) o man! lose not sight! what saith the deep midnight? "i lay in sleep, in sleep; from deep dream i woke to light. the world is deep, and deeper than ever day though! it might. deep is its woe,- and deeper still than woe--delight." saith woe: "pass, go! eternity's sought by all delight,- eternity deep--by all delight. "thus spake zarathustra," the drunken song, p. 174.--the translation but faintly suggests the poetic appeal of the original. a timid heart may indeed recoil from the iron necessity of reliving _ad infinitum_ its woeful terrestrial fate. but the prospect can hold no terror for the heroic soul by whose fiat all items of experience have assumed important meanings and values. he who has cast in his lot with destiny in spontaneous submission to all its designs, cannot but revere and cherish his own fate as an integral part of the grand unalterable fatality of things. * * * * * if this crude presentment of friedrich nietzsche's doctrine has not entirely failed of its purpose, the _leitmotifs_ of that doctrine will have been readily referred by the reader to their origin; they can be subsumed under that temperamental category which is more or less accurately defined as the _romantic_. glorification of violent passion,--quest of innermost mysteries,--boundless expansion of self-consciousness,--visions of a future of transcendent magnificence, and notwithstanding an ardent worship of reality a quixotically impracticable detachment from the concrete basis of civic life,--these outstanding characteristics of the nietzschean philosophy give unmistakable proof of a central, driving, romantic inspiration: nietzsche shifts the essence and principle of being to a new center of gravity, by substituting the future for the present and relying on the untrammeled expansion of spontaneous forces which upon closer examination are found to be without definite aim or practical goal. for this reason, critically to animadvert upon nietzsche as a social reformer would be utterly out of place; he is simply too much of a poet to be taken seriously as a statesman or politician. the weakness of his philosophy before the forum of logic has been referred to before. nothing can be easier than to prove the incompatibility of some of his theorems. how, for instance, can the absolute determinism of the belief in cyclic recurrence be reconciled with the power vested in superman to deflect by his autonomous will the straight course of history? or, to touch upon a more practical social aspect of his teaching,--if in the order of nature all men are unequal, how can we ever bring about the right selection of leaders, how indeed can we expect to secure the due ascendancy of character and intellect over the gregarious grossness of the demos? again, it is easy enough to controvert nietzsche almost at any pass by demonstrating his unphilosophic onesidedness. were nietzsche not stubbornly onesided, he would surely have conceded--as any sane-minded person must concede in these times of suffering and sacrifice--that charity, self-abnegation, and self-immolation might be viewed, not as conclusive proofs of degeneracy, but on the contrary as signs of growth towards perfection. besides, philosophers of the _métier_ are sure to object to the haziness of nietzsche's idea of vitality which in truth is oriented, as is his philosophy in general, less by thought than by sentiment. notwithstanding his obvious connection with significant contemporaneous currents, the author of "zarathustra" is altogether too much _sui generis_ to be amenable to any crude and rigid classification. he may plausibly be labelled an anarchist, yet no definition of anarchism will wholly take him in. anarchism stands for the demolition of the extant social apparatus of restraint. its battle is for the free determination of personal happiness. nietzsche's prime concern, contrarily, is with internal self-liberation from the obsessive desire for personal happiness in any accepted connotation of the term; such happiness to him does not constitute the chief object of life. the cardinal point of nietzsche's doctrine is missed by those who, arguing retrospectively, expound the gist of his philosophy as an incitation to barbarism. nothing can be more remote from his intentions than the transformation of society into a horde of ferocious brutes. his impeachment of mercy, notwithstanding an appearance of reckless impiety, is in the last analysis no more and no less than an expedient in the truly romantic pursuit of a new ideal of love. compassion, in his opinion, hampers the progress towards forms of living that shall be pregnant with a new and superior type of perfection. and in justice to nietzsche it should be borne in mind that among the various manifestations of that human failing there is none he scorns so deeply as cowardly and petty commiseration of self. it also deserves to be emphasized that he nowhere endorses selfishness when exercised for small or sordid objects. "i love the brave. but it is not enough to be a swordsman, one must also know against whom to use the sword. and often there is more bravery in one's keeping quiet and going past, in order to spare one's self for a worthier enemy: ye shall have only enemies who are to be hated, but not enemies who are to be despised."(27) despotism must justify itself by great and worthy ends. and no man must be permitted to be hard towards others who lacks the strength of being even harder towards himself. (27) "thus spake zarathustra," p. 304. at all events it must serve a better purpose to appraise the practical importance of nietzsche's speculations than blankly to denounce their immoralism. nietzsche, it has to be repeated, was not on the whole a creator of new ideas. his extraordinary influence in the recent past is not due to any supreme originality or fertility of mind; it is predominantly due to his eagle-winged imagination. in him the emotional urge of utterance was, accordingly, incomparably more potent than the purely intellectual force of opinion: in fact the texture of his philosophy is woven of sensations rather than of ideas, hence its decidedly ethical trend. the latent value of nietzsche's ethics in their application to specific social problems it would be extremely difficult to determine. their successful application to general world problems, if it were possible, would mean the ruin of the only form of civilization that signifies to us. his philosophy, if swallowed in the whole, poisons; in large potations, intoxicates; but in reasonable doses, strengthens and stimulates. such danger as it harbors has no relation to grossness. his call to the joy of living and doing is no encouragement of vulgar hedonism, but a challenge to persevering effort. he urges the supreme importance of vigor of body and mind and force of will. "o my brethren, i consecrate you to be, and show unto you the way unto a new nobility. ye shall become procreators and breeders and sowers of the future.--not whence ye come be your honor in future, but whither ye go! your will, and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves, be that your new honor!"(28) (28) "thus spake zarathustra," p. 294. it would be a withering mistake to advocate the translation of nietzsche's poetic dreams into the prose of reality. unquestionably his utopia if it were to be carried into practice would doom to utter extinction the world it is devised to regenerate. but it is generally acknowledged that "prophets have a right to be unreasonable," and so, if we would square ourselves with friedrich nietzsche in a spirit of fairness, we ought not to forget that the daring champion of reckless unrestraint is likewise the inspired apostle of action, power, enthusiasm, and aspiration, in fine, a prophet of vitality and a messenger of hope. iv the revivalism of leo tolstoy in the intellectual record of our times it is one of the oddest events that the most impressive preacher who has taken the ear of civilized mankind in this generation raised up his voice in a region which in respect of its political, religious, and economic status was until recently, by fairly common consent, ruled off the map of europe. the greatest humanitarian of his century sprang up in a land chiefly characterized in the general judgment of the outside world by the reactionism of its government and the stolid ignorance of its populace. a country still teeming with analphabeticians and proverbial for its dense medievalism gave to the world a writer who by the great quality of his art and the lofty spiritualism of his teaching was able not only to obtain a wide hearing throughout all civilized countries, but to become a distinct factor in the moral evolution of the age. the stupefying events that have recently revolutionized the russian state have given the world an inkling of the secrets of the slavic type of temperament, so mystifying in its commixture of simplicity and strength on the one hand with grossness and stupidity, and on the other hand with the highest spirituality and idealism. for such people as in these infuriated times still keep up some objective and judicious interest in products of the literary art, the volcanic upheaval in the social life of russia has probably thrown some of tolstoy's less palpable figures into a greater plastic relief. tolstoy's own character, too, has become more tangible in its curious composition. the close analogy between his personal theories and the dominant impulses of his race has now been made patent. we are better able to understand the people of whom he wrote because we have come to know better the people for whom he wrote. the emphasis of tolstoy's popular appeal was unquestionably enhanced by certain eccentricities of his doctrine, and still more by his picturesque efforts to conform his mode of life, by way of necessary example, to his professed theory of social elevation. the personality of tolstoy, like the character of the russian people, is many-sided, and since its aspects are not marked off by convenient lines of division, but are, rather, commingled in the great and varied mass of his literary achievements, it is not easy to make a definitive forecast of his historic position. tentatively, however, the current critical estimate may be summed up in this: as a creative writer, in particular of novels and short stories, he stood matchless among the realists, and the verdict pronounced at one time by william dean howells when he referred to tolstoy as "the only living writer of perfect fiction" is not likely to be overruled by posterity. nor will competent judges gainsay his supreme importance as a critic and moral revivalist of society, even though they may be seriously disposed to question whether his principles of conduct constitute in their aggregate a canon of much practical worth for the needs of the western world. as a philosopher or an original thinker, however, he will hardly maintain the place accorded him by the less discerning among his multitudinous followers, for in his persistent attempt to find a new way of understanding life he must be said to have signally failed. wisdom in him was hampered by utopian fancies; his dogmas derive from idiosyncrasies and lead into absurdities. then, too, most of his tenets are easily traced to their sources: in his vagaries as well as in his noblest and soundest aspirations he was merely continuing work which others had prepared. * * * * * an objective survey of tolstoy's work in realistic fiction, in which he ranked supreme, should start with the admission that he was by no means the first arrival among the russians in that field. nicholas gogol, fedor dostoievsky, and ivan turgenieff had the priority by a small margin. of these three powerful novelists, dostoievsky (1821-1881) has probably had an even stronger influence upon modern letters than has tolstoy himself. he was one of the earliest writers of romance to show the younger generation how to found fiction upon deeper psychologic knowledge. his greatest proficiency lay, as is apt to be the case with writers of a realistic bent, in dealing with the darkest side of life. the wretched and outcast portion of humanity yielded to his skill its most congenial material. his novels--"poor folk," (1846), "memoirs from a dead house," (1862), "raskolnikoff," (1866), "the idiot," (1868), "the karamasoffs," (1879)--take the reader into company such as had heretofore not gained open entrance to polite literature: criminals, defectives, paupers, and prostitutes. yet he did not dwell upon the wretchedness of that submerged section of humanity from any perverse delight in what is hideous or for the satisfaction of readers afflicted with morbid curiosity, but from a compelling sense of pity and brotherly love. his works are an appeal to charity. in them, the imperdible grace of the soul shines through the ugliest outward disguise to win a glance from the habitual indifference of fortune's _enfants gâtés_. dostoievsky preceded tolstoy in frankly enlisting his talents in the service of his outcast brethren. with the same ideal of the writer's mission held in steady view, tolstoy turned his attention from the start, and then more and more as his work advanced, to the pitiable condition of the lower orders of society. it must not be forgotten in this connection that his career was synchronous with the growth of a social revolution which, having reached its full force in these days, is making russia over for better or for worse, and whose wellsprings tolstoy helps us to fathom. * * * * * for the general grouping of his writings it is convenient to follow tolstoy's own division of his life. his dreamy poetical childhood was succeeded by three clearly distinct stages: first, a score of years filled up with self-indulgent worldliness; next, a nearly equal length of time devoted to artistic ambition, earnest meditation, and helpful social work; last, by a more gradual transition, the ascetic period, covering a long stretch of years given up to religious illumination and to the strenuous advocacy of the simple life. the remarkable spiritual evolution of this great man was apparently governed far more by inborn tendencies than by the workings of experience. of tolstoy in his childhood, youth, middle age, and senescence we gain trustworthy impressions from numerous autobiographical documents, but here we shall have to forego anything more than a passing reference to the essential facts of his career. he was descended from an aristocratic family of german stock but domiciled in russia since the fourteenth century. the year of his birth was 1828, the same as ibsen's. in youth he was bashful, eccentric, and amazingly ill-favored. the last-named of these handicaps he outgrew but late in life, still later did he get over his bashfulness, and his eccentricity never left him. his penchant for the infraction of custom nearly put a premature stop to his career when in his urchin days he once threw himself from a window in an improvised experiment in aerial navigation. at the age of fourteen he was much taken up with subtile speculations about the most ancient and vexing of human problems: the future life, and the immortality of the soul. entering the university at fifteen, he devoted himself in the beginning to the study of oriental languages, but later on his interest shifted to the law. at sixteen he was already imbued with the doctrines of jean jacques rousseau that were to play such an important rôle in guiding his conduct. in 1846 he passed out of the university without a degree, carrying away nothing but a lasting regret over his wasted time. he went directly to his ancestral estates, with the idealistic intention to make the most of the opportunity afforded him by the patriarchal relationship that existed in russia between the landholder and the _adscripti glebae_ and to improve the condition of his seven hundred dependents. his efforts, however, were foredoomed to failure, partly through his lack of experience, partly also through a certain want of sincerity or tenacity of purpose. the experiment in social education having abruptly come to its end, the disillusionized reformer threw himself headlong into the diversions and dissipations of the capital city. in his "confession" he refers to that chapter of his existence as made up wholly of sensuality and worldliness. he was inordinately proud of his noble birth,--at college his inchoate apostleship of the universal brotherhood of man did not shield him from a general dislike on account of his arrogance,--and he cultivated the most exclusive social circles of moscow. he freely indulged the love of sports that was to cling through life and keep him strong and supple even in very old age. (up to a short time before his death he still rode horseback and perhaps none of the renunciations exacted by his principles came so hard as that of giving up his favorite pastime of hunting.) but he also fell into the evil ways of gilded youth, soon achieving notoriety as a toper, gambler, and _courreur des femmes_. after a while his brother, who was a person of steadier habits and who had great influence over him, persuaded him to quit his profligate mode of living and to join him at his military post. under the bracing effect of the change, the young man's moral energies quickly revived. in the wilds of the caucasus he at once grew freer and cleaner; his deep affection for the half-civilized land endeared him both to the cossack natives and the russian soldiers. he entered the army at twenty-three, and from november, 1853, up to the fall of sebastopol in the summer of 1855, served in the crimean campaign. he entered the famous fortress in november, 1854, and was among the last of its defenders. the indelible impressions made upon his mind by the heroism of his comrades, the awful scenes and the appalling suffering he had to witness, were responsible then and later for descriptions as harrowing and as stirring as any that the war literature of our own day has produced. in the crimea he made his début as a writer. among the tales of his martial period the most popular and perhaps the most excellent is the one called "the cossacks." turgenieff pronounced it the best short story ever written in russian, and it is surely no undue exaggeration to say of tolstoy's novelettes in general that in point of technical mastery they are unsurpassed. sick at heart over the unending bloodshed in the caucasus the young officer made his way back to petrograd, and here, lionized in the salons doubly, fur his feats at arms and in letters, he seems to have returned, within more temperate limits, to his former style of living. at any rate, in his own judgment the ensuing three years were utterly wasted. the mental inanity and moral corruption all about him swelled his sense of superiority and self-righteousness. the glaring humbug and hypocrisy that permeated his social environment was, however, more than he could long endure. having resigned his officer's commission he went abroad in 1857, to switzerland, germany, and france. the studies and observations made in these travels sealed his resolution to settle down for good on his domain and to consecrate his life to the welfare of his peasants. but a survey of the situation found upon his return made him realize that nothing could be done for the "muzhik" without systematic education: therefore, in order to prepare himself for efficacious work as a teacher, he spent some further time abroad for special study, in 1859. after that, the educational labor was taken up in full earnest. the lord of the land became the schoolmaster of his subjects, reenforcing the effect of _viva voce_ teaching by means of a periodical published expressly for their moral uplift. this work he continued for about three years, his hopes of success now rising, now falling, when in a fit of despondency he again abandoned his philanthropic efforts. about this time, 1862, he married sophia andreyevna behrs, the daughter of a moscow physician. with characteristic honesty he forced his private diary on his fiancée, who was only eighteen, so that she might know the full truth about his pre-conjugal course of living. about the countess tolstoy much has been said in praise and blame. let her record speak for itself. of her union with the great novelist thirteen children were born, of whom nine reached an adult age. the mother nursed and tended them all, with her own hands made their clothes, and until they grew to the age of ten supplied to them the place of a schoolmistress. it must not be inferred from this that her horizon did not extend beyond nursery and kitchen, for during the earlier years she acted also as her husband's invaluable amanuensis. before the days of the typewriter his voluminous manuscripts were all copied by her hand, and recopied and revised--in the case of "war and peace" this happened no less than seven times, and the novel runs to sixteen hundred close-printed pages!--and under her supervision his numerous works were not only printed but also published and circulated. moreover, she managed his properties, landed, personal, and literary, to the incalculable advantage of the family fortune. this end, to be sure, she accomplished by conservative and reliable methods of business; for while of his literary genius she was the greatest admirer, she never was in full accord with his communistic notions. and the highest proof of all her extraordinary _tüchtigkeit_ and devotion is that by her common sense and tact she was enabled to function for a lifetime as a sort of buffer between her husband's world-removed dreamland existence and the rigid and frigid reality of facts. thus tolstoy's energies were left to go undivided into literary production; its amount, as a result, was enormous. if all his writings were to be collected, including the unpublished manuscripts now reposing in the rumyantzoff museum, which are said to be about equal in quantity to the published works, and if to this collection were added his innumerable letters, most of which are of very great interest, the complete set of tolstoy's works would run to considerably more than one hundred volumes. to discuss all of tolstoy's writings, or even to mention all, is here quite out of the question. all those, however, that seem vital for the purpose of a just estimate and characterization will be touched upon. * * * * * the literary fame of tolstoy was abundantly secured already in the earlier part of his life by his numerous short stories and sketches. the three remarkable pen pictures of the siege of sebastopol, and tales such as "the cossacks," "two hussars," "polikushka," "the snow-storm," "the encounter," "the invasion," "the captive in the caucasus," "lucerne," "albert," and many others, revealed together with an exceptional depth of insight an extraordinary plastic ability and skill of motivation; in fact they deserve to be set as permanent examples before the eyes of every aspiring author. in their characters and their setting they present true and racy pictures of a portentous epoch, intimate studies of the human soul that are full of charm and fascination, notwithstanding their tragic sadness of outlook. manifestly this author was a prose poet of such marvelous power that he could abstain consistently from the use of sweeping color, overwrought sentiment, and high rhetorical invective. at this season tolstoy, while he refrained from following any of the approved literary models, was paying much attention to the artistic refinement of his style. there was to be a time when he would abjure all considerations of artistry on the ground that by them the ethical issue in a narration is beclouded. but it would be truer to say conversely that in his own later works, since "anna karenina," the clarity of the artistic design was dimmed by the obtrusive didactic purpose. fortunately the artistic interest was not yet wholly subordinated to the religious urge while the three great novels were in course of composition: "war and peace," (1864-69), "anna karenina," (first part, 1873; published complete in 1877), and "resurrection," (1899). to the first of these is usually accorded the highest place among all of tolstoy's works; it is by this work that he takes his position as the chief epic poet of modern times. "war and peace" is indeed an epic rather than a novel in the ordinary meaning. playing against the background of tremendous historical transactions, the narrative sustains the epic character not only in the hugeness of its dimensions, but equally in the qualities of its technique. there is very little comment by the author upon the events, and merely a touch of subjective irony here and there. the story is straightforwardly told as it was lived out by its characters. tolstoy has not the self-complacency to thrust in the odds and ends of his personal philosophy, as is done so annoyingly even by a writer of george meredith's consequence, nor does he ever treat his readers with the almost simian impertinence so successfully affected by a bernard shaw. if "war and peace" has any faults, they are the faults of its virtues, and spring mainly from an unmeasured prodigality of the creative gift. as a result of tolstoy's excessive range of vision, the orderly progress of events in that great novel is broken up somewhat by the profusion of shapes that monopolize the attention one at a time much as individual spots in a landscape do under the sweeping glare of the search-light. yet although in the externalization of this crowding multitude of figures no necessary detail is lacking, the grand movement as a whole is not swamped by the details. the entire story is governed by the conception of events as an emanation of the cosmic will, not merely as the consequence of impulses proceeding from a few puissant geniuses of the napoleonic order. it is quite in accord with such a view of history that the machinery of this voluminous epopee is not set in motion by a single conspicuous protagonist. as a matter of fact, it is somewhat baffling to try to name the principals in the story, since in artistic importance all the figures are on an equal footing before their maker; possibly the fact that tolstoy's ethical theory embodied the most persistent protest ever raised against the inequality of social estates proved not insignificant for his manner of characterization. ethical justice, however, is carried to an artistic fault, for the feelings and reactions of human nature in so many diverse individuals lead to an intricacy and subtlety of motivation which obscures the organic causes through overzeal in making them patent. anyway, tolstoy authenticates himself in this novel as a past master of realism, particularly in his utterly convincing depictment of russian soldier life. and as a painter of the battlefield he ranks, allowing for the difference of the medium, with vasili verestschagin at his best. it may be said in passing that these two russian pacifists, by their gruesome exposition of the horrors of war, aroused more sentiment against warfare than did all the spectacular and expensive peace conferences inaugurated by the crowned but hollow head of their nation, and the splendid declamations of the possessors of, or aspirants for, the late mr. nobel's forty-thousand dollar prize. like all true realists, tolstoy took great pains to inform himself even about the minutiæ of his subjects, but he never failed, as did in large measure zola in _la débâcle_, to infuse emotional meaning into the static monotony of facts and figures. in his strong attachment for his own human creatures he is more nearly akin to the idealizing or sentimentalizing type of realists, like daudet, kipling, hauptmann, than to the downright matter-of-fact naturalists such as zola or gorki. but to classify him at all would be wrong and futile, since he was never leagued with literary creeds and cliques and always stood aloof from the heated theoretical controversies of his time even after he had hurled his great inclusive challenge to art. "war and peace" was written in tolstoy's happiest epoch, at a time, comparatively speaking, of spiritual calm. he had now reached some satisfying convictions in his religious speculations, and felt that his personal life was moving up in the right direction. his moral change is made plain in the contrast between two figures of the story, prince andrey and peter bezukhoff: the ambitious worldling and the honest seeker after the right way. in his second great novel, "anna karenina," the undercurrent of the author's own moral experience has a distinctly greater carrying power. it is through the earnest idealist, levine, that tolstoy has recorded his own aspirations. characteristically, he does not make levine the central figure. "anna karenina" is undoubtedly far from "pleasant" reading, since it is the tragical recital of an adulterous love. but the situation, with its appalling consequence of sorrow, is seized in its fullest psychological depth and by this means saved from being in any way offensive. the relation between the principals is viewed as by no means an ordinary liaison. anna and vronsky are serious-minded, honorable persons, who have struggled conscientiously against their mutual enchantment, but are swept out of their own moral orbits by the resistless force of fate. this fatalistic element in the tragedy is variously emphasized; so at the beginning of the story, where anna, in her emotional confusion still half-ignorant of her infatuation, suddenly realizes her love for vronsky; or in the scene at the horse races where he meets with an accident. throughout the narrative the psychological argumentation is beyond criticism. witness the description of anna's husband, a sort of cousin-in-kind of ibsen's thorvald helmer, reflecting on his future course after his wife's confession of her unfaithfulness. or that other episode, perhaps the greatest of them all, when anna, at the point of death, joins together the hands of her husband and her lover. or, finally, the picture of anna as she deserts her home leaving her son behind in voluntary expiation of her wrong-doing, an act, by the way, that betrays a nicety of conscience far too subtle for the rhadamantine inquisitors who demand to know why, if anna would atone to karenin, does she go with vronsky? how perfectly true to life, subsequently, is the rapid _dégringolade_ of this passion under the gnawing curse of the homeless, workless, purposeless existence which little by little disunites the lovers! only the end may be somewhat open to doubt, with its metastasis of the heroine's character,--unless indeed we consider the sweeping change accounted for by the theory of duplex personality. she herself believes that there are two quite different women alive in her, the one steadfastly loyal to her obligations, the other blindly driven into sin by the demon of her uncontrollable temperament. in the power of analysis, "anna karenina" is beyond doubt tolstoy's masterpiece, and yet in its many discursive passages it already foreshadows the disintegration of his art, or more precisely, its ultimate capitulation to moral propagandism. for it was while at work upon this great novel that the old perplexities returned to bewilder his soul. in the tumultuous agitation of his conscience, the crucial and fundamental questions, why do we live? and how should we live? could nevermore be silenced. now a definitive attitude toward life is forming; to it all the later works bear a vital relation. and so, in regard to their moral outlook, tolstoy's books may fitly be divided into those written before and those written since his "conversion." "anna karenina" happens to be on the dividing line. he was a man well past fifty, of enviable social position, in prosperous circumstances, widely celebrated for his art, highly respected for his character, and in his domestic life blessed with every reason for contentment. yet all the gifts of fortune sank into insignificance before that vexing, unanswered why? in the face of a paralyzing universal aimlessness, there could be to him no abiding sense of life in his personal enjoyments and desires. the burden of life became still less endurable face to face with the existence of evil and with the wretchedness of our social arrangements. with so much toil and trouble, squalor, ignorance, crime, and every conceivable kind of bodily and mental suffering all about me, why should i be privileged to live in luxury and idleness? this ever recurring question would not permit him to enjoy his possessions without self-reproach. to think of thousands of fellowmen lacking the very necessaries, made affluence and its concomitant ways of living odious to him. we know that in 1884, or thereabouts, he radically changed his views and modes of life so as to bring them into conformity with the laws of the gospel. but before this conversion, in the despairing anguish that attacked him after the completion of "anna karenina," he was frequently tempted to suicide. although the thought of death was very terrible to him then and at all times, still he would rather perish than live on in a world made heinous and hateful by the iniquity of men. then it was that he searched for a reason why the vast proportion of humanity endure life, nay enjoy it, and why self-destruction is condemned by the general opinion, and this in spite of the fact that for most mortals existence is even harder than it could have been for him, since he at least was shielded from material want and lived amid loving souls. the answer he found in the end seemed to lead by a straight road out of the wilderness of doubt and despair. the great majority, so he ascertained, are able to bear the burden of life because they heed the ancient injunction: "_ora et labora_"; they _work_ and they _believe_. might he not sweeten his lot after the same prescription? being of a delicate spiritual sensibility, he had long realized that people of the idle class were for the most part inwardly indifferent to religion and in their actions defiant of its spirit. in the upper strata of society religious thought, where it exists, is largely adulterated or weakened; sophisticated by education, doctored by science, thinned out with worldly ambitions and with practical needs and considerations. the faith that supports life is found only among simple folk. for faith, to deserve the name, must be absolute, uncritical, unreasoning. starting from these convictions as a basis, tolstoy resolutely undertook _to learn to believe_; a determination which led him, as it has led other ardent religionists, so far astray from ecclesiastical paths that in due course of time he was unavoidably excommunicated from his church. his convictions made him a vehement antagonist of churchdom because of its stiffness of creed and laxness of practice. for his own part he soon arrived at a full and absolute acceptance of the christian faith in what he considered to be its primitive and essential form. in "walk ye in the light," (1893), the reversion of a confirmed worldling to this original conception of christianity gives the story of the writer's own change of heart. to the period under discussion belongs tolstoy's drama, "the power of darkness," (1886).(29) it is a piece of matchless realism, probably the first unmixedly naturalistic play ever wrought out. it is brutally, terribly true to life, and that to life at its worst, both in respect of the plot and the actors, who are individualized down to the minutest characteristics of utterance and gesture. withal it is a species of modern morality, replete with a reformatory purpose that reflects deeply the author's tensely didactic state of mind. his instructional zeal is heightened by intimate knowledge of the russian peasant, on his good side as well as on his bad. some of his short stories are crass pictures of the muzhik's bestial degradation, veritable pattern cards of human and inhuman vices. in other stories, again, the deep-seated piety of the muzhik, and his patriarchal simplicity of heart are portrayed. as instance, the story of "two old men," (1885), who are pledged to attain the holy land: the one performs his vow to the letter, the other, much the godlier of the two, is kept from his goal by a work of practical charity. in another story a muzhik is falsely accused of murder and accepts his undeserved punishment in a devout spirit of non-resistance. in a third, a poor cobbler who intuitively walks in the light is deemed worthy of a visit from christ. (29) the only tragedy brought out during his life time. in "the power of darkness," the darkest traits of peasant life prevail, yet the frightful picture is somehow christianized, as it were, so that even the miscreant nikita, in spite of his monstrous crimes, is sure of our profound compassion. we are gripped at the very heartstrings by that great confession scene where he stutters out his budget of malefactions, forced by his awakened conscience and urged on by his old father: "speak out, my child, speak it off your soul, then you will feel easier." "the power of darkness" was given its counterpart in the satirical comedy, "fruits of culture," (1889). the wickedness of refined society is more mercilessly excoriated than low-lived infamy. but artistically considered the peasant tragedy is far superior to the "society play." * * * * * tolstoy was a pessimist both by temperament and philosophical persuasion. this is made manifest among other things by the prominent place which the idea of death occupies in his writings. his feelings are expressed with striking simplicity by one of the principal characters in "war and peace": "one must often think of death, so that it may lose its terrors for us, cease to be an enemy, and become on the contrary a friend that delivers us from this life of miseries." still, in tolstoy's stories, death, as a rule, is a haunting spectre. this conception comes to the fore even long after his conversion in a story like "master and man." throughout his literary activity it has an obsessive hold on his mind. even the shadowing of the animal mind by the ubiquitous spectre gives rise to a story: "cholstomjer, the story of a horse," (1861), and in one of the earlier tales even the death of a tree is pictured. death is most terrifying when, denuded of its heroic embellishments in battle pieces such as "the death of a soldier" ("sebastopol") or the description of prince andrey's death in "war and peace," it is exposed in all its bare and grim loathsomeness. such happens in the short novel published in 1886 under the name of "the death of ivan ilyitch,"--in point of literary merit one of tolstoy's greatest performances. it is a plain tale about a middle-aged man of the official class, happy in an unreflecting sort of way in the jog-trot of his work and domestic arrangements. suddenly his fate is turned,--by a trite mishap resulting in a long, hopeless sickness. his people at first give him the most anxious care, but as the illness drags on their devotion gradually abates, the patient is neglected, and soon almost no thought is given to him. in the monotonous agony of his prostration, the sufferer slowly comes to realize that he is dying, while his household has gone back to its habitual ways mindless of him, as though he were already dead, or had never lived. all through this lengthened crucifixion he still clings to life, and it is only when the family, gathering about him shortly before the release, can but ill conceal their impatience for the end, that ivan at last accepts his fate: "i will no longer let them suffer--i will die; i will deliver them and myself." so he dies, and the world pursues its course unaltered,--in which consists the after-sting of this poignant tragedy. * * * * * between the years 1879 and 1886 tolstoy published the main portion of what may be regarded as his spiritual autobiography, namely, "the confession," (1879, with a supplement in 1882), "the union and translation of the four gospels," (1881-2), "what do i believe?" (also translated under the title "my religion," 1884) and "what then must we do?" (1886). he was now well on the way to the logical ultimates of his ethical ideas, and in the revulsion from artistic ambitions so plainly foreshown in a treatise in 1887: "what is true art?" he repudiated unequivocally all his earlier work so far as it sprang from any motives other than those of moral teaching. without a clear appreciation of these facts a just estimate of "the kreutzer sonata" (1889) is impossible. the central character of the book is a commonplace, rather well-meaning fellow who has been tried for the murder of his wife, slain by him in a fit of insensate jealousy, and has been acquitted because of the extenuating circumstances in the case. the object of the story is to lay bare the causes of his crime. tolstoy's ascetic proclivity had long since set him thinking about sex problems in general and in particular upon the ethics of marriage. and by this time he had arrived at the conclusion that the demoralized state of our society is chiefly due to polygamy and polyandrism; corroboration of his uncompromising views on the need of social purity he finds in the evangelist matthew, v:27-28, where the difference between the old command and its new, far more rigorous, interpretation is bluntly stated: "ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery: but i say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." now tolstoy thinks that society, far from concurring in the scriptural condemnation of lewdness, caters systematically to the appetites of the voluptuary. if tolstoy is right in his diagnosis, then the euphemistic term "social evil" has far wider reaches of meaning than those to which it is customarily applied. with the head person in "the kreutzer sonata," tolstoy regards society as no better than a _maison de tolérance_ conducted on a very comprehensive scale. women are reared with the main object of alluring men through charms and accomplishments; the arts of the hairdresser, the dressmaker, and milliner, as well as the exertions of governesses, music masters, and linguists all converge toward the same aim: to impart the power of attracting men. between the woman of the world and the professional courtezan the main difference in the light of this view lies in the length of the service. pozdnicheff accordingly divides femininity into long term and short term prostitutes, which rather fantastic classification tolstoy follows up intrepidly to its last logical consequence. the main idea of "the kreutzer sonata," as stated in the postscript, is that sexless life is best. a recommendation of celibacy as mankind's highest ideal to be logical should involve a wish for the disappearance of human life from the globe. a world-view of such pessimistic sort prevents itself from the forfeiture of all bonds with humanity only by its concomitant reasoning that a race for whom it were better not to be is the very one that will struggle desperately against its _summum bonum_. since race suicide, then, is a hopeless desideratum, the reformer must turn to more practicable methods if he would at least alleviate the worst of our social maladjustments. idleness is the mother of all mischief, because it superinduces sensual self-indulgence. therefore we must suppress anything that makes for leisure and pleasure. at this point we grasp the meaning of tolstoy's vehement recoil from art. it is, to a great extent, the strong-willed resistance of a highly impressionable puritan against the enticements of beauty,--their distracting and disquieting effect, and principally their power of sensuous suggestion. the last extensive work published by tolstoy was "resurrection," (1889). in artistic merit it is not on a level with "war and peace" and "anna karenina," nor can this be wondered at, considering the opinion about the value of art that had meanwhile ripened in the author. "resurrection" was written primarily for a constructive moral purpose, yet the subject matter was such as to secrete, unintendedly, a corrosive criticism of social and religious cant. the satirical connotation of the novel could not have been more grimly brought home than through this fact, that the hero by his unswerving allegiance to christian principles of conduct greatly shocks, at first, our sense of the proprieties, instead of eliciting our enthusiastic admiration. in spite of our highest moral notions prince nekhludoff, like that humbler follower of the voice of conscience in gerhart hauptmann's novel, impresses us as a "fool in christ." the story, itself, leads by degrees from the under-world of crime and punishment to a great spiritual elevation. maslowa, a drunken street-walker, having been tried on a charge of murder, is wrongfully sentenced to transportation for life, because--the jury is tired out and the judge in a hurry to visit his mistress. prince nekhludoff, sitting on that jury, recognizes in the victim of justice a girl whose downfall he himself had caused. he is seized by penitence and resolves to follow the convict to siberia, share her sufferings, dedicate his life to her redemption. she has sunk so low that his hope of reforming her falters, yet true to his resolution he offers to marry her. although the offer is rejected, yet the suggestion of a new life which it brings begins to work a change in the woman. in the progress of the story her better nature gradually gains sway until a thorough moral revolution is completed. "resurrection" derives its special value from its clear demonstration of those rules of conduct to which the author was straining with every moral fiber to conform his own life. from his ethical speculations and social experiments are projected figures like that of maria paulovna, a rich and beautiful woman who prefers to live like a common workingwoman and is drawn by her social conscience into the revolutionary vortex. in this figure, and more definitely still in the political convict simonson, banished because of his educational work among the common people, tolstoy studies for the first time the so-called "intellectual" type of revolutionist. his view of the "intellectuals" is sympathetic, on the whole. they believe that evil springs from ignorance. their agitation issues from the highest principles, and they are capable of any self-sacrifice for the general weal. still tolstoy, as a thoroughly anti-political reformer, deprecates their organized movement. altogether, he repudiated the systems of social reconstruction that go by the name of socialism, because he relied for the regeneration of society wholly and solely upon individual self-elevation. in an essential respect he was nevertheless a socialist, inasmuch as he strove for the ideal of universal equality. his social philosophy, bound up inseparably with his personal religious evolution, is laid down in a vast number of essays, letters, sketches, tracts, didactic tales, and perhaps most comprehensively in those autobiographical documents already mentioned. sociologically the most important of these is a book on the problem of property, entitled, "what then must we do?" (1886), which expounds the passage in luke iii:10, 11: "and the people asked him, saying, what shall we do then? he answered and saith unto them, he that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." not long before that, he had thought of devoting himself entirely to charitable work, but practical experiments at moscow demonstrated to him the futility of almsgiving. speaking on that point to his english biographer, aylmer maude,(30) he remarked: "all such activity, if people attribute importance to it, is worthless." when his interviewer insisted that the destitute have to be provided for somehow and that the count himself was in the habit of giving money to beggars, the latter replied: "yes, but i do not imagine that i am doing good! i only do it for myself, because i know that i have no right to be well off while they are in misery." it is worth mention in passing that during the famine of 1891-2 this determined opponent of organized charity, in noble inconsistency with his theories, led in the dispensation of relief to the starving population of middle russia. (30) "the life of tolstoy," later years, p. 643 f. but in "what then must we do?" he treats the usual organized dabbling in charity as utterly preposterous: "give away all you have or else you can do no good." ... "if i give away a hundred thousand and still withhold five hundred thousand, i am far from acting in the spirit of charity, and remain a factor of social injustice and evil. at the sight of the freezing and hungering i must still feel responsible for their plight, and feel that since we should live in conditions where that evil can be abstained from, it is impossible for me in the position in which i deliberately place myself to be anything other than a source of general evil." it was chiefly due to the influence of two peasants, named sutayeff and bondareff, that tolstoy decided by a path of religious reasoning to abandon "parasitical existence,"--that is, to sacrifice all prerogatives of his wealth and station and to share the life of the lowly. he reasoned as follows: "since i am to blame for the existence of social wrong, i can lessen my blame only by making myself like unto those that labor and are heavy-laden." economically, tolstoy reasons from this fallacy: if all men do not participate equitably in the menial work that has to be performed in the world, it follows that a disproportionate burden of work falls upon the shoulders of the more defenseless portion of humanity. whether this undue amount of labor be exacted in the form of chattel slavery, or, which is scarcely less objectionable, in the form of the virtual slavery imposed by modern industrial conditions, makes no material difference. the evil conditions are bound to continue so long as the instincts that make for idleness prevail over the co-operative impulses. the only remedy lies in the simplification of life in the upper strata of the social body, overwork in the laboring classes being the direct result of the excessive demands for the pleasures and luxuries of life in the upper classes. to bondareff in particular tolstoy confessedly owes the conviction that the best preventive for immorality is physical labor, for which reason the lower classes are less widely removed from grace than the upper. bondareff maintained on scriptural grounds that everybody should employ at least a part of his time in working the land. this view tolstoy shared definitely after 1884. not only did he devote a regular part of his day to agricultural labor; he learned, in addition, shoemaking and carpentry, meaning to demonstrate by his example that it is feasible to return to those patriarchal conditions under which the necessities of life were produced by the consumer himself. from this time forth he modelled his habits more and more upon those of the common rustic. he adopted peasant apparel and became extremely frugal in his diet. although by natural taste he was no scorner of the pleasures of the table, he now eliminated one luxury after another. about this time he also turned strict vegetarian, then gave up the use of wine and spirits, and ultimately even tobacco, of which he had been very fond, was made to go the way of flesh. he practiced this self-abnegation in obedience to the law of life which he interpreted as a stringent renunciation of physical satisfactions and personal happiness. nor did he shirk the ultimate conclusion to which his premises led: if the law of life imposes the suppression of all natural desires and appetites and commands the voluntary sacrifice of every form of property and power, it must be clear that life itself is devoid of sense and utterly undesirable. and so it is expressly stated in his "thoughts."(31) (31) no. 434. * * * * * to what extent tolstoy was a true christian believer may best be gathered from his own writings, "what do i believe?" (1884), "on life," (1887), and "the kingdom of god is within you," (1893). although at the age of seventeen he had ceased to be orthodox, there can be no question whatever that throughout his whole life religion remained the deepest source of his inspiration. by the early eighties he had emerged from that acute scepticism that well-nigh cost him life and reason, and had, outwardly at least, made his peace with the church, attending services regularly, and observing the feasts and the fasts; here again in imitating the muzhik in his religious practices he strove apparently to attain also to the muzhik's actual gift of credulity. but in this endeavor his superior culture proved an impediment to him, and his widening doctrinal divergence from the established church finally drew upon his head, in 1891, the official curse of the holy synod. and yet a leading religious journal was right, shortly after his death, in this comment upon the religious meaning of his life: "if christians everywhere should put their religious beliefs into practice with the simplicity and sincerity of tolstoy, the entire religious, moral, and social life of the world would be revolutionized in a month." the orthodox church expelled him from its communion because of his radicalism; but in his case radicalism meant indeed the going to the roots of christian religion, to the original foundations of its doctrines. in the teachings of the _primitive_ church there presented itself to tolstoy a dumfoundingly simple code for the attainment of moral perfection. hence arose his opposition to the _established_ church which seemed to have strayed so widely from its own fundamentals. since tolstoy's life aimed at the progressive exercise of self-sacrifice, his religious belief could be no gospel of joy. in fact, his is a sad, gray, ascetic religion, wholly devoid of poetry and emotional uplift. he did not learn to believe in the divinity of christ nor in the existence of a god in any definite sense personal, and it is not even clear whether he believed in an after-life. and yet he did not wrongfully call himself a christian, for the mainspring of his faith and his labor was the message of christ delivered to his disciples in the sermon on the mount. this, for tolstoy, contained all the philosophy and the theology of which the modern world stands in need, since in the precept of non-resistance is joined forever the issue between the law and the gospel: "ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but i say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." and farther on: "ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. but i say unto you. love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you." ... in this commandment tolstoy found warrant for unswerving forbearance toward every species of private and corporate aggression. offenders against individuals or the commonwealth deserve nothing but pity. prisons should be abolished and criminals never punished. tolstoy went so far as to declare that even if he saw his own wife or daughters being assaulted, he would abstain from using force in their defense. the infliction of the death penalty was to him the most odious of crimes. no life, either human or animal, should be wilfully destroyed. the doctrine of non-resistance removes every conceivable excuse for war between the nations. a people is as much bound as is an individual by the injunction: "whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." war is not to be justified on patriotic grounds, for patriotism, far from being a virtue, is an enlarged and unduly glorified form of selfishness. consistently with his convictions, tolstoy put forth his strength not for the glory of his nation but for the solidarity of mankind. the cornerstones of tolstoy's religion, then, were these three articles of faith. first, true faith gives life. second, man must live by labor. third, evil must never be resisted by means of evil. * * * * * outside of the sphere of religious thought it is inaccurate to speak of a specific tolstoyan philosophy, and it is impossible for the student to subscribe unconditionally to the hackneyed formula of the books that tolstoy "will be remembered as perhaps the most profound influence of his day on human thought." yet the statement might be made measurably true if it were modified in accordance with the important reservation made earlier in this sketch. in the field of thought he was not an original explorer. he was great only as the promulgator, not as the inventor, of ideas. his work has not enriched the wisdom of man by a single new thought, nor was he a systematizer and expounder of thought or a philosopher. in fact he possessed slight familiarity with philosophical literature. among the older metaphysicians his principal guide was spinoza, and in more modern speculative science he did not advance beyond schopenhauer. to the latter he was not altogether unlike in his mental temper. at least he showed himself indubitably a pessimist in his works by placing in fullest relief the bad side of the social state. we perceive the pessimistic disposition also through his personal behavior, seeing how he desponded under the discords of life, how easily he lost courage whenever he undertook to cope with practical problems, and how sedulously he avoided the contact with temptations. it was only by an almost total withdrawal from the world, and by that entire relief from its daily and ordinary affairs which he owed to the devotion of his wife that tolstoy was enabled during his later years to look upon the world less despairingly. like his theology, so, too, his civic and economic creed was marked by the utmost and altogether too primitive simplicity. political questions were of slight interest to him, unless they touched upon his vital principles. if, therefore, we turn from his very definite position in matters of individual conduct to his political views, we shall find that he was wanting in a program of practical changes. his only positive contribution to economic discussion was a persistent advocacy of agrarian reform. under the influence of henry george he became an eloquent pleader for the single tax and the nationalization of the land. this question he discussed in numerous places, with especial force and clearness in a long article entitled "a great iniquity."(32) he takes the view that the mission of the state, if it have any at all, can only consist in guaranteeing the rights of every one of its denizens, but that in actual fact the state protects only the rights of the propertied. intelligent and right-minded citizens must not conspire with the state to ride rough-shod over the helpless majority. keenly alive to the unalterable tendency of organized power to abridge the rights of individuals and to dominate both their material and spiritual existence, tolstoy fell into the opposite extreme and would have abolished with a clean sweep all factors of social control, including the right of property and the powers of government, and transformed society into a community of equals and brothers, relying for its peace and well-being upon a universal love of liberty and justice. (32) printed in the (london) _times_ of september 10, 1905. by his disbelief in authority, the rejection of the socialists' schemes of reconstruction, his mistrust of fixed institutions and reliance on individual right-mindedness for the maintenance of the common good, tolstoy in the sphere of civic thought separated himself from the political socialists by the whole diameter of initial principle: he might not unjustly be classified, therefore, as an anarchist, if this definition were neither too narrow nor too wide. the christian socialists might claim him, because he aspires ardently to ideals essentially christian in their nature, and there is surely truth in the thesis that "every thinker who understands and earnestly accepts the teaching of the master is at heart a socialist." at the same time, christianity and socialism do not travel the whole way together. for a religion that enjoins patience and submission can hardly be conducive to the full flowering of socialism. and tolstoy's attitude towards the church differs radically from that of the christian socialists. on the whole one had best abstain from classifying men of genius. the base of tolstoy's social creed was the non-recognition of private property. the effect of the present system is to maintain the inequality of men and thereby to excite envy and stir up hatred among them. eager to set a personal example and precedent, tolstoy rendered himself nominally penniless by making all his property, real and personal, over to his wife and children. likewise he abdicated his copyrights. thus he reduced himself to legal pauperism with a completeness of success that cannot but stir with envy the bosom of any philanthropist who shares mr. andrew carnegie's conviction that to die rich is to die disgraced. tolstoy's detractors have cast a plausible suspicion upon his sincerity. they pointed out among other things that his relinquishment of pecuniary profit in his books was apparent, not real. since russia has no copyright conventions with other countries, it was merely making a virtue of necessity to authorize freely the translation of his works into foreign languages. as for the russian editions of his writings, it is said that in so far as the heavy hand of the censor did not prevent, the countess, as her husband's financial agent, managed quite skilfully to exploit them. * * * * * altogether, did tolstoy practice what he professed? inconsistency between principles and conduct is a not uncommon frailty of genius, as is notoriously illustrated by tolstoy's real spiritual progenitor, jean jacques rousseau. now there are many discreditable stories in circulation about the muzhik lord of yasnaya polyana. he urged upon others the gospel commands: "lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth" and: "take what ye have and give to the poor," and for his own part lived, according to report, in sumptuous surroundings. he went ostentatiously on pilgrimages to holy places, barefooted but with an expert pedicure attending him. he dressed in a coarse peasant blouse, but underneath it wore fine silk and linen. he was a vegetarian of the strictest observance, yet so much of an epicure that his taste for unseasonable dainties strained the domestic resources. he preached simplicity, and according to rumor dined off priceless plate; taught the equality of men, and was served by lackies in livery. he abstained from alcohol and tobacco, but consumed six cups of strong coffee at a sitting. finally, he extolled the sexless life and was the father of thirteen children. it was even murmured that notwithstanding his professed affection for the muzhik and his incessant proclamation of universal equality, the peasantry of yasnaya polyana was the most wretchedly-treated to be found in the whole province and that the extortionate landlordism of the tolstoys was notorious throughout the empire. much of this, to be sure, is idle gossip, unworthy of serious attention. nevertheless, there is evidence enough to show that tolstoy's insistence upon a literal acceptance of earlier christian doctrines led him into unavoidable inconsistencies and shamed him into a tragical sense of dishonesty. unquestionably tolstoy lived very simply and laboriously for a man of great rank, means, and fame, but his life was neither hard nor cramped. having had no personal experience of garret and hovel, he could have no first-hand practical knowledge of the sting of poverty, nor could he obtain hardship artificially by imposing upon himself a mild imitation of physical discomfort. for the true test of penury is not the suffering of to-day but the oppressive dread of to-morrow. his ostensible muzhik existence, wanting in none of the essentials of civilization, was a romance that bore to the real squalid pauperism of rural russia about the same relation that the bucolic make-belief of boucher's or watteau's swains and shepherdesses bore to the unperfumed truth of a sheep-farm or a hog-sty. as time passed, and the sage turned his thoughts to a more rigid enforcement of his renunciations, it was no easy task for a devoted wife to provide comfort for him without shaking him too rudely out of his fond illusion that he was enduring privations. after all, then, his practice did not tally with his theory; and this consciousness of living contrary to his own teachings was a constant source of unhappiness which no moral quibbles of his friends could still. yet no man could be farther from being a hypocrite. if at last he broke down under a burden of conscience, it was a burden imposed by the reality of human nature which makes it impossible for any man to live up to intentions of such rigor as tolstoy's. from the start he realized that he did not conform his practice entirely to his teachings, and as he grew old he was resolved that having failed to harmonize his life with his beliefs he would at least corroborate his sincerity by his manner of dying. even in this, however, he was to be thwarted. in his dramatic ending, still plainly remembered, we feel a grim consistency with the lifelong defeat of his will to suffer. early in 1910 a student by the name of manzos addressed a rebuke to tolstoy for simulating the habits of the poor, denouncing his mode of life as a form of mummery. he challenged the sage to forsake his comforts and the affections of his family, and to go forth and beg his way from place to place. "do this," entreated the young fanatic, "and you will be the first true man after christ." with his typical large-heartedness, tolstoy accepted the reproof and said in the course of his long reply:(33) ... "the fact that i am living with wife and daughter in terrible and shameful conditions of luxury when poverty surrounds me on all sides, torments me ever more and more, and there is not a day when i am not thinking of following your advice. i thank you very, very much for your letter." as a matter of fact, he had more than once before made ready to put his convictions to a fiery proof by a final sacrifice,--leaving his home and spending his remaining days in utter solitude. but when he finally proceeded to carry out this ascetic intention and actually set out on a journey to some vague and lonely destination, he was foiled in his purpose. if ever tolstoy's behavior irresistibly provoked misrepresentation of his motives it was by this somewhat theatrical hegira. the fugitive left yasnaya polyana, not alone, but with his two favorite companions, his daughter alexandra and a young hungarian physician who for some time had occupied the post of private secretary to him. after paying a farewell visit to his sister, a nun cloistered in shamardin, he made a start for the trans-caucasus. his idea was to go somewhere near the tolstoy colony at the black sea. but in an early stage of the journey, a part of which was made in an ordinary third-class railway compartment, the old man was overcome by illness and fatigue. he was moved to a trackman's hut at the station of astopovo, not farther than eighty miles from his home, and here,--surrounded by his hastily summoned family and tenderly nursed for five days,--he expired. thus he was denied the summit of martyrdom to which he had aspired,--a lonely death, unminded of men. (33) february 17, 1910. * * * * * even a summary review like this of tolstoy's life and labors cannot be concluded without some consideration of his final attitude toward the esthetic embodiment of civilization. the development of his philosophy of self-abnegation had led irresistibly, as we have seen, to the condemnation of all self-regarding instincts. among these, art appeared to him as one of the most insidious. he warned against the cultivation of the beautiful on the ground that it results in the suppression and destruction of the moral sense. already in 1883 it was known that he had made up his mind to abandon his artistic aspirations out of loyalty to his moral theory, and would henceforth dedicate his talents exclusively to the propagation of humanitarian views. in vain did the dean of russian letters, turgenieff, appeal to him with a death-bed message: "my friend, great writer of the russians, return to literary work! heed my prayer." tolstoy stood firm in his determination. nevertheless, his genius refused to be throttled by his conscience; he could not paralyze his artistic powers; he could merely bend them to his moral aims. as a logical corollary to his opposition to art for art's sake, tolstoy cast from him all his own writings antedating "confession,"--and denounced all of them as empty manifestations of worldly conceit. his authorship of that immortal novel, "war and peace," filled him with shame and remorse. his views on art are plainly and forcibly expounded in the famous treatise on "what is art?" and in the one on "shakespeare." in both he maintains that art, no matter of what sort, should serve the sole purpose of bringing men nearer to each other in the common purpose of right living. hence, no art work is legitimate without a pervasive moral design. the only true touchstone of an art work is the uplifting strength that proceeds from it. therefore, a painting like the "angelus," or a poem like "the man with the hoe" would transcend in worth the creations of a michael angelo or a heinrich heine even as the merits of sophocles, shakespeare, and goethe are outmatched in tolstoy's judgment by those of victor hugo, charles dickens, and george eliot. by the force of this naïve reasoning and his theoretical antipathy toward true art, he was led to see in "uncle tom's cabin" the veritable acme of literary perfection, for the reason that this book wielded such an enormous and noble influence upon the most vital question of its day. he strongly discountenanced the literary practice of revamping ancient themes, believing with ibsen that modern writers should impart their ideas through the medium of modern life. yet at the same time he was up in arms against the self-styled "moderns"! they took their incentives from science, and this tolstoy decried, because science did not fulfill its mission of teaching people how rightly to live. in this whole matter he reasoned doggedly from fixed ideas, no matter to what ultimates the argument would carry him. for instance, he did not stick at branding shakespeare as an utter barbarian, and to explain the reverence for such "disgusting" plays as "king lear" as a crass demonstration of imitative hypocrisy. art in general is a practice aiming at the production of the beautiful. but what is "beautiful"? asked tolstoy. the current definitions he pronounced wrong because they were formulated from the standpoint of the pleasure-seeker. such at least has been the case since the renaissance. from that time forward, art, like all cults of pleasure, has been evil. to the pleasure-seeker, the beautiful is that which is enjoyable; hence he appraises works of art according to their ability to procure enjoyment. in tolstoy's opinion this is no less absurd than if we were to estimate the nutritive value of food-stuffs by the pleasure accompanying their consumption. so he baldly declares that we must abolish beauty as a criterion of art, or conversely, must establish truth as the single standard of beauty. "the heroine of my stories whom i strive to represent in all her beauty, who was ever beautiful, is so, and will remain so, is truth." his views on art have a certain analogy with two modern schools,--much against his will, since he strenuously disavows and deprecates everything modern; they make us think on the one hand of the "naturalists," inasmuch as like them tolstoy eschews all intentional graces of style and diction: and on the other hand of the "impressionists," with whom he seems united by his fundamental definition of art, namely that it is the expression of a dominant emotion calculated to reproduce itself in the reader or beholder. lacking, however, a deep and catholic understanding for art, tolstoy, in contrast with the modern impressionists, would restrict artists to the expression of a single type of sentiments, those that reside in the sphere of religious consciousness. to him art, as properly conceived and practiced, must be ancillary to religion, and its proper gauge is the measure of its agreement with accepted moral teachings. remembering, then, the primitive form of belief to which tolstoy contrived to attain, we find ourselves face to face with a theory of art which sets up as the final arbiter the man "unspoiled by culture," and he, in tolstoy's judgment, is the russian muzhik. * * * * * this course of reasoning on art is in itself sufficient to show the impossibility for any modern mind of giving sweeping assent to tolstoy's teachings. and a like difficulty would be experienced if we tried to follow him in his meditations on any other major interest of life. seeking with a tremendous earnestness of conscience to reduce the bewildering tangle of human affairs to elementary simplicity, he enmeshed himself in a new network of contradictions. the effect was disastrous for the best part of his teaching; his own extremism stamped as a hopeless fantast a man incontestably gifted by nature, as few men have been in history, with the cardinal virtues of a sage, a reformer, and a missionary of social justice. because of this extremism, his voice was doomed to remain that of one crying in the wilderness. the world could not do better than to accept tolstoy's fundamental prescriptions: simplicity of living, application to work, and concentration upon moral culture. but to apply his radical scheme to existing conditions would amount to a self-stultification of the race, for it would entail the unpardonably sinful sacrifice of some of the finest and most hard-won achievements of human progress. for our quotidian difficulties his example promises no solution. the great mass of us are not privileged to test our individual schemes of redemption in the leisured security of an ideal experiment station; not for every man is there a yasnaya polyana, and the sophia andreyevnas are thinly sown in the matrimonial market. but even though tolstoyism will not serve as a means of solving the great social problems, it supplies a helpful method of social criticism. and its value goes far beyond that: the force of his influence was too great not to have strengthened enormously the moral conscience of the world; he has played, and will continue to play, a leading part in the establishing and safeguarding of democracy. after all, we do not have to separate meticulously what is true in tolstoy's teaching from what is false in order to acknowledge him as a voice of his epoch. for as lord morley puts the matter in the case of jean jacques rousseau: "there are some teachers whose distinction is neither correct thought, nor an eye for the exigencies of practical organization, but simply depth and fervor of the moral sentiment, bringing with it the indefinable gift of touching many hearts with love of virtue and the things of the spirit." [ transcriber's note: the following is a list of corrections made to the original. the first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. sublimal regions of the inner life, and that their work somehow brings subliminal regions of the inner life, and that their work somehow brings in the writings of the de-gallisized frenchman, count joseph arthur in the writings of the de-gallicized frenchman, count joseph arthur the same time, the universal decreptitude prevented the despiser of his the same time, the universal decrepitude prevented the despiser of his artistic design was dimmed by the obstrusive didactic purpose. artistic design was dimmed by the obtrusive didactic purpose. ] http://www.freeliterature.org (images generously made available by the internet archive.) the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche by h. l. mencken i shall be told, i suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless--because i speak the truth; and people prefer to believe that everything the lord made is good. if you are one such, go to the priests, and leave philosophers in peace! _arthur schopenhauer._ _third edition_ boston luce and company 1913 preface to the third edition when this attempt to summarize and interpret the principal ideas of friedrich wilhelm nietzsche was first published, in the early part of 1908, several of his most important books were yet to be translated into english and the existing commentaries were either fragmentary and confusing or frankly addressed to the specialist in philosophy. it was in an effort to make nietzsche comprehensible to the general reader, at sea in german and unfamiliar with the technicalities of the seminaries, that the work was undertaken. it soon appeared that a considerable public had awaited that effort, for the first edition was quickly exhausted and there was an immediate demand for a special edition in england. the larger american edition which followed has since gone the way of its predecessor, and so the opportunity offers for a general revision, eliminating certain errors in the first draft and introducing facts and opinions brought forward by the publication of dr. oscar levy's admirable complete edition of nietzsche in english and by the appearance of several new and informative biographical studies, and a large number of discussions and criticisms. the whole of the section upon nietzsche's intellectual origins has been rewritten, as has been the section on his critics, and new matter has been added to the biographical chapters. in addition, the middle portion of the book has been carefully revised, and a final chapter upon the study of nietzsche, far more extensive than the original bibliographical note, has been appended. the effect of these changes, it is believed, has been to increase the usefulness of the book, not only to the reader who will go no further, but also to the reader who plans to proceed to nietzsche's own writings and to the arguments of his principal critics and defenders. that nietzsche has been making progress of late goes without saying. no reader of current literature, nor even of current periodicals, can have failed to notice the increasing pressure of his ideas. when his name was first heard in england and america, toward the end of the nineties, he suffered much by the fact that few of his advocates had been at any pains to understand him. thus misrepresented, he took on the aspect of an horrific intellectual hobgoblin, half bakúnin and half byron, a sacrilegious and sinister fellow, the father of all the wilder ribaldries of the day. in brief, like ibsen before him, he had to bear many a burden that was not his. but in the course of time the truth about him gradually precipitated itself from this cloud of unordered enthusiasm, and his principal ideas began to show themselves clearly. then the discovery was made that the report of them had been far more appalling than the substance. some of them, indeed, had already slipped into respectable society in disguise, as the original inspirations of lesser sages, and others, on examination, turned out to be quite harmless, and even comforting. the worst that could be said of most of them was that they stood in somewhat violent opposition to the common platitudes, that they were a bit vociferous in denying this planet to be the best of all possible worlds. heresy, of course, but falling, fortunately enough, upon ears fast growing attuned to heretical music. the old order now had fewer to defend it than in days gone by. the feeling that it must yield to something better, that contentment must give way to striving and struggle, that any change was better than no change at all--this feeling was abroad in the world. and if the program of change that nietzsche offered was startling at first hearing, it was at least no more startling than the programs offered by other reformers. thus he got his day in court at last and thus he won the serious attention of open-minded and reflective folk. not, of course, that nietzsche threatens, today or in the near future, to make a grand conquest of christendom, as paul conquered, or the unknown father of republics. far from it, indeed. filtered through the comic sieve of a shaw or sentimentalized by a roosevelt, some of his ideas show a considerable popularity, but in their original state they are not likely to inflame millions. broadly viewed, they stand in direct opposition to every dream that soothes the slumber of mankind in the mass, and therefore mankind in the mass must needs be suspicious of them, at least for years to come. they are pre-eminently for the man who is _not_ of the mass, for the man whose head is lifted, however little, above the common level. they justify the success of that man, as christianity justifies the failure of the man below. and so they give no promise of winning the race in general from its old idols, despite the fact that the pull of natural laws and of elemental appetites is on their side. but inasmuch as an idea, to make itself felt in the world, need not convert the many who serve and wait but only the few who rule, it must be manifest that the nietzschean creed, in the long run, gives promise of exercising a very real influence upon human thought. reduced to a single phrase, it may be called a counterblast to sentimentality--and it is precisely by breaking down sentimentality, with its fondness for moribund gods, that human progress is made. if nietzsche had left no other vital message to his time, he would have at least forced and deserved a hearing for his warning that christianity is a theory for those who distrust and despair of their strength, and not for those who hope and fight on. to plat his principal ideas for the reader puzzled by conflicting reports of them, to prepare the way for an orderly and profitable reading of his own books--such is the purpose of the present volume. the works of nietzsche, as they have been done into english, fill eighteen volumes as large as this one, and the best available account of his life would make three or four more. but it is sincerely to be hoped that the student, once he has learned the main paths through this extensive country, will proceed to a diligent and thorough exploration. of all modern philosophers nietzsche is the least dull. he was undoubtedly the greatest german prose writer of his generation, and even when one reads him through the english veil it is impossible to escape the charm and color of his phrases and the pyrotechnic brilliance of his thinking. mencken. baltimore, november, 1913. contents nietzsche the man i. boyhood and youth 3 ii. the beginnings of the philosopher 16 iii. blazing a new path 27 iv. the prophet of the superman 40 v. the philosopher and the man 50 nietzsche the philosopher i. dionysus _vs._ apollo 63 ii. the origin of morality 74 iii. beyond good and evil 88 iv. the superman 100 v. eternal recurrence 117 vi. christianity 126 vii. truth 147 viii. civilization 162 ix. women and marriage 174 x. government 192 xi. crime and punishment 208 xii. education 216 xiii. sundry ideas 226 xiv. nietzsche _vs._ wagner 242 nietzsche the prophet i. nietzsche's origins 255 ii. nietzsche and his critics 268 how to study nietzsche 290 index 297 nietzsche the man friedrich nietzsche i boyhood and youth friedrich nietzsche was a preacher's son, brought up in the fear of the lord. it is the ideal training for sham-smashers and freethinkers. let a boy of alert, restless intelligence come to early manhood in an atmosphere of strong faith, wherein doubts are blasphemies and inquiry is a crime, and rebellion is certain to appear with his beard. so long as his mind feels itself puny beside the overwhelming pomp and circumstance of parental authority, he will remain docile and even pious. but so soon as he begins to see authority as something ever finite, variable and all-too-human--when he begins to realize that his father and his mother, in the last analysis, are mere human beings, and fallible like himself--then he will fly precipitately toward the intellectual wailing places, to think his own thoughts in his own way and to worship his own gods beneath the open sky. as a child nietzsche was holy; as a man he was the symbol and embodiment of all unholiness. at nine he was already versed in the lore of the reverend doctors, and the pulpit, to his happy mother--a preacher's daughter as well as a preacher's wife--seemed his logical and lofty goal; at thirty he was chief among those who held that all pulpits should be torn down and fashioned into bludgeons, to beat out the silly brains of theologians. the awakening came to him when he made his first venture away from the maternal apron-string and fireside: when, as a boy of ten, he learned that there were many, many men in the world and that these men were of many minds. with the clash of authority came the end of authority. if a. was right, b. was wrong--and b. had a disquieting habit of standing for one's mother, one's grandmother or the holy prophets. here was the beginning of intelligence in the boy--the beginning of that weighing and choosing faculty which seems to give man at once his sense of mastery and his feeling of helplessness. the old notion that doubt was a crime crept away. there remained in its place the new notion that the only real crime in the world--the only unmanly, unspeakable and unforgivable offense against the race--was unreasoning belief. thus the orthodoxy of the nietzsche home turned upon and devoured itself. the philosopher of the superman was born on october 15th, 1844, at röcken, a small town in the prussian province of saxony. his father, karl ludwig nietzsche, was a country pastor of the lutheran church and a man of eminence in the countryside. but he was more than a mere rural worthy, with an outlook limited by the fringe of trees on the horizon, for in his time he had seen something of the great world and had even played his humble part in it. years before his son friedrich was born he had been tutor to the children of the duke of altenburg. the duke was fond of him and took him, now and then, on memorable and eventful journeys to berlin, where that turbulent monarch, king friedrich wilhelm iv, kept a tinsel court and made fast progress from imbecility to acute dementia. the king met the young tutor and found him a clever and agreeable person, with excellent opinions regarding all those things whereon monarchs are wont to differ with mobs. when the children of the duke became sufficiently saturated with learning, the work of pastor nietzsche at altenburg was done and he journeyed to berlin to face weary days in the anterooms of ecclesiastical magnates and jobbers of places. the king, hearing by chance of his presence and remembering him pleasantly, ordered that he be given without delay a vicarage worthy of his talents. so he was sent to röcken, and there, when a son was born to him, he called the boy friedrich wilhelm, as a graceful compliment to his royal patron and admirer. there were two other children in the house. one was a boy, josef, who was named after the duke of altenburg, and died in infancy in 1850. the other was a girl, therese elisabeth alexandra, who became in after years her brother's housekeeper, guardian angel and biographer. her three names were those of the three noble children her father had grounded in the humanities. elisabeth--who married toward middle age and is best known as frau förster-nietzsche--tells us practically all that we know about the nietzsche family and the private life of its distinguished son.[1] the clan came out of poland, like so many other families of eastern germany, at the time of the sad, vain wars. legend maintains that it was noble in its day and nietzsche himself liked to think so. the name, says elisabeth, was originally nietzschy. "germany is a great nation," nietzsche would say, "only because its people have so much polish blood in their veins.... i am proud of my polish descent. i remember that in former times a polish noble, by his simple veto, could overturn the resolution of a popular assembly. there were giants in poland in the time of my forefathers." he wrote a tract with the french title "_l'origine de la famille de nietzsche_" and presented the manuscript to his sister, as a document to be treasured and held sacred. she tells us that he was fond of maintaining that the nietzsches had suffered greatly and fallen from vast grandeur for their opinions, religious and political. he had no proof of this, but it pleased him to think so. pastor nietzsche was thrown from his horse in 1848 and died, after a lingering illness, on july 28th, 1849, when friedrich was barely five years old. frau nietzsche then moved her little family to naumburg-on-the-saale--"a christian, conservative, loyal city." the household consisted of the mother, the two children, their paternal grandmother and two maiden aunts--the sisters of the dead pastor. the grandmother was something of a bluestocking and had been, in her day, a member of that queer circle of intellectuals and amateurs which raged and roared around goethe at weimar. but that was in the long ago, before she dreamed of becoming the wife of one preacher and the mother of another. in the year '50 she was well of all such youthful fancies and there was no doubt of the divine revelations beneath her pious roof. prayers began the day and ended the day. it was a house of holy women, with something of a convent's placidity and quiet exaltation. little friedrich was the idol in the shrine. it was the hope of all that he would grow up into a man inimitably noble and impossibly good. pampered thus, the boy shrank from the touch of the world's rough hand. his sister tells us that he disliked the bad little boys of the neighborhood, who robbed bird's nests, raided orchards and played at soldiers. there appeared in him a quaint fastidiousness which went counter to the dearest ideals of the healthy young male. his school fellows, in derision, called him "the little pastor" and took delight in waylaying him and venting upon him their grotesque and barbarous humor. he liked flowers and books and music and when he went abroad it was for solitary walks. he could recite and sing and he knew the bible so well that he was able to dispute about its mysteries. "as i think of him," said an old school-mate years afterward, "i am forced irresistibly into a thought of the 12-year-old jesus in the temple." "the serious introspective child, with his dignified politeness," says his sister, "seemed so strange to other boys that friendly advances from either side were out of the question." there is a picture of the boy in all the glory of his first long-tailed coat. his trousers stop above his shoe-tops, his hair is long and his legs seem mere airy filaments. as one gazes upon the likeness one can almost smell the soap that scoured that high, shiny brow and those thin, white cheeks. the race of such seraphic boys has died out in the world. gone are their slick, plastered locks and their translucent ears! gone are their ruffled cuffs and their spouting of the golden text! nietzsche wrote verses before he was ten: pious, plaintive verses that scanned well and showed rhymes and metaphors made respectable by ages of honorable employment. his maiden effort, so far as we know, was an elegy entitled "the grave of my father." later on he became aware of material things and sang the praises of rose and sunset. he played the piano, too, and knew his beethoven well, from the snares for the left hand in "_für elise_" to the raging tumults of the c minor symphony. one sunday--it was ascension day--he went to the village church and heard the choir sing the hallelujah chorus from "the messiah." here was music that benumbed the senses and soothed the soul and, boy as he was, he felt its supreme beauty. that night he covered pages of ruled paper with impossible pot-hooks. he, too, would write music! later on the difficulties of thorough-bass, as it was taught in the abysmal german text-books of the time, somewhat dampened his ardor, but more than once during his youth he thought seriously of becoming a musician. his first really ambitious composition was a piano _pièce_ called "_mondschein auf der pussta_"--"moonlight on the pussta"--the pussta being the flat bohemian prairie. the family circle was delighted with this maiden _opus_, and we may conjure up a picture of little friedrich playing it of a quiet evening at home, while mother, grandmother, sister and aunts gathered round and marvelled at his genius. in later life he wrote songs and sonatas, and--if an enemy is to be believed--an opera in the grand manner. his sister, in her biography, prints some samples of his music. candor compels the admission that it is even worse than it sounds. nietzsche, at this time, still seemed like piety on a monument, but as much as he revered his elders and as much as he relied upon their infallibility, there were yet problems which assailed him and gave him disquiet. when he did not walk and think alone, his sister was his companion, and to her he opened his heart, as one might to a sexless, impersonal confessor. in her presence, indeed, he really thought aloud, and this remained his habit until the end of his life. his mind, awakening, wandered beyond the little world hedged about by doting and complacent women. until he entered the gymnasium--that great weighing place of german brains--he shrank from open revolt, and even from the thought of it, but he could not help dwelling upon the mysteries that rose before him. there were things upon which the scriptures, search them as he might, seemed to throw no light, and of which mothers and grandmothers and maiden aunts did not discourse. "one day," says elisabeth, "when he was yet very young, he said to me: 'you mustn't expect me to believe those silly stories about storks bringing babies. man is a mammal and a mammal must get his own children for himself.'" every child, perhaps, ponders such problems, but in the vast majority knowledge must wait until it may enter fortuitously and from without. nietzsche did not belong to the majority. to him ideas were ever things to be sought out eagerly, to be weighed calmly, to be tried in the fire. for weal or for woe, the cornerstones of his faith were brought forth, with sweat and pain, from the quarry of his own mind. nietzsche went to various village schools--public and private--until he was ten, dutifully trudging away each morning with knapsack and lunch-basket. he kissed his mother at the gate when he departed and she was waiting for him, with another kiss, when he returned. as happiness goes, his was probably a happy childhood. the fierce joy of boyish combat--of fighting, of robbing, of slaying--was never his, but to a child so athirst for knowledge, each fresh discovery--about the sayings of luther, the lions of africa, the properties of an inverted fraction--must have brought its thrill. but as he came to the last year of his first decade, unanswerable questions brought their discontent and disquiet--as they do to all of us. there is a feeling of oppression and poignant pain in facing problems that defy solution and facts that refuse to fit into ordered chains. it is only when mastery follows that the fine stimulation of conscious efficiency drowns out all moody vapors. when nietzsche went to the gymnasium his whole world was overturned. here boys were no longer mute and hollow vessels, to be stuffed with predigested learning, but human beings whose approach to separate entity was recognized. it was possible to ask questions and to argue moot points, and teaching became less the administration of a necessary medicine and more the sharing of a delightful meal. your german school-master is commonly a martinet, and his birch is never idle, but he has the saving grace of loving his trade and of readily recognizing true diligence in his pupils. history does not record the name of the pedagogue who taught nietzsche at the naumburg gymnasium, but he must have been one who ill deserved his oblivion. he fed the eager, inquiring mind of his little student and made a new boy of him. the old unhealthy, uncanny embodiment of a fond household's impossible dreams became more likeable and more human. his exclusiveness and fastidiousness were native and ineradicable, perhaps, for they remained with him, in some degree, his whole life long, but his thirst for knowledge and yearning for disputation soon led him to the discovery that there were other boys worth cultivating: other boys whose thoughts, like his own, rose above misdemeanor and horse-play. with two such he formed a quick friendship, and they were destined to influence him greatly to the end of his youth. they organized a club for mutual culture, gave it the sonorous name of "_der litterarischen vereinigung germania_" ("the german literary association") and drew up an elaborate scheme of study. once a week there was a meeting, at which each of the three submitted an essay or a musical composition to the critical scrutiny of the others. they waded out into the deep water. one week they discussed "the infancy of nations," and after that, "the dæmonic element in music," "napoleon iii" and "fatalism in history." despite its praiseworthy earnestness, this program causes a smile--and so does the transformation of the retiring and well-scrubbed little nietzsche we have been observing into the long, gaunt nietzsche of 14, with a yearning for the companionship of his fellows, and a voice beginning to grow comically harsh and deep, and a mind awhirl with unutterable things. nietzsche was a brilliant and spectacular pupil and soon won a scholarship at pforta, a famous and ancient preparatory academy not far away. pforta, in those days, was of a dignity comparable to eton's or harrow's. it was a great school, but tradition overpowered it. violent combats between amateur sages were not encouraged: it was a place for gentlemen to acquire euclid and the languages in a decent, gentlemanly way, and not an arena for gawky country philosophers to prance about in. but nietzsche, by this time, had already become a frank rebel and delighted in elaborating and controverting the doctrines of the learned doctors. he drew up a series of epigrams under the head of "_ideen_" and thought so well of them that he sent them home, to astonish and alarm his mother. some of them exhibited a quite remarkable faculty for pithy utterance--as, for example, "war begets poverty and poverty begets peace"--while others were merely opaque renderings of thoughts half formed. he began to believe in his own mental cunning, with a sincerity which never left him, and, as a triumphant proof of it, he drew up a series of syllogisms designed to make homesickness wither and die. thus he wrestled with life's problems as his boy's eyes saw them. all this was good training for the philosopher, but to the pforta professors it gave disquiet. nietzsche became a bit too sure of himself and a bit too arrogant for discipline. it seemed to him a waste of time to wrestle with the studies that every oafish baron's son and future guardsman sought to master. he neglected mathematics and gave himself up to the hair-splitting of the eleatics and the pythagoreans, the sophists and the skeptics. he pronounced his high curse and anathema upon geography and would have none of it. the result was that when he went up for final examination he writhed and floundered miserably and came within an ace of being set down for further and more diligent labor with his books. only his remarkable mastery of the german language and his vast knowledge of christian doctrine--a legacy from his pious childhood--saved him. the old nietzsche--the shrinking mother's darling of naumburg--was now but a memory. the nietzsche that went up to bonn was a young man with a touch of cynicism and one not a little disposed to pit his sneer against the jurisprudence of the world: a young man with a swagger, a budding moustache and a head full of violently novel ideas about everything under the sun. nietzsche entered bonn in october, 1864, when he was just 20 years old. he was enrolled as a student of philology and theology, but the latter was a mere concession to family faith and tradition, made grudgingly, and after the first semester, the reverend doctors of exegetics knew him no more. at the start he thought the university a delightful place and its people charming. the classrooms and beer gardens were full of young germans like himself, who debated the doings of bismarck, composed eulogies of darwin, sang rabelaisian songs in bad latin, kept dogs, wore ribbons on their walking sticks, fought duels, and drank unlimited steins of pale beer. in the youth of every man there comes over him a sudden yearning to be a good fellow: to be "bill" or "jim" to multitudes, and to go down into legend with sir john falstaff and tom jones. this melancholy madness seized upon nietzsche during his first year at bonn. he frequented the theatres and posed as a connoisseur of opera _bouffe,_ malt liquor and the female form divine. he went upon students' walking tours and carved his name upon the mutilated tables of country inns. he joined a student corps, bought him a little cap and set up shop as a devil of a fellow. his mother was not poor, but she could not afford the outlays that these ambitious enterprises required. friedrich overdrew his allowance and the good woman, no doubt, wept about it, as mothers will, and wondered that learning came so dear. but the inevitable reaction followed. nietzsche was not designed by nature for a hero of pot-houses and duelling sheds. the old fastidiousness asserted itself--that queer, unhealthy fastidiousness which, in his childhood, had set him apart from other boys, and was destined, all his life long, to make him shrink from too intimate contact with his fellow-men. the touch of the crowd disgusted him: he had an almost insane fear of demeaning himself. all of this feeling had been obscured for awhile, by the strange charm of new delights and new companions, but in the end, the gloomy spinner of fancies triumphed over the university buck. nietzsche resigned from his student corps, burned his walking sticks, foreswore smoking and roistering, and bade farewell to johann strauss and offenbach forever. the days of his youth--of his carefree, merry gamboling--were over. hereafter he was all solemnity and all seriousness. "from these early experiences," says his sister, "there remained with him a life-long aversion to smoking, beer-drinking and the whole _biergemüthlichkeit._ he maintained that people who drank beer and smoked pipes were absolutely incapable of understanding him. such people, he thought, lacked the delicacy and clearness of perception necessary to grasp profound and subtle problems." [1] "_das leben friedrich nietzsche's,_" 3 vols. leipsic, 1895-7-9. ii the beginnings of the philosopher at bonn nietzsche became a student of ritschl, the famous philologist,[1] and when ritschl left bonn for leipsic, nietzsche followed him. all traces of the good fellow had disappeared and the student that remained was not unlike those sophomores of medieval toulouse who "rose from bed at 4 o'clock, and having prayed to god, went at 5 o'clock to their studies, their big books under their arms, their inkhorns and candles in their hands." between teacher and pupil there grew up a bond of strong friendship. nietzsche was taken, too, under the wing of motherly old frau ritschl, who invited him to her afternoons of coffee and cinnamon cake and to her evening soirées, where he met the great men of the university world and the eminent strangers who came and went. to ritschl the future philosopher owed many things, indeed, including his sound knowledge of the ancients, his first (and last) university appointment and his meeting with richard wagner. nietzsche always looked back upon these days with pleasure and there was ever a warm spot in his heart for the kindly old professor who led him up to grace. two years or more were thus spent, and then, in the latter part of 1867, nietzsche began his term of compulsory military service in the fourth regiment of prussian field artillery. he had hoped to escape because he was near-sighted and the only son of a widow, but a watchful _oberst-lieutenant_ found loopholes in the law and so ensnared him. he seems to have been some sort of officer, for a photograph of the period shows him with epaulets and a sword. but lieutenant or sergeant, soldiering was scarcely his forte, and he cut a sorry figure on a horse. after a few months of unwilling service, in fact, he had a riding accident and came near dying as his father had died before him. as it was he wrenched his breast muscles so badly that he was condemned by a medical survey and discharged from the army. during his long convalescence he busied himself with philological studies and began his first serious professional work--essays on the theogony of hesiod, the sources of diogenes laërtius and the eternal strife between hesiod and homer. he also made an index to an elaborate collection of german historical fragments and performed odd tasks of like sort for various professors. in october, 1868, he returned to leipsic--not as an undergraduate, but as a special student. this change was advantageous, for it gave him greater freedom of action and protected him from that student _bonhomie_ he had learned to despise. again old ritschl was his teacher and friend and again frau ritschl welcomed him to her _salon_ and gave him of her good counsel and her excellent coffee. meanwhile there had occurred something that was destined to direct and color the whole stream of his life. this was his discovery of arthur schopenhauer. in the 60's, it would appear, the great pessimist was still scarcely more than a name in the german universities, which, for all their later heterodoxy, clung long to their ancient first causes. nietzsche knew nothing of him, and in the seminaries of leipsic not a soul maintained him. of kant and of hegel there was talk unlimited, and of lotze and fichte there were riotous disputations that roared and raged about the class-room of fechner, then the university professor of philosophy. but of schopenhauer nothing was heard, and so, when nietzsche, rambling through an old leipsic bookshop, happened upon a second-hand copy of "_die welt als wille und vorstellung_"[2] a new world came floating into his view. this was in 1865. "i took the book to my lodgings," he said years afterward, "and flung myself on a sofa and read and read and read. it seemed as if schopenhauer were addressing me personally. i felt his enthusiasm and seemed to see him before me. every line cried aloud for renunciation, denial, resignation!" so much for the first flush of the ecstasy of discovery. that nietzsche entirely agreed with everything in the book, even in his wildest transports of admiration, is rather doubtful. he was but 21--the age of great passions and great romance--and he was athirst for some writing that would solve the problems left unanswered by the accepted sages, but it is probable that when he shouted the schopenhauer manifesto loudest he read into the text wild variations of his own. the premises of the pessimist gave credit and order to thoughts that had been rising up in his own mind; but the conclusions, if he subscribed to them at all, led him far afield. no doubt he was like one of those fantastic messiahs of new cults who search the scriptures for testimony--and find it. late in life, when he was accused of inconsistency in first deifying schopenhauer and then damning him, he made this defense, and despite the derisive sneers of his enemies, it seemed a fairly good one. schopenhauer's argument, to put it briefly, was that the will to exist--the primary instinct of life--was the eternal first cause of all human actions, motives and ideas. the old philosophers of christendom had regarded intelligence as the superior of instinct. some of them thought that an intelligent god ruled the universe and that nothing happened without his knowledge and desire. others believed that man was a free agent, that whatever he did was the result of his own thought and choice, and that it was right, in consequence, to condemn him to hell for his sins and to exalt him to heaven for any goodness he might chance to show. schopenhauer turned all this completely about. intelligence, he said, was not the source of will, but its effect. when life first appeared upon earth, it had but one aim and object: that of perpetuating itself. this instinct, he said, was still at the bottom of every function of all living beings. intelligence grew out of the fact that mankind, in the course of ages, began to notice that certain manifestations of the will to live were followed by certain invariable results. this capacity of perceiving was followed by a capacity for remembering, which in turn produced a capacity for anticipating. an intelligent man, said schopenhauer, was merely one who remembered so many facts (the result either of personal experience or of the transmitted experience of others) that he could separate them into groups and observe their relationship, one to the other, and hazard a close guess as to their future effects: _i.e._ could reason about them. going further, schopenhauer pointed out that this will to exist, this instinct to preserve and protect life, this old adam, was to blame for the unpleasant things of life as well as for the good things--that it produced avarice, hatred and murder just as well as industry, resourcefulness and courage--that it led men to seek means of killing one another as well as means of tilling the earth and procuring food and raiment. he showed, yet further, that its bad effects were a great deal more numerous than its good effects and so accounted for the fact--which many men before him had observed--that life, at best, held more of sorrow than of joy.[3] the will-to-live, argued schopenhauer, was responsible for all this. pain, he believed, would always outweigh pleasure in this sad old world until men ceased to want to live--until no one desired food or drink or house or wife or money. to put it more briefly, he held that true happiness would be impossible until mankind had killed will with will, which is to say, until the will-to-live was willed out of existence. therefore the happiest man was the one who had come nearest this end--the man who had killed all the more obvious human desires, hopes and aspirations--the solitary ascetic--the monk in his cell--the soaring, starving poet--the cloud-enshrouded philosopher. nietzsche very soon diverged from this conclusion. he believed, with schopenhauer, that human life, at best, was often an infliction and a torture, but in his very first book he showed that he admired, not the ascetic who tried to escape from the wear and tear of life altogether, but the proud, stiff-necked hero who held his balance in the face of both seductive pleasure and staggering pain; who cultivated within himself a sublime indifference, so that happiness and misery, to him, became mere words, and no catastrophe, human or superhuman, could affright or daunt him.[4] it is obvious that there is a considerable difference between these ideas, for all their similarity in origin and for all nietzsche's youthful worship of schopenhauer. nietzsche, in fact, was so enamoured by the honesty and originality of what may be called the data of schopenhauer's philosophy that he took the philosophy itself rather on trust and did not begin to inquire into it closely or to compare it carefully with his own ideas until after he had committed himself in a most embarrassing fashion. the same phenomena is no curiosity in religion, science or politics. before a realization of these differences quite dawned upon nietzsche he was busied with other affairs. in 1869, when he was barely 25, he was appointed, upon ritschl's recommendation, to the chair of classical philology at the university of basel, in switzerland, an ancient stronghold of lutheran theology. he had no degree, but the university of leipsic promptly made him a doctor of philosophy, without thesis or examination, and on april 13th he left the old home at naumburg to assume his duties. thus passed that pious household. the grandmother had died long before--in 1856--and one of the maiden aunts had preceded her to the grave by a year. the other, long ill, had followed in 1867. but nietzsche's mother lived until 1897, though gradually estranged from him by his opinions, and his sister, as we know, survived him. nietzsche was officially professor of philology, but he also became teacher of greek in the pedagogium attached to the university. he worked like a trojan and mixed schopenhauer and hesiod in his class-room discourses upon the origin of greek verbs and other such dull subjects. but it is not recorded that he made a very profound impression, except upon a relatively small circle. his learning was abysmal, but he was far too impatient and unsympathetic to be a good teacher. his classes, in fact, were never large, except in the pedagogium. this, however, may have been partly due to the fact that in 1869, as in later years, there were comparatively few persons impractical enough to spend their days and nights in the study of philology. in 1870 came the franco-prussian war and nietzsche decided to go to the front. despite his hatred of all the cant of cheap patriotism and his pious thankfulness that he was a pole and not a german, he was at bottom a good citizen and perfectly willing to suffer and bleed for his country. but unluckily he had taken out swiss naturalization papers in order to be able to accept his appointment at basel, and so, as the subject of a neutral state, he had to go to the war, not as a warrior, but as a hospital steward. even as it was, nietzsche came near giving his life to germany. he was not strong physically--he had suffered from severe headaches as far back as 1862--and his hard work at basel had further weakened him. on the battlefields of france he grew ill. diphtheria and what seems to have been cholera morbus attacked him and when he finally reached home again he was a neurasthenic wreck. ever thereafter his life was one long struggle against disease. he suffered from migraine, that most terrible disease of the nerves, and chronic catarrh of the stomach made him a dyspeptic. unable to eat or sleep, he resorted to narcotics, and according to his sister, he continued their use throughout his life. "he wanted to get well quickly," she says, "and so took double doses." nietzsche, indeed, was a slave to drugs, and more than once in after life, long before insanity finally ended his career, he gave evidence of it. despite his illness he insisted upon resuming work, but during the following winter he was obliged to take a vacation in italy. meanwhile he had delivered lectures to his classes on the greek drama and two of these he revised and published, in 1872, as his first book, "_die geburt der tragödie_" ("the birth of tragedy"). engelmann, the great leipsic publisher, declined it, but fritsch, of the same city, put it into type.[5] this book greatly pleased his friends, but the old-line philologists of the time thought it wild and extravagant, and it almost cost nietzsche his professorship. students were advised to keep away from him, and during the winter of 1872-3, it is said, he had no pupils at all. nevertheless the book, for all its iconoclasm, was an event. it sounded nietzsche's first, faint battle-cry and put the question mark behind many tilings that seemed honorable and holy in philology. most of the philologists of that time were german savants of the comic-paper sort, and their lives were spent in wondering why one greek poet made the name of a certain plant masculine while another made it feminine. nietzsche, passing over such scholastic futilities, burrowed down into the heart of greek literature. why, he asked himself, did the greeks take pleasure in witnessing representations of bitter, hopeless conflicts, and how did this form of entertainment arise among them? later on, his conclusions will be given at length, but in this place it may be well to sketch them in outline, because of the bearing they have upon his later work, and even upon the trend of his life. in ancient greece, he pointed out at the start, apollo was the god of art--of life as it was recorded and interpreted--and bacchus dionysus was the god of life itself--of eating, drinking and making merry, of dancing and roistering, of everything that made men acutely conscious of the vitality and will within them. the difference between the things they represented has been well set forth in certain homely verses addressed by rudyard kipling to admiral robley d. evans, u. s. n.: zogbaum draws with a pencil and i do things with a pen, but you sit up in a conning tower, bossing eight hundred men. to him that hath shall be given and that's why these books are sent to the man who has _lived_ more stories than zogbaum or i could _invent_. here we have the plain distinction: zogbaum and kipling are apollonic, while evans is dionysian. epic poetry, sculpture, painting and story-telling are apollonic: they represent, not life itself, but some one man's visualized idea of life. but dancing, great deeds and, in some cases, music, are dionysian: they are part and parcel of life as some actual human being, or collection of human beings, is living it. nietzsche maintained that greek art was at first apollonic, but that eventually there appeared a dionysian influence--the fruit, perhaps, of contact with primitive, barbarous peoples. ever afterward there was constant conflict between them and this conflict was the essence of greek tragedy. as sarcey tells us, a play, to hold our attention, must depict some sort of battle, between man and man or idea and idea. in the melodrama of today the battle is between hero and villain; in the ancient greek tragedy it was between apollo and dionysus, between the life contemplative and the life strenuous, between law and outlaw, between the devil and the seraphim. nietzsche, as we shall see, afterward applied this distinction in morals and life as well as in art. he called himself a dionysian and the crowning volume of his system of philosophy, which he had barely started when insanity overtook him, was to have been called "dionysus." [1] friedrich wilhelm ritschl (1806-1876), the foremost philologist of modern times. he became a professor of classical literature and rhetoric in 1839 and founded the science of historical literary criticism, as we know it today. [2] arthur schopenhauer (1788-1860) published this book, his _magnum opus_, at leipsic in 1819. it has been translated into english as "the world as will and idea" and has appeared in many editions. [3] schopenhauer (_"nachträge für lehre vom leiden der welt_") puts the argument thus: "pleasure is never as pleasant as we expect it to be and pain is always more painful. the pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. if you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other." [4] later on, in "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," ii, nietzsche argued that the ascetic was either a coward, who feared the temptations of pleasure and the agonies of pain, or an exhausted worldling who had become satiated with life. [5] begun in 1869, this maiden work was dedicated to richard wagner. at wagner's suggestion nietzsche eliminated a great deal of matter in the original draft. the full title was "the birth of tragedy from the spirit of music," but this was changed, in 1886, when a third edition was printed, to "the birth of tragedy, or hellenism and pessimism." nietzsche then also added a long preface, entitled "an attempt at self-criticism." the material originally excluded was published in 1896. iii blazing a new path having given birth, in this theory of greek tragedy, to an idea which, whatever its defects otherwise, was at least original, understandable and workable, nietzsche began to be conscious, as it were, of his own intellect--or, in his sister's phrase, "to understand what a great man he was." during his first years at basel he had cut quite a figure in academic society, for he was an excellent musician, he enjoyed dancing and he had plenty of pretty things to say to the ladies. but as his ideas clarified and he found himself more and more in conflict with the pundits about him, he withdrew within himself, and in the end he had few friends save richard and cosima wagner, who lived at tribschen, not far away. to one of his turn of mind, indeed, the atmosphere of the college town was bound to grow oppressive soon or late. acutely aware of his own superiority, he showed no patience with the unctuous complacency of dons and dignitaries, and so he became embroiled in various conflicts, and even his admirers among his colleagues seldom ventured upon friendly advances. there are critics who see in all this proof that nietzsche showed signs of insanity from early manhood, but as a matter of fact it was his abnormally accurate vision and not a vision gone awry, that made him stand so aloof from his fellows. in the vast majority of those about him he saw the coarse metal of sham and pretense beneath the showy gilding of learning. he had before him, at close range, a good many of the great men of his time--the intellectuals whose word was law in the schools. he saw them on parade and he saw them in their shirt sleeves. what wonder that he lost all false reverence for them and began to estimate them in terms, not of their dignity and reputation, but of their actual credibility and worth? it was inevitable that he should compare his own ideas to theirs, and it was inevitable that he should perceive the difference between his own fanatical striving for the truth and the easy dependence upon precedent and formula which lay beneath their booming bombast. thus there arose in him a fiery loathing for all authority, and a firm belief that his own opinion regarding any matter to which he had given thought was as sound, at the least, as any other man's. thenceforth the assertive "_ich_" began to besprinkle his discourse and his pages. "i condemn christianity. _i_ have given to mankind.... _i_ was never yet modest.... _i_ think.... _i_ say.... _i_ do...." thus he hurled his javelin at authority until the end. to those about him, perhaps, nietzsche seemed wild and impossible, but it is not recorded that any one ever looked upon him as ridiculous. his high brow, bared by the way in which he brushed his hair; his keen eyes, with their monstrous overhanging brows, and his immense, untrimmed moustache gave him an air of alarming earnestness. beside the pedagogues about him--with their well-barbered, professorial beards, their bald heads and their learned spectacles--he seemed like some incomprehensible foreigner. the exotic air he bore delighted him and he cultivated it assiduously. he regarded himself as a polish grandee set down by an unkind fate among german shopkeepers, and it gave him vast pleasure when the hotel porters and street beggars, deceived by his disorderly façade, called him "the polack." thus he lived and had his being. the inquisitive boy of old naumburg, the impudent youth of pforta and the academic free lance of bonn and leipsic had become merged into a man sure of himself and contemptuous of all whose search for the truth was hampered or hedged about by any respect for statute or precedent. he saw that the philosophers and sages of the day, in many of their most gorgeous flights of logic, started from false premises, and he observed the fact that certain of the dominant moral, political and social maxims of the time were mere foolishness. it struck him, too, that all of this faulty ratiocination--all of this assumption of outworn doctrines and dependence upon exploded creeds--was not confined to the confessedly orthodox. there was fallacy no less disgusting in the other camp. the professed apostles of revolt were becoming as bad as the old crusaders and apologists. nietzsche harbored a fevered yearning to call all of these false prophets to book and to reduce their fine axioms to absurdity. accordingly, he planned a series of twenty-four pamphlets and decided to call them "_unzeitgemässe betrachtungen_" which may be translated as "inopportune speculations," or more clearly, "essays in sham-smashing." in looking about for a head to smash in essay number one, his eye, naturally enough, alighted upon that of david strauss, the favorite philosopher and fashionable iconoclast of the day. strauss had been a preacher but had renounced the cloth and set up shop as a critic of christianity.[1] he had labored with good intentions, no doubt, but the net result of all his smug agnosticism was that his disciples were as self-satisfied, bigoted and prejudiced in the garb of agnostics as they had been before as christians. nietzsche's clear eye saw this and in the first of his little pamphlets, "_david strauss, der bekenner und der schriftsteller_" ("david strauss, the confessor and the writer"), he bore down upon strauss' _bourgeoise_ pseudo-skepticism most savagely. this was in 1873. "strauss," he said, "utterly evades the question, what is the meaning of life? he had an opportunity to show courage, to turn his back upon the philistines, and to boldly deduce a new morality from that constant warfare which destroys all but the fittest, but to do this would have required a love of truth infinitely higher than that which spends itself in violent invectives against parsons, miracles and the historical humbug of the resurrection. strauss had no such courage. had he worked out the darwinian doctrine to its last decimal he would have had the philistines against him to a man. as it is, they are with him. he has wasted his time in combatting christianity's nonessentials. for the idea at the bottom of it he has proposed no substitute. in consequence, his philosophy is stale."[2] as a distinguished critic has pointed out, nietzsche's attack was notable, not only for its keen analysis and ruthless honesty, but also for its courage. it required no little bravery, three years after sedan, to tell the germans that the new culture which constituted their pride was rotten, and that, unless it were purified in the fire of absolute truth, it might one day wreck their civilization. in the year following nietzsche returned to the attack with a criticism of history, which was then the fashionable science of the german universities, on account, chiefly, of its usefulness in exploding the myths of christianity. he called his essay _"vom nutzen und nachtheil der historie für das leben_" ("on the good and bad effects of history upon human life") and in it he took issue with the reigning pedagogues and professors of the day. there was much hard thinking and no little good writing in this essay and it made its mark. the mere study of history, argued nietzsche, unless some definite notion regarding the destiny of man were kept ever in mind, was misleading and confusing. there was great danger in assuming that everything which happened was part of some divine and mysterious plan for the ultimate attainment of perfection. as a matter of fact, many historical events were meaningless, and this was particularly true of those expressions of "governments, public opinion and majorities" which historians were prone to accentuate. to nietzsche the ideas and doings of peoples seemed infinitely less important than the ideas and doings of exceptional individuals. to put it more simply, he believed that one man, hannibal, was of vastly more importance to the world than all the other carthaginians of his time taken together. herein we have a reappearance of dionysus and a foreshadowing of the _herrenmoral_ and superman of later days. nietzsche's next essay was devoted to schopenhauer and was printed in 1874. he called it "_schopenhauer als erzieher_" ("schopenhauer as a teacher") and in it he laid his burnt offering upon the altar of the great pessimist, who was destined to remain his hero, if no longer his god, until the end. nietzsche was already beginning to read rebellious ideas of his own into "the world as will and idea," but in two things--the theory of will and the impulse toward truth--he and schopenhauer were ever as one. he preached a holy war upon all those influences which had made the apostle of pessimism, in his life-time, an unheard outcast. he raged against the narrowness of university schools of philosophy and denounced all governmental interference in speculation--whether it were expressed crudely, by inquisitorial laws and the _index_, or softly and insidiously, by the bribery of comfortable berths and public honors. "experience teaches us," he said, "that nothing stands so much in the way of developing great philosophers as the custom of supporting bad ones in state universities.... it is the popular theory that the posts given to the latter make them 'free' to do original work; as a matter of fact, the effect is quite the contrary.... no state would ever dare to patronize such men as plato and schopenhauer. and why? because the state is always afraid of them.... it seems to me that there is need for a higher tribunal outside the universities to critically examine the doctrines they teach. as soon as philosophers are willing to resign their salaries, they will constitute such a tribunal. without pay and without honors, it will be able to free itself from the prejudices of the age. like schopenhauer, it will be the judge of the so-called culture around it."[3] years later nietzsche denied that, in this essay, he committed himself irretrievably to the whole philosophy of schopenhauer and a fair reading bears him out. he was not defending schopenhauer's doctrine of renunciation, but merely asking that he be given a hearing. he was pleading the case of foes as well as of friends: all he asked was that the forum be opened to every man who had something new to say. nietzsche regarded schopenhauer as a king among philosophers because he shook himself entirely free of the dominant thought of his time. in an age marked, beyond everything, by humanity's rising reliance upon human reason, he sought to show that reason was a puny offshoot of an irresistible natural law--the law of self-preservation. nietzsche admired the man's courage and agreed with him in his insistence that this law was at the bottom of all sentient activity, but he was never a subscriber to schopenhauer's surrender and despair. from the very start, indeed, he was a prophet of defiance, and herein his divergence from schopenhauer was infinite. as his knowledge broadened and his scope widened, he expanded and developed his philosophy, and often he found it necessary to modify it in detail. but that he ever turned upon himself in fundamentals is untrue. nietzsche at 40 and nietzsche at 25 were essentially the same. the germ of practically all his writings lies in his first book--nay, it is to be found further back: in the wild speculations of his youth. the fourth of the "_unzeitgemässe betrachtungen_" (and the last, for the original design of the series was not carried out) was "richard wagner in bayreuth."[4] this was published in 1876 and neither it nor the general subject of nietzsche's relations with wagner need be considered here. in a subsequent chapter the whole matter will be discussed. for the present, it is sufficient to say that nietzsche met wagner through the medium of ritschl's wife; that they became fast friends; that nietzsche hailed the composer as a hero sent to make the drama an epitome of the life unfettered and unbounded, of life defiant and joyful; that wagner, after starting from the schopenhauer base, travelled toward st. francis rather than toward dionysus, and that nietzsche, after vain expostulations, read the author of "parsifal" out of meeting and pronounced him anathema. it was all a case of misunderstanding. wagner was an artist, and not a philosopher. right or wrong, christianity was beautiful, and as a thing of beauty it called aloud to him. to nietzsche beauty seemed a mere phase of truth. it was during this period of preliminary skirmishing that nietzsche's ultimate philosophy began to formulate itself. he saw clearly that there was something radically wrong with the german culture of the day--that many things esteemed right and holy were, in reality, unspeakable, and that many things under the ban of church and state were far from wrong in themselves. he saw, too, that there had grown up a false logic and that its taint was upon the whole of contemporary thought. men maintained propositions plainly erroneous and excused themselves by the plea that ideals were greater than actualities. the race was subscribing to one thing and practicing another. christianity was official, but not a single real christian was to be found in all christendom. thousands bowed down to men and ideas that they despised and denounced things that every sane man knew were necessary and inevitable. the result was a flavor of dishonesty and hypocrisy in all human affairs. in the abstract the laws--of the church, the state and society--were looked upon as impeccable, but every man, in so far as they bore upon him personally, tried his best to evade them. other philosophers, in germany and elsewhere, had made the same observation and there was in progress a grand assault-at-arms upon old ideas. huxley and spencer, in england, were laboring hard in the vineyard planted by darwin; ibsen, in norway, was preparing for his epoch-making life-work, and in far america andrew d. white and others were battling to free education from the bonds of theology. thus it will be seen that, at the start, nietzsche was no more a pioneer than any one of a dozen other men. some of these other men, indeed, were far better equipped for the fray than he, and their services, for a long while, seemed a great deal more important. but it was his good fortune, before his working days were over, to press the conflict much further afield than the others. beginning where they ended, he fought his way into the very citadel of the enemy. his attack upon christianity, which is described at length later on, well exemplifies this uncompromising thoroughness. nietzsche saw that the same plan would have to be pursued in examining all other concepts--religious, political or social. it would be necessary to pass over surface symptoms and go to the heart of things: to tunnel down deep into ideas; to trace out their history and seek out their origins. there were no willing hands to help him in this: it was, in a sense, a work new to the world. in consequence nietzsche perceived that he would have to go slowly and that it would be needful to make every step plain. it was out of the question to expect encouragement: if the task attracted notice at all, this notice would probably take the form of blundering opposition. but nietzsche began his clearing and his road cutting with a light heart. the men of his day might call him accursed, but in time his honesty would shame all denial. this was his attitude always: he felt that neglect and opprobrium were all in his day's work and he used to say that if ever the generality of men endorsed any idea that he had advanced he would be convinced at once that he had made an error. in his preliminary path-finding nietzsche concerned himself much with the history of specific ideas. he showed how the thing which was a sin in one age became the virtue of the next. he attacked hope, faith and charity in this way, and he made excursions into nearly every field of human thought--from art to primary education. all of this occupied the first half of the 70's. nietzsche was in indifferent health and his labors tired him so greatly that he thought more than once of giving up his post at basel, with its dull round of lecturing and quizzing. but his private means at this time were not great enough to enable him to surrender his salary and so he had to hold on. he thought, too, of going to vienna to study the natural sciences so that he might attain the wide and certain knowledge possessed by spencer, but the same considerations forced him to abandon the plan. he spent his winters teaching and investigating and his summers at various watering-places--from tribschen, in switzerland, where the wagners were his hosts, to sorrento, in italy. at sorrento he happened to take lodgings in a house which also sheltered dr. paul rée, the author of "psychological observations," "the origin of moral feelings," and other metaphysical works. that rée gave him great assistance he acknowledged himself in later years, but that his ideas were, in any sense, due to this chance meeting (as max nordau would have us believe) is out of the question, for, as we have seen, they were already pretty clear in his mind a long while before. but rée widened his outlook a great deal, it is evident, and undoubtedly made him acquainted with the english naturalists who had sprung up as spores of darwin, and with a number of great frenchmen--montaigne, larochefoucauld, la bruyère, fontenelle, vauvenargues and chamfort. nietzsche had been setting down his thoughts and conclusions in the form of brief memoranda and as he grew better acquainted with the french philosophers, many of whom published their works as collections of aphorisms, he decided to employ that form himself. thus he began to arrange the notes which were to be given to the world as "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" ("human, all-too human"). in 1876 he got leave from basel and gave his whole time to the work. during the winter of 1876-7, with the aid of a disciple named bernhard cron (better known as peter gast) he prepared the first volume for the press. nietzsche was well aware that it would make a sensation and while it was being set up his courage apparently forsook him and he suggested to his publisher that it be sent forth anonymously. but the latter would not hear of it and so the first part left the press in 1878. as the author had expected, the book provoked a fine frenzy of horror among the pious. the first title chosen for it, "_die pflugschar_" ("the plowshare"), and the one finally selected, "human, all-too human," indicate that it was an attempt to examine the underside of human ideas. in it nietzsche challenged the whole of current morality. he showed that moral ideas were not divine, but human, and that, like all things human, they were subject to change. he showed that good and evil were but relative terms, and that it was impossible to say, finally and absolutely, that a certain action was right and another wrong. he applied the acid of critical analysis to a hundred and one specific ideas, and his general conclusion, to put it briefly, was that no human being had a right, in any way or form, to judge or direct the actions of any other being. herein we have, in a few words, that gospel of individualism which all our sages preach today.[5] nietzsche sent a copy of the book to wagner and the great composer was so appalled that he was speechless. even the author's devoted sister, who worshipped him as an intellectual god, was unable to follow him. germany, in general, pronounced the work a conglomeration of crazy fantasies and wild absurdities--and nietzsche smiled with satisfaction. in 1879 he published the second volume, to which he gave the sub-title of "_vermischte meinungen und sprüche_" ("miscellaneous opinions and aphorisms") and shortly thereafter he finally resigned his chair at basel. the third part of the book appeared in 1880 as "_der wanderer und sein schatten_" ("the wanderer and his shadow"). the three volumes were published as two in 1886 as "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" with the explanatory sub-title, "_ein buch für freie geister_" ("a book for free spirits"). [1] david friedrich strauss (1808-74) sprang into fame with his "_das leben jesu,_" 1835 (eng. tr. by george eliot, 1846), but the book which served as nietzsche's target was "_der alte und der neue glaube_" ("the old faith and the new"), 1872. [2] "_david strauss, der bekenner und der schriftsteller_," § 7. [3] "_schopenhauer als erzieher,_" § 8. [4] according to nietzsche's original plan the series was to have included pamphlets on "literature and the press," "art and painters," "the higher education," "german and counter-german," "war and the nation," "the teacher," "religion," "society and trade," "society and natural science," and "the city," with an epilogue entitled "the way to freedom." [5] it must be remembered, in considering all of nietzsche's writings, that when he spoke of a human being, he meant a being of the higher sort--_i.e._ one capable of clear reasoning. he regarded the drudge class, which is obviously unable to think for itself, as unworthy of consideration. its highest mission, he believed, was to serve and obey the master class. but he held that there should be no artificial barriers to the rise of an individual born to the drudge class who showed an accidental capacity for independent reasoning. such an individual, he believed, should be admitted, _ipso facto_, to the master class. naturally enough, he held to the converse too. _vide_ the chapter on "civilization." iv the prophet of the superman nietzsche spent the winter of 1879-80 at naumburg, his old home. during the ensuing year he was very ill, indeed, and for awhile he believed that he had but a short while to live. like all such invalids he devoted a great deal of time to observing and discussing his condition. he became, indeed, a hypochondriac of the first water and began to take a sort of melancholy pleasure in his infirmities. he sought relief at all the baths and cures of europe: he took hot baths, cold baths, salt-water baths and mud baths. every new form of pseudo-therapy found him in its freshman class. to owners of sanatoria and to inventors of novel styles of massage, irrigation, sweating and feeding he was a joy unlimited. but he grew worse instead of better. after 1880, his life was a wandering one. his sister, after her marriage, went to paraguay for a while, and during her absence nietzsche made his progress from the mountains to the sea, and then back to the mountains again. he gave up his professorship that he might spend his winters in italy and his summers in the engadine. in the face of all this suffering and travelling about, close application, of course, was out of the question. so he contented himself with working whenever and however his headaches, his doctors and the railway time-tables would permit--on hotel verandas, in cure-houses and in the woods. he would take long, solitary walks and struggle with his problems by the way. he swallowed more and more pills; he imbibed mineral waters by the gallon; he grew more and more moody and ungenial. one of his favorite haunts, in the winter time, was a verdant little neck of land that jutted out into lake maggiore. there he could think and dream undisturbed. one day, when he found that some one had placed a rustic bench on the diminutive peninsula, that passersby might rest, he was greatly incensed. nietzsche would make brief notes of his thoughts during his daylight rambles, and in the evenings would polish and expand them. as we have seen, his early books were sent to the printer as mere collections of aphorisms, without effort at continuity. sometimes a dozen subjects are considered in two pages, and then again, there is occasionally a little essay of three or four pages. nietzsche chose this form because it had been used by the french philosophers he admired, and because it well suited the methods of work that a pain-racked frame imposed upon him. he was ever in great fear that some of his precious ideas would be lost to posterity--that death, the ever-threatening, would rob him of his rightful immortality and the world of his stupendous wisdom--and so he made efforts, several times, to engage an amanuensis capable of jotting down, after the fashion of johnson's boswell, the chance phrases that fell from his lips. his sister was too busy to undertake the task: whenever she was with him her whole time was employed in guarding him from lion-hunters, scrutinizing his daily fare and deftly inveigling him into answering his letters, brushing his clothes and getting his hair cut. finally, paul rée and another friend, fräulein von meysenbug, brought to his notice a young russian woman, mlle. lou salomé, who professed vast interest in his work and offered to help him. but this arrangement quickly ended in disaster, for nietzsche fell in love with the girl--she was only 20--and pursued her over half of europe when she fled. to add to the humors of the situation rée fell in love with her too, and the two friends thus became foes and there was even some talk of a duel. mlle. salomé, however, went to rée, and with his aid she later wrote a book about nietzsche.[1] frau förster-nietzsche sneers at that book, but the fact is not to be forgotten that she was very jealous of mlle. salomé, and gave constant proof of it by unfriendly word and act. in the end, the latter married one prof. andreas and settled down in göttingen. early in 1881 nietzsche published "_morgenröte_" ("the dawn of day"). it was begun at venice in 1880 and continued at marienbad, lago maggiore and genoa. it was, in a broad way, a continuation of _"menschliches allzu menschliches_." it dealt with an infinite variety of subjects, from matrimony to christianity, and from education to german patriotism. to all the test of fundamental truth was applied: of everything nietzsche asked, not, is it respectable or lawful? but, is it essentially true? these early works, at best, were mere note-books. nietzsche saw that the ground would have to be plowed, that people would have to grow accustomed to the idea of questioning high and holy things, before a new system of philosophy would be understandable or possible. in "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" and in _"morgenröte_" he undertook this preparatory cultivation. the book which followed, "_die fröhliche wissenschaft_" ("the joyful science") continued the same task. the first edition contained four parts and was published in 1882. in 1887 a fifth part was added. nietzsche had now completed his plowing and was ready to sow his crop. he had demonstrated, by practical examples, that moral ideas were vulnerable, and that the ten commandments might be debated. going further, he had adduced excellent historical evidence against the absolute truth of various current conceptions of right and wrong, and had traced a number of moral ideas back to decidedly lowly sources. his work so far had been entirely destructive and he had scarcely ventured to hint at his plans for a reconstruction of the scheme of things. as he himself says, he spent the four years between 1878 and 1882 in preparing the way for his later work. "i descended," he says, "into the lowest depths, i searched to the bottom, i examined and pried into an old faith on which, for thousands of years, philosophers had built as upon a secure foundation. the old structures came tumbling down about me. i undermined our old faith in morals."[2] this labor accomplished, nietzsche was ready to set forth his own notion of the end and aim of existence. he had shown that the old morality was like an apple rotten at the core--that the christian ideal of humility made mankind weak and miserable; that many institutions regarded with superstitious reverence, as the direct result of commands from the creator (such, for instance, as the family, the church and the state), were mere products of man's "all-too-human" cupidity, cowardice, stupidity and yearning for ease. he had turned the searchlight of truth upon patriotism, charity and self-sacrifice. he had shown that many things held to be utterly and unquestionably good or bad by modern civilization were once given quite different values--that the ancient greeks considered hope a sign of weakness, and mercy the attribute of a fool, and that the jews, in their royal days, looked upon wrath, not as a sin, but as a virtue--and in general he had demonstrated, by countless instances and arguments, that all notions of good and evil were mutable and that no man could ever say, with utter certainty, that one thing was right and another wrong. the ground was now cleared for the work of reconstruction and the first structure that nietzsche reared was "_also sprach zarathustra_" ("thus spake zoroaster"). this book, to which he gave the sub-title of _"ein buch für alle und keinen_" ("a book for all and none"), took the form of a fantastic, half-poetical half-philosophical rhapsody. nietzsche had been delving into oriental mysticism and from the law-giver of the ancient persians he borrowed the name of his hero--zoroaster. but there was no further resemblance between the two, and no likeness whatever between nietzsche's philosophy and that of the persians. the zoroaster of the book is a sage who lives remote from mankind, and with no attendants but a snake and an eagle. the book is in four parts and all are made up of discourses by zoroaster. these discourses are delivered to various audiences during the prophet's occasional wanderings and at the conferences he holds with various disciples in the cave that he calls home. they are decidedly oriental in form and recall the manner and phraseology of the biblical rhapsodists. toward the end nietzsche throws all restraint to the winds and indulges to his heart's content in the rare and exhilarating sport of blasphemy. there is a sort of parody of the last supper and zoroaster's backsliding disciples engage in the grotesque and indecent worship of a jackass. wagner and other enemies of the author appear, thinly veiled, as ridiculous buffoons. in his discourses zoroaster voices the nietzschean idea of the superman--the idea that has come to be associated with nietzsche more than any other. later on, it will be set forth in detail. for the present, suffice it to say that it is the natural child of the notions put forward in nietzsche's first book, "the birth of tragedy," and that it binds his entire life work together into one consistent, harmonious whole. the first part of "_also sprach zarathustra_" was published in 1883, the second part following in the same year, and the third part was printed in 1884. the last part was privately circulated among the author's friends in 1885, but was not given to the public until 1892, when the entire work was printed in one volume. as showing nietzsche's wandering life, it may be recorded that the book was conceived in the engadine and written in genoa, sils maria, nice and mentone. _"jenseits von gut und böse_" ("beyond good and evil") appeared in 1886. in this book nietzsche elaborated and systematized his criticism of morals, and undertook to show why he considered modern civilization degrading. here he finally formulated his definitions of master-morality and slave-morality, and showed how christianity was necessarily the idea of a race oppressed and helpless, and eager to escape the lash of its masters. "_zur genealogie der moral_" ("the genealogy of morals"), which appeared in 1887, developed these propositions still further. in it there was also a partial return to nietzsche's earlier manner, with its merciless analysis of moral concepts. in 1888 nietzsche published a most vitriolic attack upon wagner, under the title of "_der fall wagner_" ("the case of wagner"), the burden of which was the author's discovery that the composer, starting, with him, from schopenhauer's premises, had ended, not with the superman, but with the man on the cross. "_götzendämmerung_" ("the twilight of the idols") a sort of parody of wagner's "_götterdämmerung_" ("the twilight of the gods") followed in 1889. "_nietzsche contra wagner_" ("nietzsche versus wagner") was printed the same year. it was made up of extracts from the philosopher's early works, and was designed to prove that, contrary to the allegations of his enemies, he had not veered completely about in his attitude toward wagner. meanwhile, despite the fact that his health was fast declining and he was approaching the verge of insanity, nietzsche made plans for a great four volume work that was to sum up his philosophy and stand forever as his _magnum opus._ the four volumes, as he planned them, were to bear the following titles: 1. "_der antichrist: versuch einer kritik des christenthums_" ("the anti-christ: an attempt at a criticism of christianity"). 2. "_der freie geist: kritik der philosophie als einer nihilistischen bewegung_" ("the free spirit: a criticism of philosophy as a nihilistic movement"). 3. "_der immoralist: kritik der verhängnissvollsten art von unwissenheit, der moral_" ("the immoralist: a criticism of that fatal species of ignorance, morality"). 4. "_dionysus, philosophie der ewigen wiederkunft_" ("dionysus, the philosophy of eternal recurrence"). this work was to be published under the general title of "_der wille zur macht: versuch einer umwerthung aller werthe_" ("the will to power: an attempt at a transvaluation of all values"), but nietzsche got no further than the first book, "_der antichrist_" and a mass of rough notes for the others. "_der antichrist_" probably the most brilliant piece of writing that germany had seen in half a century, was written at great speed between september 3rd and september 30th, 1888, but it was not published until 1895, six years after the philosopher had laid down his work forever. during that same year c. g. naumann, the leipsic publisher, began the issue of a definite edition of all his writings, in fifteen volumes, under the editorial direction of frau förster-nietzsche, dr. fritz koegel, peter gast and e. von der hellen. in this edition his notes for "_der wille zur macht_" and his early philological essays were included. the notes are of great interest to the serious student of nietzsche, for they show how some of his ideas changed with the years and point out the probable structure of his final system, but the general reader will find them chaotic, and often incomprehensible. in october, 1888, but three months before his breakdown, he began a critical autobiography with the title of "_ecce homo_," and it was completed in three weeks. it is an extremely frank and entertaining book, with such chapter headings as "why i am so wise," "why i write such excellent books" and "why i am a fatality." in it nietzsche sets forth his private convictions regarding a great many things, from cooking to climates, and discusses each of his books in detail. "_ecce homo_" was not printed until 1908, when it appeared at leipsic in a limited edition of 1250 copies. in january, 1889, at turin, where he was living alone in very humble quarters, nietzsche suddenly became hopelessly insane. his friends got news of it from his own hand. "i am ferdinand de lesseps," he wrote to prof. burckhardt of basel. to cosima wagner: "ariadne, i love you!" to georg brandes, the danish critic, he sent a telegram signed "the crucified." franz overbeck, an old basel friend, at once set out for turin, and there he found nietzsche thumping the piano with his elbows and singing wild songs. overbeck brought him back to basel and he was confined in a private asylum, where his general health greatly improved and hopes were entertained of his recovery. but he never got well enough to be left alone, and so his old mother, with whom he had been on bad terms for years, took him back to naumburg. when, in 1893, his sister elizabeth returned from paraguay, where her husband had died, he was well enough to meet her at the railroad station. four years later, when their mother died, elizabeth removed him to weimar, where she bought a villa called "_silberblick_" (silver view) in the suburbs. this villa had a garden overlooking the hills and the lazy river ilm, and a wide, sheltered veranda for the invalid's couch. there he would sit day after day, receiving old friends but saying little. his mind never became clear enough for him to resume work, or even to read. he had to grope for words, slowly and painfully, and he retained only a cloudy memory of his own books. his chief delight was in music and he was always glad when someone came who could play the piano for him. there is something poignantly pathetic in the picture of this valiant fighter--this arrogant _ja-sager_--this foe of men, gods and devils--being nursed and coddled like a little child. his old fierce pride and courage disappeared and he became docile and gentle. "you and i, my sister--we are happy!" he would say, and then his hand would slip out from his coverings and clasp that of the tender and faithful lisbeth. once she mentioned wagner to him. "_den habe ich sehr geliebt!_" he said. all his old fighting spirit was gone. he remembered only the glad days and the dreams of his youth. nietzsche died at weimar on august 25, 1900, the immediate cause of death being pneumonia. his ashes are buried in the little village of röcken, his birthplace. [1] "_friedrich nietzsche in seinen werken_;" vienna, 1894. [2] preface to "_morgenröte_," § 2; autumn, 1886. v the philosopher and the man "my brother," says frau förster-nietzsche, in her biography, "was stockily and broadly built and was anything but thin. he had a rather dark, healthy, ruddy complexion. in all things he was tidy and orderly, in speech he was soft-spoken, and in general, he was inclined to be serene under all circumstances. all in all, he was the very antithesis of a nervous man. "in the fall of 1888, he said of himself, in a reminiscent memorandum: 'my blood moves slowly. a doctor who treated me a long while for what was at first diagnosed as a nervous affection said: "no, your trouble cannot be in your nerves. i myself am much more nervous than you."'... "my brother, both before and after his long illness seized him, was a believer in natural methods of healing. he took cold baths, rubbed down every morning and was quite faithful in continuing light, bed-room gymnastics." at one time, she says, nietzsche became a violent vegetarian and afflicted his friends with the ancient vegetarian horror of making a sarcophagus of one's stomach. it seems surprising that a man so quick to perceive errors, saw none in the silly argument that, because an ape's organs are designed for a vegetarian diet, a man's are so planned also. an acquaintance with elementary anatomy and physiology would have shown him the absurdity of this, but apparently he knew little about the human body, despite his uncanny skill at unearthing the secrets of the human mind. nietzsche had read emerson in his youth, and those emersonian seeds which have come to full flower in the united states as the so-called new thought movement--with christian science, osteopathy, mental telepathy, occultism, pseudo-psychology and that grand lodge of credulous _comiques_, the society for psychical research, as its final blossoms--all of this probably made its mark on the philosopher of the superman, too. frau förster-nietzsche, in her biography, seeks to prove the impossible thesis that her brother, despite his constant illness, was ever well-balanced in mind. it is but fair to charge that her own evidence is against her. from his youth onward, nietzsche was undoubtedly a neurasthenic, and after the franco-prussian war he was a constant sufferer from all sorts of terrible ills--some imaginary, no doubt, but others real enough. in many ways, his own account of his symptoms recalls vividly the long catalogue of aches and pains given by herbert spencer in his autobiography. spencer had queer pains in his head and so did nietzsche. spencer roved about all his life in search of health and so did nietzsche. spencer's working hours were limited and so were nietzsche's. the latter tells us himself that, in a single year, 1878, he was disabled 118 days by headaches and pains in the eyes. dr. gould, the prophet of eye-strain, would have us believe that both of these great philosophers suffered because they had read too much during adolescence. it is more likely, however, that each was the victim of some definite organic malady, and perhaps of more than one. in nietzsche's case things were constantly made worse by his fondness for self-medication, that vice of fools. preparatory to his service as a hospital steward in 1870 he had attended a brief course of first-aid lectures at the military hospital at erlangen, and thereafter he regarded himself as a finished pathologist and was forever taking his own doses. the amount of medicine he thus swallowed was truly appalling, and the only way he could break his appetite for one drug was by acquiring an appetite for another. chloral, however, was his favorite, and toward the end he took it daily and in staggering quantities. meanwhile, his mental disturbances grew more and more visible. at times he would be highly excited and exalted, denouncing his foes, and proclaiming his own genius. this was his state when his friends were finally forced to put him under restraint. at other times he would show symptoms of melancholia--a feeling of isolation and friendlessness, a great sadness, a foreboding of death. the hostility with which his books were received gave sharpness and plausibility to this mood, and it pursued him through many a despairing day. "an animal, when it is sick," he wrote to baron von seydlitz, in 1888, "slinks away to some dark cavern, and so, too, does the _bête philosophe_. i am alone--absurdly alone--and in my unflinching and toilsome struggle against all that men have hitherto held sacred and venerable, i have become a sort of dark cavern myself--something hidden and mysterious, which is not to be explored...." but the mood vanished as the words were penned, and the defiant dionysian roared his challenge at his foes. "it is not impossible," he said, "that i am the greatest philosopher of the century--perhaps even more than that! i may be the decisive and fateful link between two thousand centuries!"[1] max nordau[2] says that nietzsche was crazy from birth, but the facts do not bear him out. it is much more reasonable to hold that the philosopher came into the world a sound and healthy animal, and that it remained for overstudy in his youth, over-work and over drugging later on, exposure on the battle field, functional disorders and constant and violent strife to undermine and eventually overthrow his intellect. but if we admit the indisputable fact that nietzsche died a madman and the equally indisputable fact that his insanity was not sudden, but progressive, we by no means read him out of court as a thinker. a man's reasoning is to be judged, not by his physical condition, but by its own ingenuity and accuracy. if a raving maniac says that twice two make four, it is just as true as it would be if pope pius x or any other undoubtedly sane man were to maintain it. judged in this way nietzsche's philosophy is very far from insane. later on we shall consider it as a workable system, and point out its apparent truths and apparent errors, but in no place (saving, perhaps, one) is his argument to be dismissed as the phantasm of a lunatic. nietzsche's sister says that, in the practical affairs of life, the philosopher was absurdly impractical. he cared nothing for money and during the better part of his life had little need to do so. his mother, for a country pastor's widow, was well-to-do, and when he was twenty-five his professorship at basel brought him 3,000 francs a year. at basel, in the late sixties, 3,000 francs was the income of an independent, not to say opulent man. nietzsche was a bachelor and lived very simply. it was only upon books and music and travel that he was extravagant. after two years' service at basel, the university authorities raised his wage to 4,000 francs, and in 1879, when ill health forced him to resign, they gave him a pension of 3,000 francs a year. besides that, he inherited 30,000 marks from one of his aunts, and so, altogether, he had an income of $900 or $1,000 a year--the sum which herbert spencer regarded, all his life, as an insurance of perfect tranquillity and happiness. nietzsche's passion and dissipation, throughout his life, was music. in all his books musical terms and figures of speech are constantly encountered. he played the piano very well, indeed, and was especially fond of performing transcriptions of the wagner opera scores. "my three solaces," he wrote home from leipsic, "are schopenhauer's philosophy, schumann's music and solitary walks." in his late youth, wagner engrossed him, but his sympathies were broad enough to include bach, schubert and mendelssohn. his admiration for the last named, in fact, helped to alienate him from wagner, who regarded the mendelssohn scheme of things as unspeakable. nietzsche's own compositions were decidedly heavy and scholastic. he was a skillful harmonist and contrapuntalist, but his musical ideas lacked life. into the simplest songs he introduced harsh and far-fetched modulations. the music of richard strauss, who professes to be his disciple and has found inspiration in his "_also sprach zarathustra_" would have delighted him. strauss has achieved the uncanny feat of writing in two keys at once. such an effort would have enlisted nietzsche's keen interest. all the same, his music was not a mere creature of the study and of rules, and we have evidence that he was frequently inspired to composition by bursts of strong emotion. on his way to the franco-prussian war, he wrote a patriotic song, words and music, on the train. he called it "adieu! i must go!" and arranged it for men's chorus, _a capella_. it would be worth while to hear a german _männerchor_, with its high, beery tenors, and ponderous basses, sing this curious composition. certainly no more grotesque music was ever put on paper by mortal man. much has been written by various commentators about the strange charm of nietzsche's prose style. he was, indeed, a master of the german language, but this mastery was not inborn. like spencer he made a deliberate effort, early in life, to acquire ease and force in writing. his success was far greater than spencer's. toward the end--in "_der antichrist_," for instance--he attained a degree of powerful and convincing utterance almost comparable to huxley's. but his style never exhibited quite that wonderful air of clearness, of utter certainty, of inevitableness which makes the "lay sermons" so tremendously impressive. nietzsche was ever nearer to carlyle than to addison. "his style," says a writer in the _athenæum,_ "is a shower of sparks, which scatter, like fireworks, all over the sky." "my sense for form," says nietzsche himself, "awakened on my coming in contact with sallust." later on he studied the great french stylists, particularly larochefoucauld, and learned much from them. he became a master of the aphorism and the epigram, and this skill, very naturally, led him to descend, now and then, to mere violence and invective. he called his opponents all sorts of harsh names--liar, swindler, counterfeiter, ox, ass, snake and thief. whatever he had to say, he hammered in with gigantic blows, and to the accompaniment of fearsome bellowing and grimacing. "nervous, vivid and picturesques, full of fire and a splendid vitality," says one critic, "his style flashed and coruscated like a glowing flame, and had a sort of dithyrambic movement that at times recalls the swing of the pindaric odes." naturally, this very _abandon_ made his poetry formless and grotesque. he scorned metres and rhymes and raged on in sheer savagery. reading his verses one is forced irresistibly into the thought that they should be printed in varied fonts of type and in a dozen brilliant inks. nietzsche never married, but he was by no means a misogynist. his sister tells us, indeed, that he made a formal proposal of marriage to a young dutch woman, fräulein tr----, at geneva in 1876, and the story of his melodramatic affair with mlle. lou salomé, six years later, was briefly rehearsed in the last chapter. there were also other women in his life, early and late, and certain scandal-mongers do not hesitate to accuse him of a passion for cosima wagner, apparently on the ground that he wrote to her, in his last mad days, "ariadne, i love thee!" but his intentions were seldom serious. even when he pursued mlle. salomé from rome to leipsic and quarrelled with his sister about her, and threatened poor rée with fire-arms, there is good reason to believe that he shied at bell and book. his proposal, in brief, was rather one of a free union than one of marriage. for the rest, he kept safely to impossible flirtations. during all his wanderings he was much petted by the belles of pump room and hotel parlor, not only because he was a mysterious and romantic looking fellow, but also because his philosophy was thought to be blasphemous and indecent, particularly by those who knew nothing about it. but the fair admirers he singled out were either securely married or hopelessly antique. "for me to marry," he soliloquized in 1887, "would probably be sheer asininity." there are sentimental critics who hold that nietzsche's utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. a good woman--alike beautiful and sensible--would have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. he would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of her smiles, and children would have civilized him. the defect in this theory lies in the fact that philosophers do not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy. high thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house fare and hall bed-rooms. spinoza, munching his solitary herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it also satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. a married spinoza, with two sons at college, another managing the family lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a wife growing querulous and fat--the vision, alas, is preposterous, outrageous and impossible! we must think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome. a married schopenhauer or kant or nietzsche would be unthinkable. that a venture into matrimony might have somewhat modified nietzsche's view of womankind is not at all improbable, but that this change would have been in the direction of greater accuracy does not follow. he would have been either a ridiculously henpecked slave or a violent domestic tyrant. as a bachelor he was comparatively well-to-do, but with a wife and children his thousand a year would have meant genteel beggary. his sister had her own income and her own affairs. when he needed her, she was ever at his side, but when his working fits were upon him--when he felt efficient and self-sufficient--she discreetly disappeared. a wife's constant presence, day in and day out, would have irritated him beyond measure or reduced him to a state of compliance and sloth. nietzsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine outlook, and so lose his own sure vision. the ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. he must study women, but he must be free, when he pleases, to close his note book and go away and digest its contents with an open mind. toward the end of his life, when increasing illness made him helpless, nietzsche's faithful sister took the place of wife and mother in his clouding world. she made a home for him and she sat by and watched him. they talked for hours--nietzsche propped up with pillows, his old ruddiness faded into a deathly white, and his niagara of a moustache showing dark against his pallid skin. they talked of naumburg and the days of long ago and the fiery prophet of the superman became simple brother fritz. we are apt to forget that a great man is thus not only great, but also a man: that a philosopher, in a life time, spends less hours pondering the destiny of the race than he gives over to wondering if it will rain tomorrow and to meditating upon the toughness of steaks, the dustiness of roads, the stuffiness of railway coaches and the brigandage of gas companies. nietzsche's sister was the only human being that ever saw him intimately, as a wife might have seen him. her affection for him was perfect and her influence over him perfect, too. love and understanding, faith and gentleness--these are the things which make women the angels of joyous illusion. lisbeth, the calm and trusting, had all in boundless richness. there was, indeed, something noble, and almost holy in the eagerness with which she sought her brother's comfort and peace of mind during his days of stress and storm, and magnified his virtues after he was gone. [1] thomas common: "nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet;" london, 1901, p. 54. [2] "degeneration;" eng. tr.: new york, 1895; pp. 415-471. nietzsche the philosopher i dionysus versus apollo in one of the preceding chapters nietzsche's theory of greek tragedy was given in outline and its dependence upon the data of schopenhauer's philosophy was indicated. it is now in order to examine this theory a bit more closely and to trace out its origin and development with greater dwelling upon detail. in itself it is of interest only as a step forward in the art of literary criticism, but in its influence upon nietzsche's ultimate inquiries it has colored, to a measurable extent, the whole stream of modern thought. schopenhauer laid down, as his cardinal principle, it will be recalled, the idea that, in all the complex whirlpool of phenomena we call human life, the mere will to survive is at the bottom of everything, and that intelligence, despite its seeming kingship in civilization, is nothing more, after all, than a secondary manifestation of this primary will. in certain purely artificial situations, it may seem to us that reason stands alone (as when, for example, we essay to solve an abstract problem in mathematics), but in everything growing out of our relations as human beings, one to the other, the old instinct of race-and-self-preservation is plainly discernible. all of our acts, when they are not based obviously and directly upon our yearning to eat and take our ease and beget our kind, are founded upon our desire to appear superior, in some way or other, to our fellow men about us, and this desire for superiority, reduced to its lowest terms, is merely a desire to face the struggle for existence--to eat and beget--under more favorable conditions than those the world accords the average man. "happiness is the feeling that power increases--that resistance is being overcome."[1] nietzsche went to basel firmly convinced that these fundamental ideas of schopenhauer were profoundly true, though he soon essayed to make an amendment to them. this amendment consisted in changing schopenhauer's "will to live" into "will to power." that which does not live, he argued, cannot exercise a will to live, and when a thing is already in existence, how can it strive after existence? nietzsche voiced the argument many times, but its vacuity is apparent upon brief inspection. he started out, in fact, with an incredibly clumsy misinterpretation of schopenhauer's phrase. the philosopher of pessimism, when he said "will to live" obviously meant, not will to begin living, but will to continue living. now, this will to continue living, if we are to accept words at their usual meaning, is plainly identical, in every respect, with nietzsche's will to power. therefore, nietzsche's amendment was nothing more than the coinage of a new phrase to express an old idea. the unity of the two philosophers and the identity of the two phrases are proved a thousand times by nietzsche's own discourses. like schopenhauer he believed that all human ideas were the direct products of the unconscious and unceasing effort of all living creatures to remain alive. like schopenhauer he believed that abstract ideas, in man, arose out of concrete ideas, and that the latter arose out of experience, which, in turn, was nothing more or less than an ordered remembrance of the results following an endless series of endeavors to meet the conditions of existence and so survive. like schopenhauer, he believed that the criminal laws, the poetry, the cookery and the religion of a race were alike expressions of this unconscious groping for the line of least resistance. as a philologist, nietzsche's interest, very naturally, was fixed upon the literature of greece and rome, and so it was but natural that his first tests of schopenhauer's doctrines should be made in that field. some time before this, he had asked himself (as many another man had asked before him) why it was that the ancient greeks, who were an efficient and vigorous people, living in a green and sunny land, should so delight in gloomy tragedies. one would fancy that a greek, when he set out to spend a pleasant afternoon, would seek entertainment that was frivolous and gay. but instead, he often preferred to see one of the plays of thespis, æschylus, phrynichus or pratinus, in which the heroes fought hopeless battles with fate and died miserably, in wretchedness and despair. nietzsche concluded that the greeks had this liking for tragedy because it seemed to them to set forth, truthfully and understandably, the conditions of life as they found it: that it appeared to them as a reasonable and accurate picture of human existence. the gods ordered the drama on the real stage of the world; the dramatist ordered the drama on the mimic stage of the theatre--and the latter attained credibility and verisimilitude in proportion as it approached an exact imitation or reproduction of the former. nietzsche saw that this quality of realism was the essence of all stage plays. "only insofar as the dramatist," he said, "coalesces with the primordial dramatist of the world, does he reach the true function of his craft."[2] "man posits himself as the standard.... a race cannot do otherwise than thus acquiesce in itself."[3] in other words, man is interested in nothing whatever that has no bearing upon his own fate: he himself is his own hero. thus the ancient greeks were fond of tragedy because it reflected their life in miniature. in the mighty warriors who stalked the boards and defied the gods each greek recognized himself. in the conflicts on the stage he saw replicas of that titanic conflict which seemed to him to be the eternal essence of human existence. but why did the greeks regard life as a conflict? in seeking an answer to this nietzsche studied the growth of their civilization and of their race ideas. these race ideas, as among all other peoples, were visualized and crystallized in the qualities, virtues and opinions attributed to the racial gods. therefore, nietzsche undertook an inquiry into the nature of the gods set up by the greeks, and particularly into the nature of the two gods who controlled the general scheme of greek life, and, in consequence, of greek art,--for art, as we have seen, is nothing more or less than a race's view or opinion of itself, i.e. an expression of the things it sees and the conclusions it draws when it observes and considers itself. these gods were apollo and dionysus. apollo, according to the greeks, was the inventor of music, poetry and oratory, and as such, became the god of all art. under his beneficent sway the greeks became a race of artists and acquired all the refinement and culture that this implies. but the art that he taught them was essentially contemplative and subjective. it depicted, not so much things as they were, as things as they had been. thus it became a mere record, and as such, exhibited repose as its chief quality. whether it were expressed as sculpture, architecture, painting or epic poetry, this element of repose, or of action translated into repose, was uppermost. a painting of a man running, no matter how vividly it suggests the vitality and activity of the runner, is itself a thing inert and lifeless. architecture, no matter how much its curves suggest motion and its hard lines the strength which may be translated into energy, is itself a thing immovable. poetry, so long as it takes the form of the epic and is thus merely a chronicle of past actions, is as lifeless, at bottom, as a tax list. the greeks, during apollo's reign as god of art, thus turned art into a mere inert fossil or record--a record either of human life itself or of the emotions which the vicissitudes of life arouse in the spectator. this notion of art was reflected in their whole civilization. they became singers of songs and weavers of metaphysical webs rather than doers of deeds, and the man who could carve a flower was more honored among them than the man who could grow one. in brief, they began to degenerate and go stale. great men and great ideas grew few. they were on the downward road. what they needed, of course, was the shock of contact with some barbarous, primitive people--an infusion of good red blood from some race that was still fighting for its daily bread and had had no time to grow contemplative and retrospective and fat. this infusion of red blood came in good time, but instead of coming from without (as it did years afterward in rome, when the goths swooped down from the north), it came from within. that is to say, there was no actual invasion of barbarian hordes, but merely an auto-reversion to simpler and more primitive ideas, which fanned the dormant energy of the greeks into flame and so allowed them to accomplish their own salvation. this impulse came in the form of a sudden craze for a new god--bacchus dionysus. bacchus was a rude, boisterous fellow and the very antithesis of the quiet, contemplative apollo. we remember him today merely as the god of wine, but in his time he stood, not only for drinking and carousing, but also for a whole system of art and a whole notion of civilization. apollo represented the life meditative; bacchus dionysus represented the life strenuous. the one favored those forms of art by which human existence is halted and embalmed in some lifeless medium--sculpture, architecture, painting or epic poetry. the other was the god of life in process of actual being, and so stood for those forms of art which are not mere records or reflections of past existence, but brief snatches of present existence itself--dancing, singing, music and the drama. it will be seen that this barbarous invasion of the new god and his minions made a profound change in the whole of greek culture. instead of devoting their time to writing epics, praising the laws, splitting philosophical hairs and hewing dead marble, the greeks began to question all things made and ordained and to indulge in riotous and gorgeous orgies, in which thousands of maidens danced and hundreds of poets chanted songs of love and war, and musicians vied with cooks and vintners to make a grand delirium of joy. the result was that the entire outlook of the greeks, upon history, upon morality and upon human life, was changed. once a people of lofty introspection and elegant repose, they became a race of violent activity and strong emotions. they began to devote themselves, not to writing down the praises of existence as they had found it, but to the task of improving life and of widening the scope of present and future human activity and the bounds of possible human happiness.[4] but in time there came a reaction and apollo once more triumphed. he reigned for awhile, unsteadily and uncertainly, and then, again, the pendulum swung to the other side. thus the greeks swayed from one god to the other. during apollo's periods of ascendancy they were contemplative and imaginative, and man, to them, seemed to reach his loftiest heights when he was most the historian. but when dionysus was their best-beloved, they bubbled over with the joy of life, and man seemed, not an historian, but a maker of history--not an artist, but a work of art. in the end, they verged toward a safe middle ground and began to weigh, with cool and calm, the ideas represented by the two gods. when they had done so, they came to the conclusion that it was not well to give themselves unreservedly to either. to attain the highest happiness, they decided, humanity required a dash of both. there was need in the world for dionysians, to give vitality an outlet and life a purpose, and there was need, too, for apollonians, to build life's monuments and read its lessons. they found that true civilization meant constant conflict between the two--between the dreamer and the man of action, between the artist who builds temples and the soldier who burns them down, between the priest and policeman who insist upon the permanence of laws and customs as they are and the criminal and reformer and conqueror who insist that they be changed. when they had learned this lesson, the greeks began to soar to heights of culture and civilization that, in the past, had been utterly beyond them, and so long as they maintained the balance between apollo and dionysus they continued to advance. but now and again, one god or the other grew stronger, and then there was a halt. when apollo had the upper hand, greece became too contemplative and too placid. when dionysus was the victor, greece became wild and thoughtless and careless of the desires of others, and so turned a bit toward barbarism. this seesawing continued for a long while, but apollo was the final victor--if victor he may be called. in the eternal struggle for existence greece became a mere looker-on. her highest honors went to socrates, a man who tried to reduce all life to syllogisms. her favorite sons were rhetoricians, dialecticians and philosophical cobweb-spinners. she placed ideas above deeds. and in the end, as all students of history know, the state that once ruled the world descended to senility and decay, and dionysians from without overran it, and it perished in anarchy and carnage. but with this we have nothing to do. nietzsche noticed that tragedy was most popular in greece during the best days of the country's culture, when apollo and dionysus were properly balanced, one against the other. this ideal balancing between the two gods was the result, he concluded, not of conscious, but of unconscious impulses. that is to say, the greeks did not call parliaments and discuss the matter, as they might have discussed a question of taxes, but acted entirely in obedience to their racial instinct. this instinct--this will to live or desire for power--led them to feel, without putting it into words, or even, for awhile, into definite thoughts, that they were happiest and safest and most vigorous, and so best able to preserve their national existence, when they kept to the golden mean. they didn't reason it out; they merely felt it. but as schopenhauer shows us, instinct, long exercised, means experience, and the memory of experience, in the end, crystallizes into what we call intelligence or reason. thus the unconscious greek feeling that the golden mean best served the race, finally took the form of an idea: _i.e._ that human life was an endless conflict between two forces, or impulses. these, as the greeks saw them, were the dionysian impulse to destroy, to burn the candle, to "use up" life; and the apollonian impulse to preserve. seeing life in this light, it was but natural that the greeks should try to exhibit it in the same light on their stage. and so their tragedies were invariably founded upon some deadly and unending conflict--usually between a human hero and the gods. in a word, they made their stage plays set forth life as they saw it and found it, for, like all other human beings, at all times and everywhere, they were more interested in life as they found it than in anything else on the earth below or in the vasty void above. when nietzsche had worked out this theory of greek tragedy and of greek life, he set out, at once, to apply it to modern civilization, to see if it could explain certain ideas of the present as satisfactorily as it had explained one great idea of the past. he found that it could: that men were still torn between the apollonian impulse to conform and moralize and the dionysian impulse to exploit and explore. he found that all mankind might be divided into two classes: the apollonians who stood for permanence and the dionysians who stood for change. it was the aim of the former to live in strict obedience to certain invariable rules, which found expression as religion, law and morality. it was the aim of the latter to live under the most favorable conditions possible; to adapt themselves to changing circumstances, and to avoid the snares of artificial, permanent rules. nietzsche believed that an ideal human society would be one in which these two classes of men were evenly balanced--in which a vast, inert, religious, moral slave class stood beneath a small, alert, iconoclastic, immoral, progressive master class. he held that this master class--this aristocracy of efficiency--should regard the slave class as all men now regard the tribe of domestic beasts: as an order of servitors to be exploited and turned to account. the aristocracy of europe, though it sought to do this with respect to the workers of europe, seemed to him to fail miserably, because it was itself lacking in true efficiency. instead of practising a magnificent opportunism and so adapting itself to changing conditions, it stood for formalism and permanence. its fetish was property in land and the worship of this fetish had got it into such a rut that it was becoming less and less fitted to survive, and was, indeed, fast sinking into helpless parasitism. its whole color and complexion were essentially apollonic.[5] therefore nietzsche preached the gospel of dionysus, that a new aristocracy of efficiency might take the place of this old aristocracy of memories and inherited glories. he believed that it was only in this way that mankind could hope to forge ahead. he believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality, a class acutely adaptable and immoral; a class bent on achieving, not the equality of all men, but the production, at the top, of the superman. [1] "_der antichrist_," § 2. [2] "_die geburt der tragödie_," § 5. [3] "_götzendämmerung_" ix, § 19. [4] "this enrichment of consciousness among the greeks ... showed itself first in the development of lyric poetry, in which the gradual transition from the expression of universal religious and political feeling to that which is personal and individual formed a typical process." dr. wilhelm windelband, "a history of ancient philosophy," tr. by h. e. cushman; p. 18; new york, 1901. [5] _vide_ the chapter on "civilization." ii the origin of morality it may be urged with some reason, by those who have read the preceding chapter carefully, that the nietzschean argument, so far, has served only to bring us face to face with a serious contradiction. we have been asked to believe that all human impulses are merely expressions of the primary instinct to preserve life by meeting the changing conditions of existence, and in the same breath we have been asked to believe, too, that the apollonian idea--which, like all other ideas, must necessarily be a result of this instinct--destroys adaptability and so tends to make life extra hazardous and difficult and progress impossible. here we have our contradiction: the will to live is achieving, not life, but death. how are we to explain it away? how are we to account for the fact that the apollonian idea at the bottom of christian morality, for example, despite its origin in the will to live, has an obvious tendency to combat free progress? how are we to account for the fact that the church, which is based upon this christian morality, is, always has been and ever will be a bitter and implacable foe of good health, intellectual freedom, self-defense and every other essential factor of efficiency? nietzsche answers this by pointing out that an idea, while undoubtedly an effect or expression of the primary life instinct, is by no means identical with it. the latter manifests itself in widely different acts as conditions change: it is necessarily opportunistic and variable. the former, on the contrary, has a tendency to survive unchanged, even after its truth is transformed into falsity. that is to say, an idea which arises from a true and healthy instinct may survive long after this instinct itself, in consequence of the changing conditions of existence, has disappeared and given place to an instinct diametrically opposite. this survival of ideas we call morality. by its operation the human race is frequently saddled with the notions of generations long dead and forgotten. thus we modern christians still subscribe to the apollonian morality of the ancient jews--our moral forebears--despite the fact that their ideas were evolved under conditions vastly different from those which confront us today. thus the expressions of the life instinct, by obtaining an artificial and unnatural permanence, turn upon the instinct itself and defeat its beneficent purpose. thus our contradiction is explained. to make this rather complicated reasoning more clear it is necessary to follow nietzsche through the devious twists and windings of his exhaustive inquiry into the origin of moral codes. in making this inquiry he tried to rid himself of all considerations of authority and reverence, just as a surgeon, in performing a difficult and painful operation, tries to rid himself of all sympathy and emotion. adopting this plan, he found that a code of morals was nothing more than a system of customs, laws and ideas which had its origin in the instinctive desire of some definite race to live under conditions which best subserved its own welfare. the morality of the egyptians, he found, was one thing, and the morality of the goths was another. the reason for the difference lay in the fact that the environment of the egyptians--the climate of their land, the nature of their food supply and the characteristics of the peoples surrounding them--differed from the environment of the goths. the morality of each race was, in brief, its consensus of instinct, and once having formulated it and found it good, each sought to give it force and permanence. this was accomplished by putting it into the mouths of the gods. what was once a mere expression of instinct thus became the mandate of a divine law-giver. what was once a mere attempt to meet imminent--and usually temporary--conditions of existence, thus became a code of rules to be obeyed forever, no matter how much these conditions of existence might change. wherefore, nietzsche concluded that the chief characteristic of a moral system was its tendency to perpetuate itself unchanged, and to destroy all who questioned it or denied it.[1] nietzsche saw that practically all members of a given race, including the great majority of those who violated these rules, were influenced into believing them--or at least into professing to believe them--utterly and unchangeably correct, and that it was the main function of all religions to enforce and support them by making them appear as laws laid down, at the beginning of the world, by the lord of the universe himself, or at some later period, by his son, messiah or spokesman. "morality," he said, "not only commands innumerable terrible means for preventing critical hands being laid upon her: her security depends still more upon a sort of enchantment at which she is phenomenally skilled. that is to say, she knows how to _enrapture_. she appeals to the emotions; her glance paralyzes the reason and the will.... ever since there has been talking and persuading on earth, she has been the supreme mistress of seduction."[2] thus "a double wall is put up against the continued testing, selection and criticism of values. on one hand is revelation, and on the other, veneration and tradition. the authority of the law is based upon two assumptions--first, that god gave it, and secondly, that the wise men of the past obeyed it."[3] nietzsche came to the conclusion that this universal tendency to submit to moral codes--this unreasonable, emotional faith in the invariable truth of moral regulations--was a curse to the human race and the chief cause of its degeneration, inefficiency and unhappiness. and then he threw down the gauntlet by denying that an ever-present deity had anything to do with framing such codes and by endeavoring to prove that, far from being eternally true, they commonly became false with the passing of the years. starting out as expressions of the primary life-instinct's effort to adapt some individual or race to certain given conditions of existence, they took no account of the fact that these conditions were constantly changing, and that the thing which was advantageous at one time and to one race was frequently injurious at some other time and to another race. this reduction of all morality to mere expressions of expedience engaged the philosopher during what he calls his "tunneling" period. to exhibit his precise method of "tunneling" let us examine, for example, a moral idea which is found in the code of every civilized country. this is the notion that there is something inherently and fundamentally wrong in the act of taking human life. we have good reason to believe that murder was as much a crime 5,000 years ago as it is today and that it took rank at the head of all conceivable outrages against humankind at the very dawn of civilization. and why? simply because the man who took his neighbor's life made the life of everyone else in his neighborhood precarious and uncomfortable. it was plain that what he had done once he could do again, and so the peace and security of the whole district were broken. now, it is apparent that the average human being desires peace and security beyond all things, because it is only when he has them that he may satisfy his will to live--by procuring food and shelter for himself and by becoming the father of children. he is ill-fitted to fight for his existence; the mere business of living and begetting his kind consumes all of his energies: "the world, as a world," as horace greeley said, "barely makes a living." therefore, it came to be recognized at the very beginning of civilization, that the man who killed other men was a foe to those conditions which the average man had to seek in order to exist--to peace and order and quiet and security. out of this grew the doctrine that it was immoral to commit murder, and as soon as mankind became imaginative enough to invent personal gods, this doctrine was put into their mouths and so attained the force and authority of divine wisdom. in some such manner, said nietzsche, the majority of our present moral concepts were evolved. at the start they were mere echoes of a protest against actions which made existence difficult and so outraged and opposed the will to live. as a rule, said nietzsche, such familiar protests as that against murder, which laid down the maxim that the community had rights superior to those of the individual, were voiced by the weak, who found it difficult to protect themselves, as individuals, against the strong. one strong man, perhaps, was more than a match, in the struggle for existence, for ten weak men and so the latter were at a disadvantage. but fortunately for them they could overcome this by combination, for they were always in an overwhelming majority, numerically, and in consequence they were stronger, taken together, than the phalanx of the strong. thus it gradually became possible for them to enforce the rules that they laid down for their own protection--which rules always operated against the wishes--and, as an obvious corollary, against the best interests of--the strong.[4] when the time arrived for fashioning religious systems, these rules were credited to the gods, and again the weak triumphed. thus the desire of the weak among the world's early races of men, to protect their crops and wives against the forays of the strong, by general laws and divine decrees instead of by each man fighting for his own, has come down to us in the form of the christian commandments: "thou shalt not steal.... thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.... thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." nietzsche shows that the device of putting man-made rules of morality into the mouths of the gods--a device practiced by every nation in history--has vastly increased the respectability and force of all moral ideas. this is well exhibited by the fact that, even today and among thinking men, offenses which happen to be included in the scope of the ten commandments, either actually or by interpretation, are regarded with a horror which seldom, if ever, attaches to offenses obviously defined and delimited by merely human agencies. thus, theft is everywhere looked upon as dishonorable, but cheating at elections, which is fully as dangerous to the body politic, is commonly pardoned by public opinion as a normal consequence of enthusiasm, and in some quarters is even regarded as an evidence of courage, not to say of a high and noble sense of gratitude and honor. nietzsche does not deny that human beings have a right to construct moral codes for themselves, and neither does he deny that they are justified, from their immediate standpoint, at least, in giving these codes the authority and force of divine commands. but he points out that this procedure is bound to cause trouble in the long run, for the reason that divine commands are fixed and invariable, and do not change as fast as the instincts and needs of the race. suppose, for instance, that all acts of parliament and congress were declared to be the will of god, and that, as a natural consequence, the power to repeal or modify them were abandoned. it is apparent that the world would outgrow them as fast as it does today, but it is also apparent that the notion that they were infallible would paralyze and block all efforts, by atheistic reformers, to overturn or amend them. as a result, the british and american people would be compelled to live in obedience to rules which, on their very face, would often seem illogical and absurd. yet the same thing happens to notions of morality. they are devised, at the start, as measures of expediency, and then given divine sanction in order to lend them authority. in the course of time, perhaps, the race outgrows them, but none the less, they continue in force--at least so long as the old gods are worshipped. thus human laws become divine--and inhuman. thus morality itself becomes immoral. thus the old instinct whereby society differentiates between good things and bad, grows muddled and uncertain, and the fundamental purpose of morality--that of producing a workable scheme of living--is defeated. thereafter it is next to impossible to distinguish between the laws that are still useful and those that have outlived their usefulness, and the man who makes the attempt--the philosopher who endeavors to show humanity how it is condemning as bad a thing that, in itself, is now good, or exalting as good a thing that, for all its former goodness, is now bad--this man is damned as a heretic and anarchist, and according as fortune serves him, is burned at the stake or merely read out of the human race.[5] nietzsche found that all existing moral ideas might be divided into two broad classes, corresponding to the two broad varieties of human beings--the masters and the slaves. every man is either a master or a slave, and the same is true of every race. either it rules some other race or it is itself ruled by some other race. it is impossible to think of a man or of a people as being utterly isolated, and even were this last possible, it is obvious that the community would be divided into those who ruled and those who obeyed. the masters are strong and are capable of doing as they please; the slaves are weak and must obtain whatever rights they crave by deceiving, cajoling or collectively intimidating their masters. now, since all moral codes, as we have seen, are merely collections of the rules laid down by some definite group of human beings for their comfort and protection, it is evident that the morality of the master class has for its main object the preservation of the authority and kingship of that class, while the morality of the slave class seeks to make slavery as bearable as possible and to exalt and dignify those things in which the slave can hope to become the apparent equal or superior of his master. the civilization which existed in europe before the dawn of christianity was a culture based upon master-morality, and so we find that the theologians and moralists of those days esteemed a certain action as right only when it plainly subserved the best interests of strong, resourceful men. the ideal man of that time was not a meek and lowly sufferer, bearing his cross uncomplainingly, but an alert, proud and combative being who knew his rights and dared maintain them. in consequence we find that in many ancient languages, the words "good" and "aristocratic" were synonymous. whatever served to make a man a nobleman--cunning, wealth, physical strength, eagerness to resent and punish injuries--was considered virtuous, praiseworthy and moral,[6] and on the other hand, whatever tended to make a man sink to the level of the great masses--humility, lack of ambition, modest desires, lavish liberality and a spirit of ready forgiveness--was regarded as immoral and wrong. "among these master races," says nietzsche, "the antithesis 'good and bad' signified practically the same as 'noble and contemptible!' the despised ones were the cowards, the timid, the insignificant, the self-abasing--the dog-species of men who allowed themselves to be misused--the flatterers and, above all, the liars. it is a fundamental belief of all true aristocrats that the common people are deceitful. 'we true ones,' the ancient greek nobles called themselves. "it is obvious that the designations of moral worth were at first applied to individual men, and not to actions or ideas in the abstract. the master type of man regards himself as a sufficient judge of worth. he does not seek approval: his own feelings determine his conduct. 'what is injurious to me,' he reasons, 'is injurious in itself.' this type of man honors whatever qualities he recognizes in himself: his morality is self-glorification. he has a feeling of plentitude and power and the happiness of high tension. he helps the unfortunate, perhaps, but it is not out of sympathy. the impulse, when it comes at all, rises out of his superabundance of power--his thirst to function. he honors his own power, and he knows how to keep it in hand. he joyfully exercises strictness and severity over himself and he reverences all that is strict and severe. 'wotan has put a hard heart in my breast,' says an old scandinavian saga. there could be no better expression of the spirit of a proud viking.... "the morality of the master class is irritating to the taste of the present day because of its fundamental principle that a man has obligations only to his equals; that he may act to all of lower rank and to all that are foreign as he pleases.... the man of the master class has a capacity for prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge, but it is only among his equals. he has, too, great resourcefulness in retaliation; great capacity for friendship, and a strong need for enemies, that there may be an outlet for his envy, quarrelsomeness and arrogance, and that by spending these passions in this manner, he may be gentle towards his friends."[7] by this ancient _herrenmoral_, or master-morality, napoleon bonaparte would have been esteemed a god and the man of sorrows an enemy to society. it was the ethical scheme, indeed, of peoples who were sure of themselves and who had no need to make terms with rivals or to seek the good will or forbearance of anyone. in its light, such things as mercy and charity seemed pernicious and immoral, because they meant a transfer of power from strong men, whose proper business it was to grow stronger and stronger, to weak men, whose proper business it was to serve the strong. in a word, this master-morality was the morality of peoples who knew, by experience, that it was pleasant to rule and be strong. they knew that the nobleman was to be envied and the slave to be despised, and so they came to believe that everything which helped to make a man noble was good and everything which helped to make him a slave was evil. the idea of nobility and the idea of good were expressed by the same word, and this verbal identity survives in the english language today, despite the fact that our present system of morality, as we shall see, differs vastly from that of the ancient master races. in opposition to this master-morality of the strong, healthy nations there was the _sklavmoral_, or slave-morality, of the weak nations. the jews of the four or five centuries preceding the birth of christ belonged to the latter class. compared to the races around them, they were weak and helpless. it was out of the question for them to conquer the greeks or romans and it was equally impossible for them to force their laws, their customs or their religion upon their neighbors on other sides. they were, indeed, in the position of an army surrounded by a horde of irresistible enemies. the general of such an army, with the instinct of self-preservation strong within him, does not attempt to cut his way out. instead he tries to make the best terms he can, and if the leader of the enemy insists upon making him and his vanquished force prisoners, he endeavors to obtain concessions which will make this imprisonment as bearable as possible. the strong man's object is to take as much as he can from his victim; the weak man's is to save as much as he can from his conqueror. the fruit of this yearning of weak nations to preserve as much of their national unity as possible is the thing nietzsche calls slave-morality. its first and foremost purpose is to discourage, and if possible, blot out, all those traits and actions which are apt to excite the ire, the envy, or the cupidity of the menacing enemies round about. revenge, pride and ambition are condemned as evils. humility, forgiveness, contentment and resignation are esteemed virtues. the moral man is the man who has lost all desire to triumph and exult over his fellow-men--the man of mercy, of charity, of self-sacrifice. "the impotence which does not retaliate for injuries," says nietzsche, "is falsified into 'goodness;' timorous abjectness becomes 'humility;' subjection to those one hates is called 'obedience,' and the one who desires and commands this impotence, abjectness and subjection is called god. the inoffensiveness of the weak, their cowardice (of which they have ample store); their standing at the door, their unavoidable time-serving and waiting--all these things get good names. the inability to get revenge is translated into an _unwillingness_ to get revenge, and becomes forgiveness, a virtue. "they are wretched--these mutterers and forgers--but they say that their wretchedness is of god's choosing and even call it a distinction that he confers upon them. the dogs which are liked best, they say, are beaten most. their wretchedness is a test, a preparation, a schooling--something which will be paid for, one day, in happiness. they call that 'bliss.'"[8] by the laws of this slave-morality the immoral man is he who seeks power and eminence and riches--the millionaire, the robber, the fighter, the schemer. the act of acquiring property by conquest--which is looked upon as a matter of course by master-morality--becomes a crime and is called theft. the act of mating in obedience to natural impulses, without considering the desire of others, becomes adultery; the quite natural act of destroying one's enemies becomes murder. [1] ii thess. ii, 15: "hold the tradition which ye have been taught." eusebius pamphilus: "those things which are written believe; those things which are not written, neither think upon nor inquire after." st. austin: "whatever ye hear from the holy scriptures let it favor well with you; whatever is without them refuse." see also st. basil, tertullian and every other professional moralist since, down to john alexander dowie and emperor william of germany. [2] "_morgenröte_," preface, § 3. [3] "_der antichrist_," § 57. [4] the fact that the state is founded, not upon a mysterious "social impulse" in man, but upon each individual's regard for his own interest, was first pointed out by thomas hobbes (1588-1679), in his argument against aristotle and grotius. [5] the risk of such idol-smashing is well set forth at length by g. bernard shaw in the preface to "the quintessence of ibsenism;" london, 1904. [6] henry bradley, in a lecture at the london institution, in jan 1907, showed that this was true of the ancient britons, as is demonstrated by their liking for bestowing such names as wolf and bear upon themselves. it was true, also, of the north american indians and of all primitive races conscious of their efficiency. [7] "_jenseits von gut und böse_," § 260. [8] "_zur genealogie der moral_," i, § 14. iii beyond good and evil despite the divine authority which gives permanence to all moral codes, this permanence is constantly opposed by the changing conditions of existence, and very often the opposition is successful. the slave-morality of the ancient jews has come down to us, with its outlines little changed, as ideal christianity, but such tenacious persistence of a moral scheme is comparatively rare. as a general rule, in truth, races change their gods very much oftener than we have changed ours, and have less faith than we in the independence of intelligence. in consequence they constantly revamp and modify their moral concepts. the same process of evolution affects even our own code, despite the extraordinary tendency to permanence just noted. our scheme of things, in its fundamentals, has persisted for 2,500 years, but in matters of detail it is constantly in a state of flux. we still call ourselves christians, but we have evolved many moral ideas that are not to be found in the scriptures and we have sometimes denied others that are plainly there. indeed, as will be shown later on, the beatitudes would have wiped us from the face of the earth centuries ago had not our forefathers devised means of circumventing them without openly questioning them. our progress has been made, not as a result of our moral code, but as a result of our success in dodging its inevitable blight. all morality, in fact, is colored and modified by opportunism, even when its basic principles are held sacred and kept more or less intact. the thing that is a sin in one age becomes a virtue in the next. the ancient persians, who were zoroastrians, regarded murder and suicide, under any circumstances, as crimes. the modern persians, who are mohammedans, think that ferocity and foolhardiness are virtues. the ancient japanese, to whom the state appeared more important than the man, threw themselves joyously upon the spears of the state's enemies. the modern japanese, who are fledgling individualists, armor their ships with nickel steel and fight on land from behind bastions of earth and masonry. and in the same way the moral ideas that have grown out of christianity, and even some of its important original doctrines, are being constantly modified and revised, despite the persistence of the fundamental notion of self-sacrifice at the bottom of them. in dr. andrew d. white's monumental treatise "on the warfare of science with theology in christendom" there are ten thousand proofs of it. things that were crimes in the middle ages are quite respectable at present. actions that are punishable by excommunication and ostracism in catholic spain today, are sufficient to make a man honorable in freethinking england. in france, where the church once stood above the king, it is now stripped of all rights not inherent in the most inconsequential social club. in germany it is a penal offense to poke fun at the head of the state; in the united states it is looked upon by many as an evidence of independence and patriotism. in some of the american states a violation of the seventh commandment, in any form, is a felony; in maryland, it is, in one form, a mere misdemeanor, and another form, no crime at all. "many lands did i see," says zarathustra, "and many peoples, and so i discovered the good and bad of many peoples.... much that was regarded as good by one people was held in scorn and contempt by another. i found many things called bad here and adorned with purple honors there.... a catalogue of blessings is posted up for every people. lo! it is the catalogue of their triumphs--the voice of their will to power!... whatever enables them to rule and conquer and dazzle, to the dismay and envy of their neighbors, is regarded by them as the summit, the head, the standard of all things.... verily, men have made for themselves all their good and bad. verily they did not find it so: it did not come to them as a voice from heaven.... it is only through valuing that there comes value."[1] to proceed from the concrete to the general, and to risk a repetition, it is evident that all morality, as nietzsche pointed out, is nothing more than an expression of expediency.[2] a thing is called wrong solely because a definite group of people, at some specific stage of their career, have found it injurious to them. the fact that they have discovered grounds for condemning it in some pronunciamento of their god signifies nothing, for the reason that the god of a people is never anything more than a reflection of their ideas for the time being. as prof. otto pfleiderer has shown,[3] jesus christ was a product of his age, mentally and spiritually as well as physically. had there been no jewish theology before him, he could not have sought or obtained recognition as a messiah, and the doctrines that he expressed--had he ever expressed them at all--would have fallen upon unheeding and uncomprehending ears. therefore it is plain that the ten commandments are no more immortal and immutable, in the last analysis, than the acts of parliament. they have lasted longer, it is true, and they will probably continue in force for many years, but this permanence is only relative. fundamentally they are merely expressions of expedience, like the rules of some great game, and it is easily conceivable that there may arise upon the earth, at some future day, a race to whom they will appear injurious, unreasonable and utterly immoral. "the time may come, indeed, when we will prefer the _memorabilia_ of socrates to the bible."[4] admitting this, we must admit the inevitable corollary that morality in the absolute sense has nothing to do with truth, and that it is, in fact, truth's exact antithesis. absolute truth necessarily implies eternal truth. the statement that a man and a woman are unlike was true on the day the first man and woman walked the earth and it will be true so long as there are men and women. such a statement approaches very near our ideal of an absolute truth. but the theory that humility is a virtue is not an absolute truth, for while it was undoubtedly true in ancient judea, it was not true in ancient greece and is debatable, to say the least, in modern europe and america. the western catholic church, despite its extraordinarily successful efforts at permanence, has given us innumerable proofs that laws, in the long run, always turn upon themselves. the popes were infallible when they held that the earth was flat and they were infallible when they decided that it was round--and so we reach a palpable absurdity. therefore, we may lay it down as an axiom that morality, in itself, is the enemy of truth, and that, for at least half of the time, by the mathematical doctrine of probabilities, it is necessarily untrue. if this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? why should any man conform to laws formulated by a people whose outlook on the universe probably differed diametrically from his own? why should any man obey a regulation which is denounced, by his common-sense, as a hodge-podge of absurdities, and why should he model his whole life upon ideals invented to serve the temporary needs of a forgotten race of some past age? these questions nietzsche asked himself. his conclusion was a complete rejection of all fixed codes of morality, and with them of all gods, messiahs, prophets, saints, popes, bishops, priests, and rulers. the proper thing for a man to do, he decided, was to formulate his own morality as he progressed from lower to higher things. he should reject the old conceptions of good and evil and substitute for them the human valuations, good and bad. in a word, he should put behind him the morality invented by some dead race to make its own progress easy and pleasant, and credited to some man-made god to give it authority, and put in the place of this a workable personal morality based upon his own power of distinguishing between the things which benefit him and the things which injure him. he should (to make the idea clearer) judge a given action solely by its effect upon his own welfare; his own desire or will to live; and that of his children after him. all notions of sin and virtue should be banished from his mind. he should weigh everything in the scales of individual expedience. such a frank wielding of a razor-edged sword in the struggle for existence is frowned upon by our jewish slave-morality. we are taught to believe that the only true happiness lies in self-effacement; that it is wrong to profit by the misfortune or weakness of another. but against this nietzsche brings the undeniable answer that all life, no matter how much we idealize it, is, at bottom, nothing more or less than exploitation. the gain of one man is inevitably the loss of some other man. that the emperor may die of a surfeit the peasant must die of starvation. among human beings, as well as among the bacilli in the hanging drop and the lions in the jungle, there is ever in progress this ancient struggle for existence. it is waged decently, perhaps, but it is none the less savage and unmerciful, and the devil always takes the hindmost. "life," says nietzsche, "is essentially the appropriation, the injury, the vanquishing of the unadapted and weak. its object is to obtrude its own forms and insure its own unobstructed functioning. even an organization whose individuals forbear in their dealings with one another (a healthy aristocracy, for example) must, if it would live and not die, act hostilely toward all other organizations. it must endeavor to gain ground, to obtain advantages, to acquire ascendancy. and this is not because it is _immoral_, but because it lives, and all life is will to power."[5] nietzsche argues from this that it is absurd to put the stigma of evil upon the mere symptoms of the great struggle. "in itself," he says, "an act of injury, violation, exploitation or annihilation cannot be wrong, for life operates, essentially and fundamentally, by injuring, violating, exploiting and annihilating, and cannot even be conceived of out of this character. one must admit, indeed, that, from the highest biological standpoint, conditions under which the so-called rights of others are recognized must ever be regarded as exceptional conditions--that is to say, as partial restrictions of the instinctive power-seeking will-to-live of the individual, made to satisfy the more powerful will-to-live of the mass. thus small units of power are sacrificed to create large units of power. to regard the rights of others as being inherent in them, and not as mere compromises for the benefit of the mass-unit, would be to enunciate a principle hostile to life itself."[6] nietzsche holds that the rights of an individual may be divided into two classes: those things he is able to do despite the opposition of his fellow men, and those things he is enabled to do by the grace and permission of his fellow men. the second class of rights may be divided again into two groups: those granted through fear and foresight, and those granted as free gifts. but how do fear and foresight operate to make one man concede rights to another man? it is easy enough to discern two ways. in the first place, the grantor may fear the risks of a combat with the grantee, and so give him what he wants without a struggle. in the second place, the grantor, while confident of his ability to overcome the grantee, may forbear because he sees in the struggle a certain diminution of strength on both sides, and in consequence, an impaired capacity for joining forces in effective opposition to some hostile third power. and now for the rights obtained under the second head--by bestowal and concession. "in this case," says nietzsche, "one man or race has enough power, and more than enough, to be able to bestow some of it on another man or race."[7] the king appoints one subject viceroy of a province, and so gives him almost regal power, and makes another cup-bearer and so gives him a perpetual right to bear the royal cup. when the power of the grantee, through his inefficiency, decreases, the grantor either restores it to him or takes it away from him altogether. when the power of the grantee, on the contrary, increases, the grantor, in alarm, commonly seeks to undermine it and encroach upon it. when the power of the grantee remains at a level for a considerable time, his rights become "vested" and he begins to believe that they are inherent in him--that they constitute a gift from the gods and are beyond the will and disposal of his fellow men. as nietzsche points out, this last happens comparatively seldom. more often, the grantor himself begins to lose power and so comes into conflict with the grantee, and not infrequently they exchange places. "national rights," says nietzsche, "demonstrate this fact by their constant lapse and regenesis."[8] nietzsche believed that a realization of all this would greatly benefit the human race, by ridding it of some of its most costly delusions. he held that so long as it sought to make the struggle for existence a parlor game, with rules laid down by some blundering god--that so long as it regarded its ideas of morality, its aspirations and its hopes as notions implanted by the creator in the mind of father adam--that so long as it insisted upon calling things by fanciful names and upon frowning down all effort to reach the ultimate verities--that just so long its progress would be fitful and slow. it was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the golden age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the age of faith. it was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism. nietzsche called himself an immoralist. he believed that all progress depended upon the truth and that the truth could not prevail while men yet enmeshed themselves in a web of gratuitous and senseless laws fashioned by their own hands. he was fond of picturing the ideal immoralist as "a magnificent blond beast"--innocent of "virtue" and "sin" and knowing only "good" and "bad." instead of a god to guide him, with commandments and the fear of hell, this immoralist would have his own instincts and intelligence. instead of doing a given thing because the church called it a virtue or the current moral code required it, he would do it because he knew that it would benefit him or his descendants after him. instead of refraining from a given action because the church denounced it as a sin and the law as a crime, he would avoid it only if he were convinced that the action itself, or its consequences, might work him or his an injury. such a man, were he set down in the world today, would bear an outward resemblance, perhaps, to the most pious and virtuous of his fellow-citizens, but it is apparent that his life would have more of truth in it and less of hypocrisy and cant and pretense than theirs. he would obey the laws of the land frankly and solely because he was afraid of incurring their penalties, and for no other reason, and he would not try to delude his neighbors and himself into believing that he saw anything sacred in them. he would have no need of a god to teach him the difference between right and wrong and no need of priests to remind him of this god's teachings. he would look upon the woes and ills of life as inevitable and necessary results of life's conflict, and he would make no effort to read into them the wrath of a peevish and irrational deity at his own or his ancestors' sins. his mind would be absolutely free of thoughts of sin and hell, and in consequence, he would be vastly happier than the majority of persons about him. all in all, he would be a powerful influence for truth in his community, and as such, would occupy himself with the most noble and sublime task possible to mere human beings: the overthrow of superstition and unreasoning faith, with their long train of fears, horrors, doubts, frauds, injustice and suffering.[9] under an ideal government--which herbert spencer defines as a government in which the number of laws has reached an irreducible minimum--such a man would prosper a great deal more than the priest-ridden, creed-barnacled masses about him.[10] in a state wherein communistic society, with its levelling usages and customs, had ceased to exist, and wherein each individual of the master class was permitted to live his life as much as possible in accordance with his own notions of good and bad, such a man would stand forth from the herd in proportion as his instincts were more nearly healthy and infallible than the instincts of the herd. ideal anarchy, in brief, would insure the success of those men who were wisest mentally and strongest physically, and the race would make rapid progress. it is evident that the communistic and socialistic forms of government at present in fashion in the world oppose such a consummation as often as they facilitate it. civilization, as we know it, makes more paupers than millionaires, and more cripples than sandows. its most conspicuous products, the church and the king, stand unalterably opposed to all progress. like the frog of the fable, which essayed to climb out of a well, it slips back quite as often as it goes ahead. and for these reasons nietzsche was an anarchist--in the true meaning of that much-bespattered word--just as herbert spencer and arthur schopenhauer were anarchists before him. [1] "_also sprach zarathustra_" i. [2] "the word _mos_, from signifying what is customary, has come to signify what is right." sir wm. markby: "elements of law considered with reference to general principles of jurisprudence:" pp. 118, 5th ed., london, 1896. [3] in his masterly treatise, "christian origins," tr. by david a. huebsch: new york, 1906. [4] "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" iii. [5] "_jenseits von gut und böse_" § 259. [6] "_zur genealogie der moral_" ii, § 11. [7] "_morgenröte,_" § 112. [8] "_morgenröte,_" § 112. [9] "it is my experience," said thomas h. huxley, "that, aside from a few human affections, the only thing that gives lasting and untainted pleasure in the world, is the pursuit of truth and the destruction of error." see "the life and letters of t. h. huxley," by leonard huxley; london, 1900. [10] "read the suicide tables and see how many despairing men, hope less of keeping their homes together, pay with their lives the toil imposed upon them by squanderers of the public money." helen mathers in _p. t. o._, feb. 9 1907, p. 180. this is one of tolstoi's chief arguments against all government. iv the superman no doubt the reader who has followed the argument in the preceding chapters will have happened, before now, upon the thought that nietzsche's chain of reasoning, so far, still has a gap in it. we have seen how he started by investigating greek art in the light of the schopenhauerean philosophy, how this led him to look into morality, how he revealed the origin of morality in transitory manifestations of the will to power, and how he came to the conclusion that it was best for a man to reject all ready-made moral ideas and to so order his life that his every action would be undertaken with some notion of making it subserve his own welfare or that of his children or children's children. but a gap remains and it may be expressed in the question: how is a man to define and determine his own welfare and that of the race after him? here, indeed, our dionysian immoralist is confronted by a very serious problem, and nietzsche himself well understood its seriousness. unless we have in mind some definite ideal of happiness and some definite goal of progress we had better sing the doxology and dismiss our congregation. christianity has such an ideal and such a goal. the one is a christ-like life on earth and the other is a place at the right hand of jehovah in the hereafter. mohammedanism, a tinsel form of christianity, paints pictures of the same sort. buddhism holds out the tempting bait of a race set free from the thrall of earthly desires, with an eternity of blissful nothingness.[1] the other oriental faiths lead in the same direction and schopenhauer, in his philosophy, laid down the doctrine that humanity would attain perfect happiness only when it had overcome its instinct of self-preservation--that is to say, when it had ceased to desire to live. even christian science--that most grotesque child of credulous faith and incredible denial--offers us the double ideal of a mortal life entirely free from mortal pain and a harp in the heavenly band for all eternity. what had nietzsche to offer in place of these things? by what standard was his immoralist to separate the good--or beneficial--things of the world from the bad--or damaging--things? and what was the goal that the philosopher had in mind for his immoralist? the answer to the first question is to be found in nietzsche's definition of the terms "good" and "bad." "all that elevates the sense of power, the will to power, and power itself"--this is how he defined "good." "all that proceeds from weakness"--this is how he defined "bad." happiness, he held, is "the feeling that power increases--that resistance is being overcome." "i preach not contentedness," he said, "but more power; not peace, but war; not virtue, but efficiency. the weak and defective must go to the wall: that is the first principle of the dionysian charity. and we must help them to go."[2] to put it more simply, nietzsche offers the gospel of prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism. "one must learn," sang zarathustra, "how to love oneself, with a whole and hearty love, that one may find life with oneself endurable, and not go gadding about. this gadding about is familiar: it is called loving one's neighbor.'"[3] his ideal was an aristocracy which regarded the proletariat merely as a conglomeration of draft animals made to be driven, enslaved and exploited. "a good and healthy aristocracy," he said, "must acquiesce, with a good conscience, in the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its benefit, must be reduced to slaves and tools. the masses have no right to exist on their own account: their sole excuse for living lies in their usefulness as a sort of superstructure or scaffolding, upon which a more select race of beings may be elevated."[4] rejecting all permanent rules of good and evil and all notions of brotherhood, nietzsche held that the aristocratic individualist--and it was to the aristocrat only that he gave, unreservedly, the name of human being--must seek every possible opportunity to increase and exalt his own sense of efficiency, of success, of mastery, of power. whatever tended to impair him, or to decrease his efficiency, was bad. whatever tended to increase it--at no matter what cost to others--was good. there must be a complete surrender to the law of natural selection--that invariable natural law which ordains that the fit shall survive and the unfit shall perish. all growth must occur at the top. the strong must grow stronger, and that they may do so, they must waste no strength in the vain task of trying to lift up the weak. the reader may interrupt here with the question we encountered at the start: how is the dionysian individualist to know whether a given action will benefit him or injure him? the answer, of course, lies in the obvious fact that, in every healthy man, instinct supplies a very reliable guide, and that, when instinct fails or is uncertain, experiment must solve the problem. as a general thing, nothing is more patent than the feeling of power--the sense of efficiency, of capacity, of mastery. every man is constantly and unconsciously measuring himself with his neighbors, and so becoming acutely aware of those things in which he is their superior. let two men clash in the stock market and it becomes instantly apparent that one is richer, or more resourceful or more cunning than the other. let two men run after an omnibus and it becomes instantly apparent that one is swifter than the other. let two men come together as rivals in love, war, drinking or holiness, and one is bound to feel that he has bested the other. such contests are infinite in variety and in number, and all life, in fact, is made up of them. therefore, it is plain that every man is conscious of his power, and aware of it when this power is successfully exerted against some other man. in such exertions, argues nietzsche, lies happiness, and so his prescription for happiness consists in unrestrained yielding to the will to power. that all men worth discussing so yield, despite the moral demand for humility, is so plain that it scarcely needs statement. it is the desire to attain and manifest efficiency and superiority which makes one man explore the wilds of africa and another pile up vast wealth and another write books of philosophy and another submit to pain and mutilation in the prize ring. it is this yearning which makes men take chances and risk their lives and limbs for glory. everybody knows, indeed, that in the absence of such a primordial and universal emulation the world would stand still and the race would die. nietzsche asks nothing more than that the fact be openly recognized and admitted; that every man yield to the yearning unashamed, without hypocrisy and without wasteful efforts to feed and satisfy the yearning of other men at the expense of his own. it is evident, of course, that the feeling of superiority has a complement in the feeling of inferiority. every man, in other words, sees himself, in respect to some talent possessed in common by himself and a rival, in one of three ways: he knows that he is superior, he knows that he is inferior, or he is in doubt. in the first case, says nietzsche, the thing for him to do is to make his superiority still greater by yielding to its stimulation: to make the gap between himself and his rival wider and wider. in the second case, the thing for him to do is to try to make the gap smaller: to lift himself up or to pull his rival down until they are equal or the old disproportion is reversed. in the third case, it is his duty to plunge into a contest and risk his all upon the cast of the die. "i do not exhort you to peace," says zarathustra, "but to victory!"[5] if victory comes not, let it be defeat, death and annihilation--but, in any event, let there be a fair fight. without this constant strife--this constant testing--this constant elimination of the unfit--there can be no progress. "as the smaller surrenders himself to the greater, so the greater must surrender himself to the will to power and stake life upon the issue. it is the mission of the greatest to run risk and danger--to cast dice with death."[6] power, in a word, is never infinite: it is always becoming. practically and in plain language, what does all this mean? simply that nietzsche preaches a mighty crusade against all those ethical ideas which teach a man to sacrifice himself for the theoretical good of his inferiors. a culture which tends to equalize, he says, is necessarily a culture which tends to rob the strong and so drag them down, for the strong cannot give of their strength to the weak without decreasing their store. there must be an unending effort to widen the gap; there must be a constant search for advantage, an infinite alertness. the strong man must rid himself of all idea that it is disgraceful to yield to his acute and ever present yearning for still more strength. there must be an abandonment of the old slave-morality and a transvaluation of moral values. the will to power must be emancipated from the bonds of that system of ethics which brands it with infamy, and so makes the one all-powerful instinct of every sentient creature loathsome and abominable. it is only the under-dog, he says, that believes in equality. it is only the groveling and inefficient mob that seeks to reduce all humanity to one dead level, for it is only the mob that would gain by such leveling. "'there are no higher men,' says the crowd in the market place. 'we are all equal; man is man; in the presence of god we are all equal!' in the presence of god, indeed! but i tell you that god is dead!" so thunders zarathustra.[7] that is to say, our idea of brotherhood is part of the mob-morality of the ancient jews, who evolved it out of their own helplessness and credited it to their god. we have inherited their morality with their god and so we find it difficult--in the mass--to rid ourselves of their point of view. nietzsche himself rejected utterly the judaic god and he believed that the great majority of intelligent men of his time were of his mind. that he was not far wrong in this assumption is evident to everyone. at the present time, indeed, it is next to impossible to find a sane man in all the world who believes in the actual existence of the deity described in the old testament. all theology is now an effort to explain away this god. therefore, argues nietzsche, it is useless to profess an insincere concurrence in a theistic idea at which our common sense revolts, and ridiculous to maintain the inviolability of an ethical scheme grounded upon this idea. it may be urged here that, even if the god of judea is dead, the idea of brotherhood still fives, and that, as a matter of fact, it is an idea inherent in the nature of man, and one that owes nothing to the rejected supernaturalism which once fortified and enforced it. that is to say, it may be argued that the impulse to self-sacrifice and mutual help is itself an instinct. the answer to this lies in the very patent fact that it is not. nothing, indeed, is more apparent than the essential selfishness of man. in so far as they are able to defy or evade the moral code without shame or damage, the strong always exploit the weak. the rich man puts up the price of the necessities of life and so makes himself richer and the poor poorer. the emperor combats democracy. the political boss opposes the will of the people for his own advantage. the inventor patents his inventions and so increases his relative superiority to the common run of men. the ecclesiastic leaves a small parish for a larger one--because the pay is better or "the field offers wider opportunities," _i.e._ gives him a better chance to "save souls" and so increases his feeling of efficiency. the philanthropist gives away millions because the giving visualizes and makes evident to all men his virtue and power. it is ever the same in this weary old world: every slave would be a master if he could. therefore, why deny it? why make it a crime to do what every man's instincts prompt him to do? why call it a sin to do what every man does, insofar as he can? the man who throws away his money or cripples himself with drink, or turns away from his opportunities--we call him a lunatic or a fool. and yet, wherein does he differ from the ideal holy man of our slave-morality--the holy man who tortures himself, neglects his body, starves his mind and reduces himself to parasitism, that the weak, the useless and unfit may have, through his ministrations, some measure of ease? such is the argument of the dionysian philosophy. it is an argument for the actual facts of existence--however unrighteous and ugly those facts may be. that the lifting up of the weak, in the long run, is an unprofitable and useless business is evident on very brief reflection. philanthropy, considered largely, is inevitably a failure. now and then we may transform an individual pauper or drunkard into a useful, producing citizen, but this happens very seldom. nothing is more patent, indeed, than the fact that charity merely converts the unfit--who, in the course of nature, would soon die out and so cease to encumber the earth--into parasites--who live on indefinitely, a nuisance and a burden to their betters. the "reformed" drunkard always goes back to his cups: drunkardness, as every physician knows, is as essentially incurable as congenital insanity. and it is the same with poverty. we may help a pauper to survive by giving him food and drink, but we cannot thereby make an efficient man of him--we cannot rid him of the unfitness which made him a pauper. there are, of course, exceptions to this, as to other rules, but the validity of the rule itself will not be questioned by any observant man. it goes unquestioned, indeed, by those who preach the doctrine of charity the loudest. they know it would be absurd to argue that helping the unfit is profitable to the race, and so they fall back, soon or late, upon the argument that charity is ordained of god and that the impulse to it is implanted in every decent man. nietzsche flatly denies this. charity, he says, is a man-made idea, with which the gods have nothing to do. its sole effect is to maintain the useless at the expense of the strong. in the mass, the helped can never hope to discharge in full their debt to the helpers. the result upon the race is thus retrogression. and now for our second question. what was the goal nietzsche had in mind for his immoralist? what was to be the final outcome of his overturning of all morality? did he believe the human race would progress until men became gods and controlled the sun and stars as they now control the flow of great rivers? or did he believe that the end of it all would be annihilation? after the publication of nietzsche's earlier books, with their ruthless tearing down of the old morality, these questions were asked by critics innumerable in all the countries of europe. the philosopher was laughed at as a crazy iconoclast who destroyed without rebuilding. he was called a visionary and a lunatic, and it was reported and believed that he had no answer: that his philosophy was doomed to bear itself to the earth, like an arch without a keystone. but in april, 1883, he began the publication of "_also sprach zarathustra_" and therein his reply was written large. "i teach you," cries zarathustra, "the superman! man is something that shall be surpassed. what, to man, is the ape? a joke or a shame. man shall be the same to the superman: a joke or shame.... man is a bridge connecting ape and superman.... the superman will be the final flower and ultimate expression of the earth. i conjure you to be faithful to the earth ... to cease looking beyond the stars for your hopes and rewards. you must sacrifice yourself to the earth that one day it may bring forth the superman."[8] here we hearken unto the materialist, the empiricist, the monist _par excellence._ and herein we perceive dimly the outlines of the superman. he will be rid of all delusions that hamper and oppress the will to power. he will be perfect in body and perfect in mind. he will know everything worth knowing and have strength and skill and cunning to defend himself against any conceivable foe. because the prospect of victory will feed his will to power he will delight in combat, and his increasing capacity for combat will decrease his sensitiveness to pain. conscious of his efficiency, he will be happy; having no illusions regarding a heaven and a hell, he will be content. he will see life as something pleasant--something to be faced gladly and with a laugh. he will say "yes" alike to its pleasures and to its ills. rid of the notion that there is anything filthy in living--that the flesh is abominable[9] and life an affliction[10]--he will grow better and better fitted to meet the conditions of actual existence. he will be scornful, merciless and supremely fit. he will be set free from man's fear of gods and of laws, just as man has been set free from the ape's fear of lions and of open places. to put it simply, the superman's thesis will be this: that he has been put into the world without his consent, that he must live in the world, that he owes nothing to the other people there, and that he knows nothing whatever of existence beyond the grave. therefore, it will be his effort to attain the highest possible measure of satisfaction for the only unmistakable and genuinely healthy instinct within him: the yearning to live--to attain power--to meet and overcome the influences which would weaken or destroy him. "keep yourselves up, my brethren," cautions zarathustra, "learn to keep yourselves up! the sea is stormy and many seek to keep afloat by your aid. the sea is stormy and all are overboard. well, cheer up and save yourselves, ye old seamen!... what is your fatherland? the land wherein your children will dwell.... thus does your love to these remote ones speak: 'disregard your neighbors! man is something to be surpassed!' surpass yourself at the expense of your neighbor. what you cannot seize, let no man _give_ you.... let him who can command, obey!"[11] the idea, by this time, should be plain. the superman, in the struggle for existence, asks and gives no quarter. he believes that it is the destiny of sentient beings to progress upward, and he is willing to sacrifice himself that his race may do so. but his sacrifice must benefit, not his neighbor--not the man who should and must look out for himself--but the generations yet unborn. it must be borne in mind that the superman will make a broad distinction between instinct and passion--that he will not mistake the complex thing we call love, with its costly and constant hurricanes of emotion, for the instinct of reproduction--that he will not mistake mere anger for war--that he will not mistake patriotism, with all its absurdities and illusions, for the homing instinct. the superman, in brief, will know how to renounce as well as how to possess, but his renunciation will be the child, not of faith or of charity, but of expediency. "will nothing beyond your capacity," says zarathustra. "demand nothing of yourself that is beyond achievement!... the higher a thing is, the less often does it succeed. be of good cheer! what matter! learn to laugh at yourselves!... suppose you have failed? has not the future gained by your failure?"[12] the superman, as nietzsche was fond of putting it, must play at dice with death. he must have ever in mind no other goal but the good of the generations after him. he must be willing to battle with his fellows, as with illusions, that those who came after may not be afflicted by these enemies. he must be supremely unmoral and unscrupulous. his must be the gospel of eternal defiance. nietzsche, it will be observed, was unable to give any very definite picture of this proud, heaven-kissing superman. it is only in zarathustra's preachments to "the higher man," a sort of bridge between man and superman, that we may discern the philosophy of the latter. on one occasion nietzsche penned a passage which seemed to compare the superman to "the great blond beasts" which ranged europe in the days of the mammoth, and from this fact many commentators have drawn the conclusion that he had in mind a mere two-legged brute, with none of the higher traits that we now speak of as distinctly human. but, as a matter of fact, he harbored no such idea. in another place, wherein he speaks of three metamorphoses of the race, under the allegorical names of the camel, the lion and the child, he makes this plain. the camel, a hopeless beast of burden, is man. but when the camel goes into the solitary desert, it throws off its burden and becomes a lion. that is to say, the heavy and hampering load of artificial dead-weight called morality is cast aside and the instinct to live--or, as nietzsche insists upon regarding it, the will to power--is given free rein. the lion is the "higher man"--the intermediate stage between man and superman. the latter appears neither as camel nor lion, but as a little child. he knows a little child's peace. he has a little child's calm. like a babe _in utero_ he is ideally adapted to his environment. zarathustra sees man "like a camel kneeling down to be heavy laden." what are his burdens? one is "to humiliate oneself." another is "to love those who despise us." in the desert comes the first metamorphosis, and the "thou shalt" of the camel becomes the "i will" of the lion. and what is the mission of the lion? "to create for itself freedom for new creating." after the lion comes the child. it is "innocence and oblivion, a new starting, a play, a wheel rolling by itself, a prime motor, a holy asserting." the thought here is cast in the heightened language of mystic poetry, but its meaning, i take it, is not lost.[13] nietzsche, even more than schopenhauer, recognized the fact that great mental progress--in the sense that mental progress means an increased capacity for grappling with the conditions of existence--necessarily has to depend upon physical efficiency. in exceptional cases a great mind may inhabit a diseased body, but it is obvious that this is not the rule. a nation in which the average man had but one hand and the duration of life was but 20 years could not hope to cope with even the weakest nation of modern europe. so it is plain that the first step in the improvement of the race must be the improvement of the body. jesus christ gave expression to this need by healing the sick, and the chief end and aim of all modern science is that of making life more and more bearable. every labor-saving machine ever invented by man has no other purpose than that of saving bodily wear and tear. every religion aims to rescue man from the racking fear of hell and the strain of trying to solve the great problems of existence for himself. every scheme of government that we know is, at bottom, a mere device for protecting human beings from injury and death. thus it will be seen that nietzsche's program of progress does not differ from other programs quite so much as, at first sight, it may seem to do. he laid down the principle that, before anything else could be accomplished, we must have first looked to the human machine. as we have seen, the intellect is a mere symptom of the will to live. therefore whatever removes obstacles to the free exercise of this will to live, necessarily promotes and increases intelligence. a race that was never incapacitated by illness would be better fitted than any other race for any conceivable intellectual pursuit: from making money to conjugating greek verbs. nietzsche merely states this obvious fact in an unaccustomed form. his superman is to give his will to live--or will to power, as you please--perfect freedom. as a result, those individuals in whom this instinct most accurately meets the conditions of life on earth will survive, and in their offspring, by natural laws, the instinct itself will become more and more accurate. that is to say, there will appear in future generations individuals in whom this instinct will tend more and more to order the performance of acts of positive benefit and to forbid the performance of acts likely to result in injury. this injury, it is plain, may take the form of unsatisfied wants as well as of broken skulls. therefore, the man--or superman--in whom the instinct reaches perfection will unconsciously steer clear of all the things which harass and batter mankind today--exhausting self-denials as well as exhausting passions. whatever seems likely to benefit him, he will do; whatever seems likely to injure him he will avoid. when he is in doubt, he will dare--and accept defeat or victory with equal calm. his attitude, in brief, will be that of a being who faces life as he finds it, defiantly and unafraid--who knows how to fight and how to forbear--who sees things as they actually are, and not as they might or should be, and so wastes no energy yearning for the moon or in butting his head against stone walls. "this new table, o my brethren, i put over you: _be hard!_"[14] such was the goal that nietzsche held before the human race. other philosophers before him had attempted the same thing. schopenhauer had put forward his idea of a race that had found happiness in putting away its desire to live. comte had seen a vision of a race whose every member sought the good of all. the humanitarians of all countries had drawn pictures of utopias peopled by beings who had outgrown all human instincts--who had outgrown the _one_ fundamental, unquenchable and eternal instinct of every living thing: the desire to conquer, to live, to remain alive. nietzsche cast out all these fine ideals as essentially impossible. man was of the earth, earthy, and his heavens and hells were creatures of his own vaporings. only after he had ceased dreaming of them and thrown off his crushing burden of transcendental morality--only thus and then could he hope to rise out of the slough of despond in which he wallowed. [1] "nirvana is a cessation of striving for individual existence"--that is, after death. see "dictionary of philosophy and psychology," vol. ii, pp. 178; new york, 1902. [2] "der antichrist," § 2. [3] "_also sprach zarathustra,_" iii. [4] "_jenseits von gut und böse,_" § 258. [5] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [6] "_also sprach zarathustra_," ii. [7] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iv. [8] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [9] galatians v, 19, 20, 21. [10] job v, 7; xiv, 1; ecclesiastes i, 1. [11] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [12] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iv. [13] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [14] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iii. v eternal recurrence in the superman nietzsche showed the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. but there still remained a problem and it was this: when the superman at last appears on earth, what then? will there be another super-superman to follow and a super-supersuperman after that? in the end, will man become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever he may be? or will a period of decline come after, with a return down the long line, through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether and empty space? nietzsche answered these questions by offering the theory that the universe moves in regular cycles and that all which is now happening on earth, and in all the stars, to the uttermost, will be repeated, again and again, throughout eternity. in other words, he dreamed of a cosmic year, corresponding, in some fashion, to the terrestrial year. man, who has sprung from the elements, will rise into superman, and perhaps infinitely beyond, and then, in the end, by catastrophe or slow decline, he will be resolved into the primary elements again, and the whole process will begin anew. this notion, it must be admitted, was not original with nietzsche and it would have been better for his philosophy and for his repute as an intelligent thinker had he never sought to elucidate it. in his early essay on history he first mentioned it and there he credited it to its probable inventors--the pythagoreans.[1] it was their belief that, whenever the heavenly bodies all returned to certain fixed relative positions, the whole history of the universe began anew. the idea seemed to fascinate nietzsche, in whom, despite his worship of the actual, there was an ever-evident strain of mysticism, and he referred to it often in his later books. the pure horror of it--of the notion that all the world's suffering would have to be repeated again and again, that men would have to die over and over again for all infinity, that there was no stopping place or final goal--the horror of all this appealed powerfully to his imagination. frau andreas-salomé tells us that he "spoke of it only in a low voice and with every sign of the profoundest emotion" and there is reason to believe that, at one time, he thought there might be some confirmation of it in the atomic theory, and that his desire to go to vienna to study the natural sciences was prompted by a wish to investigate this notion. finally he became convinced that there was no ground for such a belief in any of the known facts of science, and after that, we are told, his shuddering horror left him. it was then possible for him to deal with the doctrine of eternal recurrence as a mere philosophical speculation, without the uncomfortable reality of a demonstrated scientific fact, and thereafter he spent much time considering it. in "_also sprach zarathustra_" he puts it into the brain of his prophet-hero, and shows how it well-nigh drove the latter mad. "i will come back," muses zarathustra, "with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent--_not_ for a new life or a better life, but to the same life i am now leading. i will come back unto this same old life, in the greatest things and in the smallest, in order to teach once more the eternal recurrence of all things."[2] in the end, nietzsche turned this fantastic idea into a device for exalting his superman. the superman is one who realizes that all of his struggles will be in vain, and that, in future cycles, he will have to go through them over and over again. yet he has attained such a superhuman immunity to all emotion--to all ideas of pleasure and pain--that the prospect does not daunt him. despite its horror, he faces it unafraid. it is all a part of life, and in consequence it is good. he has learned to agree to everything that exists--even to the ghastly necessity for living again and again. in a word, he does not fear an endless series of lives, because life, to him, has lost all the terrors which a merely human man sees in it. "let us not only endure the inevitable," says nietzsche, "and still less hide it from ourselves: _let us love it!_" as vernon lee (miss violet paget)[3] has pointed out, this idea is scarcely to be distinguished from the fundamental tenet of stoicism. miss paget also says that it bears a close family resemblance to that denial of pain which forms the basis of christian science, but this is not true, for a vast difference exists between a mere denial of pain and a willingness to admit it, face it, and triumph over it. but the notion appears, in endless guises, in many philosophies and goethe voiced it, after a fashion, in his maxim, "_entbehren sollst du_" ("man must do without"). the idea of eternal recurrence gives point, again, to a familiar anecdote. this concerns a joker who goes to an inn, eats his fill and then says to the innkeeper: "you and i will be here again in a million years: let me pay you then." "very well," replies the quick-witted innkeeper, "but first pay me for the beefsteak you ate the last time you were here--a million years ago." despite nietzsche's conclusion that the known facts of existence do not bear it out, and the essential impossibility of discussing it to profit, the doctrine of eternal recurrence is by no means unthinkable. the celestial cycle put forward, as an hypothesis, by modern astronomy--the progression, that is, from gas to molten fluid, from fluid to solid, and from solid, by catastrophe, back to gas again--is easily conceivable, and it is easily conceivable, too, that the earth, which has passed through an uninhabitable state into a habitable state, may one day become uninhabitable again, and so keep seesawing back and forth through all eternity. but what will be the effect of eternal recurrence upon the superman? the tragedy of it, as we have seen, will merely serve to make him heroic. he will defy the universe and say "yes" to life. putting aside all thought of conscious existence beyond the grave, he will seek to live as nearly as possible in exact accordance with those laws laid down for the evolution of sentient beings on earth when the cosmos was first set spinning. but how will he know when he has attained this end? how will he avoid going mad with doubts about his own knowledge? nietzsche gave much thought, first and last, to this epistemological problem, and at different times he leaned toward different schools, but his writing, taken as a whole, indicates that the fruit of his meditations was a thorough-going empiricism. the superman, indeed, is an empiricist who differs from bacon only in the infinitely greater range of his observation and experiment. he learns by bitter experience and he generalizes from this knowledge. an utter and unquestioning materialist, he knows nothing of mind except as a function of body. to him speculation seems vain and foolish: his concern is ever with imminent affairs. that is to say, he believes a thing to be true when his eyes, his ears, his nose and his hands tell him it is true. and in this he will be at one with all those men who are admittedly above the mass today. reject empiricism and you reject at one stroke, the whole sum of human knowledge. when a man stubs his toe, for example, the facts that the injured member swells and that it hurts most frightfully appear to him as absolute certainties. if we deny that he actually knows these things and maintain that the spectacle of the swelling and the sensation of pain are mere creatures of his mind, we cast adrift from all order and common-sense in the universe and go sailing upon a stormy sea of crazy metaphysics and senseless contradictions. there are many things that we do not know, and in the nature of things, never can know. we do not know _why_ phosphorus has a tendency to combine with oxygen, but the fact that it _has_ we _do_ know--and if we try to deny we _do_ know it, we must deny that we are sentient beings, and in consequence, must regard life and the universe as mere illusions. no man with a sound mind makes any such denial. the things about us are real, just as our feeling that we are alive is real.[4] from this it must be plain that the superman will have the same guides that we have, viz.: his instincts and senses. but in him they will be more accurate and more acute than in us, because the whole tendency of his scheme of things will be to fortify and develop them.[5] if any race of europe devoted a century to exercising its right arms, its descendants, in the century following, would have right arms like piston-rods. in the same way, the superman, by subordinating everything else to his instinct to live, will make it evolve into something very accurate and efficient. his whole concern, in brief, will be to live as long as possible and so to avoid as much as possible all of those things which shorten life--by injuring the body from without or by using up energy within. as a result he will cease all effort to learn _why_ the world exists and will devote himself to acquiring knowledge _how_ it exists. this knowledge _how_ will be within his capacity even more than it is within our capacity today. our senses, as we have seen, have given us absolute knowledge that stubbing the toe results in swelling and pain. the superman's developed senses will give him absolute knowledge about everything that exists on earth. he will know exactly _how_ a tubercle bacillus attacks the lung tissue, he will know exactly _how_ the blood fights the bacillus, and he will know exactly _how_ to interfere in this battle in such a manner that the blood shall be invariably victorious. in a word, he will be the possessor of exact and complete knowledge regarding the working of all the benign and malignant forces in the world about him, but he will not bother himself about insoluble problems. he will waste no time speculating as to _why_ tubercle bacilli were sent into the world: his instinct to live will be satisfied by his success in stamping them out. the ideal superman then is merely a man in whom instinct works without interference--a man who feels that it is right to live and that the only knowledge worth while is that which makes life longer and more bearable. the superman's instinct for life is so strong that its mere exercise satisfies him, and so makes him happy. he doesn't bother about the unknown void beyond the grave: it is sufficient for him to know that he is alive and that being alive is pleasant. he is, in the highest sense, a utilitarian, and he believes to the letter in auguste comte's[6] dictum that the only thing living beings can ever hope to accomplish on earth is to adapt themselves perfectly to the natural forces around them--to the winds and the rain, the hills and the sea, the thunderbolt and the germ of disease. "i am a dionysian!" cries nietzsche. "i am an immoralist!" he means simply that his ideal is a being capable of facing the horrors of life unafraid, of meeting great enemies and slaying them, of gazing down upon the earth in pride and scorn, of making his own way and bearing his own burdens. in the profane folk-philosophy of every healthy and vigorous people, we find some trace of this dionysian idea. "let us so live day by day," says a distinguished american statesman, "that we can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell!" we get a subtle sort of joy out of this saying because it voices our racial advance toward individualism and away from servility and oppression. we believe in freedom, in toleration, in moral anarchy. we have put this notion into innumerable homely forms. things have come to a hell of a pass when a man can't wallop his own jackass! so we phrase it. the superman, did he stalk the earth, would say the same thing. [1] pythagoras (b.c. 570?-500?) was a greek who brought the doctrine of the transmigration of souls from asia minor to greece. in magna graecia he founded a mystical brotherhood, half political party and half school of philosophy. it survived him for many years and its members revered him as the sage of sages. he was a bitter foe to democracy and took part in wars against its spread. [2] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iii. [3] _north american review_, dec., 1904. [4] _vide_ the chapter on "truth." [5] it is very evident, i take it, that the principal function of all science is the widening of our perceptions. the chief argument for idealism used to be the axiom that our power of perception was necessarily limited and that it would be limited forever. this may be true still, but it is now apparent that these limits are being indefinitely extended, and may be extended, in future, almost infinitely. a thousand years ago, if any one had laid down the thesis that malaria was caused by minute animals, he would have been dismissed as a lunatic, because it was evident that no one could see these animals, and it was evident, too--that is to say, the scientists of that time held it to be evident--that this inability to see them would never be removed, because the human eye would always remain substantially as it was. but now we know that the microscope may increase the eye's power of perception a thousandfold. when we consider the fact that the spectroscope has enabled us to make a chemical analysis of the sun, that the telephone has enabled us to hear 2,000 miles and that the x-rays have enabled us to see through flesh and bone, we must admit without reservation, that our power of perception, at some future day, may be infinite. and if we admit this we must admit the essential possibility of the superman. [6] "_cours de philosophie positive_," tr. by helen martineau; london, 1853. vi christianity nietzsche's astonishingly keen and fearless criticism of christianity has probably sent forth wider ripples than any other stone he ever heaved into the pool of philistine contentment. he opened his attack in "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," the first book of his maturity, and he was still at it, in full fuming and fury, in "_der antichrist_," the last thing he was destined to write. the closing chapter of "_der antichrist_"--his swan song--contains his famous phillipic, beginning "i condemn." it recalls zola's "_j'accuse_" letter in the dreyfus case, but it is infinitely more sweeping and infinitely more uproarious and daring. "i condemn christianity," it begins. "i bring against it the most terrible of accusations that ever an accuser put into words. it is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions.... it has left nothing untouched by its depravity. it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a sin out of everything straightforward, healthy and honest. let anyone dare to speak to me of its humanitarian blessings! to do away with pain and woe is contrary to its principles. it lives by pain and woe: it has created pain and woe in order to perpetuate itself. it invented the idea of original sin.[1] it invented 'the equality of souls before god'--that cover for all the rancour of the useless and base.... it has bred the art of self-violation--repugnance and contempt for all good and cleanly instincts.... parasitism is its praxis. it combats all good red-blood, all love and all hope for life, with its anæmic ideal of holiness. it sets up 'the other world' as a negation of every reality. the cross is the rallying post for a conspiracy against health, beauty, well-being, courage, intellect, benevolence--against life itself.... "this eternal accusation i shall write upon all walls: i call christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity,... for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean! i call it the one immortal shame and blemish upon the human race!"[2] so much for the philosopher's vociferous hurrah at the close of his argument. in the argument itself it is apparent that his indictment of christianity contains two chief counts. the first is the allegation that it is essentially untrue and unreasonable, and the second is the theory that it is degrading. the first of these counts is not unfamiliar to the students of religious history. it was first voiced by that high priest who "rent his clothes" and cried "what need have we of any further witnesses? ye have heard the blasphemy."[3] it was voiced again by the romans who threw converts to the lions, and after the long silence of the middle ages, it was piped forth again by voltaire, hume, the encyclopedists and paine. after the philosophers and scientists who culminated in darwin had rescued reason for all time from the transcendental nonsense of the cobweb-spinners and metaphysicians, huxley came to the front with his terrific heavy artillery and those who still maintained that christianity was historically true--gladstone and the rest of the forlorn hope--were mowed down. david strauss, lessing, eichhorn, michaelis, bauer, meyer, ritschl,[4] pfleiderer and a host of others joined in the chorus and in nietzsche's early manhood the battle was practically won. by 1880 no reasonable man actually believed that there were devils in the swine, and it was already possible to deny the physical resurrection and still maintain a place in respectable society. today a literal faith in the gospel narrative is confined to ecclesiastical reactionaries, pious old ladies and men about to be hanged. therefore, nietzsche did not spend much time examining the historical credibility of christianity. he did not try to prove, like huxley, that the witnesses to the resurrection were superstitious peasants and hysterical women, nor did he seek to show, like huxley again, that christ might have been taken down from the cross before he was dead. he was intensely interested in all such inquiries, but he saw that, in the last analysis, they left a multitude of problems unsolved. the solution of these unsolved problems was the task that he took unto himself. tunneling down, in his characteristic way, into the very foundations of the faith, he endeavored to prove that it was based upon contradictions and absurdities; that its dogmas were illogical and its precepts unworkable; and that its cardinal principles presupposed the acceptance of propositions which, to the normal human mind, were essentially unthinkable. this tunneling occupied much of nietzsche's energy in "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," and he returned to it again and again, in all of the other books that preceded "_der antichrist_." his method of working may be best exhibited by a few concrete examples. prayer, for instance, is an exceedingly important feature of christian worship and any form of worship in which it had no place would be necessarily unchristian.[5] but upon what theory is prayer based? examining the matter from all sides you will have to conclude that it is reasonable only upon two assumptions: first, that it is possible to change the infallible will and opinion of the deity, and secondly, that the petitioner is capable of judging what he needs. now, christianity maintains, as one of its main dogmas, that the deity is omniscient and all-wise,[6] and, as another fundamental doctrine, that human beings are absolutely unable to solve their problems without heavenly aid[7] _i.e._ that the deity necessarily knows what is best for any given man better than that man can ever hope to know it himself. therefore, christianity, in ordaining prayer, orders, as a condition of inclusion in its communion, an act which it holds to be useless. this contradiction, argues nietzsche, cannot be explained away in terms comprehensible to the human intelligence. again christianity holds that man is a mere creature of the deity's will, and yet insists that the individual be judged and punished for his acts. in other words, it tries to carry free will on one shoulder and determinism on the other, and its doctors and sages have themselves shown that they recognize the absurdity of this by their constant, but futile efforts to decide which of the two shall be abandoned. this contradiction is a legacy from judaism, and mohammedanism suffers from it, too. those sects which have sought to remove it by an entire acceptance of determinism--under the name of predestination, fatalism, or what not--have become bogged in hopeless morasses of unreason and dogmatism. it is a cardinal doctrine of presbyterianism, for instance, that "by the decree of god, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death ... without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions...."[8] in other words, no matter how faithfully one man tries to follow in the footsteps of christ, he may go to hell, and no matter how impiously another sins, he may be foreordained for heaven. that such a belief makes all religion, faith and morality absurd is apparent. that it is, at bottom, utterly unthinkable to a reasoning being is also plain. nietzsche devoted a great deal of time during his first period of activity to similar examinations of christian ideas and he did a great deal to supplement the historical investigations of those english and german savants whose ruthless exposure of fictions and frauds gave birth to what we now call the higher criticism. but his chief service was neither in the field of historical criticism nor in that of the criticism of dogmas. toward the end of his life he left the business of examining biblical sources to the archeologists and historians, whose equipment for the task was necessarily greater than his own, and the business of reducing christian logic to contradiction and absurdity to the logicians. thereafter, his own work took him a step further down and in the end he got to the very bottom of the subject. the answer of the theologians had been that, even if you denied the miracles, the gospels, the divinity of christ and his very existence as an actual man, you would have to admit that christianity itself was sufficient excuse for its own existence; that it had made the world better and that it provided a workable scheme of life by which men could live and die and rise to higher things. this answer, for awhile, staggered the agnostics and huxley himself evidently came near being convinced that it was beyond rebuttal.[9] but it only made nietzsche spring into the arena more confident than ever. "very well," he said, "we will argue it out. you say that christianity has made the world better? i say that it has made it worse! you say that it is comforting and uplifting? i say that it is cruel and degrading! you say that it is the best religion mankind has ever invented? i say it is the most dangerous!" having thus thrown down the gage of battle, nietzsche proceeded to fight like a tartar, and it is but common fairness to say that, for a good while, he bore the weight of his opponents' onslaught almost unaided. the world was willing enough to abandon its belief in christian supernaturalism and as far back as the early 80's the dignitaries of the church of england--to employ a blunt but expressive metaphor--had begun to get in out of the wet. but the pietists still argued that christianity remained the fairest flower of civilization and that it met a real and ever-present human want and made mankind better. to deny this took courage of a decidedly unusual sort--courage that was willing to face, not only ecclesiastical anathema and denunciation, but also the almost automatic opposition of every so-called respectable man. but nietzsche, whatever his deficiencies otherwise, certainly was not lacking in assurance, and so, when he came to write "_der antichrist_" he made his denial thunderous and uncompromising beyond expression. no medieval bishop ever pronounced more appalling curses. no backwoods evangelist ever laid down the law with more violent eloquence. the book is the shortest he ever wrote, but it is by long odds the most compelling. beginning _allegro_, it proceeds from _forte_, by an uninterrupted _crescendo_ to _allegro con moltissimo molto fortissimo_. the sentences run into mazes of italics, dashes and asterisks. it is german that one cannot read aloud without roaring and waving one's arm. christianity, says nietzsche, is the most dangerous system of slave-morality the world has ever known. "it has waged a deadly war against the highest type of man. it has put a ban on all his fundamental instincts. it has distilled evil out of these instincts. it makes the strong and efficient man its typical outcast man. it has taken the part of the weak and the low; it has made an ideal out of its antagonism to the very instincts which tend to preserve life and well-being.... it has taught men to regard their highest impulses as sinful--as temptations."[10] in a word, it tends to rob mankind of all those qualities which fit any living organism to survive in the struggle for existence. as we shall see later on, civilization obscures and even opposes this struggle for existence, but it is in progress all the same, at all times and under all conditions. every one knows, for instance, that one-third of the human beings born into the world every year die before they are five years old. the reason for this lies in the fact that they are, in some way or other, less fitted to meet the conditions of life on earth than the other two-thirds. the germ of cholera infantum is an enemy to the human race, and so long as it continues to exist upon earth it will devote all of its activity to attacking human infants and seeking to destroy them. it happens that some babies recover from cholera infantum, while others die of it. this is merely another way of saying that the former, having been born with a capacity for resisting the attack of the germ, or having been given the capacity artificially, are better fitted to survive, and that the latter, being incapable of making this resistance, are unfit. all life upon earth is nothing more than a battle with the enemies of life. a germ is such an enemy, cold is such an enemy, lack of food is such an enemy, and others that may be mentioned are lack of water, ignorance of natural laws, armed foes and deficient physical strength. the man who is able to get all of the food he wants, and so can nourish his body until it becomes strong enough to combat the germs of disease; who gets enough to drink, who has shelter from the elements, who has devised means for protecting himself against the desires of other men--who yearn, perhaps, who take for themselves some of the things that he has acquired--such a man, it is obvious, is far better fitted to live than a man who has none of these things. he is far better fitted to survive, in a purely physical sense, because his body is nourished and protected, and he is far better fitted to attain happiness, because most of his powerful wants are satisfied. nietzsche maintains that christianity urges a man to make no such efforts to insure his personal survival in the struggle for existence. the beatitudes require, he says, that, instead of trying to do so, the christian shall devote his energies to helping others and shall give no thought to himself. instead of exalting himself as much as possible above the common herd and thus raising his chances of surviving, and those of his children, above those of the average man, he is required to lift up this average man. now, it is plain that every time he lifts up some one else, he must, at the same time, decrease his own store, because his own store is the only stock from which he can draw. therefore, the tendency of the christian philosophy of humility is to make men voluntarily throw away their own chances of surviving, which means their own sense of efficiency, which means their own "feeling of increasing power," which means their own happiness. as a substitute for this natural happiness, christianity offers the happiness derived from the belief that the deity will help those who make the sacrifice and so restore them to their old superiority. this belief, as nietzsche shows, is no more borne out by known facts than the old belief in witches. it is, in fact, proved to be an utter absurdity by all human experience. "i call an animal, a species, an individual, depraved," he says, "when it loses its instincts, when it selects, when it _prefers_ what is injurious to it.... life itself is an instinct for growth, for continuance, for accumulation of forces, for _power:_ where the will to power is wanting there is decline."[11] christianity, he says, squarely opposes this will to power in the golden rule, the cornerstone of the faith. the man who confines his efforts to attain superiority over his fellow men to those acts which he would be willing to have them do toward him, obviously abandons all such efforts entirely. to put it in another form, a man can't make himself superior to the race in general without making every other man in the world, to that extent, his inferior. now, if he follows the golden rule, he must necessarily abandon all efforts to make himself superior, because if he didn't he would be suffering all the time from the pain of seeing other men--whose standpoint the rule requires him to assume--grow inferior. thus his activity is restricted to one of two things: standing perfectly still or deliberately making himself inferior. the first is impossible, but nietzsche shows that the latter is not, and that, in point of fact, it is but another way of describing the act of sympathy--one of the things ordered by the fundamental dogma of christianity. sympathy, says nietzsche, consists merely of a strong man giving up some of his strength to a weak man. the strong man, it is evident, is debilitated thereby, while the weak man, very often, is strengthened but little. if you go to a hanging and sympathize with the condemned, it is plain that your mental distress, without helping that gentleman, weakens, to a perceptible degree, your own mind and body, just as all other powerful emotions weaken them, by consuming energy, and so you are handicapped in the struggle for life to the extent of this weakness. you may get a practical proof of it an hour later by being overcome and killed by a foot-pad whom you might have been able to conquer, had you been feeling perfectly well, or by losing money to some financial rival for whom, under normal conditions, you would have been a match; and then again you may get no immediate or tangible proof of it at all. but your organism will have been weakened to some measurable extent, all the same, and at some time--perhaps on your death bed--this minute drain will make itself evident, though, of course, you may never know it. "sympathy," says nietzsche, "stands in direct antithesis to the tonic passions which elevate the energy of human beings and increase their feeling of efficiency and power. it is a depressant. one loses force by sympathizing and any loss of force which has been caused by other means--personal suffering, for example--is increased and multiplied by sympathy. suffering itself becomes contagious through sympathy and under certain circumstances it may lead to a total loss of life. if a proof of that is desired, consider the case of the nazarene, whose sympathy for his fellow men brought him, in the end, to the cross. "again, sympathy thwarts the law of development, of evolution, of the survival of the fittest. it preserves what is ripe for extinction, it works in favor of life's condemned ones, it gives to life itself a gloomy aspect by the number of the ill-constituted it _maintains_ in life.... it is both a multiplier of misery and a conservator of misery. it is the principal tool for the advancement of decadence. it leads to nothingness, to the negation of all those instincts which are at the basis of life.... but one does not say 'nothingness;' one says instead 'the other world' or 'the better life.'... this innocent rhetoric, out of the domain of religio-moral fantasy, becomes far from innocent when one realizes what tendency it conceals: the tendency _hostile to life_."[12] the foregoing makes it patent that nietzsche was a thorough-going and uncompromising biological monist. that is to say, he believed that man, while superior to all other animals because of his greater development, was, after all, merely an animal, like the rest of them; that the struggle for existence went on among human beings exactly as it went on among the lions in the jungle and the protozoa in the sea ooze, and that the law of natural selection ruled all of animated nature--mind and matter--alike. indeed, it is but just to credit him with being the pioneer among modern monists of this school, for he stated and defended the doctrine of morphological universality at a time when practically all the evolutionists doubted it, and had pretty well proved its truth some years before haeckel wrote his "monism" and "the riddle of the universe." to understand all of this, it is necessary to go back to darwin and his first statement of the law of natural selection. darwin proved, in "the origin of the species," that a great many more individuals of any given species of living being are born into the world each year than can possibly survive. those that are best fitted to meet the condition of existence live on; those that are worst fitted die. the result is that, by the influence of heredity, the survivors beget a new generation in which there is a larger percentage of the fit. one might think that this would cause a greater number to survive, but inasmuch as the food and room on earth are limited, a large number must always die. but all the while the half or third, or whatever the percentage may be, which actually do survive become more and more fit. in consequence, a species, generation after generation, tends to become more and more adapted to meet life's vicissitudes, or, as the biologists say, more and more adapted to its environment. darwin proved that this law was true of all the lower animals and showed that it was responsible for the evolution of the lower apes into anthropoid apes, and that it could account, theoretically, for a possible evolution of anthropoid apes into man. but in "the descent of man" he argued that the law of natural selection ceased when man became an intelligent being. thereafter, he said, man's own efforts worked against those of nature. instead of letting the unfit of his race die, civilization began to protect and preserve them. the result was that nature's tendency to make all living beings more and more sturdy was set aside by man's own conviction that mere sturdiness was not the thing most to be desired. from this darwin argued that if two tribes of human beings lived side by side, and if, in one of them, the unfit were permitted to perish, while in the other there were many "courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, and to aid and defend one another"--that in such a case, the latter tribe would make the most progress, despite its concerted effort to defy a law of nature. darwin's disciples agreed with him in this and some of them went to the length of asserting that civilization, in its essence, was nothing more or less than a successful defiance of this sort.[13] herbert spencer was much troubled by the resultant confusion and as one critic puts it,[14] the whole drift of his thought "appears to be inspired by the question: how to evade and veil the logical consequence of evolutionarism for human existence?" john fiske, another darwinian, accepted the situation without such disquieting doubt. "when humanity began to be evolved," he said, "an entirely new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. henceforth the life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance and the bodily life became subordinated to it."[15] even huxley believed that man would have to be excepted from the operation of the law of natural selection. "the ethical progress of society," he said, "depends, not on imitating the cosmic process and still less on running away from it, but in combating it." he saw that it was audacious thus to pit man against nature, but he thought that man was sufficiently important to make such an attempt and hoped "that the enterprise might meet with a certain measure of success."[16] and the other darwinians agreed with him.[17] as all the best critics of philosophy have pointed out,[18] any philosophical system which admits such a great contradiction fails utterly to furnish workable standards of order in the universe, and so falls short of achieving philosophy's first aim. we must either believe with the scholastics that intelligence rules, or we must believe, with haeckel, that all things happen in obedience to invariable natural laws. we cannot believe both. a great many men, toward the beginning of the 90's, began to notice this fatal defect in darwin's idea of human progress. in 1891 one of them pointed out the conclusion toward which it inevitably led.[19] if we admitted, he said, that humanity had set at naught the law of natural selection, we must admit that civilization was working against nature's efforts to preserve the race, and that, in the end, humanity would perish. to put it more succinctly, man might defy the law of natural selection as much as he pleased, but he could never hope to set it aside. soon or late, he would awaken to the fact that he remained a mere animal, like the rabbit and the worm, and that, if he permitted his body to degenerate into a thing entirely lacking in strength and virility, not all the intelligence conceivable could save him. nietzsche saw all this clearly as early as 1877.[20] he saw that what passed for civilization, as represented by christianity, was making such an effort to defy and counteract the law of natural selection, and he came to the conclusion that the result would be disaster. christianity, he said, ordered that the strong should give part of their strength to the weak, and so tended to weaken the whole race. self-sacrifice, he said, was an open defiance of nature, and so were all the other christian virtues, in varying degree. he proposed, then, that before it was too late, humanity should reject christianity, as the "greatest of all imaginable corruptions," and admit freely and fully that the law of natural selection was universal and that the only way to make real progress was to conform to it. it may be asked here how nietzsche accounted for the fact that humanity had survived so long--for the fact that the majority of men were still physically healthy and that the race, as a whole, was still fairly vigorous. he answered this in two ways. first, he denied that the race was maintaining to the full its old vigor. "the european of the present," he said, "is far below the european of the renaissance." it would be absurd, he pointed out, to allege that the average german of 1880 was as strong and as healthy--_i.e._ as well fitted to his environment--as the "blond beast" who roamed the saxon lowlands in the days of the mammoth. it would be equally absurd to maintain that the highest product of modern civilization--the town-dweller--was as vigorous and as capable of becoming the father of healthy children as the intelligent farmer, whose life was spent in approximate accordance with all the more obvious laws of health. nietzsche's second answer was that humanity had escaped utter degeneration and destruction because, despite its dominance as a theory of action, few men actually practiced christianity. it was next to impossible, he said, to find a single man who, literally and absolutely, obeyed the teachings of christ.[21] there were plenty of men who thought they were doing so, but all of them were yielding in only a partial manner. absolute christianity meant absolute disregard of self. it was obvious that a man who reached this state of mind would be unable to follow any gainful occupation, and so would find it impossible to preserve his own life or the lives of his children. in brief, said nietzsche, an actual and utter christian would perish today just as christ perished, and so, in his own fate, would provide a conclusive argument against christianity. nietzsche pointed out further that everything which makes for the preservation of the human race is diametrically opposed to the christian ideal. thus christianity becomes the foe of science. the one argues that man should sit still and let god reign; the other that man should battle against the tortures which fate inflicts upon him, and try to overcome them and grow strong. thus all science is unchristian, because, in the last analysis, the whole purpose and effort of science is to arm man against loss of energy and death, and thus make him self-reliant and unmindful of any duty of propitiating the deity. that this antagonism between christianity and the search, for truth really exists has been shown in a practical way time and again. since the beginning of the christian era the church has been the bitter and tireless enemy of all science, and this enmity has been due to the fact that every member of the priest class has realized that the more a man learned the more he came to depend upon his own efforts, and the less he was given to asking help from above. in the ages of faith men prayed to the saints when they were ill. today they send for a doctor. in the ages of faith battles were begun with supplications, and it was often possible to witness the ridiculous spectacle of both sides praying to the same god. today every sane person knows that the victory goes to the wisest generals and largest battalions. nietzsche thus showed, first, that christianity (and all other ethical systems having self-sacrifice as their basis) tended to oppose the law of natural selection and so made the race weaker; and secondly, that the majority of men, consciously or unconsciously, were aware of this, and so made no effort to be absolute christians. if christianity were to become universal, he said, and every man in the world were to follow christ's precepts to the letter in all the relations of daily life, the race would die out in a generation. this being true--and it may be observed in passing that no one has ever successfully controverted it--there follows the converse: that the human race had best abandon the idea of self-sacrifice altogether and submit itself to the law of natural selection. if this is done, says nietzsche, the result will be a race of supermen--of proud, strong dionysians--of men who will say "yes" to the world and will be ideally capable of meeting the conditions under which life must exist on earth. in his efforts to account for the origin of christianity, nietzsche was less happy, and indeed came very near the border-line of the ridiculous. the faith of modern europe, he said, was the result of a gigantic effort on the part of the ancient jews to revenge themselves upon their masters. the jews were helpless and inefficient and thus evolved a slave-morality. naturally, as slaves, they hated their masters, while realizing, all the while, the unmanliness of the ideals they themselves had to hold to in order to survive. so they crucified christ, who voiced these same ideals, and the result was that the outside world, which despised the jews, accepted christ as a martyr and prophet and thus swallowed the jewish ideals without realizing it. in a word, the jews detested the slave-morality which circumstances thrust upon them, and got their revenge by foisting it, in a sugar-coated pill, upon their masters. it is obvious that this idea is sheer lunacy. that the jews ever realized the degenerating effect of their own slave-morality is unlikely, and that they should take counsel together and plan such an elaborate and complicated revenge, is impossible. the reader of nietzsche must expect to encounter such absurdities now and then. the mad german was ordinarily a most logical and orderly thinker, but sometimes the traditional german tendency to indulge in wild and imbecile flights of speculation cropped up in him. [1] _vide_ the chapter on "crime and punishment." [2] "_der antichrist_," § 62. [3] st. mark xiv, 63, 64. [4] albrecht ritschl (1822-89), who is not to be confused with nietzsche's teacher at bonn and leipsic. ritschl founded what is called the ritschlian movement in theology. this has for its object the abandonment of supernaturalism and the defence of christianity as a mere scheme of living. it admits that the miracle stories are fables and even concedes that christ was not divine, but maintains that his teachings represent the best wisdom of the human race. see denny: "studies in theology," new york, 1894. [5] ph. iv, 6: "be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to god." [6] deut. xxxii, 4: "he is the rock, his work is perfect." see also a hundred similar passages in the old and new testaments. [7] isaiah xliv, 8: "now, o lord, thou art our father; we are the clay and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand." [8] "the constitution of the presbyterian church in the united states," pp. 16 to 20: philadelphia, 1841. [9] to the end of his days huxley believed that, to the average human being, even of the highest class, some sort of faith would always be necessary. "my work in the london hospitals," he said, "taught me that the preacher often does as much good as the doctor." it would be interesting to show how this notion has been abandoned in recent years. the trained nurse, who was unknown in huxley's hospital days, now takes the place of the confessor, and as dr. osler has shown us in "science and immortality," men die just as comfortably as before. [10] "_der antichrist_," § 5. [11] "_der antichrist_," § 6. [12] "_der antichrist_," § 7. [13] alfred russell wallace: "darwinism," london, 1889. [14] alexander tille, introduction to the eng. tr. of "the works of friedrich nietzsche," vol. xi; new york, 1896. [15] john fiske: "the destiny of man;" london, 1884. [16] romanes lecture on "evolution and ethics," 1893. [17] as a matter of fact this dualism still lives. thus it was lately defended by a correspondent of the new york _sun:_ "if there can be such a thing as an essential difference there surely is one between the animal evolution discovered by darwin and the self-culture, progress and spiritual aspiration of man." many other writers on the subject take the same position. [18] see the article on "monism" in the new international encyclopedia. [19] a. j. balfour: "fragment on progress;" london, 1891. [20] he was a monist, indeed, as early as 1873, at which time he had apparently not yet noticed darwin's notion that the human race could successfully defy the law of natural selection. "the absence of any cardinal distinction between man and beast," he said, "is a doctrine which i consider true." ("_unzeitgemässe betrachtungen_," i, 189.) nevertheless, in a moment of sophistry, late in life, he undertook to criticize the law of natural selection and even to deny its effects (_vide_ "roving expeditions of an inopportune philosopher," § 14, in "the twilight of the idols"). it is sufficient to say, in answer, that the law itself is inassailable and that all of nietzsche's work, saving this single unaccountable paragraph, helps support it. his frequent sneers at darwin, in other places, need not be taken too seriously. everything english, toward the close of his life, excited his ire, but the fact remains that he was a thorough darwinian and that, without darwin's work, his own philosophy would have been impossible. [21] this observation is as old as montaigne, who said: "after all, the stoics were actually stoical, but where in all christendom will you find a christian?" vii truth at the bottom of all philosophy, of all science and of all thinking, you will find the one all-inclusive question: how is man to tell truth from error? the ignorant man solves this problem in a very simple manner: he holds that whatever he believes, he _knows;_ and that whatever he knows is true. this is the attitude of all amateur and professional theologians, politicians and other numbskulls of that sort. the pious old maid, for example, who believes in the doctrine of the immaculate conception looks upon her faith as proof, and holds that all who disagree with her will suffer torments in hell. opposed to this childish theory of knowledge is the chronic doubt of the educated man. he sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs. at different times in the history of man, various methods of solving or evading the riddle have been proposed. in the age of faith it was held that, by his own efforts alone, man was unable, even partly, to distinguish between truth and error, but that he could always go for enlightenment to an infallible encyclopedia: the word of god, as set forth, through the instrumentality of inspired scribes, in the holy scriptures. if these scriptures said that a certain proposition was true, it _was_ true, and any man who doubted it was either a lunatic or a criminal.[1] this doctrine prevailed in europe for many years and all who ventured to oppose it were in danger of being killed, but in the course of time the number of doubters grew so large that it was inconvenient or impossible to kill all of them, and so, in the end, they had to be permitted to voice their doubts unharmed. the first man of this new era to inflict any real damage upon the ancient churchly idea of revealed wisdom was nicolas of cusa, a cardinal of the roman catholic church, who lived in the early part of the fifteenth century.[2] despite his office and his time, nicolas was an independent and intelligent man, and it became apparent to him, after long reflection, that mere belief in a thing was by no means a proof of its truth. man, he decided was prone to err, but in the worst of his errors, there was always some kernel of truth, else he would revolt against it as inconceivable. therefore, he decided, the best thing for man to do was to hold all of his beliefs lightly and to reject them whenever they began to appear as errors. the real danger, he said, was not in making mistakes, but in clinging to them after they were known to be mistakes. it seems well nigh impossible that a man of nicolas' age and training should have reasoned so clearly, but the fact remains that he did, and that all of modern philosophy is built upon the foundations he laid. since his time a great many other theories of knowledge have been put forward, but all have worked, in a sort of circle, back to nicolas. it would be interesting, perhaps, to trace the course and history of these variations and denials, but such an enterprise is beyond the scope of the present inquiry. nicolas by no means gave the world a complete and wholly credible system of philosophy. until the day of his death scholasticism was dominant in the world that he knew, and it retained its old hold upon human thought, in fact, for nearly two hundred years thereafter. not until descartes, in 1619, made his famous resolution "to take nothing for the truth without clear knowledge that it is such," did humanity in general begin to realize, as huxley says, that there was sanctity in doubt. and even descartes could not shake himself free of the supernaturalism and other balderdash which yet colored philosophy. he laid down, for all time, the emancipating doctrine that "the profession of belief in propositions, of the truth of which there is no sufficient evidence, is immoral"--a doctrine that might well be called the magna charta of human thought[3]--but it should not be forgotten that he also laid down other doctrines and that many of them were visionary and silly. the philosophers after him rid their minds of the old ideas but slowly and there were frequent reversions to the ancient delusion that a man's mind is a function of his soul--whatever that may be--and not of his body. it was common, indeed, for a philosopher to set out with sane, debatable, conceivable ideas--and then to go soaring into the idealistic clouds.[4] only in our own time have men come to understand that the ego, for all its seeming independence, is nothing more than the sum of inherited race experience--that a man's soul, his conscience and his attitude of mind are things he has inherited from his ancestors, just as he has inherited his two eyes, his ten toes and his firm belief in signs, portents and immortality. only in our own time have men ceased seeking a golden key to all riddles, and sat themselves down to solve one riddle at a time. those metaphysicians who fared farthest from the philosopher of cusa evolved the doctrine that, in themselves, things have no existence at all, and that we can think of them only in terms of our impressions of them. the color green, for example, may be nothing but a delusion, for all we can possibly know of it is that, under certain conditions, our optic nerves experience a sensation of greenness. whether this sensation of greenness is a mere figment of our imagination or the reflection of an actual physical state, is something that we cannot tell. it is impossible, in a word, to determine whether there are actual things around us, which produce real impressions upon us, or whether our idea of these things is the mere result of subjective impressions or conditions. we know that a blow on the eyes may cause us to see a flash of light which does not exist and that a nervous person may feel the touch of hands and hear noises which are purely imaginary. may it not be possible, also, that all other sensations have their rise within us instead of without, and that in saying that objects give us impressions we have been confusing cause and effect? such is the argument of those metaphysicians who doubt, not only the accuracy of human knowledge, but also the very capacity of human beings to acquire knowledge. it is apparent, on brief reflection, that this attitude, while theoretically admissible, is entirely impracticable, and that, as a matter of fact, it gives us no more substantial basis for intelligent speculation than the old device of referring all questions to revelation. to say that nothing exists save in the imagination of living beings is to say that this imagination itself does not exist. this, of course, is an absurdity, because every man is absolutely certain that he himself is a real thing and that his mind is a real thing, too, and capable of thought. in place of such cob-web spinning, modern philosophers--driven to it, it may be said, in parenthesis, by the scientists--have gone back to the doctrine that, inasmuch as we can know nothing of anything save through the impressions it makes upon us, these impressions must be accepted provisionally as accurate, so long as they are evidently normal and harmonize one with the other. that is to say, our perceptions, corrected by our experience and our common sense, must serve as guides for us, and we must seize every opportunity to widen their range and increase their accuracy. for millions of years they have been steadily augmenting our store of knowledge. we know, for instance, that when fire touches us it causes an impression which we call pain and that this impression is invariably the same, and always leads to the same results, in all normal human beings. therefore, we accept it as an axiom that fire causes pain. there are many other ideas that may be and have been established in the same manner: by the fact that they are universal among sane men. but there is also a multitude of things which produce different impressions upon different men, and here we encounter the problem of determining which of these impressions is right and which is wrong. one man, observing the rising and setting of the sun, concludes that it is a ball of fire revolving about the earth. another man, in the face of the same phenomena, concludes that the earth revolves around the sun. how, then, are we to determine which of these men has drawn the proper conclusion? as a matter of fact, it is impossible in such a case, to come to any decision which can be accepted as utterly and absolutely true. but all the same the scientific empiric method enables us to push the percentage of error nearer and nearer to the irreducible minimum. we can observe the phenomenon under examination from a multitude of sides and compare the impression it produces with the impressions produced by kindred phenomena regarding which we know more. again, we can put this examination into the hands of men specially trained and fitted for such work--men whose conclusions we know, by previous experience, to be above the average of accuracy. and so, after a long time, we can formulate some idea of the thing under inspection which violates few or none of the other ideas held by us. when we have accomplished this, we have come as near to the absolute truth as it is possible for human beings to come. i need not point out that this method does not contemplate a mere acceptance of the majority vote. its actual effect, indeed, is quite the contrary, for it is only a small minority of human beings who may be said, with any truth, to be capable of thought. it is probable, for example, that nine-tenths of the people in christendom today believe that friday is an unlucky day, while only the remaining tenth hold that one day is exactly like another. but despite this, it is apparent that the idea of the latter will survive and that, by slow degrees, it will be forced upon the former. we know that it is true, not because it is accepted by all men or by the majority of men--for, as a matter of fact, we have seen that it isn't--but because we realize that the few who hold to it are best capable of distinguishing between actual impressions and mere delusions. again, the scientific method tends to increase our knowledge by the very fact that it discourages unreasoning faith. the scientist realizes that most of his so-called facts are probably errors and so he is willing to harbor doubts of their truth and to seek for something better. like socrates he boldly says "i know that i am ignorant." he realizes, in fact, that error, when it is constantly under fire, is bound to be resolved in the long run into something approximating the truth. as nicolas pointed out 500 years ago, nothing is utterly and absolutely true and nothing is utterly and absolutely false. there is always a germ of truth in the worst error, and there is always a residuum of error in the soundest truth. therefore, an error is fatal only when it is hidden from the white light of investigation. herein lies the difference between the modern scientist and the moralist. the former holds nothing sacred, not even his own axioms; the latter lays things down as law and then makes it a crime to doubt them. it is in this way--by submitting every idea to a searching, pitiless, unending examination--that the world is increasing its store of what may be called, for the sake of clearness, absolute knowledge. error always precedes truth, and it is extremely probable that the vast majority of ideas held by men of today--even the sanest and wisest men--are delusions, but with the passing of the years our stock of truth grows larger and larger. "a conviction," says nietzsche, "always has its history--its previous forms, its tentative forms, its states of error. it becomes a conviction, indeed, only after having been _not_ a conviction, and then _hardly_ a conviction. no doubt falsehood is one of these embryonic forms of conviction. sometimes only a change of persons is needed to transform one into the other. that which, in the son, is a conviction, was, in the father, still a falsehood."[5] the tendency of intelligent men, in a word, is to approach nearer and nearer the truth, by the processes of rejection, revision and invention. many old ideas are rejected by each new generation, but there always remain a few that survive. we no longer believe with the cave-men that the thunder is the voice of an angry god and the lightning the flash of his sword, but we still believe, as they did, that wood floats upon water, that seeds sprout and give forth plants, that a roof keeps off the rain and that a child, if it lives long enough, will inevitably grow into a man or a woman. such ideas may be called truths. if we deny them we must deny at once that the world exists and that we exist ourselves. nietzsche's discussion of these problems is so abstruse and so much complicated by changes in view that it would be impossible to make an understandable summary of it in the space available here. in his first important book, "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" he devoted himself, in the main, to pointing out errors made in the past, without laying down any very definite scheme of thought for the future. in the early stages of human progress, he said, men made the mistake of regarding everything that was momentarily pleasant or beneficial as absolutely and eternally true. herein they manifested the very familiar human weakness for rash and hasty generalization, and the equally familiar tendency to render the ideas of a given time and place perpetual and permanent by erecting them into codes of morality and putting them into the mouths of gods. this, he pointed out, was harmful, for a thing might be beneficial to the men of today and fatal to the men of tomorrow. therefore, he argued that while a certain idea's effect was a good criterion, humanly speaking, of its present or current truth, it was dangerous to assume that this effect would be always the same, and that, in consequence, the idea itself would remain true forever. not until the days of socrates, said nietzsche, did men begin to notice this difference between imminent truth and eternal truth. the notion that such a distinction existed made its way very slowly, even after great teachers began to teach it, but in the end it was accepted by enough men to give it genuine weight. since that day philosophy and science, which were once merely different names for the same thing, have signified two separate things. it is the object of philosophy to analyze happiness, and by means of the knowledge thus gained, to devise means for safeguarding and increasing it. in consequence, it is necessary for philosophy to generalize--to assume that the thing which makes men happy today will make them happy tomorrow. science, on the contrary, concerns itself, not with things of the uncertain future, but with things of the certain present. its object is to examine the world as it exists today, to uncover as many of its secrets as possible, and to study their effect upon human happiness. in other words, philosophy first constructs a scheme of happiness and then tries to fit the world to it, while science studies the world with no other object in view than the increase of knowledge, and with full confidence that, in the long run, this increase of knowledge will increase efficiency and in consequence happiness. it is evident, then, that science, for all its contempt for fixed schemes of happiness, will eventually accomplish with certainty what philosophy--which most commonly swims into the ken of the average man as morality--is now trying to do in a manner that is not only crude and unreasonable, but also necessarily unsuccessful. in a word, just so soon as man's store of knowledge grows so large that he becomes complete master of the natural forces which work toward his undoing, he will be perfectly happy. now, nietzsche believed, as we have seen in past chapters, that man's instinctive will to power had this same complete mastery over his environment as its ultimate object, and so he concluded that the will to power might be relied upon to lead man to the truth. that is to say, he believed that there was, in every man of the higher type (the only type he thought worth discussing) an instinctive tendency to seek the true as opposed to the false, that this instinct, as the race progressed, grew more and more accurate, and that its growing accuracy explained the fact that, despite the opposition of codes of morality and of the iron hand of authority, man constantly increased his store of knowledge. a thought, he said, arose in a man without his initiative or volition, and was nothing more or less than an expression of his innate will to obtain power over his environment by accurately observing and interpreting it. it was just as reasonable, he said, to say _it_ thinks as to say _i_ think,[6] because every intelligent person knew that a man couldn't control his thoughts. therefore, the fact that these thoughts, in the long run and considering the human race as a whole, tended to uncover more and more truths proved that the will to power, despite the danger of generalizing from its manifestations, grew more and more accurate and so worked in the direction of absolute truth. nietzsche believed that mankind was ever the slave of errors, but he held that the number of errors tended to decrease. when, at last, truth reigned supreme and there were no more errors, the superman would walk the earth. now it is impossible for any man to note the workings of the will to power save as it is manifested in his own instincts and thoughts, and therefore nietzsche, in his later books, urges that every man should be willing, at all times, to pit his own feelings against the laws laid down by the majority. a man should steer clear of rash generalization from his own experience, but he should be doubly careful to steer clear of the generalizations of others. the greatest of all dangers lies in subscribing to a thesis without being certain of its truth. "this not-wishing-to-see what one sees ... is a primary requisite for membership in a party, in any sense whatsoever. therefore, the party man becomes a liar by necessity." the proper attitude for a human being, indeed, is chronic dissent and skepticism. "zarathustra is a skeptic.... convictions are prisons.... the freedom from every kind of permanent conviction, the ability to search freely, belong to strength.... the need of a belief, of something that is unconditioned is a sign of weakness. the man of belief is necessarily a dependent man.... his instinct gives the highest honor to self-abnegation. he does not belong to himself, but to the author of the idea he believes."[7] it is only by skepticism, argues nietzsche, that we can hope to make any progress. if all men accepted without question, the _dicta_ of some one supreme sage, it is plain that there could be no further increase of knowledge. it is only by constant turmoil and conflict and exchange of views that the minute granules of truth can be separated from the vast muck heap of superstition and error. fixed truths, in the long run, are probably more dangerous to intelligence than falsehoods.[8] this argument, i take it, scarcely needs greater elucidation. every intelligent man knows that if there had been no brave agnostics to defy the wrath of the church in the middle ages, the whole of christendom would still wallow in the unspeakably foul morass of ignorance which had its center, during that black time, in an infallible sovereign of sovereigns. authority, at all times and everywhere, means sloth and degeneration. it is only doubt that creates. it is only the minority that counts. the fact that the great majority of human beings are utterly incapable of original thought, and so must, perforce, borrow their ideas or submit tamely to some authority, explains nietzsche's violent loathing and contempt for the masses. the average, self-satisfied, conservative, orthodox, law-abiding citizen appeared to him to be a being but little raised above the cattle in the barn-yard. so violent was this feeling that every idea accepted by the majority excited, for that very reason, his suspicion and opposition. "what everybody believes," he once said, "is never true." this may seem like a mere voicing of brobdingnagian egotism, but as a matter of fact, the same view is held by every man who has spent any time investigating the history of ideas. "truth," said dr. osler a while ago, "scarcely ever carries the struggle for acceptance at its first appearance." the masses are always a century or two behind. they have made a virtue of their obtuseness and call it by various fine names: conservatism, piety, respectability, faith. the nineteenth century witnessed greater human progress than all the centuries before it saw or even imagined, but the majority of white men of today still believe in ghosts, still fear the devil, still hold that the number 13 is unlucky and still picture the deity as a patriarch in a white beard, surrounded by a choir of resplendent amateur musicians. "we think a thing," says prof. henry sedgwick, "because all other people think so; or because, after all, we _do_ think so; or because we are told so, and think we must think so; or because we once thought so, and think we still think so; or because, having thought so, we think we _will_ think so." naturally enough, nietzsche was an earnest opponent of the theological doctrine of free will. he held, as we have seen, that every human act was merely the effect of the will to power reacting against environment, and in consequence he had to reject absolutely the notion of volition and responsibility. a man, he argued, was not an object _in vacuo_ and his acts, thoughts, impulses and motives could not be imagined without imagining some cause for them. if this cause came from without, it was clearly beyond his control, and if it came from within it was no less so, for his whole attitude of mind, his instinctive habits of thoughts, his very soul, so-called, were merely attributes that had been handed down to him, like the shape of his nose and the color of his eyes, from his ancestors. nietzsche held that the idea of responsibility was the product and not the cause of the idea of punishment, and that the latter was nothing more than a manifestation of primitive man's will to power--to triumph over his fellows by making them suffer the handicap and humiliation of pain. "men were called free," he said, "in order that they might be condemned and punished.... when we immoralists try to cleanse psychology, history, nature and sociology of these notions, we find that our chief enemies are the theologians, who, with their preposterous idea of 'a moral order of the world,' go on tainting the innocence of man's struggle upward with talk of punishment and guilt. christianity is, indeed, a hangman's metaphysic."[9] as a necessary corollary of this, nietzsche denied the existence of any plan in the cosmos. like haeckel, he believed that but two things existed--energy and matter; and that all the phenomena which made us conscious of the universe were nothing more than symptoms of the constant action of the one upon the other. nothing ever happened without a cause, he said, and no cause was anything other than the effect of some previous cause. "the destiny of man," he said, "cannot be disentangled from the destiny of everything else in existence, past, present and future.... we are a part of the whole, we exist in the whole.... there is nothing which could judge, measure or condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure and condemn the whole.... but there is nothing outside of the whole.... the concept of god has hitherto made our existence a crime.... we deny god, we deny responsibility by denying god: it is only thereby that we save man."[10] herein, unluckily, nietzsche fell into the trap which has snapped upon haeckel and every other supporter of atheistic determinism. he denied that the human will was free and argued that every human action was inevitable, and yet he spent his whole life trying to convince his fellow men that they should do otherwise than as they did in fact. in a word, he held that they had no control whatever over their actions, and yet, like moses, mohammed and st. francis, he thundered at them uproariously and urged them to turn from their errors and repent. [1] j. w. draper, "a history of the conflict between religion and science;" new york, 1874. [2] richard falckenberg: "a history of modern philosophy," tr. by a. c. armstrong, jr.; new york, 1897; chap. i. [3] t. h. huxley: "hume," preface; london, 1879. [4] comte and kant, for example. [5] "_der antichrist_," § 55. [6] "_jenseits von gut und böse_," vii. [7] "_der antichrist_," § 54. [8] "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," § 483. [9] "_götzendämmerung_," vi. [10] "_götzendämmerung_," vi. viii civilization on the surface, at least, the civilization of today seems to be moving slowly toward two goals. one is the eternal renunciation of war and the other is universal brotherhood: one is "peace on earth" and the other is "good will to men." five hundred years ago a statesman's fame rested frankly and solely upon the victories of his armies; today we profess to measure him by his skill at keeping these armies in barracks. and in the internal economy of all civilized states we find today some pretence at unrestricted and equal suffrage. in times past it was the chief concern of all logicians and wiseacres to maintain the proposition that god reigned. at present, the dominant platitude of christendom--the cornerstone of practically every political party and the stock-in-trade of every politician--is the proposition that the people rule. nietzsche opposed squarely both the demand for peace and the demand for equality, and his opposition was grounded upon two arguments. in the first place, he said, both demands were rhetorical and insincere and all intelligent men knew that neither would ever be fully satisfied. in the second place, he said, it would be ruinous to the race if they were. that is to say, he believed that war was not only necessary, but also beneficial, and that the natural system of castes was not only beneficent, but also inevitable. in the demand for universal peace he saw only the yearning of the weak and useless for protection against the righteous exploitation of the useful and strong. in the demand for equality he saw only the same thing. both demands, he argued, controverted and combated that upward tendency which finds expression in the law of natural selection. "the order of castes," said nietzsche, "is the dominating law of nature, against which no merely human agency may prevail. in every healthy society there are three broad classes, each of which has its own morality, its own work, its own notion of perfection and its own sense of mastery. the first class comprises those who are obviously superior to the mass intellectually; the second includes those whose eminence is chiefly muscular, and the third is made up of the mediocre. the third class, very naturally, is the most numerous, but the first is the most powerful. "to this highest caste belongs the privilege of representing beauty, happiness and goodness on earth.... its members accept the world as they find it and make the best of it.... they find their happiness in those things which, to lesser men, would spell ruin--in the labyrinth, in severity toward themselves and others, in effort. their delight is self-governing: with them asceticism becomes naturalness, necessity, instinct. a difficult task is regarded by them as a privilege; to play with burdens which would crush others to death is their recreation. they are the most venerable species of men. they are the most cheerful, the most amiable. they rule because they are what they are. they are not at liberty to be second in rank. "the second caste includes the guardians and keepers of order and security--the warriors, the nobles, the king--above all, as the highest types of warrior, the judges and defenders of the law. they execute the mandates of the first caste, relieving the latter of all that is coarse and menial in the work of ruling. "at the bottom are the workers--the men of handicraft, trade, agriculture and the greater part of art and science. it is the law of nature that they should be public utilities--that they should be wheels and functions. the only kind of happiness of which they are capable makes intelligent machines of them. for the mediocre, it is happiness to be mediocre. in them the mastery of one thing--_i.e._ specialism--is an instinct. "it is unworthy of a profound intellect to see in mediocrity itself an objection. it is, indeed, a necessity of human existence, for only in the presence of a horde of average men is the exceptional man a possibility.... "whom do i hate most among the men of today? the socialist who undermines the workingman's healthy instincts, who takes from him his feeling of contentedness with his existence, who makes him envious, who teaches him revenge.... there is no wrong in unequal rights: it lies in the vain pretension to equal rights."[1] it is obvious from this that nietzsche was an ardent believer in aristocracy, but it is also obvious that he was not a believer in the thing which passes for aristocracy in the world today. the nobility of europe belongs, not to his first class, but to his second class. it is essentially military and legal, for in themselves its members are puny and inefficient, and it is only the force of law that maintains them in their inheritance. the fundamental doctrine of civilized law, as we know it today, is the proposition that what a man has once acquired shall belong to him and his heirs forever, without need on his part or theirs to defend it personally against predatory rivals. this transfer of the function of defense from the individual to the state naturally exalts the state's professional defenders--that is, her soldiers and judges--and so it is not unnatural to find the members of this class, and their parasites, in control of most of the world's governments and in possession of a large share of the world's wealth, power and honors.[2] to nietzsche this seemed grotesquely illogical and unfair. he saw that this ruling class expended its entire energy in combating experiment and change and that the aristocracy it begot and protected--an aristocracy often identical, very naturally, with itself--tended to become more and more unfit and helpless and more and more a bar to the ready recognition and unrestrained functioning of the only true aristocracy--that of efficiency. nietzsche pointed out that one of the essential absurdities of a constitutional aristocracy was to be found in the fact that it hedged itself about with purely artificial barriers. next only to its desire to maintain itself without actual personal effort was its jealous endeavor to prevent accessions to its ranks. nothing, indeed, disgusts the traditional belted earl quite so much as the ennobling of some upstart brewer or iron-master. this exclusiveness, from nietzsche's point of view, seemed ridiculous and pernicious, for a true aristocracy must be ever willing and eager to welcome to its ranks--and to enroll in fact, automatically--all who display those qualities which make a man extraordinarily fit and efficient. there should always be, he said, a free and constant interchange of individuals between the three natural castes of men. it should be always possible for an abnormally efficient man of the slave class to enter the master class, and, by the same token, accidental degeneration or incapacity in the master class should be followed by swift and merciless reduction to the ranks of slaves. thus, those aristocracies which presented the incongruous spectacle of imbeciles being intrusted with the affairs of government seemed to him utterly abhorrent, and those schemes of caste which made a mean birth an offset to high intelligence seemed no less so. so long as man's mastery of the forces of nature is incomplete, said nietzsche, it will be necessary for the vast majority of human beings to spend their lives in either supplementing those natural forces which are partly under control or in opposing those which are still unleashed. the business of tilling the soil, for example, is still largely a matter of muscular exertion, despite the vast improvement in farm implements, and it will probably remain so for centuries to come. since such labor is necessarily mere drudgery, and in consequence unpleasant, it is plain that it should be given over to men whose realization of its unpleasantness is least acute. going further, it is plain that this work will be done with less and less revolt and less and less driving, as we evolve a class whose ambition to engage in more inviting pursuits grows smaller and smaller. in a word, the ideal ploughman is one who has no thought of anything higher and better than ploughing. therefore, argued nietzsche, the proper performance of the manual labor of the world makes it necessary that we have a laboring class, which means a class content to obey without fear or question. this doctrine brought down upon nietzsche's head the pious wrath of all the world's humanitarians, but empiric experiment has more than once proved its truth. the history of the hopelessly futile and fatuous effort to improve the negroes of the southern united states by education affords one such proof. it is apparent, on brief reflection, that the negro, no matter how much he is educated, must remain, as a race, in a condition of subservience; that he must remain the inferior of the stronger and more intelligent white man so long as he retains racial differentiation. therefore, the effort to educate him has awakened in his mind ambitions and aspirations which, in the very nature of things, must go unrealized, and so, while gaining nothing whatever materially, he has lost all his old contentment, peace of mind and happiness. indeed, it is a commonplace of observation in the united states that the educated and refined negro is invariably a hopeless, melancholy, embittered and despairing man. nietzsche, to resume, regarded it as absolutely essential that there be a class of laborers or slaves--his "third caste"--and was of the opinion that such a class would exist upon earth so long as the human race survived. its condition, compared to that of the ruling class, would vary but slightly, he thought, with the progress of the years. as man's mastery of nature increased, the laborer would find his task less and less painful, but he would always remain a fixed distance behind those who ruled him. therefore, nietzsche, in his philosophy, gave no thought to the desires and aspirations of the laboring class, because, as we have just seen, he held that a man could not properly belong to this class unless his desires and aspirations were so faint or so well under the control of the ruling class that they might be neglected. all of the nietzschean doctrines and ideas apply only to the ruling class. it was at the top, he argued, that mankind grew. it was only in the ideas of those capable of original thought that progress had its source. william the conqueror was of far more importance, though he was but a single man, than all the other normans of his generation taken together. nietzsche was well aware that his "first caste" was necessarily small in numbers and that there was a strong tendency for its members to drop out of it and seek ease and peace in the castes lower down. "life," he said, "is always hardest toward the summit--the cold increases, the responsibility increases."[3] but to the truly efficient man these hardships are but spurs to effort. his joy is in combating and in overcoming--in pitting his will to power against the laws and desires of the rest of humanity. "i do not advise you to labor," says zarathustra, "but to fight. i do not advise you to compromise and make peace, but to conquer. let your labor be fighting and your peace victory.... you say that a good cause will hallow even war? i tell you that a good war hallows every cause. war and courage have done more great things than charity. not your pity, but your bravery lifts up those about you. let the little girlies tell you that 'good' means 'sweet' and 'touching.' i tell you that 'good' means 'brave.'... the slave rebels against hardships and calls his rebellion superiority. let your superiority be an acceptance of hardships. let your commanding be an obeying.... let your highest thought be: 'man is something to be surpassed.'... i do not advise you to love your neighbor--the nearest human being. i advise you rather to flee from the nearest and love the furthest human being. higher than love to your neighbor is love to the higher man that is to come in the future.... propagate yourself upward. thus live your life. what are many years worth? i do not spare you.... die at the right time!"[4] the average man, said nietzsche, is almost entirely lacking in this gorgeous, fatalistic courage and sublime egotism. he is ever reluctant to pit his private convictions and yearnings against those of the mass of men. he is either afraid to risk the consequences of originality or fearful that, since the majority of his fellows disagree with him, he must be wrong. therefore, no matter how strongly an unconventional idea may possess a man, he commonly seeks to combat it and throttle it, and the ability to do this with the least possible expenditure of effort we call self-control. the average man, said nietzsche, has the power of self-control well developed, and in consequence he seldom contributes anything positive to the thought of his age and almost never attempts to oppose it. we have seen in the preceding chapter that if every man, without exception, were of this sort, all human progress would cease, because the ideas of one generation would be handed down unchanged to the next and there would be no effort whatever to improve the conditions of existence by the only possible method--constant experiment with new ideas. therefore, it follows that the world must depend for its advancement upon those revolutionists who, instead of overcoming their impulse to go counter to convention, give it free rein. of such is nietzsche's "first caste" composed. it is plain that among the two lower castes, courage of this sort is regarded, not as an evidence of strength, but as a proof of weakness. the man who outrages conventions is a man who lacks self-control, and the majority, by a process we have examined in our consideration of slave-morality, has exalted self-control, which, at bottom, is the antithesis of courage, into a place of honor higher than that belonging, by right, to courage itself. but nietzsche pointed out that the act of denying or combating accepted ideas is a thing which always tends to inspire other acts of the same sort. it is true enough that a revolutionary idea, so soon as it replaces an old convention and obtains the sanction of the majority, ceases to be revolutionary and becomes itself conventional, but all the same the mere fact that it has succeeded gives courage to those who harbor other revolutionary ideas and inspires them to give these ideas voice. thus, it happens that courage breeds itself, and that, in times of great conflict, of no matter what sort, the world produces more than an average output of originality, or, as we more commonly denominate it, genius. in this manner nietzsche accounted for a fact that had been noticed by many men before him: that such tremendous struggles as the french revolution and the american civil war are invariably followed by eras of diligent inquiry, of bold overturning of existing institutions and of marked progress. people become accustomed to unrestrained combat and so the desirability of self-control becomes less insistent. nietzsche had a vast contempt for what he called "the green-grazing happiness of the herd." its strong morality and its insistence upon the doctrine that whatever is, is right--that "god's in his heaven; all's well with the world"--revolted him. he held that the so-called rights of the masses had no justifiable existence, since everything they asserted as a right was an assertion, more or less disguised, of the doctrine that the unfit should survive. "there are," he said, "only three ways in which the masses appear to me to deserve a glance: first, as blurred copies of their betters, printed on bad paper and from worn out plates; secondly, as a necessary opposition to stimulate the master class, and thirdly, as instruments in the hands of the master class. further than this i hand them over to statistics--and the devil."[5] kant's proposal that the morality of every contemplated action be tested by the question, "suppose everyone did as i propose to do?" seemed utterly ridiculous to nietzsche because he saw that "everyone" always opposed the very things which meant progress; and kant's corollary that the sense of duty contemplated in this dictum was "the obligation to act in reverence for law," proved to nietzsche merely that both duty and law were absurdities. "contumely," he said, "always falls upon those who break through some custom or convention. such men, in fact, are called criminals. everyone who overthrows an existing law is, at the start, regarded as a wicked man. long afterward, when it is found that this law was bad and so cannot be re-established, the epithet is changed. all history treats almost exclusively of wicked men who, in the course of time, have come to be looked upon as good men. all progress is the result of successful crimes."[6] dr. turck,[7] miss paget, m. nordau and other critics see in all this good evidence that nietzsche was a criminal at heart. at the bottom of all philosophies, says miss paget,[8] there is always one supreme idea. sometimes it is a conception of nature, sometimes it is a religious faith and sometimes it is a theory of truth. in nietzsche's case it is "my taste." he is always irritated: "_i_ dislike," "_i_ hate," "_i_ want to get rid of" appear on every page of his writings. he delights in ruthlessness, his fellow men disgust him, his physical senses are acute, he has a sick ego. for that reason he likes singularity, the lonely alps, classic literature and bizet's "clear yellow" music. turck argues that nietzsche was a criminal because he got pleasure out of things which outraged the majority of his fellow men, and nordau, in supporting this idea, shows that it is possible for a man to experience and approve criminal impulses and still never act them: that there are criminals of the chair as well as of the dark lantern and sandbag. the answer to all of this, of course, is the fact that the same method of reasoning would convict every original thinker the world has ever known of black felony: that it would make martin luther a criminal as well as jack sheppard, john the baptist as well as the borgias, and galileo as well as judas iscariot; that it would justify the execution of all the sublime company of heroes who have been done to death for their opinions, from jesus christ down the long line. [1] "_der antichrist_," § 57. [2] in "the governance of england," (london: 1904) sidney low points out (chap. x) that, despite the rise of democracy, the government of great britain is still entirely in the hands of the landed gentry and nobility. the members of this class plainly owe their power to the military prowess of their ancestors, and their identity with the present military and judicial class is obvious. the typical m.p., in fact, also writes "j.p." after his name and "capt." or "col." before it. the examples of russia, germany, japan, austria, italy, spain and the latin-american republics scarcely need be mentioned. in china the military, judicial and legislative-executive functions are always combined, and in the united states, while the military branch of the second caste is apparently impotent, it is plain that the balance of legislative power in every state and in the national legislature is held by lawyers, just as the final determination of all laws rests with judges. [3] "_der antichrist_," § 55. [4] the quotations are from various chapters in the first part of "_also sprach zarathustra_." [5] "_vom nutzen und nachtheil der historie für das leben_." [6] "_morgenröte_," § 20. [7] "_friedrich nietzsche und seine philosophische irrwege_," leipsic, 1891. [8] _north american review_, dec., 1904. ix women and marriage nietzsche's faithful sister, with almost comical and essentially feminine disgust, bewails the fact that, as a very young man, the philosopher became acquainted with the baleful truths set forth in schopenhauer's immortal essay "on women." that this daring work greatly influenced him is true, and that he subscribed to its chief arguments all the rest of his days is also true, but it is far from true to say that his view of the fair sex was borrowed bodily from schopenhauer or that he would have written otherwise than as he did if schopenhauer had never lived. nietzsche's conclusions regarding women were the inevitable result, indeed, of his own philosophical system. it is impossible to conceive a man who held his opinions of morality and society laying down any other doctrines of femininity and matrimony than those he scattered through his books. nietzsche believed that there was a radical difference between the mind of man and the mind of woman and that the two sexes reacted in diametrically different ways to those stimuli which make up what might be called the clinical picture of human society. it is the function of man, he said, to wield a sword in humanity's battle with everything that makes life on earth painful or precarious. it is the function of woman, not to fight herself, but to provide fresh warriors for the fray. thus the exercise of the will to exist is divided between the two: the man seeking the welfare of the race as he actually sees it and the woman seeking the welfare of generations yet unborn. of course, it is obvious that this division is by no means clearly marked, because the man, in struggling for power over his environment, necessarily improves the conditions under which his children live, and the woman, working for her children, often benefits herself. but all the same the distinction is a good one and empiric observation bears it out. as everyone who has given a moment's thought to the subject well knows, a man's first concern in the world is to provide food and shelter for himself and his family, while a woman's foremost duty is to bear and rear children. "thus," said nietzsche, "would i have man and woman: the one fit for warfare, the other fit for giving birth; and both fit for dancing with head and legs"[1]--that is to say: both capable of doing their share of the race's work, mental and physical, with conscious and superabundant efficiency. nietzsche points out that, in the racial economy, the place of woman may be compared to that of a slave-nation, while the position of man resembles that of a master-nation. we have seen how a weak nation, unable, on account of its weakness, to satisfy its will to survive and thirst for power by forcing its authority upon other nations, turns to the task of keeping these other nations, as much as possible, from enforcing their authority upon it. realizing that it cannot rule, but must serve, it endeavors to make the conditions of its servitude as bearable as possible. this effort is commonly made in two ways: first by ostensibly renouncing its desire to rule, and secondly, by attempts to inoculate its powerful neighbors with its ideas in subterranean and round-about ways, so as to avoid arousing their suspicion and opposition. it becomes, in brief, humble and cunning, and with its humility as a cloak, it seeks to pit its cunning against the sheer might of those it fears. the position of women in the world is much the same. the business of bearing and rearing children is destructive to their physical strength, and in consequence makes it impossible for them to prevail by force when their ideas and those of men happen to differ. to take away the sting of this incapacity, they make a virtue of it, and it becomes modesty, humility, self-sacrifice and fidelity; to win in spite of it they cultivate cunning, which commonly takes the form of hypocrisy, cajolery, dissimulation and more or less masked appeals to the masculine sexual instinct. all of this is so often observed in every-day life that it has become commonplace. a woman is physically unable to force a man to do as she desires, but her very inability to do so becomes a sentimental weapon against him, and her blandishments do the rest. the spectacle of a strong man ruled by a weak woman is no rare one certainly, and samson was neither the first nor last giant to fall before a delilah. there is scarcely a household in all the world, in truth, in which the familiar drama is not being acted and reacted day after day. now, it is plain from the foregoing that, though women's business in the world is of such a character that it inevitably leads to physical degeneration, her constant need to overcome the effects of this degeneration by cunning produces constant mental activity, which, by the law of exercise, should produce, in turn, great mental efficiency. this conclusion, in part, is perfectly correct, for women, as a sex, are shrewd, resourceful and acute; but the very fact that they are always concerned with imminent problems and that, in consequence, they are unaccustomed to dealing with the larger riddles of life, makes their mental attitude essentially petty. this explains the circumstance that despite their mental suppleness, they are not genuinely strong intellectually. indeed, the very contrary is true. women's constant thought is, not to lay down broad principles of right and wrong; not to place the whole world in harmony with some great scheme of justice; not to consider the future of nations; not to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before; but to deceive, influence, sway and please men. normally, their weakness makes masculine protection necessary to their existence and to the exercise of their overpowering maternal instinct, and so their whole effort is to obtain this protection in the easiest way possible. the net result is that feminine morality is a morality of opportunism and imminent expediency, and that the normal woman has no respect for, and scarcely any conception of abstract truth. thus is proved the fact noted by schopenhauer and many other observers: that a woman seldom manifests any true sense of justice or of honor. it is unnecessary to set forth this idea in greater detail, because everyone is familiar with it and proofs of its accuracy are supplied in infinite abundance by common observation. nietzsche accepted it as demonstrated. when he set out to pursue the subject further, he rejected entirely the schopenhauerean corollary that man should ever regard woman as his enemy, and should seek, by all means within his power, to escape her insidious influence. such a notion naturally outraged the philosopher of the superman. he was never an advocate of running away: to all the facts of existence he said "yes." his ideal was not resignation or flight, but an intelligent defiance and opposition. therefore, he argued that man should accept woman as a natural opponent arrayed against him for the benevolent purpose of stimulating him to constant efficiency. opposition, he pointed out, was a necessary forerunner of function, and in consequence the fact that woman spent her entire effort in a ceaseless endeavor to undermine and change the will of man, merely served to make this will alert and strong, and so increased man's capacity for meeting and overcoming the enemies of his existence. a man conscious of his strength, observes nietzsche, need have no fear of women. it is only the man who finds himself utterly helpless in the face of feminine cajolery that must cry, "get thee behind me, satan!" and flee. "it is only the most sensual men," he says, "who have to shun women and torture their bodies." the normal, healthy man, despite the strong appeal which women make to him by their subtle putting forward of the sexual idea--visually as dress, coquetry and what not--still keeps a level head. he is strong enough to weather the sexual storm. but the man who cannot do this, who experiences no normal reaction in the direction of guardedness and caution and reason, must either abandon himself utterly as a helpless slave to woman's instinct of race-preservation, and so become a bestial voluptuary, or avoid temptation altogether and so become a celibate.[2] there is nothing essentially evil in woman's effort to combat and control man's will by constantly suggesting the sexual idea to him, because it is necessary, for the permanence of the race, that this idea be presented frequently and powerfully. therefore, the conflict between masculine and feminine ideals is to be regarded, not as a lamentable battle, in which one side is right and the other wrong, but a convenient means of providing that stimulation-by-opposition without which all function, and in consequence all progress, would cease. "the man who regards women as an enemy to be avoided," says nietzsche, "betrays an unbridled lust which loathes not only itself, but also its means."[3] there are, of course, occasions when the feminine influence, by its very subtlety, works harm to the higher sort of men. it is dangerous for a man to love too violently and it is dangerous, too, for him to be loved too much.' "the natural inclination of women to a quiet, uniform and peaceful existence "--that is to say, to a slave-morality--"operates adversely to the heroic impulse of the masculine free spirit. without being aware of it, women act like a person who would remove stones from the path of a mineralogist, lest his feet should come in contact with them--forgetting entirely that he is faring forth for the very purpose of coming in contact with them.... the wives of men with lofty aspirations cannot resign themselves to seeing their husbands suffering, impoverished and slighted, even though it is apparent that this suffering proves, not only that its victim has chosen his attitude aright, but also that his aims--some day, at least--will be realized. women always intrigue in secret against the higher souls of their husbands. they seek to cheat the future for the sake of a painless and agreeable present."[4] in other words, the feminine vision is ever limited in range. your typical woman cannot see far ahead; she cannot reason out the ultimate effect of a complicated series of causes; her eye is always upon the present or the very near future. thus nietzsche reaches, by a circuitous route, a conclusion supported by the almost unanimous verdict of the entire masculine sex, at all times and everywhere. nietzsche quite agrees with schopenhauer (and with nearly everyone else who has given the matter thought) that the thing we call love is grounded upon physical desire, and that all of those arts of dress and manner in which women excel are mere devices for arousing this desire in man, but he points out, very justly, that a great many other considerations also enter into the matter. love necessarily presupposes a yearning to mate, and mating is its logical consequence, but the human imagination has made it more than that. the man in love sees in his charmer, not only an attractive instrument for satisfying his comparatively rare and necessarily brief impulses to dalliance, but also a worthy companion, guide, counsellor and friend. the essence of love is confidence--confidence in the loved one's judgment, honesty and fidelity and in the persistence of her charm. so large do these considerations loom among the higher classes of men that they frequently obscure the fundamental sexual impulse entirely. it is a commonplace, indeed, that in the ecstasies of amorous idealization, the notion of the function itself becomes obnoxious. it may be impossible to imagine a man loving a woman without having had, at some time, conscious desire for her, but all the same it is undoubtedly true that the wish for marriage is very often a wish for close and constant association with the one respected, admired and trusted rather than a yearning for the satisfaction of desire. all of this admiration, respect and trust, as we have seen, may be interpreted as confidence, which, in turn, is faith. now, faith is essentially unreasonable, and in the great majority of cases, is the very antithesis of reason. therefore, a man in love commonly endows the object of his affection with merits which, to the eye of a disinterested person, she obviously lacks. "love ... has a secret craving to discover in the loved one as many beautiful qualities as possible and to raise her as high as possible." "whoever idolizes a person tries to justify himself by idealizing; and thus becomes an artist (or self-deceiver) in order to have a clear conscience." again there is a tendency to illogical generalization. "everything which pleases me once, or several times, is pleasing of and in itself." the result of this, of course, is quick and painful disillusion. the loved one is necessarily merely human and when the ideal gives way to the real, reaction necessarily follows. "many a married man awakens one morning to the consciousness that his wife is far from attractive."[5] and it is only fair to note that the same awakening is probably the bitter portion of most married women, too. in addition, it is plain that the purely physical desire which lies at the bottom of all human love, no matter how much sentimental considerations may obscure it, is merely a passion and so, in the very nature of things, is intermittent and evanescent. there are moments when it is overpowering, but there are hours, days, weeks and months when it is dormant. therefore, we must conclude with nietzsche, that the thing we call love, whether considered from its physical or psychical aspect, is fragile and short-lived. now, inasmuch as marriage, in the majority of cases, is a permanent institution (as it is, according to the theory of our moral code, in _all_ cases), it follows that, in order to make the relation bearable, something must arise to take the place of love. this something, as we know, is ordinarily tolerance, respect, _camaraderie_, or a common interest in the well-being of the matrimonial firm or in the offspring of the marriage. in other words, the discovery that many of the ideal qualities seen in the life-companion through the rosy glasses of love do not exist is succeeded by a common-sense and unsentimental decision to make the best of those real ones which actually do exist. from this it is apparent that a marriage is most apt to be successful when the qualities imagined in the beloved are all, or nearly all, real: that is to say, when the possibility of disillusion is at an irreducible minimum. this occurs sometimes by accident, but nietzsche points out that such accidents are comparatively rare. a man in love, indeed, is the worst possible judge of his _inamorata's_ possession of those traits which will make her a satisfactory wife, for, as we have noted, he observes her through an ideal haze and sees in her innumerable merits which, to the eye of an unprejudiced and accurate observer, she does not possess. nietzsche, at different times, pointed out two remedies for this. his first plan proposed that marriages for love be discouraged, and that we endeavor to insure the permanence of the relation by putting the selection of mates into the hands of third persons likely to be dispassionate and far-seeing: a plan followed with great success, it may be recalled, by most ancient peoples and in vogue, in a more or less disguised form, in many european countries today. "it is impossible," he said, "to found a permanent institution upon an idiosyncrasy. marriage, if it is to stand as the bulwark of civilization, cannot be founded upon the temporary and unreasonable thing called love. to fulfil its mission, it must be founded upon the impulse to reproduction, or race permanence; the impulse to possess property (women and children are property); and the impulse to rule, which constantly organizes for itself the smallest unit of sovereignty, the family, and which needs children and heirs to maintain, by physical force, whatever measure of power, riches and influence it attains." nietzsche's second proposal was nothing more or less than the institution of trial marriage, which, when it was proposed years later by an american sociologist,[6] caused all the uproar which invariably rises in the united states whenever an attempt is made to seek absolute truth. "give us a term," said zarathustra, "and a small marriage, that we may see whether we are fit for the great marriage."[7] the idea here, of course, is simply this: that, when a man and a woman find it utterly impossible to live in harmony, it is better for them to separate at once than to live on together, making a mock of the institution they profess to respect, and begetting children who, in nietzsche's phrase, cannot be regarded other than as mere "scapegoats of matrimony." nietzsche saw that this notion was so utterly opposed to all current ideals and hypocrisies that it would be useless to argue it, and so he veered toward his first proposal. the latter, despite its violation of one of the most sacred illusions of the anglo-saxon race, is by no means a mere fantasy of the chair. marriages in which love is subordinated to mutual fitness and material considerations are the rule in many countries today, and have been so for thousands of years, and if it be urged that, in france, their fruit has been adultery, unfruitfulness and degeneration, it may be answered that, in turkey, japan and india, they have become the cornerstones of quite respectable civilizations. nietzsche believed that the ultimate mission and function of human marriage was the breeding of a race of supermen and he saw very clearly that fortuitous pairing would never bring this about. "thou shalt not only propagate thyself," said zarathustra, "but propagate thyself upward. marriage should be the will of two to create that which is greater than either. but that which the many call marriage--alas! what call i that? alas i that soul-poverty of two! alas! that soul-filth of two! alas! that miserable dalliance of two! marriage they call it--and they say that marriages are made in heaven. i like them not: these animals caught in heavenly nets.... laugh not at such marriages! what child has not reason to weep over its parents?" it is the old argument against haphazard breeding. we select the sires and dams of our race-horses with most elaborate care, but the strains that mingle in our children's veins get there by chance. "worthy and ripe for begetting the superman this man appeared to me, but when i saw his wife earth seemed a madhouse. yea, i wish the earth would tremble in convulsions when such a saint and such a goose mate! this one fought for truth like a hero--and then took to heart a little dressed-up lie. he calls it his marriage. that one was reserved in intercourse and chose his associates fastidiously--and then spoiled his company forever. he calls it his marriage. a third sought for a servant with an angel's virtues. now he is the servant of a woman. even the most cunning buys his wife in a sack."[8] as has been noted, nietzsche was by no means a declaimer against women. a bachelor himself and constitutionally suspicious of all who walked in skirts, he nevertheless avoided the error of damning the whole sex as a dangerous and malignant excrescence upon the face of humanity. he saw that woman's mind was the natural complement of man's mind; that womanly guile was as useful, in its place, as masculine truth; that man, to retain those faculties which made him master of the earth, needed a persistent and resourceful opponent to stimulate them and so preserve and develop them. so long as the institution of the family remained a premise in every sociological syllogism, so long as mere fruitfulness remained as much a merit among intelligent human beings as it was among peasants and cattle--so long, he saw, it would be necessary for the stronger sex to submit to the parasitic opportunism of the weaker. but he was far from exalting mere women into goddesses, after the sentimental fashion of those virtuosi of illusion who pass for law-givers in the united states, and particularly in the southern part thereof. chivalry, with its ridiculous denial of obvious facts, seemed to him unspeakable and the good old sub-potomac doctrines that a woman who loses her virtue is, _ipso facto_, a victim and not a criminal or _particeps criminis_, and that a "lady," by virtue of being a "lady," is necessarily a reluctant and helpless quarry in the hunt of love--these ancient and venerable fallacies would have made him laugh. he admitted the great and noble part that woman had to play in the world-drama, but he saw clearly that her methods were essentially deceptive, insincere and pernicious, and so he held that she should be confined to her proper role and that any effort she made to take a hand in other matters should be regarded with suspicion, and when necessary, violently opposed. thus nietzsche detested the idea of women's suffrage almost as much as he detested the idea of chivalry. the participation of women in large affairs, he argued, could lead to but one result: the contamination of the masculine ideals of justice, honor and truth by the feminine ideals of dissimulation, equivocation and intrigue. in women, he believed, there was an entire absence of that instinctive liking for a square deal and a fair fight which one finds in all men--even the worst. hence, nietzsche believed that, in his dealings with women, man should be wary and cautious. "let men fear women when she loveth: for she sacrificeth all for love and nothing else hath value to her.... man is for woman a means: the end is always the child.... two things are wanted by the true man: danger and play. therefore he seeketh woman as the most dangerous toy within his reach.... thou goest to women? _don't forget thy whip!_"[9] this last sentence has helped to make nietzsche a stench in the nostrils of the orthodox, but the context makes his argument far more than a mere effort at sensational epigram. he is pointing out the utter unscrupulousness which lies at the foundation of the maternal instinct: an unscrupulousness familiar to every observer of humanity.[10] indeed, it is so potent a factor in the affairs of the world that we have, by our ancient device of labelling the inevitable the good, exalted it to the dignity and estate of a virtue. but all the same, we are instinctively conscious of its inherent opposition to truth and justice, and so our law books provide that a woman who commits a crime in her husband's presence is presumed to have been led to it by her desire to work what she regards as his good, which means her desire to retain his protection and good will. "man's happiness is: 'i will.' woman's happiness is: 'he will.'"[11] maternity, thought nietzsche, was a thing even more sublime than paternity, because it produced a more keen sense of race responsibility. "is there a state more blessed," he asked, "than that of a woman with child?... even worldly justice does not allow the judge and hangman to lay hold on her."[12] he saw, too, that woman's insincere masochism[13] spurred man to heroic efforts and gave vigor and direction to his work by the very fact that it bore the outward aspect of helplessness. he saw that the resultant stimulation of the will to power was responsible for many of the world's great deeds, and that, if woman served no other purpose, she would still take an honorable place as the most splendid reward--greater than honors or treasures--that humanity could bestow upon its victors. the winning of a beautiful and much-sought woman, indeed, will remain as great an incentive to endeavor as the conquest of a principality so long as humanity remains substantially as it is today. it is unfortunate that nietzsche left us no record of his notions regarding the probable future of matrimony as an institution. we have reason to believe that he agreed with schopenhauer's analysis of the "lady," _i.e._ the woman elevated to splendid, but complete parasitism. schopenhauer showed that this pitiful creature was the product of the monogamous ideal, just as the prostitute was the product of the monogamous actuality. in the united states and england, unfortunately, it is impossible to discuss such matters with frankness, or to apply to them the standards of absolute truth, on account of the absurd axiom that monogamy is ordained of god,--with which maxim there appears the equally absurd corollary: that the civilization of a people is to be measured by the degree of dependence of its women. luckily for posterity this last revolting doctrine is fast dying, though its decadence is scarcely noticed and wholly misunderstood. we see about us that women are becoming more and more independent and self-sufficient and that, as individuals, they have less and less need to seek and retain the good will and protection of individual men, but we overlook the fact that this tendency is fast undermining the ancient theory that the family is a necessary and impeccable institution and that without it progress would be impossible. as a matter of fact, the idea of the family, as it exists today, is based entirely upon the idea of feminine helplessness. so soon as women are capable of making a living for themselves and their children, without the aid of the fathers of the latter, the old cornerstone of the family--the masculine defender and bread-winner--will find his occupation gone, and it will become ridiculous to force him, by law or custom, to discharge duties for which there is no longer need. wipe out your masculine defender, and your feminine parasite-_haus-frau_--and where is your family? this tendency is exhibited empirically by the rising revolt against those fetters which the family idea has imposed upon humanity: by the growing feeling that divorce should be a matter of individual expedience; by the successful war of cosmopolitanism upon insularity and clannishness and upon all other costly outgrowths of the old idea that because men are of the same blood they must necessarily love one another; and by the increasing reluctance among civilized human beings to become parents without some reason more logical than the notion that parenthood, in itself, is praiseworthy. it seems plain, in a word, that so soon as any considerable portion of the women of the world become capable of doing men's work and of thus earning a living for themselves and their children without the aid of men, there will be in full progress a dangerous, if unconscious, war upon the institution of marriage. it may be urged in reply that this will never happen, because of the fact that women are physically unequal to men, and that in consequence of their duty of child-bearing, they will ever remain so, but it may be answered to this that use will probably vastly increase their physical fitness; that science will rob child-bearing of most of its terrors within a comparatively few years; and that the woman who seeks to go it alone will have only herself and her child to maintain, whereas, the man of today has not only himself and his child, but also the woman. again, it is plain that the economic handicap of child-bearing is greatly overestimated. at most, the business of maternity makes a woman utterly helpless for no longer than three months, and in the case of a woman who has three children, this means nine months in a life time. it is entirely probable that alcohol alone, not to speak of other enemies of efficiency, robs the average man of quite that much productive activity during his three score years and ten. [1] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iii. [2] nietzsche saw, of course ("the genealogy of morals," iii), that temporary celibacy was frequently necessary to men with peculiarly difficult and vitiating tasks ahead of them. the philosopher who sought to solve world riddles, he said, had need to steer clear of women, for reasons which appealed, with equal force, to the athlete who sought to perform great feats of physical strength. it is obvious, however, that this desire to escape distraction and drain differs vastly from ethical celibacy. [3] "_morgenröte_," § 346. [4] "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," § 431, 434. [5] all of these quotations are from "_morgenröte_." [6] elsie clews parsons: "the family," new york, 1906. mrs. parsons is a doctor of philosophy, a hartley house fellow and was for six years a lecturer on sociology at barnard college. [7] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iii. [8] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [9] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [10] until quite recently it was considered indecent and indefensible to mention this fact, despite its obviousness. but it is now discussed freely enough and in henry arthur jones' play, "the hypocrites," it is presented admirably in the character of the mother whose instinctive effort to protect her son makes her a scoundrel and the son a cad. [11] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [12] "_morgenröte_," § 552. [13] prof. dr. r. von krafft ebing: "masochism is ... a peculiar perversion ... consisting in this, that the individual seized with it is dominated by the idea that he is wholly and unconditionally subjected to the will of a person of the opposite sex, who treats him imperiously and humiliates and maltreats him." x government like spencer before him, nietzsche believed, as we have seen, that the best possible system of government was that which least interfered with the desires and enterprises of the efficient and intelligent individual. that is to say, he held that it would be well to establish, among the members of his first caste of human beings, a sort of glorified anarchy. each member of this caste should be at liberty to work out his own destiny for himself. there should be no laws regulating and circumscribing his relations to other members of his caste, except the easily-recognizable and often-changing laws of common interest, and above all, there should be no laws forcing him to submit to, or even to consider, the wishes and behests of the two lower castes. the higher man, in a word, should admit no responsibility whatever to the lower castes. the lowest of all he should look upon solely as a race of slaves bred to work his welfare in the most efficient and uncomplaining manner possible, and the military caste should seem to him a race designed only to carry out his orders and so prevent the slave caste marching against him. it is plain from this that nietzsche stood squarely opposed to both of the two schemes of government which, on the surface, at least, seem to prevail in the western world today. for the monarchial ideal and for the democratic ideal he had the same words of contempt. under an absolute monarchy, he believed, the military or law-enforcing caste was unduly exalted, and so its natural tendency to permanence was increased and its natural opposition to all experiment and progress was made well nigh irresistible. under a communistic democracy, on the other hand, the mistake was made of putting power into the hands of the great, inert herd, which was necessarily and inevitably ignorant, credulous, superstitious, corrupt and wrong. the natural tendency of this herd, said nietzsche, was to combat change and progress as bitterly and as ceaselessly as the military-judicial caste, and when, by some accident, it rose out of its rut and attempted experiments, it nearly always made mistakes, both in its premises and its conclusions and so got hopelessly bogged in error and imbecility. its feeling for truth seemed to him to be almost _nil_; its mind could never see beneath misleading exteriors. "in the market place," said zarathustra, "one convinces by gestures, but real reasons make the populace distrustful."[1] that this natural incompetence of the masses is an actual fact was observed by a hundred philosophers before nietzsche, and fresh proofs of it are spread copiously before the world every day. wherever universal suffrage, or some close approach to it, is the primary axiom of government, the thing known in the united states as "freak legislation" is a constant evil. on the statute books of the great majority of american states there are laws so plainly opposed to all common-sense that they bear an air of almost pathetic humor. one state legislature,[2] in an effort to prevent the corrupt employment of insurance funds, passes laws so stringent that, in the face of them, it is utterly impossible for an insurance company to transact a profitable business. another considers an act contravening rights guaranteed specifically by the state and national constitutions;[3] yet another[4] passes a law prohibiting divorce under any circumstances whatever. and the spectacle is by no means confined to the american states. in the australian commonwealth, mob-rule has burdened the statutes with regulations which make difficult, if not impossible, the natural development of the country's resources and trade. if, in england and germany, the effect of universal suffrage has been less apparent, it is because in these countries the two upper castes have solved the problem of keeping the proletariat, despite its theoretical sovereignty, in proper leash and bounds. the possibility of exercising this control seemed to nietzsche to be the saving grace of all modern forms of government, just as their essential impossibility appeared as the saving grace alike of christianity and of communistic civilization. in england, as we have seen,[5] the military-judicial caste, despite the reform act of 1867, has retained its old dominance, and in germany, despite the occasional success of the socialists, it is always possible for the military aristocracy, by appealing to the vanity of the _bourgeoisie_, to win in a stand-up fight. in america, the proletariat, when it is not engaged in functioning in its own extraordinary manner, is commonly the tool, either of the first of nietzsche's castes or of the second. that is to say, the average legislature has its price, and this price is often paid by those who believe that old laws, no matter how imperfect they may be, are better than harum-scarum new ones. naturally enough, the most intelligent and efficient of americans--members of the first caste--do not often go to a state capital with corruption funds and openly buy legislation, but nevertheless their influence is frequently felt. president roosevelt, for one, has more than once forced his views upon a reluctant proletariat and even enlisted it under his banner--as in his advocacy of centralization, a truly dionysian idea, for example--and in the southern states the educated white class--which there represents, though in a melancholy fashion, the nietzschean first caste--has found it easy to take from the black masses their very right to vote, despite the fact that they are everywhere in a great majority numerically, and so, by the theory of democracy, represent whatever power lies in the state. thus it is apparent that nietzsche's argument against democracy, like his argument against brotherhood, is based upon the thesis that both are rejected instinctively by all those men whose activity works for the progress of the human race.[6] it is obvious, of course, that the sort of anarchy preached by nietzsche differs vastly from the beery, collarless anarchy preached by herr most and his unwashed followers. the latter contemplates a suspension of all laws in order that the unfit may escape the natural and rightful exploitation of the fit, whereas the former reduces the unfit to _de facto_ slavery and makes them subject to the laws of a master class, which, in so far as the relations of its own members, one to the other, are concerned, recognizes no law but that of natural selection. to the average american or englishman the very name of anarchy causes a shudder, because it invariably conjures up a picture of a land terrorized by low-browed assassins with matted beards, carrying bombs in one hand and mugs of beer in the other. but as a matter of fact, there is no reason whatever to believe that, if all laws were abolished tomorrow, such swine would survive the day. they are incompetents under our present paternalism and they would be incompetents under dionysian anarchy. the only difference between the two states is that the former, by its laws, protects men of this sort, whereas the latter would work their speedy annihilation. in a word, the dionysian state would see the triumph, not of drunken loafers, but of the very men whose efforts are making for progress today: those strong, free, self-reliant, resourceful men whose capacities are so much greater than the mob's that they are often able to force their ideas upon it despite its theoretical right to rule them and its actual endeavor so to do. nietzschean anarchy would create an aristocracy of efficiency. the strong man--which means the intelligent, ingenious and far-seeing man--would acknowledge no authority but his own will and no morality but his own advantage. as we have seen in previous chapters, this would re-establish the law of natural selection firmly upon its disputed throne, and so the strong would grow ever stronger and more efficient, and the weak would grow ever more obedient and tractile. it may be well at this place to glance briefly at an objection that has been urged against nietzsche's argument by many critics, and particularly by those in the socialistic camp. led to it, no doubt, by their too literal acceptance of marx's materialistic conception of history, they have assumed that nietzsche's higher man must necessarily belong to the class denominated, by our after-dinner speakers and leader writers, "captains of industry," and to this class alone. that is to say, they have regarded the higher man as identical with the pushing, grasping buccaneer of finance, because this buccaneer has seemed to them to be the only man of today who is truly "strong, free, self-reliant and resourceful" and the only one who actually "acknowledges no authority but his own will." as a matter of fact, all of these assumptions are in error. for one thing, the "captain of industry" is not uncommonly the reverse of a dionysian, and without the artificial aid of our permanent laws, he might often perish in the struggle for existence. for another thing, it is an obvious fact that the men who go most violently counter to the view of the herd, and who battle most strenuously to prevail against it--our true criminals and transvaluers and breakers of the law--are not such men as rockefeller, but men such as pasteur; not such men as morgan and hooley, but sham-smashers and truth-tellers and mob-fighters after the type of huxley, lincoln, bismarck, darwin, virchow, haeckel, hobbes, macchiavelli, harvey and jenner, the father of vaccination. jenner, to choose one from the long list, was a real dionysian, because he boldly pitted his own opinion against the practically unanimous opinion of all the rest of the human race. among those members of the ruling class in england who came after him--those men, that is, who made vaccination compulsory--the dionysian spirit was still more apparent. the masses themselves did not want to be vaccinated, because they were too ignorant to understand the theory of inoculation and too stupid to be much impressed by its unvisualized and--for years, at least--impalpable benefits. yet their rulers forced them, against their will, to bare their arms. and why was this done? was it because the ruling class was possessed by a boundless love for humanity and so yearned to lavish upon it a wealth of christian devotion? not at all. the real motive of the law makers was to be found in two considerations. in the first place, a proletariat which suffered from epidemics of small-pox was a crippled mob whose capacity for serving its betters, in the fields and factories of england, was sadly decreased. in the second place experience proved that when smallpox raged in the slums, it had an unhappy habit of stretching out its arms in the direction of mansion and castle, too. therefore, the proletariat was vaccinated and small-pox was stamped out--not because the ruling class loved the workers, but because it wanted to make them work for it as continuously as possible and to remove or reduce their constant menace to its life and welfare. in so far as it took the initiative in these proceedings, the military ruling-class of england raised itself to the eminence of nietzsche's first caste. that jenner himself, when he put forward his idea and led the military caste to carry it into execution, was an ideal member of the first caste, is plain. the goal before him was fame everlasting--and he gained it. i have made this rather long digression because the opponents of nietzsche have voiced their error a thousand times and have well-nigh convinced a great many persons of its truth. it is apparent enough, of course, that a great many men whose energy is devoted to the accumulation of money are truly dionysian in their methods and aims, but it is apparent, too, that a great many others are not. nietzsche himself was well aware of the dangers which beset a race enthralled by commercialism, and he sounded his warning against them. trade, being grounded upon security, tends to work for permanence in laws and customs, even after the actual utility of these laws and customs is openly questioned. this is shown by the persistence of free trade in england and of protectionism in the united states, despite the fact that the conditions of existence, in both countries, have materially changed since the two systems were adopted, and there is now good ground, in each, for demanding reform. so it is plain that nietzsche did not cast his higher man in the mold of a mere millionaire. it is conceivable that a careful analysis might prove mr. morgan to be a dionysian, but it is certain that his character as such would not be grounded upon his well-known and oft-repeated plea that existing institutions be permitted to remain as they are. yet again, a great many critics of nietzsche mistake his criticism of existing governmental institutions for an argument in favor of their immediate and violent abolition. when he inveighs against monarchy or democracy, for instance, it is concluded that he wants to assassinate all the existing rulers of the world, overturn all existing governments and put chaos, carnage, rapine and anarchy in their place. such a conclusion, of course, is a grievous error. nietzsche by no means believed that reforms could be instituted in a moment or that the characters and habits of thought of human beings could be altered by a lightning stroke. his whole philosophy, in truth, was based upon the idea of slow evolution, through infinitely laborious and infinitely protracted stages. all he attempted to do was to indicate the errors that were being made in his own time and to point out the probable character of the truths that would be accepted in the future. he believed that it was only by constant skepticism, criticism and opposition that progress could be made, and that the greatest of all dangers was inanition. therefore, when he condemned all existing schemes of government, it meant no more than that he regarded them as based upon fundamental errors, and that he hoped and believed that, in the course of time, these errors would be observed, admitted and swept away, to make room for other errors measurably less dangerous, and in the end for truths. such was his mission, as he conceived it: to attack error wherever he saw it and to proclaim truth whenever he found it. it is only by such iconoclasm and proselyting that humanity can be helped. it is only after a mistake is perceived and admitted that it can be rectified. nietzsche's argument for the "free spirit" by no means denies the efficacy of co-operation in the struggle upward, but neither does it support that blind fetishism which sees in co-operation the sole instrument of human progress. in one of his characteristic thumb-nail notes upon evolution he says: "the most important result of progress in the past is the fact that we no longer live in constant fear of wild beasts, barbarians, gods and our own dreams."[7] it may be argued, in reference to this, that organized government is to be thanked for our deliverance, but a moment's thought will show the error of the notion. humanity's war upon wild beasts was fought and won by individualists, who had in mind no end but their personal safety and that of their children, and the subsequent war upon barbarians would have been impossible, or at least unsuccessful, had it not been for the weapons invented and employed during the older fight against beasts. again, it is apparent that our emancipation from the race's old superstitions regarding gods and omens has been achieved, not by communal effort, but by individual effort. knowledge and not government brought us the truth that made us free. government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase of knowledge. its tendency is always toward permanence and against change. it is unthinkable without some accepted scheme of law or morality, and such schemes, as we have seen, stand in direct antithesis to every effort to find the absolute truth. therefore, it is plain that the progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face of its constant and bitter opposition. the code of hammurabi, the laws of the medes and persians, the code napoleon and the english common law have retarded the search for the ultimate verities almost as much, indeed, as the ten commandments. nietzsche denies absolutely that there is inherent in mankind a yearning to gather into communities. there is, he says, but one primal instinct in human beings (as there is in all other animals), and that is the desire to remain alive. all those systems of thought which assume the existence of a "natural morality" are wrong. even the tendency to tell the truth, which seems to be inborn in every civilized white man, is not "natural," for there have been--and are today--races in which it is, to all intents and purposes, entirely absent.[8] and so it is with the so-called social instinct. man, say the communists, is a gregarious animal and can be happy only in company with his fellows, and in proof of it they cite the fact that loneliness is everywhere regarded as painful and that, even among the lower animals, there is an impulse toward association. the facts set forth in the last sentence are indisputable, but they by no means prove the existence of an elemental social feeling sufficiently strong to make its satisfaction an end in itself. in other words, while it is plain that men flock together, just as birds flock together, it is going too far to say that the mere joy of flocking--the mere desire to be with others--is at the bottom of the tendency. on the contrary, it is quite possible to show that men gather in communities for the same reason that deer gather in herds: because each individual realizes (unconsciously, perhaps) that such a combination materially aids him in the business of self-protection. one deer is no match for a lion, but fifty deer make him impotent.[9] nietzsche shows that, even after communities are formed, the strong desire of every individual to look out for himself, regardless of the desires of others, persists, and that, in every herd there are strong members and weak members. the former, whenever the occasion arises, sacrifice the latter: by forcing the heavy, killing drudgery of the community upon them or by putting them, in time of war, into the forefront of the fray. the result is that the weakest are being constantly weeded out and the strongest are always becoming stronger and stronger. "hence," says nietzsche, "the first 'state' made its appearance in the form of a terrible tyranny, a violent and unpitying machine, which kept grinding away until the primary raw material, the man-ape, was kneaded and fashioned into alert, efficient man." now, when a given state becomes appreciably more efficient than the states about it, it invariably sets about enslaving them. thus larger and larger states are formed, but always there is a ruling master-class and a serving slave-class. "this," says nietzsche, "is the origin of the state on earth, despite the fantastic theory which would found it upon some general agreement among its members. he who can command, he who is a master by nature, he who, in deed and gesture, behaves violently--what need has he for agreements? such beings come as fate comes, without reason or pretext.... their work is the instinctive creation of forms: they are the most unconscious of all artists; wherever they appear, something new is at once created--a governmental organism which lives; in which the individual parts and functions are differentiated and brought into correlation, and in which nothing at all is tolerable unless some utility with respect to the whole is implanted in it. they are innocent of guilt, of responsibility, of charity--these born rulers. they are ruled by that terrible art-egotism which knows itself to be justified by its work, as the mother knows herself to be justified by her child." nietzsche points out that, even after nations have attained some degree of permanence and have introduced ethical concepts into their relations with one another, they still give evidence of that same primary will to power which is responsible, at bottom, for every act of the individual man. "the masses, in any nation," he says, "are ready to sacrifice their lives, their goods and chattels, their consciences and their virtue, to obtain that highest of pleasures: the feeling that they rule, either in reality or in imagination, over others. on these occasions they make virtues of their instinctive yearnings, and so they enable an ambitious or wisely provident prince to rush into a war with the good conscience of his people as his excuse. the great conquerors have always had the language of virtue on their lips: they have always had crowds of people around them who felt exalted and would not listen to any but the most exalted sentiments.... when man feels the sense of power, he feels and calls himself good, and at the same time those who have to endure the weight of his power call him evil. such is the curious mutability of moral judgments!... hesiod, in his fable of the world's ages, twice pictured the age of the homeric heroes and made two out of one. to those whose ancestors were under the iron heel of the homeric despots, it appeared evil; while to the grandchildren of these despots it appeared good. hence the poet had no alternative but to do as he did: his audience was composed of the descendants of both classes."[10] nietzsche saw naught but decadence and illusion in humanitarianism and nationalism. to profess a love for the masses seemed to him to be ridiculous and to profess a love for one race or tribe of men, in preference to all others, seemed to him no less so. thus he denied the validity of two ideals which lie at the base of all civilized systems of government, and constitute, in fact, the very conception of the state. he called himself, not a german, but "a good european." "we good europeans," he said, "are not french enough to 'love mankind.' a man must be afflicted by an excess of gallic eroticism to approach mankind with ardour. mankind! was there ever a more hideous old woman among all the old women? no, we do not love mankind!... on the other hand, we are not german enough to advocate nationalism and race-hatred, or to take delight in that national blood-poisoning which sets up quarantines between the nations of europe. we are too unprejudiced for that--too perverse, too fastidious, too well-informed, too much travelled. we prefer to live on mountains--apart, unseasonable.... we are too diverse and mixed in race to be patriots. we are, in a word, good europeans--the rich heirs of millenniums of european thought.... "we rejoice in everything, which like ourselves, loves danger, war and adventure--which does not make compromises, nor let itself be captured, conciliated or faced.... we ponder over the need of a new order of things--even of a new slavery, for the strengthening and elevation of the human race always involves the existence of slaves...."[11] "the horizon is unobstructed.... our ships can start on their voyage once more in the face of danger.... the sea--our sea!--lies before us!"[12] [1] "_also sprach zarathustra_," iv. [2] that of wisconsin at the 1907 session. [3] this has been done, time and again, by the legislature of every state in the union, and the overturning of such legislation occupies part of the time of all the state courts of final judicature year after year. [4] that of south carolina. [5] _vide_ the chapter on "civilization." [6] said the chicago _tribune_, "the best all-round newspaper in the united states," in a leading article, june 10, 1907: "jeremy bentham speaks of 'an incoherent and undigested mass of law, shot down, as from a rubbish cart, upon the heads of the people.' this is a fairly accurate summary of the work of the average american legislature, from new york to texas.... bad, crude and unnecessary laws make up a large part of the output of every session.... roughly speaking, the governor who vetoes the most bills is the best governor. when a governor vetoes none the legitimate presumption is, not that the work of the legislature was flawless, but that he was timid, not daring to oppose ignorant popular sentiment ... or that he had not sense enough to recognize a bad measure when he saw it." [7] "_morgenröte_," § 5. [8] "the word 'honesty' is not to be found in the code of either the socratic or the christian virtues. it represents a new virtue, not quite ripened, frequently misunderstood and hardly conscious of itself. it is yet something in embryo, which we are at liberty either to foster or to check."--"_morgenröte_," § 456. [9] an excellent discussion of this subject, by prof. warner fite, of indiana university, appeared in _the journal of philosophy, psychology and scientific methods_ of july 18, 1907. prof. fite's article is called "the exaggeration of the social," and is a keen and sound criticism of "the now popular tendency to regard the individual as the product of society." as he points out, "any consciousness of belonging to one group rather than another must involve some sense of individuality." in other words, gregariousness is nothing more than an instinctive yearning to profit personally by the possibility of putting others, to some measurable extent, in the attitude of slaves. [10] "_morgenröte_," § 189. [11] "_die fröhliche wissenschaft_," § 377. [12] "_die fröhliche wissenschaft_," § 343. xi crime and punishment nietzsche says that the thing which best differentiates man from the other animals is his capacity for making and keeping a promise. that is to say, man has a trained and efficient memory and it enables him to project an impression of today into the future. of the millions of impressions which impinge upon his consciousness every day, he is able to save a chosen number from the oblivion of forgetfulness. an animal lacks this capacity almost entirely. the things that it remembers are far from numerous and it is devoid of any means of reinforcing its memory. but man has such a means and it is commonly called conscience. at bottom it is based upon the principle that pain is always more enduring than pleasure. therefore, "in order to make an idea stay it must be burned into the memory; only that which never ceases to hurt remains fixed."[1] hence all the world's store of tortures and sacrifices. at one time they were nothing more than devices to make man remember his pledges to his gods. today they survive in the form of legal punishments, which are nothing more, at bottom, than devices to make a man remember his pledges to his fellow men. from all this nietzsche argues that our modern law is the outgrowth of the primitive idea of barter--of the idea that everything has an equivalent and can be paid for--that when a man forgets or fails to discharge an obligation in one way he may wipe out his sin by discharging it in some other way. "the earliest relationship that ever existed," he says, "was the relationship between buyer and seller, creditor and debtor. on this ground man first stood face to face with man. no stage of civilization, however inferior, is without the institution of bartering. to fix prices, to adjust values, to invent equivalents, to exchange things--all this has to such an extent preoccupied the first and earliest thought of man, that it may be said to constitute thinking itself. out of it sagacity arose, and out of it, again, arose man's first pride--his first feeling of superiority over the animal world. perhaps, our very word man (_manus_) expresses something of this.[2] man calls himself the being who weighs and measures."[3] now besides the contract between man and man, there is also a contract between man and the community. the community agrees to give the individual protection and the individual promises to pay for it in labor and obedience. whenever he fails to do so, he violates his promise, and the community regards the contract as broken. then "the anger of the outraged creditor--or community--withdraws its protection from the debtor--or law-breaker--and he is laid open to all the dangers and disadvantages of life in a state of barbarism. punishment, at this stage of civilization, is simply the image of a man's normal conduct toward a hated, disarmed and cast-down enemy, who has forfeited not only all claims to protection, but also all claims to mercy. this accounts for the fact that war (including the sacrificial cult of war) has furnished all the forms in which punishment appears in history."[4] it will be observed that this theory grounds all ideas of justice and punishment upon ideas of expedience. the primeval creditor forced his debtor to pay because he knew that if the latter didn't pay he (the creditor) would suffer. in itself, the debtor's effort to get something for nothing was not wrong, because, as we have seen in previous chapters, this is the ceaseless and unconscious endeavor of every living being, and is, in fact, the most familiar of all manifestations of the primary will to live, or more understandably, of the will to acquire power over environment. but when the machinery of justice was placed in the hands of the state, there came a transvaluation of values. things that were manifestly costly to the state were called wrong, and the old individualistic standards of good and bad--_i.e._ beneficial and harmful--became the standards of good and evil--_i.e._ right and wrong. in this way, says nietzsche, the original purpose of punishment has become obscured and forgotten. starting out as a mere means of adjusting debts, it has become a machine for enforcing moral concepts. moral ideas came into the world comparatively late, and it was not until man had begun to be a speculative being that he invented gods, commandments and beatitudes. but the institution of punishment was in existence from a much earlier day. therefore, it is apparent that the moral idea,--the notion that there is such a thing as good and such a thing as evil,--far from being the inspiration of punishment, was engrafted upon it at a comparatively late period. nietzsche says that man, in considering things as they are today, is very apt to make this mistake about their origins. he is apt to conclude, because the human eye is used for seeing, that it was created for that purpose, whereas it is obvious that it may have been created for some other purpose and that the function of seeing may have arisen later on. in the same way, man believes that punishment was invented for the purpose of enforcing moral ideas, whereas, as a matter of fact, it was originally an instrument of expediency only, and did not become a moral machine until a code of moral laws was evolved.[5] to show that the institution of punishment itself is older than the ideas which now seem to lie at the base of it, nietzsche cites the fact that these ideas themselves are constantly varying. that is to say, the aim and purpose of punishment are conceived differently by different races and individuals. one authority calls it a means of rendering the criminal helpless and harmless and so preventing further mischief in future. another says that it is a means of inspiring others with fear of the law and its agents. another says that it is a device for destroying the unfit. another holds it to be a fee exacted by society from the evil-doer for protecting him against the excesses of private revenge. still another looks upon it as society's declaration of war against its enemies. yet another says that it is a scheme for making the criminal realize his guilt and repent. nietzsche shows that all of these ideas, while true, perhaps, in some part, are fallacies at bottom. it is ridiculous, for instance, to believe that punishment makes the law-breaker acquire a feeling of guilt and sinfulness. he sees that he was indiscreet in committing his crime, but he sees, too, that society's method of punishing his indiscretion consists in committing a crime of the same sort against _him_. in other words, he cannot hold his own crime a sin without also holding his punishment a sin--which leads to an obvious absurdity. as a matter of fact, says nietzsche, punishment really does nothing more than "augment fear, intensify prudence and subjugate the passions." and in so doing it _tames_ man, but does not make him better. if he refrains from crime in future, it is because he has become more prudent and not because he has become more moral. if he regrets his crimes of the past, it is because his punishment, and not his so-called conscience, hurts him. but what, then, is conscience? that there is such a thing every reasonable man knows. but what is its nature and what is its origin? if it is not the regret which follows punishment, what is it? nietzsche answers that it is nothing more than the old will to power, turned inward. in the days of the cave men, a man gave his will to power free exercise. any act which increased his power over his environment, no matter how much it damaged other men, seemed to him good. he knew nothing of morality. things appeared to him, not as good or evil, but as good or bad--beneficial or harmful. but when civilization was born, there arose a necessity for controlling and regulating this will power. the individual had to submit to the desire of the majority and to conform to nascent codes of morality. the result was that his will to power, which once spent itself in battles with other individuals, had to be turned upon himself. instead of torturing others, he began to torture his own body and mind. his ancient delight in cruelty and persecution (a characteristic of all healthy animals) remained, but he could not longer satisfy it upon his fellow men and so he turned it upon himself, and straightway became a prey to the feeling of guilt, of sinfulness, of wrong-doing--with all its attendant horrors. now, one of the first forms that this self-torture took was primitive man's accusation against himself that he was not properly grateful for the favors of his god. he saw that many natural phenomena benefited him, and he thought that these phenomena occurred in direct obedience to the deity's command. therefore, he regarded himself as the debtor of the deity, and constantly accused himself of neglecting to discharge this debt, because he felt that, by so accusing, he would be most apt to discharge it in full, and thus escape the righteous consequences of insufficient payment. this led him to make sacrifices--to place food and drink upon his god's altar, and in the end, to sacrifice much more valuable things, such, for instance, as his first born child. the more vivid the idea of the deity became and the more terrible he appeared, the more man tried to satisfy and appease him. in the early days, it was sufficient to sacrifice a square meal or a baby. but when christianity--with its elaborate and certain theology--arose, it became necessary for a man to sacrifice himself. thus arose the christian idea of sin. man began to feel that he was in debt to his creator hopelessly and irretrievably, and that, like a true bankrupt, he should offer all he had in partial payment. so he renounced everything that made life on earth bearable and desirable and built up an ideal of poverty and suffering. sometimes he hid himself in a cave and lived like an outcast dog--and then he was called a saint. sometimes he tortured himself with whips and poured vinegar into his wounds--and then he was a flagellant of the middle ages. sometimes, he killed his sexual instinct and his inborn desire for property and power--and then he became a penniless celibate in a cloister. nietzsche shows that this idea of sin, which lies at the bottom of all religions, was and is an absurdity; that nothing, in itself, is sinful, and that no man is, or can be a sinner. if we could rid ourselves of the notion that there is a god in heaven, to whom we owe a debt, we would rid ourselves of the idea of sin. therefore, argues nietzsche, it is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better. it makes him lose his fear of hell and his consciousness of sin. it rids him of that most horrible instrument of useless, senseless and costly torture--his conscience. "atheism," says nietzsche, "will make a man innocent." [1] "_zur genealogie der moral_," ii, § 3. [2] in the ancient sanskrit the word from which "man" comes meant "to think, to weigh, to value, to reckon, to estimate." [3] "_zur genealogie der moral_," ii, § 8. [4] "_zur genealogie der moral_," ii, § 9. [5] a familiar example of this superimposition of morality is afforded by the history of costume. it is commonly assumed that garments were originally designed to hide nakedness as much as to afford warmth and adorn the person, whereas, as a matter of fact, the idea of modesty probably did not appear until man had been clothed for ages. xii education education, as everyone knows, has two main objects: to impart knowledge and to implant culture. it is the object of a teacher, first of all, to bring before his pupil as many concrete facts about the universe--the fruit of long ages of inquiry and experience--as the latter may be capable of absorbing in the time available. after that, it is the teacher's aim to make his pupil's habits of mind sane, healthy and manly, and his whole outlook upon life that of a being conscious of his efficiency and eager and able to solve new problems as they arise. the educated man, in a word, is one who knows a great deal more than the average man and is constantly increasing his area of knowledge, in a sensible, orderly logical fashion; one who is wary of sophistry and leans automatically and almost instinctively toward clear thinking. such is the purpose of education, in its ideal aspect. as we observe the science of teaching in actual practice, we find that it often fails utterly to attain this end. the concrete facts that a student learns at the average school are few and unconnected, and instead of being led into habits of independent thinking he is trained to accept authority. when he takes his degree it is usually no more than a sign that he has joined the herd. his opinion of napoleon is merely a reflection of the opinion expressed in the books he has studied; his philosophy of life is simply the philosophy of his teacher--tinctured a bit, perhaps, by that of his particular youthful idols. he knows how to spell a great many long words and he is familiar with the table of logarithms, but in the readiness and accuracy of his mental processes he has made comparatively little progress. if he was illogical and credulous and a respecter of authority as a freshman he remains much the same as a graduate. in consequence, his usefulness to humanity has been increased but little, if at all, for, as we have seen in previous chapters, the only man whose life is appreciably more valuable than that of a good cow is the man who thinks for himself, clearly and logically, and lends some sort of hand, during his life-time, in the eternal search for the ultimate verities. the cause for all this lies, no doubt, in the fact that school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of mental workers. imitativeness being the dominant impulse in youth, their pupils acquire some measure of their stupidity, and the result is that the influence of the whole teaching tribe is against everything included in genuine education and culture. that this is true is evident on the surface and a moment's analysis furnishes a multitude of additional proofs. for one thing, a teacher, before he may begin work, must sacrifice whatever independence may survive within him upon the altar of authority. he becomes a cog in the school wheel and must teach only the things countenanced and approved by the powers above him, whether those powers be visible in the minister of education, as in germany; in the traditions of the school, as in england, or in the private convictions of the millionaire who provides the cash, as in the united states. as nietzsche points out, the schoolman's thirst for the truth is always conditioned by his yearning for food and drink and a comfortable bed. his archetype is the university philosopher, who accepts the state's pay[1] and so surrenders that liberty to inquire freely which alone makes philosophy worth while. "no state," says nietzsche, "would ever dare to patronize such men as plato and schopenhauer. and why? simply because the state is always afraid of them. they tell the truth.... consequently, the man who submits to be a philosopher in the pay of the state must also submit to being looked upon by the state as one who has waived his claim to pursue the truth into all its fastnesses. so long as he holds his place, he must acknowledge something still higher than the truth--and that is the state.... "the sole criticism of a philosophy which is possible and the only one which proves anything--namely, an attempt to live according to it--is never put forward in the universities. there the only thing one hears of is a wordy criticism of words. and so the youthful mind, without much experience in life, is confronted by fifty verbal systems and fifty criticisms of them, thrown together and hopelessly jumbled. what demoralization! what a mockery of education! it is openly acknowledged, in fact, that the object of education is not the acquirement of learning, but the successful meeting of examinations. no wonder then, that the examined student says to himself 'thank god, i am not a philosopher, but a christian and a citizen!...' "therefore, i regard it as necessary to progress that we withdraw from philosophy all governmental and academic recognition and support.... let philosophers spring up naturally, deny them every prospect of appointment, tickle them no longer with salaries--yea, persecute them! then you will see marvels! they will then flee afar and seek a roof anywhere. here a parsonage will open its doors; there a schoolhouse. one will appear upon the staff of a newspaper, another will write manuals for young ladies' schools. the most rational of them will put his hand to the plough and the vainest will seek favor at court. thus we shall get rid of bad philosophers."[2] the argument here is plain enough. the professional teacher must keep to his rut. the moment he combats the existing order of things he loses his place. therefore he is wary, and his chief effort is to transmit the words of authority to his pupils unchanged. whether he be a philosopher, properly so-called, or something else matters not. in a medical school wherein chauveau's theory of immunity was still maintained it would be hazardous for a professor of pathology to teach the theory of ehrlich. in a methodist college in indiana it would be foolhardy to dally with the doctrine of apostolic succession. everywhere the teacher must fashion his teachings according to the creed and regulations of his school and he must even submit to authority in such matters as text books and pedagogic methods. again, his very work itself makes him an unconscious partisan of authority, as against free inquiry. during the majority of his waking hours he is in close association with his pupils, who are admittedly his inferiors, and so he rapidly acquires the familiar, self-satisfied professorial attitude of mind. other forces tend to push him in the same direction and the net result is that all his mental processes are based upon ideas of authority. he believes and teaches a thing, not because he is convinced by free reasoning that it is true, but because it is laid down as an axiom in some book or was laid down at some past time, by himself. in all this, of course, i am speaking of the teacher properly so-called--of the teacher, that is, whose sole aim and function is teaching. the university professor whose main purpose in life is original research and whose pupils are confined to graduate students engaged in much the same work, is scarcely a professional teacher, in the customary meaning of the word. the man i have been discussing is he who spends all or the greater part of his time in actual instruction. whether his work be done in a primary school, a secondary school or in the undergraduate department of a college or university does not matter in all that relates to it, he is essentially and almost invariably a mere perpetuator of doctrines. in some cases, naturally enough, these doctrines are truths, but in a great many other cases they are errors. an examination of the physiology, history and "english" books used in the public schools of america will convince anyone that the latter proposition is amply true. nietzsche's familiarity with these facts is demonstrated by numerous passages in his writings. "never," he says, "is either real proficiency or genuine ability the result of toilsome years at school." the study of the classics, he says, can never lead to more than a superficial acquaintance with them, because the very modes of thought of the ancients, in many cases, are unintelligible to men of today. but the student who has acquired what is looked upon in our colleges as a mastery of the humanities is acutely conscious of his knowledge, and so the things that he cannot understand are ascribed by him to the dulness, ignorance or imbecility of the ancient authors. as a result he harbors a sort of sub-conscious contempt for the learning they represent and concludes that learning cannot make real men happy, but is only fit for the futile enthusiasm of "honest, poor and foolish old book-worms." nietzsche's own notion of an ideal curriculum is substantially that of spencer. he holds that before anything is put forward as a thing worth teaching it should be tested by two questions: is it a fact? and, is the presentation of it likely to make the pupil measurably more capable of discovering other facts? in consequences, he holds the old so-called "liberal" education in abomination, and argues in favor of a system of instruction based upon the inculcation of facts of imminent value and designed to instill into the pupil orderly and logical habits of mind and a clear and accurate view of the universe. the educated man, as he understands the term, is one who is above the mass, both in his thirst for knowledge and in his capacity for differentiating between truth and its reverse. it is obvious that a man who has studied biology and physics, with their insistent dwelling upon demonstrable facts, has proceeded further in this direction than the man who has studied greek mythology and metaphysics, with their constant trend toward unsupported and gratuitous assumption and their essential foundation upon undebatable authority. nietzsche points out, in his early essay upon the study of history, that humanity is much too prone to consider itself historically. that is to say, there is too much tendency to consider man as he has seemed rather than man as he has been--to dwell upon creeds and manifestoes rather than upon individual and racial motives, characters and instincts.[3] the result is that history piles up misleading and useless records and draws erroneous conclusions from them. as a science in itself, it bears but three useful aspects--the monumental, the antiquarian and the critical. its true monuments are not the constitutions and creeds of the past--for these, as we have seen, are always artificial and unnatural--but the great men of the past--those fearless free spirits who achieved immortality by their courage and success in pitting their own instincts against the morality of the majority. such men, he says, are the only human beings whose existence is of interest to posterity. "they live together as timeless contemporaries:" they are the landmarks along the weary road the human race has traversed. in its antiquarian aspect, history affords us proof that the world is progressing, and so gives the men of the present a definite purpose and justifiable enthusiasm. in its critical aspect, history enables us to avoid the delusions of the past, and indicates to us the broad lines of evolution. unless we have in mind some definite program of advancement, he says, all learning is useless. history, which merely accumulates records, without "an ideal of humanistic culture" always in mind, is mere pedantry and scholasticism. all education, says nietzsche, may be regarded as a continuation of the process of breeding.[4] the two have the same object: that of producing beings capable of surviving in the struggle for existence. a great many critics of nietzsche have insisted that since the struggle for existence means a purely physical contest, he is in error, for education does not visibly increase a man's chest expansion or his capacity for lifting heavy weights. but it is obvious none the less that a man who sees things as they are, and properly estimates the world about him, is far better fitted to achieve some measure of mastery over his environment than the man who is a slave to delusions. of two men, one of whom believes that the moon is made of green cheese and that it is possible to cure smallpox by merely denying that it exists, and the other of whom harbors no such superstitions, it is plain that the latter is more apt to live long and acquire power. a further purpose of education is that of affording individuals a means of lifting themselves out of the slave class and into the master class. that this purpose is accomplished--except accidently--by the brand of education ladled out in the colleges of today is far from true. to transform a slave into a master we must make him intelligent, self-reliant, resourceful, independent and courageous. it is evident enough, i take it, that a college directed by an ecclesiastic and manned by a faculty of asses--a very fair, and even charitable, picture of the average small college in the united states--is not apt to accomplish this transformation very often. indeed, it is a commonplace observation that a truly intelligent youth is aided but little by the average college education, and that a truly stupid one is made, not less, but more stupid. the fact that many graduates of such institutions exhibit dionysian qualities in later life merely proves that they are strong enough to weather the blight they have suffered. every sane man knows that, after a youth leaves college, he must devote most of his energies during three or four years, to ridding himself of the fallacies, delusions and imbecilities inflicted upon him by messieurs, his professors. the intelligent man, in the course of his life, nearly always acquires a vast store of learning, because his mind is constantly active and receptive, but intelligence and mere learning are by no means synonymous, despite the popular notion that they are. disregarding the element of sheer good luck--which is necessarily a small factor--it is evident that the man who, in the struggle for wealth and power, seizes a million dollars for himself, is appreciably more intelligent than the man who starves. that this achievement, which is admittedly difficult, requires more intelligence again, than the achievement of mastering the latin language, which presents so few difficulties that it is possible to any healthy human being with sufficient leisure and patience, is also evident. in a word, the illiterate contractor, who says, "i seen" and "i done" and yet manages to build great bridges and to acquire a great fortune, is immeasurably more vigorous intellectually, and immeasurably more efficient and respectable, as a man, than the college professor who laughs at him and presumes to look down upon him. a man's mental powers are to be judged, not by his ability to accomplish things that are possible to every man foolish enough to attempt them, but by his capacity for doing things beyond the power of other men. education, as we commonly observe it today, works toward the former, rather than toward the latter end. [1] nietzsche is considering, of course, the condition of affairs in germany, where all teaching is controlled by the state. but his arguments apply to other countries as well and to teachers of other things besides philosophy. [2] "_schopenhauer als erzieher_," § 8. [3] an excellent discussion of this error will be found in dr. alex. tille's introduction to william haussmann's translation of "_zur genealogie der moral_," pp. xi _et seq._; london, 1907. [4] "_morgenröte_," § 397. xiii sundry ideas _death_.--it is schopenhauer's argument in his essay "on suicide," that the possibility of easy and painless self-destruction is the only thing that constantly and considerably ameliorates the horror of human life. suicide is a means of escape from the world and its tortures--and therefore it is good. it is an ever-present refuge for the weak, the weary and the hopeless. it is, in pliny's phrase, "the greatest of all blessings which nature gives to man," and one which even god himself lacks, for "he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die." in all of this exaltation of surrender, of course, there is nothing whatever in common with the dionysian philosophy of defiance. nietzsche's teaching is all in the other direction. he urges, not surrender, but battle; not flight, but war to the end. his curse falls upon those "preachers of death" who counsel "an abandonment of life"--whether this abandonment be partial, as in asceticism, or actual, as in suicide. and yet zarathustra sings the song of "free death" and says that the higher man must learn "to die at the right time." herein an inconsistency appears, but it is on the surface only. schopenhauer regards suicide as a means of escape, nietzsche sees in it a means of good riddance. it is time to die, says zarathustra, when the purpose of life ceases to be attainable--when the fighter breaks his sword arm or falls into his enemy's hands. and it is time to die, too, when the purpose of life is attained--when the fighter triumphs and sees before him no more worlds to conquer. "he who hath a goal and an heir wisheth death to come at the right time for goal and heir." one who has "waxed too old for victories," one who is "yellow and wrinkled," one with a "toothless mouth"--for such an one a certain and speedy death. the earth has no room for cumberers and pensioners. for them the highest of duties is the payment of nature's debt, that there may be more room for those still able to wield a sword and bear a burden in the heat of the day. the best death is that which comes in battle "at the moment of victory;" the second best is death in battle in the hour of defeat. "would that a storm came," sings zarathustra, "to shake from the tree of life all those apples that are putrid and gnawed by worms. it is cowardice that maketh them stick to their branches"--cowardice which makes them afraid to die. but there is another cowardice which makes men afraid to live, and this is the cowardice of the schopenhauerean pessimist. nietzsche has no patience with it. to him a too early death seems as abominable as a death postponed too long. "too early died that jew whom the preachers of slow death revere. would that he had remained in the desert and far away from the good and just! perhaps he would have learned how to live and how to love the earth--and even how to laugh. he died too early. he himself would have revoked his doctrine, had he reached mine age!"[1] therefore nietzsche pleads for an intelligent regulation of death. one must not die too soon and one must not die too late. "natural death," he says, "is destitute of rationality. it is really _ir_rational death, for the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel shall exist. the pining, sottish prison-warder decides the hour at which his noble prisoner is to die.... the enlightened regulation and control of death belongs to the morality of the future. at present religion makes it seem immoral, for religion presupposes that when the time for death comes, god gives the command."[2] _the attitude at death._--nietzsche rejects entirely that pious belief in signs and portents which sees a significance in death-bed confessions and "dying words." the average man, he says, dies pretty much as he has lived, and in this dr. osler[3] and other unusually competent and accurate observers agree with him. when the dying man exhibits unusual emotions or expresses ideas out of tune with his known creed, the explanation is to be found in the fact that, toward the time of death the mind commonly gives way and the customary processes of thought are disordered. "the way in which a man thinks of death, in the full bloom of his life and strength, is certainly a good index of his general character and habits of mind, but at the hour of death itself his attitude is of little importance or significance. the exhaustion of the last hours--especially when an old man is dying--the irregular or insufficient nourishment of the brain, the occasional spasms of severe physical pain, the horror and novelty of the whole situation, the atavistic return of early impressions and superstitions, and the feeling that death is a thing unutterably vast and important and that bridges of an awful kind are about to be crossed--all of these things make it irrational to accept a man's attitude at death as an indication of his character during life. moreover, it is not true that a dying man is more honest than a man in full vigor. on the contrary, almost every dying man is led, by the solemnity of those at his bedside, and by their restrained or flowing torrents of tears, to conscious or unconscious conceit and make-believe. he becomes, in brief, an actor in a comedy.... no doubt the seriousness with which every dying man is treated has given many a poor devil his only moment of real triumph and enjoyment. he is, _ipso facto_, the star of the play, and so he is indemnified for a life of privation and subservience."[4] _the origin of philosophy._--nietzsche believed that introspection and self-analysis, as they were ordinarily manifested, were signs of disease, and that the higher man and superman would waste little time upon them. the first thinkers, he said, were necessarily sufferers, for it was only suffering that made a man think and only disability that gave him leisure to do so. "under primitive conditions," he said, "the individual, fully conscious of his power, is ever intent upon transforming it into action. sometimes this action takes the form of hunting, robbery, ambuscade, maltreatment or murder, and at other times it appears as those feebler imitations of these things which alone are countenanced by the community. but when the individual's power declines--when he feels fatigued, ill, melancholy or satiated, and in consequence, temporarily lacks the yearning to function--he is a comparatively better and less dangerous man." that is to say, he contents himself with thinking instead of doing, and so puts into thought and words "his impressions and feelings regarding his companions, his wife or his gods." naturally enough, since his efficiency is lowered and his mood is gloomy his judgments are evil ones. he finds fault and ponders revenges. he gloats over enemies or envies his friends. "in such a state of mind he turns prophet and so adds to his store of superstitions or devises new acts of devotion or prophesies the downfall of his enemies. whatever he thinks, his thoughts reflect his state of mind: his fear and weariness are more than normal; his tendency to action and enjoyment are less than normal. herein we see the genesis of the poetic, thoughtful, priestly mood. evil thoughts must rule supreme therein.... in later stages of culture, there arose a caste of poets, thinkers, priests and medicine men who all acted the same as, in earlier years, individuals used to act in their comparatively rare hours of illness and depression. these persons led sad, inactive lives and judged maliciously.... the masses, perhaps, yearned to turn them out of the community, because they were parasites, but in this enterprise there was great risk, because these men were on terms of familiarity with the gods and so possessed vast and mysterious power. thus the most ancient philosophers were viewed. the masses hearkened unto them in proportion to the amount of dread they inspired. in such a way contemplation made its appearance in the world, with an evil heart and a troubled head. it was both weak and terrible, and both secretly abhorred and openly worshipped.... _pudenda origo!_"[5] _priestcraft._--so long as man feels capable of taking care of himself he has no need of priests to intercede for him with the deity. efficiency is proverbially identified with impiety: it is only when the devil is sick that the devil a monk would be. therefore "the priest must be regarded as the saviour, shepherd and advocate of the sick.... it is his providence to rule over the sufferers...." in order that he may understand them and appeal to them he must be sick himself, and to attain this end there is the device of asceticism. the purpose of asceticism, as we have seen, is to make a man voluntarily destroy his own efficiency. but the priest must have a certain strength, nevertheless, for he must inspire both confidence and dread in his charges, and must be able to defend them--against whom? "undoubtedly against the sound and strong.... he must be the natural adversary and despiser of all barbarous, impetuous, unbridled, fierce, violent, beast-of-prey healthiness and power."[6] thus he must fashion himself into a new sort of fighter--"a new zoological terror, in which the polar bear, the nimble and cool tiger and the fox are blended into a unity as attractive as it is awe-inspiring." he appears in the midst of the strong as "the herald and mouthpiece of mysterious powers, with the determination to sow upon the soil, whenever and wherever possible, the seeds of suffering, dissension and contradiction.... undoubtedly he brings balms and balsams with him, but he must first inflict the wound, before he may act as physician.... it is only the unpleasantness of disease that is combated by him--not the cause, not the disease itself!" he dispenses, not specifics, but narcotics. he brings surcease from sorrow, not by showing men how to attain the happiness of efficiency, but by teaching them that their sufferings have been laid upon them by a god who will one day repay them with bliss illimitable. _god._--"a god who is omniscient and omnipotent and yet neglects to make his wishes and intentions certainly known to his creatures--certainly this is not a god of goodness. one who for thousands of years has allowed the countless scruples and doubts of men to afflict them and yet holds out terrible consequences for involuntary errors--certainly this is not a god of justice. is he not a cruel god if he knows the truth and yet looks down upon millions miserably searching for it? perhaps he is good, but is unable to communicate with his creatures more intelligibly. perhaps he is wanting in intelligence--or in eloquence. so much the worse! for, in that case, he may be mistaken in what he calls the truth. he may, indeed, be a brother to the 'poor, duped devils' below him. if so, must he not suffer agonies on seeing his creatures, in their struggle for knowledge of him, submit to tortures for all eternity? must it not strike him with grief to realize that he cannot advise them or help them, except by uncertain and ambiguous signs?... all religions bear traces of the fact that they arose during the intellectual immaturity of the human race--before it had learned the obligation to speak the truth. not one of them makes it the duty of its god to be truthful and understandable in his communications with man."[7] _self-control._--self-control, says nietzsche, consists merely in combating a given desire with a stronger one. thus the yearning to commit a murder may be combated and overcome by the yearning to escape the gallows and to retain the name and dignity of a law-abiding citizen. the second yearning is as much unconscious and instinctive as the first, and in the battle between them the intellect plays but a small part. in general there are but six ways in which a given craving may be overcome. first, we may avoid opportunities for its gratification and so, by a long disuse, weaken and destroy it. secondly, we may regulate its gratification, and by thus encompassing its flux and reflux within fixed limits, gain intervals during which it is faint. thirdly, we may intentionally give ourselves over to it and so wear it out by excess--provided we do not act like the rider who lets a runaway horse gallop itself to death and, in so doing, breaks his own neck,--which unluckily is the rule in this method. fourthly, by an intellectual trick, we may associate gratification with an unpleasant idea, as we have associated sexual gratification, for example, with the idea of indecency. fifthly, we may find a substitute in some other craving that is measurably less dangerous, sixthly, we may find safety in a general war upon all cravings, good and bad alike, after the manner of the ascetic, who, in seeking to destroy his sensuality, at the same time destroys his physical strength, his reason and, not infrequently, his life. _the beautiful._--man's notion of beauty is the fruit of his delight in his own continued existence. whatever makes this existence easy, or is associated, in any manner, with life or vigor, seems to him to be beautiful. "man mirrors himself in things. he counts everything beautiful which reflects his likeness. the word 'beautiful' represents the conceit of his species.... nothing is truly ugly except the degenerating man. but other things are called ugly, too, when they happen to weaken or trouble man. they remind him of impotence, deterioration and danger: in their presence he actually suffers a loss of power. therefore he calls them ugly. whenever man is at all depressed he has an intuition of the proximity of something 'ugly.' his sense of power, his will to power, his feeling of pride and efficiency--all sink with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. the ugly is instinctively understood to be a sign and symptom of degeneration. that which reminds one, in the remotest degree, of degeneracy seems ugly. every indication of exhaustion, heaviness, age, or lassitude, every constraint--such as cramp or paralysis--and above all, every odor, color or counterfeit of decomposition--though it may be no more than a far-fetched symbol--calls forth the idea of ugliness. aversion is thereby excited--man's aversion to the decline of his type."[8] the phrase "art for art's sake" voices a protest against subordinating art to morality--that is, against making it a device for preaching sermons--but as a matter of fact, all art must praise and glorify and so must lay down values. it is the function of the artist, indeed, to select, to choose, to bring into prominence. the very fact that he is able to do this makes us call him an artist. and when do we approve his choice? only when it agrees with our fundamental instinct--only when it exhibits "the desirableness of life." "therefore art is the great stimulus to life. we cannot conceive it as being purposeless or aimless. 'art for art's sake' is a phrase without meaning."[9] _liberty._--the worth of a thing often lies, not in what one attains by it, but in the difficulty one experiences in getting it. the struggle for political liberty, for example, has done more than any other one thing to develop strength, courage and resourcefulness in the human race, and yet liberty itself, as we know it today, is nothing more or less than organized morality, and as such, is necessarily degrading and degenerating. "it undermines the will to power, it levels the racial mountains and valleys, it makes man small, cowardly and voluptuous. under political liberty the herd-animal always triumphs." but the very fight to attain this burdensome equality develops the self-reliance and unconformity which stand opposed to it, and these qualities often persist. warfare, in brief, makes men fit for real, as opposed to political freedom. "and what is freedom? the will to be responsible for one's self. the will to keep that distance which separates man from man. the will to become indifferent to hardship, severity, privation and even to life. the will to sacrifice men to one's cause and to sacrifice one's self, too.... the man who is truly free tramples under foot the contemptible species of well-being dreamt of by shop-keepers, christians, cows, women, englishmen and other democrats. the free man is a warrior.... how is freedom to be measured? by the resistance it has to overcome--by the effort required to maintain it. we must seek the highest type of freemen where the highest resistance must be constantly overcome: five paces from tyranny, close to the threshold of thraldom.... those peoples who were worth something, who became worth something, never acquired their greatness under political liberty. great danger made something of them--danger of that sort which first teaches us to know our resources, our virtues, our shields and swords, our genius--which compels us to be strong."[10] _science_--the object of all science is to keep us from drawing wrong inferences--from jumping to conclusions. thus it stands utterly opposed to all faith and is essentially iconoclastic and skeptical. "the wonderful in science is the reverse of the wonderful in juggling. the juggler tries to make us see a very simple relation between things which, in point of fact, have no relation at all. the scientist, on the contrary, compels us to abandon our belief in simple casualities and to see the enormous complexity of phenomena. the simplest things, indeed, are extremely complex--a fact which will never cease to make us wonder." the effect of science is to show the absurdity of attempting to reach perfect happiness and the impossibility of experiencing utter woe. "the gulf between the highest pitch of happiness and the lowest depth of misery has been created by imaginary things."[11] that is to say, the heights of religious exaltation and the depths of religious fear and trembling are alike creatures of our own myth-making. there is no such thing as perfect and infinite bliss in heaven and there is no such thing as eternal damnation in hell. hereafter our highest happiness must be less than that of the martyrs who saw the heavenly gates opening for them, and our worst woe must be less than that of those medieval sinners who died shrieking and trembling and with the scent of brimstone in their noses. "this space is being reduced further and further by science, just as through science we have learned to make the earth occupy less and less space in the universe, until it now seems infinitely small and our whole solar system appears as a mere point."[12] _the jews._--for the jewish slave-morality which prevails in the western world today, under the label of christianity, nietzsche had, as we know, the most violent aversion and contempt, but he saw very clearly that this same morality admirably served and fitted the jews themselves; that it had preserved them through long ages and against powerful enemies, and that its very persistence proved alike its own ingenuity and the vitality of its inventors as a race. "the jews," said nietzsche, "will either become the masters of europe or lose europe, as they once lost egypt, and it seems to be improbable that they will lose again. in europe, for eighteen centuries; they have passed through a school more terrible than that known to any other nation, and the experiences of this time of stress and storm have benefited the individual even more than the community. in consequence, the resourcefulness and alertness of the modern jew are extraordinary.... in times of extremity, the people of israel less often sought refuge in drink or suicide than any other race of europe. today, every jew finds in the history of his forebears a voluminous record of coolness and perseverance in terrible predicaments--of artful cunning and clever fencing with chance and misfortune. the jews have hid their bravery under the cloak of submissiveness; their heroism in facing contempt surpasses that of the saints. people tried to make them contemptible for twenty centuries by refusing them all honors and dignities and by pushing them down into the mean trades. the process did not make them cleaner, alas! but neither did it make them contemptible. they have never ceased to believe themselves qualified for the highest of activities. they have never failed to show the virtues of all suffering peoples. their manner of honoring their parents and their children and the reasonableness of their marriage customs make them conspicuous among europeans. besides, they have learned how to derive a sense of power from the very trades forced upon them. we cannot help observing, in excuse for their usury, that without this pleasant means of inflicting torture upon their oppressors, they might have lost their self-respect ages ago, for self-respect depends upon being able to make reprisals. moreover, their vengeance has never carried them too far, for they have that liberality which comes from frequent changes of place, climate, customs and neighbors. they have more experience of men than any other race and even in their passions there appears a caution born of this experience. they are so sure of themselves that, even in their bitterest straits, they never earn their bread by manual labor as common workmen, porters or peasants.... their manners, it may be admitted, teach us that they have never been inspired by chivalrous, noble feelings, nor their bodies girt with beautiful arms: a certain vulgarity always alternates with their submissiveness. but now they are intermarrying with the gentlest blood of europe, and in another hundred years they will have enough good manners to save them from making themselves ridiculous, as masters, in the sight of those they have subdued." it was nietzsche's belief that the jews would take the lead before long, in the intellectual progress of the world. he thought that their training, as a race, fitted them for this leadership. "where," he asked, "shall the accumulated wealth of great impressions which forms the history of every jewish family--that great wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles and victories of all sorts--where shall it find an outlet, if not in great intellectual functioning?" the jews, he thought, would be safe guides for mankind, once they were set free from their slave-morality and all need of it. "then again," he said, "the old god of the jews may rejoice in himself, in his creation and in his chosen people--and all of us will rejoice with him."[13] _the gentleman._--a million sages and diagnosticians, in all ages of the world, have sought to define the gentleman, and their definitions have been as varied as their own minds. nietzsche's definition is based upon the obvious fact that the gentleman is ever a man of more than average influence and power, and the further fact that this superiority is admitted by all. the vulgarian may boast of his bluff honesty, but at heart he looks up to the gentleman, who goes through life serene and imperturbable. there is in the flatter, in truth, an unmistakable air of fitness and efficiency, and it is this which makes it possible for him to be gentle and to regard those below him with tolerance. "the demeanor of high-born persons," says nietzsche, "shows plainly that in their minds the consciousness of power is ever-present. above all things, they strive to avoid a show of weakness, whether it takes the form of inefficiency or of a too-easy yielding to passion or emotion. they never sink exhausted into a chair. on the train, when the vulgar try to make themselves comfortable, these higher folk avoid reclining. they do not seem to get tired after hours of standing at court. they do not furnish their houses in a comfortable, but in a spacious and dignified manner, as if they were the abodes of a greater and taller race of beings. to a provoking speech, they reply with politeness and self-possession--and not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, enraged or out of breath, after the manner of plebeians. the aristocrat knows how to preserve the appearance of ever-present physical strength, and he knows, too, how to convey the impression that his soul and intellect are a match to all dangers and surprises, by keeping up an unchanging serenity and civility, even under the most trying circumstances."[14] _dreams._--dreams are symptoms of the eternal law of compensation. in our waking hours we develop a countless horde of yearnings, cravings and desires, and by the very nature of things, the majority of them must go ungratified. the feeling that something is wanting, thus left within us, is met and satisfied by our imaginary functionings during sleep. that is to say, dreams represent the reaction of our yearnings upon the phenomena actually encountered during sleep--the motions of our blood and intestines, the pressure of the bedclothes, the sounds of church-bells, domestic animals, etc., and the state of the atmosphere. these phenomena are fairly constant, but our dreams vary widely on successive nights. therefore, the variable factor is represented by the yearnings we harbor as we go to bed. thus, the man who loves music and must go without it all day, hears celestial harmonies in his sleep. thus the slave dreams of soaring like an eagle. thus the prisoner dreams that he is free and the sailor that he is safely at home. inasmuch as the number of our conscious and unconscious desires, each day, is infinite, there is an infinite variety in dreams. but always the relation set forth may be predicated. [1] "_also sprach zarathustra_," i. [2] "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," iii, § 185. [3] "_science and immortality_," new york, 1904. [4] "_menschliches allzu menschliches_," ii, § 88. [5] "_morgenröte_," § 42. [6] "_zur genealogie der moral_," iii, 11 to 17. [7] "_morgenröte_," § 91. [8] "_götzendämmerung_," ix, § 19. [9] "_götzendämmerung_," ix, § 24. [10] "_götzendämmerung_," ix, § 38. [11] "_morgenröte_," § 6. [12] "_morgenröte_," § 7. [13] "_morgenröte_," § 205. [14] "_morgenröte_," § 201. xiv nietzsche vs. wagner nietzsche believed in heroes and, in his youth, was a hero worshipper. first arthur schopenhauer's bespectacled visage stared from his shrine and after that the place of sacredness and honor was held by richard wagner. when the wagner of the philosopher's dreams turned into a wagner of very prosaic flesh and blood, there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for poor nietzsche. but he had courage as well as loyalty, and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and crunched the bits underfoot. faith, doubt, anguish, disillusion--it is not a rare sequence in this pitiless and weary old world. those sapient critics who hold that nietzsche discredited his own philosophy by constantly writing against himself, find their chief ammunition in his attitude toward the composer of "_tristan und isolde_" in the decade from 1869 to 1878 the philosopher was the king of german wagnerians. in the decade from 1879 to 1889, he was the most bitter, the most violent, the most resourceful and the most effective of wagner's enemies. on their face these things seem to indicate a complete change of front and a careful examination bears out the thought. but the same careful examination reveals another fact: that the change of front was made, not by nietzsche, but by wagner. as we have seen, the philosopher was an ardent musician from boyhood and so it was not unnatural that he should be among the first to recognize wagner's genius. the sheer musicianship of the man overwhelmed him and he tells us that from the moment the piano transcription of "_tristan und isolde_" was printed he was a wagnerian. the music was bold and daring: it struck out into regions that the _süsslich_ sentimentality of donizetti and bellini and the pallid classicism of beethoven and bach had never even approached. in wagner nietzsche saw a man of colossal originality and sublime courage, who thought for himself and had skill at making his ideas comprehensible to others. the opera of the past had been a mere _potpourri_ of songs, strung together upon a filament of banal recitative. the opera of wagner was a symmetrical and homogeneous whole, in which the music was unthinkable without the poetry and the poetry impossible without the music. nietzsche, at the time, was saturated with schopenhauer's brand of individualism, and intensely eager to apply it to realities. in wagner he saw a living, breathing individualist--a man who scorned the laws and customs of his craft and dared to work out his own salvation in his own way. and when fate made it possible for him to meet wagner, he found the composer preaching as well as practising individualism. in a word, wagner was well nigh as enthusiastic a schopenhauerean as nietzsche himself. his individualism almost touched the boundary of anarchy. he had invented a new art of music and he was engaged in the exciting task of smashing the old one to make room for it. nietzsche met wagner in leipsic and was invited to visit the composer at his home near tribschen, a suburb of lucerne. he accepted, and on may 15, 1869, got his first glimpse of that queer household in which the erratic richard, the ingenious cosima and little siegfried lived and had their being. when he moved to basel, he was not far from tribschen and so he fell into the habit of going there often and staying long. he came, indeed, to occupy the position of an adopted son, and spent the christmas of 1869 and that of 1870 under the wagner rooftree. this last fact alone is sufficient to show the intimate footing upon which he stood. christmas, among the germans, is essentially a family festival and mere friends are seldom asked to share its joys. nietzsche and wagner had long and riotous disputations at tribschen, but in all things fundamental they agreed. together they accepted schopenhauer's data and together they began to diverge from his conclusions. nietzsche saw in wagner that old dionysian spirit which had saved greek art. the music of the day was colorless and coldblooded. a too rigid formalism stood in the way of all expression of actual life. wagner proposed to batter this formalism to pieces and nietzsche was his prophet and _claque_. it was this enthusiasm, indeed, which determined the plan of "_die geburt der tragödie_". nietzsche had conceived it as a mere treatise upon the philosophy of the greek drama. his ardor as an apostle, his yearning to convert the stolid germans, his wild desire to do something practical and effective for wagner, made him turn it into a gospel of the new art. to him wagner was dionysus, and the whole of his argument against apollo was nothing more than an argument against classicism and for the wagnerian romanticism. it was a bomb-shell and its explosion made germany stare, but another--perhaps many more--were needed to shake the foundations of philistinism. nietzsche loaded the next one carefully and hurled it at him who stood at the very head of that self-satisfied conservatism which lay upon all germany. this man was david strauss. strauss was the prophet of the good-enough. he taught that german art was sound, that german culture was perfect. nietzsche saw in him the foe of dionysus and made an example of him. in every word of that scintillating philippic there was a plea for the independence and individualism and outlawry that the philosopher saw in wagner.[1] unluckily the disciple here ran ahead of the master and before long nietzsche began to realize that he and wagner were drifting apart. so long as they met upon the safe ground of schopenhauer's data, the two agreed, but after nietzsche began to work out his inevitable conclusions, wagner abandoned him. to put it plainly, wagner was the artist before he was the philosopher, and when philosophy began to grow ugly he turned from it without regret or qualm of conscience. theoretically, he saw things as nietzsche saw them, but as an artist he could not afford to be too literal. it was true enough, perhaps, that self-sacrifice was a medieval superstition, but all the same it made effective heroes on the stage. nietzsche was utterly unable, throughout his life, to acknowledge anything but hypocrisy or ignorance in those who descended to such compromises. when he wrote "_richard wagner in bayreuth_" he was already the prey of doubts, but it is probable that he still saw the "ifs" and "buts" in wagner's individualism but dimly. he could not realize, in brief, that a composer who fought beneath the banner of truth, against custom and convention, could ever turn aside from the battle. wagner agreed with nietzsche, perhaps, that european civilization and its child, the european art of the day, were founded upon lies, but he was artist enough to see that, without these lies, it would be impossible to make art understandable to the public. so in his librettos he employed all of the old fallacies--that love has the supernatural power of making a bad man good, that one man may save the soul of another, that humility is a virtue.[2] it is obvious from this, that the apostate was not nietzsche, but wagner. nietzsche started out in life as a seeker after truth, and he sought the truth his whole life long, without regarding for an instant the risks and dangers and consequences of the quest. wagner, so long as it remained a mere matter of philosophical disputation, was equally radical and courageous, but he saw very clearly that it was necessary to compromise with tradition in his operas. he was an atheist and a mocker of the gods, but the mystery and beauty of the roman catholic ritual appealed to his artistic sense, and so, instead of penning an opera in which the hero spouted aphorisms by huxley, he wrote "_parsifal_" and in the same way, in his other music dramas, he made artistic use of all the ancient fallacies and devices in the lumber room of chivalry. he was, indeed, a philosopher in his hours of leisure only. when he was at work over his music paper, he saw that st. ignatius was a far more effective and appealing figure than herbert spencer and that the conventional notion that marriage was a union of two immortal souls was far more picturesque than the schopenhauer-nietzschean idea that it was a mere symptom of the primary will to live. in 1876 nietzsche began to realize that he had left wagner far behind and that thereafter he could expect no support from the composer. they had not met since 1874, but nietzsche went to bayreuth for the first opera season. a single conversation convinced him that his doubts were well-founded--that wagner was a mere dionysian of the chair and had no intention of pushing the ideas they had discussed to their bitter and revolutionary conclusion. most other men would have seen in this nothing more than an evidence of a common-sense decision to sacrifice the whole truth for half the truth, but nietzsche was a rabid hater of compromise. to make terms with the philistines seemed to him to be even worse than joining their ranks. he saw in wagner only a traitor who knew the truth and yet denied it. nietzsche was so much disgusted that he left bayreuth and set out upon a walking tour, but before the end of the season he returned and heard some of the operas. but he was no longer a wagnerian and the music of the "ring" did not delight him. it was impossible, indeed, for him to separate the music from the philosophy set forth in the librettos. he believed, with wagner, that the two were indissolubly welded, and so, after awhile, he came to condemn the whole fabric--harmonies and melodies as well as heroes and dramatic situations. when wagner passed out of his life nietzsche sought to cure his loneliness by hard work and "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" was the result. he sent a copy of the first volume to wagner and on the way it crossed a copy of "_parsifal_." in this circumstance is well exhibited the width of the breach between the two men. to wagner "_menschliches allzu menschliches_" seemed impossibly and insanely radical; to nietzsche "_parsifal_", with all its exaltation of ritualism, was unspeakable. neither deigned to write to the other, but we have it from reliable testimony that wagner was disgusted and nietzsche's sister tells us how much the music-drama of the grail enraged him. a german, when indignation seizes him, rises straightway to make a loud and vociferous protest. and so, although nietzsche retained, to the end of his life, a pleasant memory of the happy days he spent at tribschen and almost his last words voiced his loyal love for wagner the man, he conceived it to be his sacred duty to combat what he regarded as the treason of wagner the philosopher. this notion was doubtlessly strengthened by his belief that he himself had done much to launch wagner's bark. he had praised, and now it was his duty to blame. he had been enthusiastic at the first task, and he determined to be pitiless at the second. but he hesitated for ten years, because, as has been said, he could not kill his affection for wagner, the man. it takes courage to wound one's nearest and dearest, and nietzsche, for all his lack of sentiment, was still no more than human. in the end, however, he brought himself to the heroic surgery that confronted him, and the result was "_der fall wagner_". in this book all friendship and pleasant memories were put aside. wagner was his friend of old? very well: that was a reason for him to be all the more exact and all the more unpitying. "what does a philosopher firstly and lastly require of himself?" he asks. "to overcome his age in himself; to become timeless! with what, then, has he to fight his hardest fight? with those characteristics and ideas which most plainly stamp him as the child of his age." herein we perceive nietzsche's fundamental error. deceived by wagner's enthusiasm for schopenhauer and his early, amateurish dabbling in philosophy, he regarded; the composer as a philosopher. but wagner, of course, was first of all an artist, and it is the function of an artist, not to reform humanity, but to depict it as he sees it, or as his age sees it--fallacies, delusions and all. george bernard shaw, in his famous criticism of shakespeare, shows us how the bard of avon made just such a compromise with the prevailing opinion of his time. shakespeare, he says, was too intelligent a man to regard rosalind as a plausible woman, but the theatre-goers of his day so regarded her and he drew her to their taste.[3] an artist who failed to make such a concession to convention would be an artist without an audience. wagner was no christian, but he knew that the quest of the holy grail was an idea which made a powerful appeal to nine-tenths of civilized humanity, and so he turned it into a drama. this was not conscious lack of sincerity, but merely a manifestation of the sub-conscious artistic feeling for effectiveness.[4] therefore, it is plain that nietzsche's whole case against wagner is based upon a fallacy and that, in consequence, it is not to be taken too seriously. it is true enough that his book contains some remarkably acute and searching observations upon art, and that, granting his premises, his general conclusions would be correct, but we are by no means granting his premises. wagner may have been a traitor to his philosophy, but if he had remained loyal to it, his art would have been impossible. and in view of the sublime beauty of that art we may well pardon him for not keeping the faith. "_der fall wagner_" caused a horde of stupid critics to maintain that nietzsche, and not wagner, was the apostate, and that the mad philosopher had begun to argue against himself. as an answer to this ridiculous charge, nietzsche published a little book called "_nietzsche contra wagner_." it was made up entirely of passages from his earlier books and these proved conclusively that, ever since his initial divergence from schopenhauer's conclusions, he had hoed a straight row. he was a dionysian in "_die geburt der tragödie_" and he was a dionysian still in "_also sprach zarathustra._" [1] that wagner gave nietzsche good reason to credit him with these qualities is amply proved. "i have never read anything better than your book," wrote the composer in 1872. "it is masterly." and frau cosima and liszt, who were certainly familiar with wagner's ideas, supported nietzsche's assumption, too. "oh, how fine is your book," wrote the former, "how fine and how deep--how deep and how keen!" liszt sent from prague (feb. 29, 1872) a pompous, patronizing letter. "i have read your book twice," he said. in all of this correspondence there is no hint that nietzsche had misunderstood wagner's position or had laid down any propositions from which the composer dissented. [2] there is an interesting discussion of this in james huneker's book, "mezzotints in modern music," page 285 _et. seq._, new york, 1899. [3] see "george bernard shaw: his plays;" page 102 _et seq._, boston, 1905. [4] "wagner's creative instinct gave the lie to his theoretical system:" r. a. streatfield, "modern music and musicians," p. 272; new york, 1906. nietzsche the prophet i nietzsche's origins the construction of philosophical family trees for nietzsche has ever been one of the favorite pastimes of his critics and interpreters. thus dr. oscar levy, editor of the english translation of his works, makes him the heir of goethe and stendhal, and the culminating figure of the "second renaissance" launched by the latter, who was "the first man to cry halt to the kantian philosophy which had flooded all europe."[1] dr. m. a. mügge agrees with this genealogy so far as it goes, but points out that nietzsche was also the intellectual descendant of certain pre-socratic greeks, particularly heracleitus, and of spinoza and stirner.[2] alfred fouillée, the frenchman, is another who gives him greek blood, but in seeking his later forebears fouillée passes over the four named by levy and mügge and puts hobbes, schopenhauer, darwin, rousseau and diderot in place of them.[3] again, thomas common says that "perhaps nietzsche is most indebted to chamfort and schopenhauer," but also allows a considerable influence to hobbes, and endeavors to show how nietzsche carried on, consciously and unconsciously, certain ideas originating with darwin and developed by huxley, spencer and the other evolutionists.[4] dr. alexander tille has written a whole volume upon this latter relationship.[5] finally, paul elmer more, the american, taking the cue from fouillée, finds the germs of many of nietzsche's doctrines in hobbes, and then proceeds to a somewhat elaborate discussion of the mutations of ethical theory during the past two centuries, showing how hume superimposed the idea of sympathy as a motive upon hobbes' idea of self-interest, and how this sympathy theory prevailed over that of self-interest, and degenerated into sentimentalism, and so opened the way for socialism and other such delusions, and how nietzsche instituted a sort of hobbesian revival.[6] many more speculations of that sort, some of them very ingenious and some merely ingenuous, might be rehearsed. by one critic or another nietzsche has been accused of more or less frank borrowings from xenophanes, democritus, pythagoras, callicles, parmenides, arcelaus, empedocles, pyrrho, hegesippus, the eleatic zeno, machiavelli, comte, montaigne, mandeville, la bruyère, fontenelle, voltaire, kant, la rochefoucauld, helvétius, adam smith, malthus, butler, blake, proudhon, paul rée, flaubert, taine, gobineau, renan, and even from karl marx!--a long catalogue of meaningless names, an exhaustive roster of pathfinders and protestants. a frenchman, jules de gaultier, has devoted a whole book to the fascinating subject.[7] but if we turn from this laborious and often irrelevant search for common ideas and parallel passages to the actual facts of nietzsche's intellectual development, we shall find, perhaps, that his ancestry ran in two streams, the one coming down from the greeks whom he studied as school-boy and undergraduate, and the other having its source in schopenhauer, the great discovery of his early manhood and the most powerful single influence of his life. no need to argue the essentially greek color of nietzsche's apprentice thinking. it was, indeed, his interest in greek literature and life that made him a philologist by profession, and the same interest that converted him from a philologist into a philosopher. the foundation of his system was laid when he arrived at his conception of the conflict between the greek gods apollo and dionysus, and all that followed belonged naturally to the working out of that idea. but what he got from the greeks of his early adoration was more than a single idea and more than the body of miscellaneous ideas listed by the commentators: it was the greek outlook, the greek spirit, the greek attitude toward god and man. in brief, he ceased to be a german pastor's son, brought up in the fear of the lord, and became a citizen of those gorgeous and enchanted isles, much as shelley had before him. the sentimentality of christianity dropped from him like an old garment; he stood forth, as it were, bare and unashamed, a pagan in the springtime of the world, a _ja-sager_. more than the reading of books, of course, was needed to work that transformation--the blood that leaped had to be blood capable of leaping--but it was out of books that the stimulus came, and the feeling of surety, and the beginnings of a workable philosophy of life. it is not a german that speaks in "the antichrist," nor even the polish noble that nietzsche liked to think himself, but a greek of the brave days before socrates, a spokesman of hellenic innocence and youth. no doubt it was the unmistakably greek note in schopenhauer--the delivery of instinct, so long condemned to the ethical dungeons--that engendered nietzsche's first wild enthusiasm for the frankfort sage. the atmosphere of leipsic in 1865 was heavy with moral vapors, and the daring dissent of schopenhauer must have seemed to blow through it like a sharp wind from the sea. and nietzsche, being young and passionate, was carried away by the ecstasy of discovery, and so accepted the whole schopenhauerean philosophy without examining it too critically--the bitter with the sweet, its pessimism no less than its rebellion. he, too, had to go through the green-sickness of youth, particularly of german youth. the greek was yet but half way from naumburg to attica, and he now stopped a moment to look backward. "every line," he tells us somewhere, "cried out renunciation, denial, resignation.... evidences of this sudden change are still to be found in the restless melancholy of the leaves of my diary at that period, with all their useless self-reproach and their desperate gazing upward for recovery and for the transformation of the whole spirit of mankind. by drawing all my qualities and my aspirations before the forum of gloomy self-contempt i became bitter, unjust and unbridled in my hatred of myself. i even practised bodily penance. for instance, i forced myself for a fortnight at a stretch to go to bed at two o'clock in the morning and to rise punctually at six." but not for long. the fortnight of self-accusing and hair-shirts was soon over. the green-sickness vanished.[8] the greek emerged anew, more hellenic than ever. and so, almost from the start, nietzsche rejected quite as much of schopenhauer as he accepted. the schopenhauerean premise entered into his system--the will to live was destined to become the father, in a few years, of the will to power--but the schopenhauerean conclusion held him no longer than it took him to inspect it calmly. thus he gained doubly--first, by the acquisition of a definite theory of human conduct, one giving clarity to his own vague feelings, and secondly, by the reaction against an abject theory of human destiny, the very antithesis of that which rose within him. and yet, for all his dissent, for all his instinctive revolt against the resignationism which overwhelmed him for an hour, nietzsche nevertheless carried away with him, and kept throughout his life, some touch of schopenhauer's distrust of the search for happiness. nine years after his great discovery we find him quoting and approving his teacher's words: "a happy life is impossible; the highest thing that man can aspire to is a _heroic_ life." and still later we find him thundering against "the green-grazing happiness of the herd." what is more, he gave his assent later on, though always more by fascination than by conviction, to the doctrine of eternal recurrence, the most hopeless idea, perhaps, ever formulated by man. but in all this a certain distinction is to be noted: schopenhauer, despairing of the happy life, renounced even the heroic life, but nietzsche never did anything of the sort. on the contrary, his whole philosophy is a protest against that very despair. the heroic life may not bring happiness, and it may even fail to bring good, but at all events it will shine gloriously in the light of its own heroism. in brief, high endeavor is an end in itself--nay, the noblest of all ends. the higher man does not work for a wage, not even for the wage of bliss: his reward is in the struggle, the danger, the aspiration. as for the happiness born of peace and love, of prosperity and tranquillity, that is for "shopkeepers, women, englishmen and cows." the man who seeks it thereby confesses his incapacity for the loftier joys and hazards of the free spirit, and the man who wails because he cannot find it thereby confesses his unfitness to live in the world. "my formula for greatness," said nietzsche toward the end of his life, "is _amor fati_ ... not only to bear up under necessity, but to _love_ it." thus, borrowing schopenhauer's pessimism, he turned it, in the end, into a defiant and irreconcilable optimism--not the slave optimism of hope, with its vain courting of gods, but the master optimism of courage. so much for the larger of the direct influences upon nietzsche's thinking. scarcely less was the influence of that great revolution in man's view of man, that genuine "transvaluation of all values," set in motion by the publication of charles darwin's "the origin of species," in 1859. in the chapter on christianity i have sketched briefly the part that nietzsche played in the matter, and have shown how it rested squarely upon the parts played by those who went before him. he himself was fond of attacking darwin, whom he disliked as he disliked all englishmen, and of denying that he had gotten anything of value out of darwin's work, but it is not well to take such denunciations and denials too seriously. like ibsen, nietzsche was often an unreliable witness as to his own intellectual obligations. so long as he dealt with ideas his thinking was frank and clear, but when he turned to the human beings behind them, and particularly when he discussed those who had presumed to approach the problems he undertook to solve himself, his incredible intolerance, jealousy, spitefulness and egomania, and his savage lust for bitter, useless and unmerciful strife, combined to make his statements dubious, and sometimes even absurd. thus with his sneers at darwin and the other evolutionists, especially spencer. if he did not actually follow them, then he at least walked side by side with them, and every time they cleared another bit of the path he profited by it too. one thing, at all events, they gave to the world that entered into nietzsche's final philosophy, and without which it would have stopped short of its ultimate development, and that was the conception of man as a mammal. their great service to human knowledge was precisely this. they found man a loiterer at the gates of heaven, a courtier in the ante-chambers of gods. they brought him back to earth and bade him help himself. meanwhile, the reader who cares to go into the matter further will find nietzsche elbowing other sages in a multitude of places. he himself has testified to his debt to stendhal (marie henri beyle), that great apologist for napoleon bonaparte and exponent of the napoleonic philosophy. "stendhal," he says, "was one of the happiest accidents of my life.... he is quite priceless, with his penetrating psychologist's eye and his grip upon facts, recalling that of the greatest of all masters of facts (_ex ungue napoleon_--); and last, but not least, as an _honest_ atheist--one of a species rare and hard to find in france.... maybe i myself am jealous of stendhal? he took from me the best of atheistic jokes, that i might best have made: 'the only excuse for god is that he doesn't exist.'"[9] of his debt to max stirner the evidence is less clear, but it has been frequently alleged, and, as dr. mügge says, "quite a literature has grown up around the question." stirner's chief work, "_der einzige und sein eigentum_,"[10] was first published in 1844, the year of nietzsche's birth, and in its strong plea for the emancipation of the individual there are many ideas and even phrases that were later voiced by nietzsche. dr. mügge quotes a few of them: "what is good and what is evil? i myself am my own rule, and i am neither good nor evil. neither word means anything to me.... between the two vicissitudes of victory and defeat swings the fate of the struggle--master or slave!... egoism, not love, must decide." others will greet the reader of stirner's book: "as long as you believe in the truth, you do not believe in yourself; you are a servant, a religious man. you alone are the truth.... whether what i think and do is christian, what do i care? whether it is human, liberal, humane, whether unhuman, illiberal, unhumane, what do i ask about that? if only it accomplishes what i want, if only i satisfy myself in it, then overlay it with predicates if you will: it is all one to me...." but, as dr. j. l. walker well says, in his introduction to mr. byington's english translation, there is a considerable gulf between stirner and nietzsche, even here. the former's plea is for absolute liberty for all men, great and small. the latter is for liberty only in the higher castes: the chandala he would keep in chains. therefore, if nietzsche actually got anything from stirner, it certainly did not enter unchanged into the ultimate structure of his system. the other attempts to convict him of appropriating ideas come to little more. dr. mügge, for example, quotes these pre-nietzschean passages from heracleitus: "war is universal and right, and by strife all things arise and are made use of ... good and evil are the same.... to me, one is worth ten thousand, if he be the best." and mr. more quotes this from hobbes: "in the first place, i put forth, for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only with death"--to which the reader may add, "whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good ... for these words of good, evil and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them; there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken for the nature of objects themselves."[11] but all these passages prove no more than that men of past ages saw the mutability of criteria, and their origin in human aspiration and striving. not only heracleitus, but many other greeks, voiced that ethical scepticism. it was for many years, indeed, one of the dominant influences in greek philosophy, and so, if nietzsche is accused of borrowing it, that is no more than saying what i have already said: that he ate greek grapes in his youth and became, to all intellectual intents and purposes, a greek himself. a man must needs have a point of view, a manner of approach to life, and that point of view is no less authentic when he reaches it through his reading and by the exercise of a certain degree of free choice than when he accepts it unthinkingly from the folk about him. the service of heracleitus and the other greeks to nietzsche was not that they gave him his philosophy, but that they made him a philosopher. it was the questions they asked rather than the answers they made that interested and stimulated him, and if, at times, he answered much as they had done, that was only proof of his genuine kinship with them. on the artistic, as opposed to the analytical side, nietzsche's most influential teacher, perhaps, was goethe, the noblest intellectual figure of modern germany, the common _stammvater_ of all the warring schools of today--in nietzsche's own phrase, "not only a good and great man, but a culture itself." his writings are full of praises of his hero, whom he began to read as a boy of eight or ten years. his grandmother, frau erdmuthe nietzsche, was a sister to dr. krause, professor of divinity at weimar in goethe's day, and she lived in the town while the poet held his court there, and undoubtedly came into contact with him. her mother, frau pastor krause, was probably the muthgen of goethe's diary. but despite all this, she thought that "faust" and "elective affinities" were "not fit for little boys" and so it remained for judge pindar, the father of one of young nietzsche's naumburg playmates, to conduct the initiation.[12] thirty years afterward, nietzsche gratefully acknowledged his debt to herr pindar, and his vastly greater debt to goethe--"a thorough-going realist in the midst of an unreal age.... he did not sever himself from life, but entered into it. undaunted, he took as much as possible to himself.... what he sought was _totality_."[13] nietzsche was also an extravagant admirer of heinrich heine, and tried to imitate that poet's "sweet and passionate music." "people will say some day," he declared, "that heine and i were the greatest artists, by far, that ever wrote in german, and that we left the best any mere german[14] could do an incalculable distance behind us."[15] another poet he greatly revered was friedrich hölderlin, a south german rhapsodist of the goethe-schiller period, who wrote odes in free rhythms and philosophical novels in gorgeous prose, and died the year before nietzsche was born, after forty years of insanity. karl joel,[16] dr. mügge and other critics have sought to connect nietzsche, through hölderlin, with the romantic movement in germany, but the truth is that both nietzsche and hölderlin, if they were romantics at all, were of the greek school rather than the german. certainly, nothing could be further from genuine german romanticism, with its sentimentality, its begging of questions and its booming patriotism, than the gospel of the superman. what nietzsche undoubtedly got from the romantics was a feeling of ease in the german language, a disregard for the artificial bonds of the schools, a sense of hospitality to the gipsy phrase. in brief, they taught him how to write. but they certainly did not teach him what to write. even so, it is probable that he was as much influenced by certain frenchmen as he ever was by germans--particularly by montaigne, la bruyère, la rochefoucauld, fontenelle, vauvenargues and chamfort, his constant companions on his wanderings. he borrowed from them, not only the somewhat obvious device of putting his argument into the form of apothegms and epigrams, but also their conception of the dialectic as one of the fine arts--in other words, their striving after style. "it is to a small number of french authors," he once said, "that i return again and again. i believe only in french culture, and regard all that is called culture elsewhere in europe, especially in germany, as mere misunderstanding.... the few persons of higher culture that i have met in germany have had french training--above all, frau cosima wagner, by long odds the best authority on questions of taste i ever heard of."[17] this preference carried him so far, indeed, that he usually wrote more like a frenchman than like a german, toying with words, experimenting with their combinations, matching them as carefully as pearls for a necklace. "nietzsche," says one critic,[18] "whether for good or evil, introduced romance (not romantic!) qualities of terseness and clearness into german prose; it was his endeavor to free it from those elements which he described as _deutsch und schwer_." (german and heavy.) for the rest, he denounced klopstock, herder, wieland, lessing and schiller, the remaining gods in germany's literary valhalla, even more bitterly than he denounced kant and hegel, the giants of orthodox german philosophy. [1] "the revival of aristocracy," london, 1906, pp. 14-59. [2] "friedrich nietzsche: his life and work," new york, 1909, pp. 315-320. [3] "_nietzsche et l'immoralisme_," paris, 1902, p. 294. [4] "nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet," london, 1901, pp. xi-xxiii. [5] "_von darwin bis nietzsche_," leipsic, 1895. [6] "nietzsche," boston, 1912, pp. 18-45. [7] "_de kant à nietzsche,_" paris, 1900. [8] nietzsche himself, in after years, viewed this attack humorously, and was wont to say that it was caused, not by schopenhauer alone, but also (and chiefly) by the bad cooking of leipsic. see "_ecce homo_," ii, i. [9] "_ecce homo_," ii, 3. [10] eng. tr. by steven t. byington, "the ego and his own," new york, 1907. [11] the leviathan, i, vi; london, 1651. [12] frau förster-nietzsche: "the life of nietzsche" (eng. tr.), vol. i, p. 31. [13] "_götzendämmerung_," ix, 49. [14] heine was a jew--and nietzsche, as we know, liked to think himself a pole. [15] "_ecce homo_," ii, 4. [16] "_nietzsche und die romantik_," jena, 1905. [17] "_ecce homo_," ii, 3. [18] j. g. robertson: "a history of german literature," edinburgh, 1902, pp. 611-615. ii nietzsche and his critics let us set aside at the start that great host of critics whose chief objection to nietzsche is that he is blasphemous, that his philosophy and his manner outrage the piety and prudery of the world. of such sort are the pale parsons who arise in suburban pulpits to dispose of him in the half hour between the first and second lessons, as their predecessors of the 70's and 80's disposed of darwin, huxley and spencer. let them read their indictments and bring in their verdicts and pronounce their bitter sentences! the student of nietzsche must perceive at once the irrelevance of that sort of criticism. it was the deliberate effort of the philosopher, from the very start of what he calls his tunnelling period, to provoke and deserve the accusation of sacrilege. in framing his accusations against christian morality he tried to make them, not only persuasive and just, but also as offensive as possible. no man ever had more belief in the propagandist value of a _succès de scandale._ he tried his best to shock the guardians of the sacred vessels, to force upon them the burdens of an active defense, to bring them out into the open, to attract attention to the combat by accentuating its mere fuming and fury. if he succeeded in the effort, if he really outraged christendom, then it is certainly absurd to bring forward that deliberate achievement as an exhibit against itself. the more pertinent and plausible criticisms of nietzsche, launched against him in europe and america by many industrious foes, may be reduced for convenience to five fundamental propositions, to wit: (_a_) he was a decadent and a lunatic, and in consequence his philosophy is not worthy of attention. (_b_) his writings are chaotic and contradictory and it is impossible to find in them any connected philosophical system. (_c_) his argument that self-sacrifice costs more than it yields, and that it thus reduces the average fitness of a race practising it, is contradicted by human experience. (_d_) the scheme of things proposed by him is opposed by ideas inherent in all civilized men. (_e_) even admitting that his criticism of christian morality is well-founded, he offers nothing in place of it that would work as well. it is scarcely worth while to linger over the first and second of these propositions. the first has been defended most speciously by max nordau, in "degeneration," a book which made as much noise, when it was first published in 1893, as any of nietzsche's own. nordau's argument is based upon a theory of degeneration borrowed quite frankly from cesare lombroso, an italian quasi-scientist whose modest contributions to psychiatry were offset by many volumes of rubbish about spooks, table-tapping, mental telepathy, spirit photography and the alleged stigmata of criminals and men of genius. degeneracy and decadence were terms that filled the public imagination in the 80's and 90's, and even nietzsche himself seemed to think, at times, that they had definite meanings and that his own type of mind was degenerate. as nordau defines degeneracy it is "a morbid deviation from the original type"--_i.e._ from the physical and mental norm of the species--and he lays stress upon the fact that by "morbid" he means "infirm" or "incapable of fulfilling normal functions." but straightway he begins to regard _any_ deviation as morbid and degenerate, despite the obvious fact that it may be quite the reverse. he says, for example, that a man with web toes is a degenerate, and then proceeds to argue elaborately from that premise, entirely overlooking the fact that web toes, under easily imaginable circumstances, might be an advantage instead of a handicap, and that, under the ordinary conditions of life, we are unable to determine with any accuracy whether they are the one thing or the other. so with the symptoms of degeneracy that he discovers in nietzsche. he shows that nietzsche differed vastly from the average, every-day german of his time, and even from the average german of superior culture--that he thought differently, wrote differently, admired different heroes and believed in different gods--but he by no means proves thereby that nietzsche's processes of thought were morbid or infirm, or that the conclusions he reached were invalid _a priori._ since nordau startled the world with his book, the lombrosan theory of degeneracy has lost ground among psychologists and pathologists, but it is still launched against nietzsche by an occasional critic, and so it deserves to be noticed. nordau's discussion of nietzsche's insanity is rather more intelligent than his discussion of the philosopher's alleged degeneracy, if only because his facts are less open to dispute, but here, too, he forgets that the proof of an idea is not to be sought in the soundness of the man fathering it, but in the soundness of the idea itself. one asks of a pudding, not if the cook who offers it is a good woman, but if the pudding itself is good. nordau, in attempting to dispose of nietzsche's philosophy on the ground that the author died a madman, succeeds only in piling up a mass of uncontroverted but irrelevant accusations. he shows that nietzsche was an utter believer in his own wisdom, that he had a fondness for repeating certain favorite arguments _ad nauseam_, that he was violently impatient of criticism, that he chronically underestimated the man opposed to him, that he sometimes indulged in blasphemy for the sheer joy of shocking folks, and that he was often hypnotized by the exuberance of his own verbosity, but it must be plain that this indictment has its effective answer in the fact that it might be found with equal justice against almost any revolutionary enthusiast one selected at random--for example, savonarola, tolstoi, luther, ibsen, garrison, phillips, wilkes, bakúnin, marx, or nordau himself. that nietzsche died insane is undoubted, and that his insanity was not sudden in its onset is also plain, and one may even admit frankly that it is visible, here and there, in his writings, particularly those of his last year or two; but that his principal doctrines, the ideas upon which his fame are based, are the fantasies of a maniac is certainly wholly false. had he sought to prove that cows had wings, it might be fair today to dismiss him as nordau attempts to dismiss him. but when he essayed to prove that christianity impeded progress, he laid down a proposition that, whatever its novelty and daring, was obviously not irrational, and neither was there anything irrational in the reasoning whereby he supported it. one need go no further for proof of this than the fact that multitudes of sane men, while he lived and since his death, have debated that proposition in all seriousness and found a plentiful food for sober thought in nietzsche's statement and defense of it. ibsen also passed out of life in mental darkness, and so did schumann, but no reasonable critic would seek thereby to deny all intelligibility to "peer gynt" or to the piano quintet in e flat. again, it is nordau who chiefly voices the second of the objections noted at the beginning of this chapter, though here many another self-confessed serpent of wisdom follows him. nietzsche, he says, tore down without building up, and died without having formulated any workable substitute for the christian morality he denounced. even to the reader who has got no further into nietzsche than the preceding chapters of this book, the absurdity of such a charge must be manifest without argument. no man, indeed, ever left a more comprehensive system of ethics, not even comte or herbert spencer, and if it be true that he scattered it through a dozen books and that he occasionally modified it in some of its details, it is equally true that his fundamental principles were always stated with perfect clearness and that they remained substantially unchanged from first to last. but even supposing that he had died before he had arranged his ideas in a connected and coherent form, and that it had remained for his disciples to deduce and group his final conclusions, and to rid the whole of inconsistency--even then it would have been possible to study those conclusions seriously and to accept them for what they were worth. nordau lays it down as an axiom that a man cannot be a reformer unless he proposes some ready-made and perfectly symmetrical scheme of things to take the place of the notions he seeks to overturn, that if he does not do this he is a mere hurler of bricks and shouter of blasphemies. but all of us know that this is not true. nearly every considerable reform the world knows has been accomplished, not by one man, but by many men working in series. it seldom happens, indeed, that the man who first points out the necessity for change lives long enough to see that change accomplished, or even to define its precise manner and terms. nietzsche himself was not the first critic of christian morality, nor did he so far dispose of the question that he left no room for successors. but he made a larger contribution to it than any man had ever made before him, and the ideas he contributed were so acute and so convincing that they must needs be taken into account by every critic who comes after him. so much for the first two arguments against the prophet of the superman. both raise immaterial objections and the second makes an allegation that is grotesquely untrue. the other three are founded upon sounder logic, and, when maintained skillfully, afford more reasonable ground for objecting to the nietzschean system, either as a whole or in part. it would be interesting, perhaps, to attempt a complete review of the literature embodying them, but that would take a great deal more space than is here available, and so we must be content with a glance at a few typical efforts at refutation. one of the most familiar of these appears in the argument that the messianic obligation of self-sacrifice, whatever its cost, has yet yielded the race a large profit--that we are the better for our christian charity and that we owe it entirely to christianity. this argument has been best put forward, perhaps, by bennett hume, an englishman. if it were not for christian charity, says mr. hume, there would be no hospitals and asylums for the sick and insane, and in consequence, no concerted and effective effort to make man more healthy and efficient. therefore, he maintains, it must be admitted that the influence of christianity, as a moral system, has been for the good of the race. but this argument, in inspection, quickly goes to pieces, and for two reasons. in the first place, it must be obvious that the advantages of preserving the unfit, few of whom ever become wholly fit again, are more than dubious; and in the second place, it must be plain that modern humanitarianism, in so far as it is scientific and unsentimental and hence profitable, is so little a purely christian idea that the christian church, even down to our own time, has actually opposed it. no man, indeed, can read dr. andrew d. white's great history of the warfare between science and the church without carrying away the conviction that such great boons as the conquest of smallpox and malaria, the development of surgery, the improved treatment of the insane, and the general lowering of the death rate have been brought about, not by the maudlin alms-giving of christian priests, but by the intelligent meliorism of rebels against a blind faith, ruthless in their ways and means but stupendously successful in their achievement. another critic, this time a frenchman, alfred fouillée by name,[1] chooses as his point of attack the nietzschean doctrine that a struggle is welcome and beneficial to the strong, that intelligent self-seeking, accompanied by a certain willingness to take risks, is the road of progress. a struggle, argues m. fouillée, always means an expenditure of strength, and strength, when so expended, is further weakened by the opposing strength it arouses and stimulates. darwin is summoned from his tomb to substantiate this argument, but its exponent seems to forget (while actually stating it!) the familiar physiological axiom, so often turned to by darwin, that strength is one of the effects of use, and the darwinian corollary that disuse, whether produced by organized protection or in some other way, leads inevitably to weakness and atrophy. in other words, the ideal strong man of m. fouillée's dream is one who seeks, with great enthusiasm, the readiest possible way of ridding himself of his strength. nordau, violet paget and various other critics attack nietzsche from much the same side. that is to say, they endeavor to controvert his criticism of humility and self-sacrifice and to show that the law of natural selection, with its insistence that only the fittest shall survive, is insufficient to insure human progress. miss paget, for example,[2] argues that if there were no belief in every man's duty to yield something to his weaker brother the race would soon become a herd of mere wild beasts. she sees humility as a sort of brake or governor, placed upon humanity to keep it from running amuck. a human being is so constituted, she says, that he necessarily looms in his own view as large as all the rest of the world put together. this distortion of values is met with in the consciousness of every individual, and if there were nothing to oppose it, it would lead to a hopeless conflict between exaggerated egos. humility, says miss paget, tempers the conflict, without wholly ending it. a man's inherent tendency to magnify his own importance and to invite death by trying to force that view upon others is held in check by the idea that it is his duty to consider the welfare of those others. the objection to all this is that the picture of humility miss paget draws is not at all a picture of self-sacrifice, of something founded upon an unselfish idea of duty, but a picture of highly intelligent egoism. whatever his pharisaical account of his motives, it must be obvious that her christian gentleman is merely a man who throws bones to the dogs about him. between such wise prudence and the immolation of the beatitudes a wide gulf is fixed. as a matter of fact, that prudence is certainly not opposed by nietzsche. the higher man of his visions is far from a mere brawler. he is not afraid of an open fight, and he is never held back by fear of hurting his antagonist, but he also understands that there are times for truce and guile. in brief, his self-seeking is conducted, not alone by his fists, but also by his head. he knows when to pounce upon his foes and rivals, but he also knows when to keep them from pouncing upon him. thus miss paget's somewhat elaborate refutation, though it leads to an undoubtedly sound conclusion, by no means disposes of nietzsche. the other branches of the argument that self-sacrifice is beneficial open an endless field of debate, in which the same set of facts is often susceptible of diametrically opposite interpretations. we have already glanced at the alleged effects of christian charity upon progress, and observed the enormous difference between sentimental efforts to preserve the unfit and intelligent efforts to make them fit, and we have seen how practical christianity, whatever its theoretical effects, has had the actual effect of furthering the former and hindering the latter. it is often argued that there is unfairness in thus burdening the creed with the crimes of the church, but how the two are to be separated is never explained. what sounder test of a creed's essential value can we imagine than that of its visible influence upon the men who subscribe to it? and what sounder test of its terms than the statement of its ordained teachers and interpreters, supported by the unanimous approval of all who profess it? we are here dealing, let it be remembered, not with esoteric doctrines, but with practical doctrines--that is to say, with working policies. if the christian ideal of charity is to be defended as a working policy, then it is certainly fair to examine it at work. and when that is done the reflective observer is almost certain to conclude that it is opposed to true progress, that it acts as a sentimental shield to the unfit without helping them in the slightest to shake off their unfitness. what is more, it stands contrary to that wise forethought which sacrifices one man today that ten may be saved tomorrow. nothing could be more patent, indeed, than the high cost to humanity of the christian teaching that it is immoral to seek the truth outside the word of god, or to take thought of an earthly tomorrow, or to draw distinctions in value between beings who all possess souls of infinite, and therefore of exactly equal preciousness. but setting aside the doctrine that self-sacrifice is a religious duty, there remains the doctrine that it is a measure of expediency, that when the strong help the weak they also help themselves. let it be said at once that this second doctrine, provided only it be applied intelligently and without any admixture of sentimentality, is not in opposition to anything in nietzsche's philosophy. on the contrary, he is at pains to point out the value of exploiting the inefficient masses, and obviously that exploitation is impossible without some concession to their habits and desires, some offer, however fraudulent, of a _quid pro quo_--and unprofitable unless they can be made to yield more than they absorb. for one thing, there is the business of keeping the lower castes in health. they themselves are too ignorant and lazy to manage it, and therefore it must be managed by their betters. when we appropriate money from the public funds to pay for vaccinating a horde of negroes, we do not do it because we have any sympathy for them or because we crave their blessings, but simply because we don't want them to be falling ill of smallpox in our kitchens and stables, to the peril of our own health and the neglect of our necessary drudgery.[3] in so far as the negroes have any voice in the matter at all, they protest against vaccination, for they can't understand its theory and so they see only its tyranny, but we vaccinate them nevertheless, and thus increase their mass efficiency in spite of them. it costs something to do the work, but we see a profit in it. here we have a good example of self-sacrifice based frankly upon expediency, and nietzsche has nothing to say against it. but what he does insist upon is that we must beware of mixing sentimentality with the business, that we must keep the idea of expediency clear of any idea of altruism. the trouble with the world, as he describes it, is that such a corruption almost always takes place. that is to say, we too often practise charity, not because it is worth while, but merely because it is pleasant. the christian ideal, he says, "knows how to enrapture." starting out from the safe premise, approved by human experience, that it is sometimes a virtue--_i.e._, a measure of intelligent prudence--to help the weak, we proceed to the illogical conclusion that it is _always_ a virtue. hence our wholesale coddling of the unfit, our enormous expenditure upon vain schemes of amelioration, our vain efforts to combat the laws of nature. we nurse the defective children of the lower classes into some appearance of health, and then turn them out to beget their kind. we parole the pickpocket, launch him upon society with a tract in his hand--and lose our pocket-books next day. we send missionaries to the heathen, build hospitals for them, civilize and educate them--and later on have to fight them. we save a pauper consumptive today, on the ostensible theory that he is more valuable saved than dead--and so open the way for saving his innumerable grandchildren in the future. in brief, our self-sacrifice of expediency seldom remains undefiled. nine times out of ten a sentimental color quickly overcomes it, and soon or late there is apt to be more sentimentality in it than expediency. what is worse, this sentimentalism results in attaching a sort of romantic glamour to its objects. just as the sunday-school teaching virgin, beginning by trying to save the chinese laundryman's soul, commonly ends by falling in love with him, so the virtuoso of any other sort of charity commonly ends by endowing its beneficiary with a variety of imaginary virtues. sympathy, by some subtle alchemy, is converted into a sneaking admiration. "blessed are the poor in spirit" becomes "blessed are the poor." this exaltation of inefficiency, it must be manifest, is a dangerous error. there is, in fact, nothing at all honorable about unfitness, considered in the mass. on the contrary, it is invariably a symptom of actual dishonor--of neglect, laziness, ignorance and depravity--if not primarily in the individual himself, then at least in his forebears, whose weakness he carries on. it is highly important that this fact should be kept in mind by the human race, that the essential inferiority of the inefficient should be insisted upon, that the penalties of deliberate slackness should be swift and merciless. but as it is, those penalties are too often reduced to nothing by charity, while the offense they should punish is elevated to a fictitious martyrdom. thus we have charity converted into an instrument of debauchery. thus we have it playing the part of an active agent of decay, and so increasing the hazards of life on earth. "we may compare civilized man," says sir ray lankester,[4] "to a successful rebel against nature, who by every step forward renders himself liable to greater and greater penalties." no need to offer cases in point. every one of us knows what the poor laws of england have accomplished in a hundred years--how they have multiplied misery enormously and created a caste of professional paupers--how they have seduced that caste downward into depths of degradation untouched by any other civilized race in history--and how, by hanging the crushing burden of that caste about the necks of the english people, they have helped to weaken and sicken the whole stock and to imperil the future of the nation. so much for the utility of self-sacrifice--undeniable, perhaps, so long as a wise and ruthless foresight rules, but immediately questionable when sentimentality enters into the matter. there remains the answer in rebuttal that sentimentality, after all, is native to the soul of man, that we couldn't get rid of it if we tried. herein, if we look closely, we will observe tracks of an idea that has colored the whole stream of human thought since the dawn of western philosophy, and is accepted today, as irrefutably true, by all who pound pulpits and wave their arms and call upon their fellow men to repent. it has clogged all ethical inquiry for two thousand years, it has been a premise in a million moral syllogisms, it has survived the assaults of all the iconoclasts that ever lived. it is taught in all our schools today and lies at the bottom of all our laws, prophecies and revelations. it is the foundation and cornerstone, not only of christianity, but also of every other compound of theology and morality known in the world. and what is this king of all axioms and emperor of all fallacies? simply the idea that there are rules of "natural morality" engraven indelibly upon the hearts of man--that all men, at all times and everywhere, have ever agreed, do now agree and will agree forevermore, unanimously and without reservation, that certain things are right and certain other things are wrong, that certain things are nice and certain other things are not nice, that certain things are pleasing to god and certain other things are offensive to god. in every treatise upon christian ethics and "natural theology," so called, you will find these rules of "natural morality" in the first chapter. thomas aquinas called them "the eternal law." even the greeks and romans, for all their skepticism in morals, had a sneaking belief in them. aristotle tried to formulate them and the latin lawyers constantly assumed their existence. most of them are held in firm faith today by all save a small minority of the folk of christendom. the most familiar of them, perhaps, is the rule against murder--the sixth commandment. another is the rule against the violation of property in goods, wives and cattle--the eighth and tenth commandments. a third is the rule upon which the solidity of the family is based, and with it the solidity of the tribe--the fifth commandment. the theory behind these rules is, not only that they are wise, but that they are innate and sempiternal, that every truly enlightened man recognizes their validity intuitively, and is conscious of sin when he breaks them. to them christianity added an eleventh commandment, a sort of infinite extension of the fifth, "that ye love one another"[5]--and in two thousand years it has been converted from a novelty into a universality. that is to say, its point of definite origin has been lost sight of, and it has been moved over into the group of "natural virtues," of "eternal laws." when christ first voiced it, in his discourse at the last supper, it was so far from general acceptance that he named a belief in it as one of the distinguishing marks of his disciples, but now our moralists tell us that it is in the blood of all of us, and that we couldn't repudiate it if we would. brotherhood, indeed, is the very soul of christianity, and the only effort of the pious today is to raise it from a universal theory to a universal fact. but the truth is, of course, that it is not universal at all, and that nothing in the so-called soul of man prompts him to subscribe to it. we cling to it today, not because it is inherent in us, but simply because it is the moral fashion of our age. when the disciples first heard it put into terms, it probably struck them as a revolutionary novelty, and on some dim tomorrow our descendants may regard it as an archaic absurdity. in brief, rules of morality are wholly temporal and temporary, for the good and sufficient reason that there is no "natural morality" in man--and the sentimental rule that the strong shall give of their strength to the weak is no exception. there have been times in the history of the race when few, if any intelligent men subscribed to it, and there are thousands of intelligent men who refuse to subscribe to it today, and no doubt there will come a time when those who are against it will once more greatly outnumber those who are in favor of it. so with all other "eternal laws." their eternality exists only in the imagination of those who seek to glorify them. nietzsche himself spent his best years demonstrating this, and we have seen how he set about the task--how he showed that the "good" of one race and age was the "bad" of some other race and age--how the "natural morality" of the periclean greeks, for example, differed diametrically from the "natural morality" of the captive jews. all history bears him out. mankind is ever revising and abandoning its "inherent" ideas. we say today that the human mind instinctively revolts against cruel punishments, and yet a moment's reflection recalls the fact that the world is, and always has been peopled by millions to whom cruelty, not only to enemies but to the weak in general, seems and has seemed wholly natural and agreeable. we say that man has an "innate" impulse to be fair and just, and yet it is a commonplace observation that multitudes of men, in the midst of our most civilized societies, have little more sense of justice than so many jackals. therefore, we may safely set aside the argument that a "natural" instinct for sentimental self-sacrifice stands as an impassable barrier to nietzsche's dionysian philosophy. there is no such barrier. there is no such instinct. it is an idea merely--an idea powerful and persistent, but still mutable and mortal. certainly, it is absurd to plead it in proof against the one man who did most to establish its mutability. we come now to the final argument against nietzsche--the argument, to wit, that, even admitting his criticism of christian morality to be well-founded, he offers nothing in place of it that would serve the world as well. the principal spokesman of this objection, perhaps, is paul elmer more, who sets it forth at some length in his hostile but very ingenious little study of nietzsche.[6] mr. more goes back to locke to show the growth of the two ideas which stand opposed as socialism and individualism, christianity and nietzscheism today. so long, he says, as man believed in revelation, there was no genuine effort to get at the springs of human action, for every impulse that was ratified by the scriptures was believed to be natural and moral, and every impulse that went counter to the scriptures was believed to be sinful, even by those who yielded to it habitually. but when that idea was cleared away, there arose a need for something to take its place, and locke came forward with his theory that the notion of good was founded upon sensations of pleasure and that of bad upon sensations of pain. there followed hume, with his elaborate effort to prove that sympathy was a source of pleasure, by reason of its grateful tickling of the sense of virtue, and so the new conception of good finally stood erect, with one foot on frank self-interest and the other on sympathy. mr. more shows how, during the century following, the importance of the second of these factors began to be accentuated, under the influence of rousseau and his followers, and how, in the end, the first was forgotten almost entirely and there arose a non-christian sentimentality which was worse, if anything, than the sentimentality of the beatitudes. in england, france and germany it colored almost the whole of philosophy, literature and politics. stray men, true enough, raised their voices against it, but its sweep was irresistible. its fruits were diverse and memorable--the romantic movement in germany, humanitarianism in england, the kantian note in ethics, and, most important of all, socialism. that this exaltation of sympathy was imprudent, and that its effects, in our own time, are far from satisfactory, mr. more is disposed to grant freely. it is perfectly true, as nietzsche argues, that humanitarianism has been guilty of gross excesses, that there is a "danger that threatens true progress in any system of education and government which makes the advantage of the average rather than the distinguished man its chief object." but mr. more holds that the danger thus inherent in sympathy is matched by a danger inherent in selfishness, that we are no worse off on one horn of hume's dual ethic than we should be on the other. sympathy unbalanced by self-seeking leads us into maudlin futilities and crimes against efficiency; self-seeking unchecked by sympathy would lead us into sheer savagery. if there is any choice between the two, that choice is probably in favor of sympathy, for the reason that it is happily impossible of realization. the most lachrymose of the romantics, in the midst of their sentimentalizing, were yet careful of their own welfare. many of them, indeed, displayed a quite extraordinary egoism, and there was some justice in byron's sneer that sterne, for one, preferred weeping over a dead ass to relieving the want (at cost to himself) of a living mother. but in urging all this against nietzsche, mr. more and the other destructive critics of the superman make a serious error, and that is the error of assuming that nietzsche hoped to abolish christian morality completely, that he proposed a unanimous desertion of the idea of sympathy for the idea of intelligent self-seeking. as a matter of fact, he had no such hope and made no such proposal. nothing was more firmly fixed in his mind, indeed, than the notion that the vast majority of men would cling indefinitely, and perhaps for all time, to some system of morality more or less resembling the christian morality of today. not only did he have no expectation of winning that majority from its idols, but he bitterly resented any suggestion that such a result might follow from his work. the whole of his preaching was addressed, not to men in the mass, but to the small minority of exceptional men--not to those who live by obeying, but to those who live by commanding--not to the race as a race, but only to its masters. it would seem to be impossible that any reader of nietzsche should overlook this important fact, and yet it is constantly overlooked by most of his critics. they proceed to prove, elaborately and, it must be said, quite convincingly, that if his transvaluation of values were made by all men, the world would be no better off than it is today, and perhaps a good deal worse, but all they accomplish thereby is to demolish a hobgoblin of straw. nietzsche himself sensed the essential value of hume's dualism. what he sought to do was not to destroy it, but to restore it, and, restoring it, to raise it to a state of active conflict--to dignify self-interest as sympathy has been dignified, and so to put the two in perpetual opposition. he believed that the former was by long odds the safer impulse for the higher castes of men to follow, if only because of its obviously closer kinship to the natural laws which make for progress upward, but by the same token he saw that these higher castes could gain nothing by disturbing the narcotic contentment of the castes lower down. therefore, he was, to that extent, an actual apologist for the thing he elsewhere so bitterly attacked. sympathy, self-sacrifice, charity--these ideas lulled and satisfied the chandala, and so he was content to have the chandala hold to them. "whom do i hate most among the rabble of today? the socialist who undermines the workingman's instincts, who destroys his satisfaction with his insignificant existence, who makes him envious and teaches him revenge."[7] in brief, nietzsche dreamed no dream of all mankind converted into a race of supermen: the only vision he saw was one of supermen at the top. to make an end, his philosophy was wholly aristocratic, in aim as well as in terms. he believed that superior men, by which he meant alert and restless men, were held in chains by the illusions and inertia of the mass--that their impulse to move forward and upward, at whatever cost to those below, was restrained by false notions of duty and responsibility. it was his effort to break down those false notions, to show that the progress of the race was more important than the comfort of the herd, to combat and destroy the lingering spectre of sin--in his own phrase, to make man innocent. but when he said man he always meant the higher man, the man of tomorrow, and not mere men. for the latter he had only contempt: he sneered at their heroes, at their ideals, at their definitions of good and evil. "there are only three ways," he said, "in which the masses appear to me to deserve a glance: first, as blurred copies of their betters, printed on bad paper and from worn-out plates; secondly, as a necessary opposition; and thirdly, as tools. further than that i hand them over to statistics--and the devil.[8] ... i am writing for a race of men which does not yet exist. i am writing for the lords of the earth."[9] [1] author of "_nietzsche et l'immoralisme_" and other books. the argument discussed appears in an article in the _international monthly_ for march, 1901, pp. 134-165. [2] in the _north american review_ for dec., 1904. [3] a more extended treatment of this point will be found in "men _vs._ the man," by robert rives la monte and the present author: new york, 1910. [4] in "the kingdom of man," london, 1907. [5] john xiii, 34. [6] "nietzsche," boston, 1912. reprinted in "the drift of romanticism," pp. 147-190, boston, 1913. [7] "_der antichrist_," 57. [8] "_vom nutzen und nachtheil der historie für das leben_," ix. [9] "_der wille zur macht_", 958. how to study nietzsche through the diligence and enthusiasm of dr. oscar levy, author of "the revival of aristocracy," a german by birth but for some time a resident of london, the whole canon of nietzsche's writings is now to be had in english translation. so long ago as 1896 a complete edition in eleven volumes was projected, and dr. alexander tille, lecturer on german in the university of glasgow, and author of "_von darwin bis nietzsche_," was engaged to edit it. but though it started fairly with a volume including "the case of wagner" and "the antichrist," and four more volumes followed after a year or so, it got no further than that. ten years later came dr. levy. he met with little encouragement when he began, but by dint of unfailing perseverance he finally gathered about him a corps of competent translators, made arrangements with publishers in great britain and the united states, and got the work under way. his eighteenth and last volume was published early in 1913. these translations, in the main, are excellent, and explanatory prefaces and notes are added wherever needed. the contents of the various volumes are as follows: i. "the birth of tragedy," translated by wm. a. haussmann, ph. d., with a biographical introduction by frau förster-nietzsche, a portrait of nietzsche, and a facsimile of his manuscript. ii. "early greek philosophy and other essays," translated by maximilian a. mügge, ph. d., author of "friedrich nietzsche: his life and work." contents: "the greek woman," "on music and words," "homer's contest," "the relation of schopenhauer's philosophy to a german culture," "philosophy during the tragic age of the greeks," and "on truth and falsity in their ultramoral sense." iii. "on the future of our educational institutions" and "homer and classical philology," translated by j. m. kennedy, author of "the quintessence of nietzsche," with an introduction by the translator. iv. "thoughts out of season," i ("david strauss, the confessor and the writer" and "richard wagner in bayreuth"), translated by anthony m. ludovici, author of "nietzsche: his life and works," "nietzsche and art," and "who is to be master of the world?" with an introduction by dr. levy and a preface by the translator. v. "thoughts out of season," ii ("the use and abuse of history" and "schopenhauer as educator"), translated by adrian collins, m. a., with an introduction by the translator. vi. "human all-too human," i, translated by helen zimmern, with an introduction by j. m. kennedy. vii. "human all-too human," ii, translated by paul v. cohn, b. a., with an introduction by the translator. viii. "the case of wagner" (including "nietzsche _contra_ wagner" and selected aphorisms), translated by a. m. ludovici, and "we philologists," translated by j. m. kennedy, with prefaces by the translators. ix. "the dawn of day," translated by j. m. kennedy, with an introduction by the translator. x. "the joyful wisdom," translated by thomas common, author of "nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet" (including "songs of prince free-as-a-bird," translated by paul v. cohn and maude d. petre). xi. "thus spake zarathustra," translated by thomas common, with an introduction by frau förster-nietzsche and explanatory notes by a. m. ludovici. xii. "beyond good and evil," translated by helen zimmern, with an introduction by thomas common. xiii. "the genealogy of morals," translated by horace b. samuel, m. a., and "people and countries," translated by j. m. kennedy, with an editor's note by dr. levy. xiv. "the will to power," i, translated by a. m. ludovici, with a preface by the translator. xv. "the will to power," ii, translated by a. m. ludovici, with a preface by the translator. xvi. "the twilight of the idols" (including "the antichrist," "eternal recurrence" and explanatory notes to "thus spake zarathustra"), translated by a. m. ludovici, with a preface by the translator. xvii. "ecce homo," translated by a. m. ludovici; various songs, epigrams and dithyrambs, translated by paul v. cohn, herman scheffauer, francis bickley and dr. g. t. wrench; and the music of nietzsche's "hymn to life" (words by lou salomé), with an introduction by mr. ludovici, a note to the poetry by dr. levy, and a reproduction of karl donndorf's bust of nietzsche. xviii. index. the student who would read nietzsche had better begin with one of the aphoristic books, preferably "the dawn of day." from that let him proceed to "beyond good and evil," "the genealogy of morals" and "the antichrist." he will then be ready to understand "thus spake zarathustra." later on he may read "ecce homo" and dip into "the joyful wisdom," "human all-too human" and "the will to power," as his fancy suggests. the wagner pamphlets are of more importance to wagnerians than to students of nietzsche's ideas, and the early philological and critical essays have lost much of their interest by the passage of time. nietzsche's poetry had better be avoided by all who cannot read it in the original german. the english translations are mostly very free and seldom satisfactory. of the larger nietzschean commentaries in english the best is "friedrich nietzsche: his life and work," by m. a. mügge. appended to it is a bibliography of 850 titles--striking evidence of the attention that nietzsche's ideas have gained in the world. other books that will be found useful are "the quintessence of nietzsche," by j. m. kennedy; "nietzsche: his life and works," by anthony m. ludovici; "the gospel of superman," by henri lichtenberger, translated from the french by j. m. kennedy; "the philosophy of nietzsche," by georges chatterton-hill, and "the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche," by grace neal dolson, ph. d., this last a pioneer work of permanent value. lesser studies are to be found in "friedrich nietzsche," by a. r. orage; "nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet," by thomas common; "friedrich nietzsche and his new gospel," by emily s. hamblen, and "nietzsche," by paul elmer more. interesting discussions of various nietzschean ideas are in "the revival of aristocracy," by dr. oscar levy; "who is to be master of the world?" by a. m. ludovici; "on the tracks of life," by leo g. sera, translated from the italian by j. m. kennedy; "nietzsche and art," by a. m. ludovici, and "the mastery of life," by g. t. wrench. selections from nietzsche's writings are put together under subject headings in "nietzsche in outline and aphorism," by a. r. orage; "nietzsche: his maxims," by j. m. kennedy, and "the gist of nietzsche," by h. l. mencken. an elaborate and invaluable summary of all nietzsche's writings, book by book, is to be found in "what nietzsche taught," by willard h. wright. this volume, the fruit of very diligent labor, is admirably concise and well-ordered. the standard biography of nietzsche is "_das leben friedrich nietzsches_" by frau förster-nietzsche, a large work in three volumes. in 1911 frau förster-nietzsche prepared a shorter version and this has since been done into english by a. m. ludovici, and published in two volumes, under the title of "the life of nietzsche." unluckily, so devoted a sister was not the best person to deal with certain episodes in the life of her brother and hero. the gaps she left and the ameliorations she attempted are filled and corrected in "the life of friedrich nietzsche," by daniel halévy, translated from the french by j. m. hone, with an extraordinarily brilliant introduction by t. m. kettle, m. p. small but suggestive studies of nietzsche and his ideas are to be found in "egoists," "mezzotints in modern music," and "the pathos of distance," by james huneker; "degeneration," by max nordau; "affirmations," by havelock ellis; "aristocracy and evolution," by w. h. mallock; "heretics" and "orthodoxy," by g. k. chesterton; "lectures and essays on natural theology," by william wallace; "heralds of revolt," by william barry, d. d.; "essays in sociology," by j. m. robertson; "the larger aspects of socialism," by william english walling; "three modern seers," by mrs. havelock ellis; "slaves to duty," by j. badcock; "in peril of change," by c. f. g. masterman; "man's place in the cosmos," by a. seth pringle pattison; and "gospels of anarchy," by vernon lee (violet paget). george bernard shaw's variations upon nietzschean themes are in "the revolutionist's handbook," appended to "man and superman." of magazine articles dealing with the prophet of the superman there has been no end of late. most of them are worthless, but any bearing the name of grace neal dolson, thomas common, thomas stockham baker or maude d. petre may be read with profit. one of the best discussions of nietzsche i have ever encountered was contributed to the _catholic world_ during december, 1905, and january, february, march, may and june, 1906, by miss petre. it is to be regretted that these excellent papers, which sought to rescue nietzsche from the misunderstandings of christian critics, have not been re-printed in book-form. index adieu, i must go!, patriotic song _amor fati_ anarchism andreas-salomé, _see_ salomé. antichrist, the- publication of quotations from style of english translation of apollo- first conception of god of music and poetry influence of conflict with dionysus aquinas, thomas arcelaus aristocracy art for art's sake asceticism, 21 _footnote_ atheism bacchus dionysus- first conception of imported into greece god of strenuous life conflict with apollo nietzsche a dionysian bad, definition of badcock, j. baker, thomas stockham balfour, a. j. barry, wm. basel, university of- nietzsche appointed prof. lectures on greek drama in academic society leave of absence resigns professorship in asylum at income at beauty, the idea of beer, nietzsche's dislike of beyle, marie henri, _see_ stendhal. beyond good and evil- publication of quotations from argument of english translation of beyond-man, _see_ higher man. bible, nietzsche's knowledge of bible, quotations from bickley, francis birth of tragedy, the- its genesis and publication doctrine of quotation from revised english translation of bizet's music blake, william blond beast bonn, nietzsche's career at bradley, henry brandes, georg buddhism burkhardt, prof. butler, samuel callicles castes _catholic world_ celibacy chamfort chandala, _see_ masses. charity chatterton-hill, georges chesterton, g. k. chivalry chloral, nietzsche's use of christian science christianity- nietzsche's indictment of scientific revolt against its dogmas examined free will vs. determinism its slave-morality charity opposition to natural selection nietzsche's attack on self-sacrifice origin of christianity cohn, paul v. college, american collins, adrian commercialism common, thomas comte, auguste conscience, the nature of costume cron, bernard, _see_ gast. crucifixion, the culture, german dancing darwin, charles david strauss, the confessor and the writer- publication of quotation from english translation of _see also_ strauss, david. dawn of day, the- publication of quotations from english translation of death- the right to die regulation of attitude at death of nietzsche decalogue degeneracy, nietzsche's alleged degeneration, nordau's book democracy descartes desire determinism diderot diogenes laërtius, early essay on dionysus, _see_ bacchus. dionysus, the philosophy of eternal recurrence, plan of proposed book doctor of philosophy dolson, grace neal donndorf, karl drama, greek draper, j. w. dreams dualism ecce homo- publication of quotations from english translation of education, perils of state aid egoism, stirner's elective affinities ellis, havelock ellis, mrs. havelock emerson, ralph waldo empedocles encyclopedists, french engadine, summers in english translation of nietzsche englishmen eternal recurrence- origin of the idea its fascinations for nietzsche effect on superman european, the good eusebius, pamphilius evil, definition of; _see also_ bad. falckenberg, richard faust fiske, john fite, warner flaubert, gustav fontenelle förster-nietzsche, elisabeth, nietzsche's sister- her biography of her brother editor of his works marriage and widowhood relations with nietzsche fouillée, alfred franco-prussian war, service in free spirit free spirit, the, plan of proposed book free will freedom friedrich wilhelm iv. gast, peter gaultier, jules de genealogy of morals, the- publication of quotations from english translation of genoa gentleman, the gobineau god, the idea of goethe golden rule good, definition of gould, dr. george m. grave of my father, the, early poem greatness, definition of greek art, nietzsche's theory of greek drama, early essays on greek philosophy and other essays greek woman, the, essay greeks, influence on nietzsche greeley, horace haeckel, ernst halévy, daniel hamblen, emily s. happiness, definitions of happiness, unattainable haussmann, william a. headaches, nietzsche's hegel hegesippus heine, heinrich hellen, e. von der helvétius heracleitus herder _herrenmoral, see_ master-morality. hesiod higher man history, function of history, on the good and bad effects of upon human life- publication of quotations from english translation of hobbes, thomas hölderlin, friedrich homer and classical philology, essay hone, j. m. human, all-too human- publication of first volume effect of upon friends and public quotations from second and third volumes english translation of hume, bennett hume, david humility huneker, james huxley, thomas h. hymn to life hypochondria, nietzsche's ibsen, henrik _ideen_ immoralist, the, plan of proposed book income, nietzsche's inopportune speculations- first volume plan of quotation from english translation of insanity, nietzsche's jenner jews joel, karl jones, henry arthur joyful science, the- publication of quotation from english translation of kant, immanuel kennedy, j. m. kettle, t. m. kipling, rudyard klopstock koegel, fritz krafft-ebing, r. von krause, dr., nietzsche's great-uncle krause, frau, nietzsche's great-grandmother la bruyère lady, the la monte, robert rives lankester, e. ray la rochefoucauld law, origin of legislation, freak leipsic, student days at lessing levy, oscar liberty, the worth of lichtenberger, henri liszt, franz _litterarischen vereinigung mania, der_ locke, john lombroso, cesare _l'origine de la famille de nietzsche_ love, nature of low, sidney ludovici, anthony m. machiavelli maggiore, lake mallock, w. h. malthus mammal, man as a man, meaning of the word mandeville marienbad markby, william marriage, _see_ women. marx, karl masochism masses, the masterman, c. f. g. master-morality maternity mencken, h. l. mentone messiah, the, handel oratorio meysenbug, fräulein von military service miscellaneous opinions and aphorisms mohammedanism monarchy monism montaigne moonlight on the pussta, composition moral order of the world morality- definitions of expression of expedience how it becomes fixed master and slave morality nietzsche's criticism of more, paul elmer mügge, m. a. music, nietzsche's compositions music, nietzsche's love of natural morality natural selection, _see_ struggle for existence. naumann, c. g. naumburg, nietzsche at new thought nice nicholas of cusa nietzsche, ermentrude, nietzsche's grandmother nietzsche, friedrich wilhelm, his characteristics- as a boy pride in his polish descent love of music a brilliant pupil his dislike of _biergemüthlichkeit_ drug-taking as a professor method of writing his intolerance personal appearance illnesses insanity literary style women relations to his sister nietzsche, friedrich wilhelm, his life- birth boyhood at naumburg first writings at pforta matriculates at bonn student of ritschl removes to leipsic military service first philological work discovery of schopenhauer takes his degree professor at basel first breakdown publishes "the birth of tragedy" other early essays meeting with wagner meeting with rée human, all-too human affair with lou salomé failing health income breakdown at turin death nietzsche, josef, nietzsche's brother nietzsche, karl ludwig, nietzsche's father nietzsche, therese elisabeth alexandra, nietzsche's sister, _see_ förster-nietzsche. nietzsche versus wagner- publication of english translation of nietzschy nirvana nobility nordau, max orage, a. r. osler, william overbeck, franz paganism, nietzsche's paget, violet (vernon lee) paine, thomas parmenides parsons, elsie clews pasteur, louis pattison, a. seth pringle peace, universal petre, maude d. pfleiderer, otto pforta philologists, we, essay philosophy pindar, judge, of naumburg pleasure and pain plowshare, the poetry, nietzsche's polish origin of nietzsche family poor laws, effect of english prayer predestination priestcraft professor at basel progress, nietzsche's program of property rights proudhon pussta pyrrho pythagoras rée, paul- nietzsche's meeting with rivals in love influence on nietzsche renaissance, second richard wagner in bayreuth- publication of english translation of _see also_ wagner. ritschl, albrecht ritschl, frau ritschl, friedrich wilhelm robertson, j. m. röcken romantic movement in germany roosevelt, theodore rousseau st. austin sallust salomé, lou- meeting with nietzsche book on nietzsche marriage nietzsche's affair with hymn to life samuel, horace b. science, its aims scheffauer, hermann schiller schooldays at naumburg schopenhauer, arthur- nietzsche's discovery of the will-to-live nietzsche's divergence essay on influence on nietzsche schopenhauer as a teacher- publication of quotations from english translation of schumann, robert self-control sera, leo g. seydlitz, baron von shaw, g. bernard _silberblick_ sils maria sin, the christian idea of skepticism _sklavmoral, see_ slave-morality. slave-morality smith, adam social contract socialism socrates sorrento spencer, herbert spinoza state, origin of stendhal stirner, max strauss, david friedrich _see also_ david strauss, the confessor and the writer. strauss, richard, 55. struggle for existence style, nietzsche's german suicide superman- described his purposes his characteristics sympathy taine teacher, nietzsche as a teachers, their characteristics thoughts out of season, _see_ inopportune speculations. tille, alexander tobacco, nietzsche's dislike of tr----, fräulein, nietzsche's proposal to tragedy, its origin tribschen truth- definitions of its origin in error the scientific method turck, dr. turin, breakdown at twilight of the idols, the- publication of quotations from english translation of vauvenarges venice voltaire wagner, the case of- publication of quotation from english translation of wagner, cosima wagner, richard- meeting with nietzsche nietzsche visits at tribschen richard wagner in bayreuth burlesqued in thus spake zarathustra the case of wagner nietzsche vs. wagner nietzsche as a wagnerian wagner and schopenhauer parsifal bayreuth opening break with nietzsche nietzsche's last words on walker, j. l. wallace, alfred russell wallace, william walling, william english wanderer and his shadow, the war, benefits of war, heracleitus on weimar white, andrew d. wieland wife will-to-live will-to-power will-to-power, the- plan of proposed work notes published quotation from english translation of windelband, wilhelm women- nietzsche's personal attitude their chief duty their slave-morality sources of their weakness their guile man's attitude toward them marriage "don't forget thy whip!" schopenhauer on the lady wrench, g. t. wright, willard h. zarathustra, thus spake- publication of plan of quotations from richard strauss' tone-poem english translation of zeno zimmern, helen zoroaster, _see_ zarathustra. in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... mooc's, educational materials,...) images generously made available by the internet archive. what nietzsche taught by willard huntington wright i am writing for a race of men which does not yet exist: for "the lords of the earth." _the will to power_ new york b. w. huebsch 1915 to h. l. mencken the critic who has given the greatest impetus to the study of nietzsche in america contents portrait bust of nietzsche by professor karl donndorf, stuttgart _frontispiece_ introduction i biographical sketch ii "human, all-too-human," vols. i and ii iii "the dawn of day" iv "the joyful wisdom" v "thus spake zarathustra" vi "the eternal recurrence" vii "beyond good and evil" viii "the genealogy of morals" ix "the twilight of the idols" x "the antichrist" xi "the will to power," vol. i xii "the will to power," vol. ii bibliography introduction it is no longer possible to ignore the teachings of friedrich nietzsche, or to consider the trend of modern thought without giving the philosopher of the superman a prominent place in the list of thinkers who contributed to the store of present-day knowledge. his powerful and ruthless mind has had an influence on contemporary thought which even now, in the face of all the scholarly books of appreciation he has called forth, one is inclined to underestimate. no philosopher since kant has left so undeniable an imprint on modern thought. even schopenhauer, whose influence coloured the greater part of europe, made no such widespread impression. nietzsche has penetrated into both england and america, two countries strangely impervious to rigorous philosophic ideals. not only in ethics and literature do we find the moulding hand of nietzsche at work, invigorating and solidifying; but in pedagogics and in art, in politics and religion, the influence of his doctrines is to be encountered. the books and essays in german elucidating his philosophy constitute a miniature library. nearly as many books and articles have appeared in france, and the list of authors of these appreciations include many of the most noted modern scholars. spain and italy, likewise, have contributed works to an inquiry into his teachings; and in england and america numerous volumes dealing with the philosophy of the superman have appeared in recent years. in m. a. mügge's excellent biography, "friedrich nietzsche: his life and work," there is appended a bibliography containing 850 titles, and this list by no means includes all the books and articles devoted to a consideration of this philosopher's doctrines. in this regard one should note that this interest is not the result of a temporary popularity, such as that which has met the philosophical pieties of henri bergson. to the contrary, nietzsche's renown is gaining ground daily among serious-minded scholars, and his adherents have already reached the dimensions of a small army. but despite this appreciation there is still current an enormous amount of ignorance concerning his teachings. the very manner in which he wrote tended to bring about misunderstandings. viewed casually and without studious consideration, his books offer many apparent contradictions. his style, always elliptic and aphoristic, lends itself easily to quotation, and because of the startling and revolutionary nature of his utterances, many excerpts from his earlier works were widely circulated through the mediums of magazines and newspapers. these quotations, robbed of their context, very often gave rise to immature and erroneous judgments, with the result that the true meaning of his philosophy was often turned into false channels. many of his best-known aphorisms have taken on strange and unearthly meanings, and often the reverse of his gospel has gained currency and masqueraded as the original canon. to a great extent this misunderstanding has been unavoidable. systematisers, ever eager to bend a philosopher's statements to their own ends, have found in nietzsche's writings much material which, when carefully isolated, substantiated their own conclusions. on the other hand, the christian moralists, sensing in nietzsche a powerful and effective opponent, have attempted to disqualify his ethical system by presenting garbled portions of his attacks on christianity, omitting all the qualifying passages. it is impossible, however, to understand any of nietzsche's doctrines unless we consider them in their relation to the whole of his teachings. contrary to the general belief, nietzsche was not simply a destructive critic and a formulator of impossible and romantic concepts. his doctrine of the superman, which seems to be the principal stumbling block in the way of a rationalistic interpretation of his philosophy, is no vague dream unrelated to present humanity. nor was his chief concern with future generations. nietzsche devoted his research to immediate conditions and to the origin of those conditions. and--what is of greater importance--he left behind him a very positive and consistent system of ethics--a workable and entirely comprehensible code of conduct to meet present-day needs. this system was not formulated with the precision which no doubt would have attached to it in its final form had he been able to complete the plans he had outlined. yet there are few points in his code of ethics--and they are of minor importance--which cannot be found, clearly conceived and concisely stated, in the main body of his works. this system of conduct embraces every stage of society; and for the rulers to-day--the people for whom nietzsche directly voiced his teachings--he outlines a method of outer conduct and a set of inner ideals which meet with every modern condition. his proposed ethical routine is not based on abstract reasoning and speculative conclusions. it is a practical code which has its foundation implanted in the dominating instincts of the organic and inorganic world. it is directly opposed to the prevailing code, and has for its ideal the fulness of life itself--life intensified to the highest degree, life charged with a maximum of beauty, power, enthusiasm, virility, wealth and intoxication. it is the code of strength and courage. its goal is a race which will possess the hardier virtues of strength, confidence, exuberance and affirmation. this ideal has been the source of many misunderstandings, and it is the errors which have arisen from the vicious and inept dissemination of his teachings, that i have striven to rectify in the present book. i have hoped to accomplish this by presenting the whole of nietzsche's philosophy, as far as possible, in his own words. this has not been so difficult a matter. his writings, more than those of any other modern philosopher, offer opportunities for such treatment. there is no point in his entire system not susceptible to brief and clear quotation. furthermore, his thought developed consistently and logically in straight-away, chronological order, so that at the conclusion of each book we find ourselves just so much further along the route of his thinking. beginning with "human, all-too-human," his first destructive volume, we can trace the gradual and concise pyramiding of his teachings, down to the last statement of his cardinal doctrine of will as set forth in the notes which comprise the second volume of "the will to power." each one of the intervening books embodies new material: it is a distinct, yet co-ordinated, division in the great structure of his life's work. these books overlap one another in many instances, and develop points raised speculatively in former books, but they organise each other and lead one surely, if at times circuitously, to the crowning doctrines of his thought. the majority of critics have chosen to systematise nietzsche's teachings by separating the ideas in his different books, and by drawing together under specific captions (such as "religion," "the state," "education," etc.,) all the scattered material which relates to these different subjects. in many cases they have succeeded in offering a very coherent and consistent résumé of his thought. but nietzsche's doctrines were inherently opposed to such arbitrary dividing and arranging, because beneath the various sociological points which fell under his consideration, were two or three general motivating principles which unified the whole of his thought. he did not work from modern institutions back to his doctrines; but, by analysing the conditions out of which these institutions grew, he arrived at the conclusions which he afterward used in formulating new methods of operation. it was the change in conditions and needs between ancient and modern times that made him voice the necessity of change between ancient and modern institutions. in other words, his advocacy of new methods for dealing with modern affairs was evolved from his researches into the origin and history of current methods. for instance, his remarks on religion, society, the state, the individual, etc., were the outcome of fundamental postulates which he described and elucidated in terms of human institutions. therefore an attempt to reach an explanation of the basic doctrines of his philosophy through his _applied_ teachings unconsciously gives rise to the very errors which the serious critics have sought to overcome: this method focuses attention on the _application_ of his doctrines rather than on the doctrines themselves. therefore i have taken his writings chronologically, beginning with his first purely philosophical work--"human, all-too-human"--and have set down, in his own words, every important conclusion throughout his entire works. in this way one may follow nietzsche throughout every step in the development of his teachings--not only in his abstract theories but also in his application of them. there is not a single important point in the entire sweep of his thought not contained in these pages. naturally i have been unable to give any of the arguments which led to these conclusions. the quotations are in every instance no longer than has been necessary to make clear the idea: for the processes of thought by which these conclusions were reached the reader must go direct to the books from which the excerpts are made. also i have omitted nietzsche's brilliant analogies and such desultory critical judgments, literary and artistic, as have no direct bearing on his philosophy; and have contented myself with setting down only those bare, unelaborated utterances which embody the positive points in his thought. by thus letting nietzsche himself state his doctrines i have attempted to make it impossible for anybody who goes carefully through these pages to misunderstand those points which now seem clouded in error. in order to facilitate further the research of the student and to make clear certain of the more obscure selections, i have preceded each chapter with a short account of the book and its contents. in these brief essays, i have reviewed the entire contents of each book, set down the circumstances under which it was written, and attempted to weigh its individual importance in relation to the others. furthermore, i have attempted to state briefly certain of the doctrines which did not permit of entirely self-explanatory quotation. and where nietzsche indulged in research, such as in tracing the origin of certain motives, or in explaining the steps which led to the acceptance of certain doctrines, i have included in these essays an abridged exposition of his theories. in short, i have embodied in each chapter such critical material as i thought would assist the reader to a clear understanding of each book's contents and relative significance. this book is frankly for the beginner--for the student who desires a survey of nietzsche's philosophy before entering upon a closer and more careful study of it. in this respect it is meant also as a guide; and i have given the exact location of every quotation so that the reader may refer at once to the main body of nietzsche's works and ascertain the premises and syllogisms which underlie the quoted conclusion. in the opening biographical sketch i have refrained from going into nietzsche's personality and character, adhering throughout to the external facts of his life. his personality will be found in the racy, vigorous and stimulating utterances i have chosen for quotation, and no comments of mine could add colour to the impression thus received. it is difficult to divorce nietzsche from his work: the man and his teachings are inseparable. his style, as well as his philosophy, is a direct outgrowth of his personality. this is why his gospel is so personal and intimate a one, and so closely bound up in the instincts of humanity. there are several good biographies of nietzsche in existence, and a brief account of the best ones in english will be found in the bibliography at the end of this volume. it must not be thought that this book is intended as a final, or even complete, commentary on nietzsche's doctrines. it was written and compiled for the purpose of supplying an introductory study, and, with that end in view, i have refrained from all technical or purely philosophical nomenclature. the object throughout has been to stimulate the reader to further study, and if this book does not send the reader sooner or later to the original volumes from which these quotations have been made, i shall feel that i have failed somewhat in my enterprise. the volumes of nietzsche's philosophy from which the quotations in this book are taken, comprise the first complete and authorised edition of the works of nietzsche in english. to the courageous energy of dr. oscar levy do we owe the fact that nietzsche's entire writings are now obtainable in english. the translations of these books have, in every instance, been made by competent scholars, and each volume is introduced by an illuminating preface. as this edition now stands, it is the most complete and voluminous translation of any foreign philosopher in the english language. the edition is in eighteen volumes, and is published in england by t. n. foulis, and in america by the macmillan company. the volumes and their contents are given below. i. "the birth of tragedy," translated by william a. haussmann, b.a., ph.d., with a biographical introduction by the author's sister; a portrait of nietzsche, and a facsimile of his manuscript. ii. "early greek philosophy and other essays," translated by maximilian a. mügge, ph.d. contents: "the greek state," "the greek woman," "on music and words," "homer's contest," "the relation of schopenhauer's philosophy to a german culture," "philosophy during the tragic age of the greeks" and "on truth and falsity in their ultramoral sense." iii. "the future of our educational institutions," translated by j. m. kennedy. besides the titular essay, this volume contains "homer and classical philology." iv. "thoughts out of season," vol. i., translated by anthony m. ludovici. contents: "david strauss, the confessor and the writer" and "richard wagner in bayreuth." v. "thoughts out of season," vol. ii., translated with introduction by adrian collins, m.a. contents: "the use and abuse of history" and "schopenhauer as educator." vi. "human, all-too-human," vol. i., translated by helen zimmern, with introduction by j. m. kennedy. vii. "human, all-too-human," vol. il, translated, with introduction, by paul v. cohn, b.a. viii. "the case of wagner," translated by anthony m. ludovici and j. m. kennedy, with introductions by the translators. contents: "the case of wagner," "nietzche _contra_ wagner," "selected aphorisms" and "we philologists." ix. "the dawn of day," translated, with introduction, by j. m. kennedy. x. "the joyful wisdom," translated, with introduction, by thomas common. the poetry which appears in the appendix under the caption of "songs of prince free-as-a-bird," is translated by paul v. cohn and maude d. petre. xi. "thus spake zarathustra," revised introduction by thomas common, with introduction by mrs. förster-nietzsche, and commentary by a. m. ludovici. xii. "beyond good and evil," translated by helen zimmern, with introduction by thomas common. xiii. "the genealogy of morals," translated by horace b. samuel, m.a., with introductory note. "people and countries," an added section to this book, is translated by j. m. kennedy with an editor's note by dr. oscar levy. xiv. "the will to power," vol. i., translated, with an introduction, by a. m. ludovici. xv. "the will to power," vol. il, translated, with an introduction, by a. m. ludovici. xvi. "the twilight of the idols," translated, with an introduction, by a. m. ludovici. contents: "the twilight of the idols," "the antichrist," "eternal recurrence," and "explanatory notes to 'thus spake zarathustra.'" xvii. "ecce homo," translated by a. m. ludovici. various poetry and epigrams translated by paul v. cohn, herman scheffauer, francis bickley and dr. g. t. wrench. in addition this volume contains the music of nietzsche's "hymn to life"--words by lou salomé--with an introduction by a. m. ludovici. xviii. "index to complete works," compiled by robert guppy, with vocabulary of foreign quotations occurring in the works of nietzsche translated by paul v. cohn, b.a., and an introductory essay, "the nietzsche movement in england (a retrospect--a confession--a prospect)," by dr. oscar levy. there are in the present volume no quotations from nietzsche's _"ecce homo"_ or from the pamphlets dealing with wagner. the former work is an autobiography which, while it throws light on both nietzsche's character and his work, is nevertheless outside his purely philosophical writings. and the wagner documents, though interesting, have little to do with the nietzschean doctrines, except as showing perhaps the result of their application. i have therefore left them intact for the student who wishes to go more deeply into the philosopher's character than i have here attempted. w. h. w. what nietzsche taught i biographical sketch nietzsche liked to believe that he was of polish descent. he had a greater admiration for the poles than for the germans, and went so far as to instigate an investigation by which he hoped to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not only polish but was descended from the polish nobility. his efforts, his sister tells us, were not entirely successful, although some evidence was turned up which pointed to the truth of this theory. several of the dates in the report, however, did not accurately tally, and since many of nietzsche's papers containing the results of his genealogical research were lost in turin after his breakdown, the hypothesis of his polish descent consequently remains somewhat mythical. nietzsche's theory was that his great-great-grandfather was a nobleman named nicki who fled from poland during the religious wars, as a fugitive under sentence of death, and took with him a young son who afterward changed his name to nietzsche. there is a romance in this belief which appealed strongly to the philosopher. he saw a genuine grandeur in the fact that his ancestor had become a fugitive for his religious and political opinions. this belief in time became a conviction with him, and in the later years of his life we find him definitely asserting the truth of this family tradition. the matter, however, one way or the other, is of little consequence, for nietzsche's mind embodied universal traits: it was uncommonly free from distinctly national characteristics. all the important facts of his life and of his immediate ancestry are known to us. he was born at röcken, a little village in the prussian province of saxony, on october 15, 1844. the day was the anniversary of the birth of friedrich wilhelm iv, king of prussia, and nietzsche was christened friedrich wilhelm in honour of the event. the coincidence was all the more marked by the fact that nietzsche's father, three years previous, had been tutor to the altenburg princesses, in which capacity he had met the sovereign and made so favourable an impression that it was by the royal favour he was living at röcken. there were two other children in the nietzsche household--a girl born in 1846, and a son born in 1850. the girl was named therese elizabeth alexandra after the duke of altenburg's three daughters who had come under her father's tutorship. afterward she became the philosopher's closest companion and guardian and his most voluminous biographer. the boy joseph, named after the duke of altenburg himself, did not survive his first year. the longevity and hardiness which marked the stock of nietzsche's ancestors does away with the theory, often advanced, that his sickness and final mental breakdown were the outcome of hereditary causes. out of his eight great-parents only two failed to reach the age of seventy-five, while one reached the age of eighty-six and another did not die until ninety. both of his grand-fathers attained to the age of seventy, and his maternal grandmother lived until she was past eighty-two. furthermore, the nietzsche families for three generations had been very large and in every instance healthy and robust. nietzsche's grandmother nietzsche had twelve children, and his grandmother oehler had eleven children--both families being strong and free from sickness. nietzsche himself, so his sister tells us in her biography, was strong and healthy from his earliest childhood until maturity. he participated in outdoor sports such as swimming, skating and ball playing, and was characterised by a ruddy complexion which in his school days often called forth remarks concerning his evident splendid health. it seems that only one physical defect marked the whole of his younger life--a myopia inherited from his father. this impediment, though slight at first, became rapidly aggravated by the constant use to which he put his eyes in his sedulous application to study. nietzsche, the most terrible and devastating critic of christianity and its ideals, was the culmination of two long collateral lines of theologians. his grandfather nietzsche was a man of many scholarly attainments, who, because of his ecclesiastical writings, had received the degree of doctor of divinity. his second wife, the mother of nietzsche's father, came from a whole family of pastors by the name of krause. her favourite brother was a preacher in the cathedral at naumburg; and of the other two one was a doctor of divinity and one a country clergyman. the father of nietzsche's mother was also a pastor by the name of oehler, and had a parsonage in pobles. likewise nietzsche's father, karl-ludwig nietzsche, was a pastor in the lutheran church; but he possessed a greater culture than we are wont to associate with the average country clergyman, and was a man looked up to and revered by all those who knew him. in fact, his appointment to the post at röcken was an expression of appreciation paid his talents by the prussian king. he was thirty-one years of age and had been married only a year when his son friedrich was born. though in perfect health, he was not destined to live more than five years after this event, for in 1848 he fell down a flight of stone stairs, and died after a year's invalidism, as a result of concussion of the brain. the event cast a decided influence on the nietzsche household and altered completely its plans. after lingering eight months at the parsonage, the family left röcken and moved to naumburg-on-the-saale, there establishing a new domicile in the home of the pastor's mother. the household was composed of the two children, friedrich and elizabeth, their mother, then only twenty-four, their grandmother nietzsche, and two maiden sisters of the dead father. this establishment was run on strict and puritanical lines. all the women were of strong theological inclinations. one of the maiden aunts, rosalie, devoted herself to christian benevolent institutions. the other aunt, augusta, was not unlike the paternal grandmother--pious and god-fearing and constantly busied with her duties to others. the widowed mother carried on the christian tradition of the family, and never forgot that she was once the wife of a lutheran pastor. daily prayers and biblical readings were fixed practices. the young friedrich was the pet of the household, and there were secret hopes held by all that he would grow up in the footsteps of his father and become an honoured and respected light in the church. to the realisation of this hope, all the efforts and influences of the four women were given. such was the atmosphere in which the early youth of the author of "the antichrist" was nurtured. soon after the family's arrival at naumburg, friedrich, then only six years old, was sent to a local municipal boys' school, in accordance with the educational theories of his grandmother, who believed in gregarious education for the very young. but she had failed to count upon the unusual character of her grandson, and the attempt to educate him at a municipal institution resulted in failure. his upbringing had made him somewhat priggish and hypersensitive. he was ridiculed by the other boys who taunted him with the epithet of "the little minister." he refused to mingle with the riff-raff which composed the larger part of the pupils, and held himself isolated and aloof. consequently, before the year was up, he was withdrawn from the school and entered in a private educational institution which prepared the younger students for the cathedral grammar school. here he was in more congenial surroundings. he had for schoolmates two youths whose families were friends of the nietzsche household--young wilhelm pinder and gustav krug, who later were to influence his youth. nietzsche remained at this school for three years. as a boy nietzsche was always thoughtful and studious. he was a taciturn child and took long walks in the country alone, preferring solitude to companionship. he was sensitive to a marked degree, polite, solicitous of all about him, and inclined to moodiness. as soon as he could write he started a diary in which he included not only the external events of his life but his thoughts and ideas and opinions. the pages of this diary, partially preserved, make unique and interesting reading. at a very early age he began writing poetry. his verses, though conventional in both theme and metre, reflected a knowledge of contemporary prosody unusual in a boy of his years. he had ample opportunity in his home of hearing good music, and he manifested a great love for it in very early youth. he devoted much time to studying the piano, and not infrequently tried his hand at composing. later in his life we still find him writing music, and also publishing it. in deportment nietzsche was a model child. he was thoroughly imbued with the religious atmosphere of his surroundings, and was far more pious than the average youth of his own age. for a long while he gave every indication of fulfilling the ecclesiastical hopes which his family harboured for him. consequently there was no lack of encouragement on the part of his guardians toward his first literary efforts which reflected the piety of his nature. after a few years in the naumburg school, where he distinguished himself as a model student and incidentally impressed the visiting inspectors by his quickness and brilliance in answering test questions, nietzsche took the entrance examinations for the well-known landes-schule at pforta, an institution then noted for its fostering and promotion of scientific studies. the vacancy at pforta had been offered nietzsche's mother by the rector who had heard rumours concerning the intellectual gifts of the young "fritz." the examinations were passed successfully, and in october, 1858, after a tearful leave-taking, he entered the lower fourth form. pforta, at that time, was an institution of considerable eminence, with a tradition attaching to it not unlike that of eton. it was a hot-bed of academic culture, and the professors were among the most learned in the country. the school had been founded as a monastery in the twelfth century by the cistercian monks. in the sixteenth century it had fallen under the rule of the duke moritz of saxony, who turned it into a secular educational academy, making way for the advance of the newer ideals. the life at pforta in nietzsche's day was strict, and we learn that the young philosopher chafed somewhat under the stringent discipline. but in time he accustomed himself to the regulations, and it was not long before we find him actively and interestedly participating in the school life. however, new ideas were fomenting. if outwardly he acquiesced to the routine, inwardly he was in a state of revolt. he had already begun to indulge in original thinking, and he felt the lack of freedom in communicating his ideas to others. his only confidante during these days was his sister whom he always saw during the holidays and on brief leaves of absence. his spare moments were devoted to music and literature other than that prescribed by the school curriculum. he resented the fact that one had to think of particular themes at specified times, and no doubt caused his good tutor, professor buddensieg, much uneasiness, for, to judge from his diary, he did not keep to himself the resentment he felt toward the enforcement of the irksome and repressive calendar of studies. this resentment doubtlessly had much to do with the inauguration of a society which was called the germania club. wilhelm pinder and gustav krug, nietzsche's former school companions at naumburg, were participants in its formation; and on the highest ledge of the watch tower, overlooking the saale valley, its object was discussed and its inception dedicated and solemnised with a bottle of red wine. this society, while bearing many of the ear-marks of mere youthful enthusiasm, formed an important turning point in nietzsche's life. it acted, at a psychological moment, as a safety-valve for the heretical ideas and aspirations which, up to that time, he had confided only to his sister and his diary. the purpose of the club can best be stated in nietzsche's own words: "we resolved to found a kind of small club which would consist of ourselves and a few friends, and the object of which would be to provide us with a stable and binding organisation, directing and adding interest to our creative impulses in art and literature; or to put it more plainly, each of us would be pledged to present an original piece of work to the club once a month, either a poem, a treatise, an architectural design, or a musical composition, upon which each of the others, in a friendly spirit, would have to pass free and unrestricted criticism. we thus hoped by means of mutual correction to be able both to stimulate and to chasten our creative impulses." it was during one of his lectures before this group of youthful individualists that nietzsche first expressed his true views on christianity--views, which, could they have been overheard by his devoted family, would have brought sorrow to their pious hearts. the list of nietzsche's contributions to this synod numbered thirty-four, and included musical compositions, poems, political orations and various literary works. nietzsche remained at pforta until 1864. he had been confirmed at easter, 1861, and to all outward manifestations retained his religious principles. his final report states that "he showed an active and lively interest in the christian doctrine." in religion he was given the grade of "excellent." during his later years at pforta he manifested an interest in the works of emerson and shakespeare and especially in the greek and latin authors. his dislike for mathematics increased steadily, and his love for sophocles, æschylus, plato and the greek lyricists "grew by leaps and bounds." his final paper--the departing thesis which was compulsory for all graduating students--was a latin essay on theognis of megara, _"de theognide megarensi"_ between nietzsche and that ancient aristocrat, with his fine contempt for democracy, there existed many temperamental affinities; and this final essay was no less than a foundation on which the young dionysian later built his philosophy of aristocracy. on the 7th of september he left pforta. after resting at naumburg until the middle of october, nietzsche set forth for the university of bonn. it was here that he came under the guidance of professor ritschl, who later was to exert a great influence over him. friedrich wilhelm ritschl was not only the foremost philologist of his time, but a scholar deeply versed in classical literature and rhetoric. it was he who founded the science of historical literary criticism as we know it to-day. when he first met nietzsche his interest in the young man at once became very great, and the relationship between them rapidly developed into the warmest of friendships. to ritschl nietzsche owed many things. it was at the former's house that he became acquainted with many of the leading learned men of the day. and it would be unfair not to credit ritschl with much of the future philosopher's ardent and lasting interest in ancient cultures. at bonn nietzsche entered the collegiate life with unusual zest. he became a member of the franconia student corps, and participated freely in the drinking bouts which, from what we can learn from his letters home, constituted one of the main duties attached to his membership. but this phase of the student life was foreign to his tastes, and after brief activities in the rôle of "good fellow," he found a more spontaneous recreation in attending concerts and the better class theatres. he privately studied schumann, and during 1864 and 1865 his life bore a marked musical stamp. it was during nietzsche's days at bonn that a decided change came over his religious views. his critical studies in the literature and culture of the ancients had done much toward weaning him from the formal and almost literal theological beliefs of his family. the first open breach between his newer ideals and the established prejudices of his mother came at easter-time about midway of his course at bonn. he was home for the holidays, and when the good people were preparing to attend communion, he suddenly informed them of his decision not to accompany them. arguments were unavailing. an animated discussion arose in which he firmly defended his attitude; and from that time on there was never a reconciliation between his religious standpoint and the one held by his family. two learned ecclesiastics were called into consultation, but they were unable to meet the disquieting arguments of the young heretic, and his case was dismissed for the moment on his aunt rosalie's theory that even in the lives of the devoutest christians there often come periods of doubt, and that during such periods it is best to leave the backslider to his own conscience. nietzsche, however, never again entered the fold. curiously enough it was at this same period that came his revulsion toward the dissipations of student life. he went so far as to attempt an imposition of his moral theories on the members of the franconia, but this attempt at reformation resulted only in his own unpopularity. in his attitude toward duelling--a pastime somewhat over-emphasised at bonn--nietzsche was consistent with his other beliefs. the chivalrous side of it appealed to him, although he detested the spirit of it from the standpoint of the student body. however, he took heroic, if unconventional, means to involve himself in a duel lest his position be misconstrued as cowardice. he selected an adversary he thought worthy of him, and pleasantly demanded a combat on the field of honour, ending his request: "let us waive all the usual preliminaries." the other agreed, and the duel was fought. but the incident merely resulted in emphasising nietzsche's disgust for student life. says his sister, "the circumstances which above all aroused my brother's wrath was the detestable 'beer materialism' with which he met on all sides, and owing to these early experiences in bonn he for ever retained a very deep dislike for smoking, drinking, and the whole of so-called 'beer-conviviality.'" his decision to leave bonn and enter the university of leipzig was due to his fondness for ritschl. in the dispute which arose between the two professors, jahn and ritschl, nietzsche's friendship for the latter made him a partisan, although he held jahn in the highest respect; and when ritschl decided to transfer himself to leipzig, the young philosopher, along with several of the other students, followed him. this was in the autumn of 1865. nietzsche reached leipzig on the 17th of october, and the next day he presented himself to the academic board. it was the centennial anniversary of the day when goethe had entered his name on the register, and the university was celebrating the event. the coincidence delighted nietzsche greatly, who regarded it as a good omen for his future at the new institution. it was during his residence at leipzig that there came into his life two events which were to have a profound and lasting influence on his future. one of these was his acquaintance with wagner--an acquaintance which several years later developed into the strongest friendship of his life. the other event (in many ways more important than the first) was his discovery of schopenhauer. this discovery is characteristically described in a letter to his sister: "one day i came across this book at old rohn's curiosity shop, and taking it up very gingerly i turned over its pages. i know not what demon whispered to me: 'take this book home with thee.' at all events, contrary to my habit not to be hasty in my purchase of books, i took it home. once in my room i threw myself into the corner of the sofa with my booty, and began to allow that energetic and gloomy genius to work upon my mind. in this book, in which every line cried out renunciation, denial, and resignation, i saw a mirror in which i espied the whole world, life and my own mind depicted in frightful grandeur. in this volume the full celestial eye of art gazed at me; here i saw illness and recovery, banishment and refuge, heaven and hell. the need of knowing myself, yea, even of gnawing at myself, forcibly seized me." this book went far in arousing the philosophic faculties of the young philologist, and later he wrote many essays, long and short, both in praise and in refutation of the great pessimist. that he should at first have subscribed to all of schopenhauer's teachings is natural. nietzsche was vital and susceptible to enthusiasms. it was in accord with his youthful nature, full of courage and strength, that he should have been seduced to pessimism. at leipzig nietzsche accomplished an enormous amount of work: and his nature developed in proportion. the life was freer than it had been at pforta or at bonn. far from being hampered in the voicings of his inner beliefs, he found his environment particularly congenial to self-expression. he made numerous friends, principal among them being erwin rohde, who crossed his later life at many points. he showed a great interest in political, as well as in literary and musical, events; and the war between prussia and austria fanned his youthful ardour to an almost extravagant degree. twice he offered himself to the authorities, hoping to be permitted to serve as a soldier, but was rejected both times on account of his shortsightedness. his interest in his studies, however, was in no wise diminished. he read widely in english, french, greek and latin, and devoted much scholarly research to theognis, diogenes laertius, and democritus. his essay on the subject, _"de fontibus diogenis laertii"_ won the first university prize, and was later published, with other of his essays on philology, in the _rheinisches museum._ at this time the prussian army found itself in sore need of men, and although nietzsche had been exempt from military duties and had failed to secure enlistment, he suddenly found himself, in the autumn of 1867, called upon for compulsory training. a new army regulation had just been passed requiring all young men, if otherwise physically sound, to enter military service even though their eyesight was partially impaired. as a consequence nietzsche had to leave leipzig and go into training. he made an effort to enlist in a berlin guard regiment, but was finally compelled to join the horse artillery at naumburg. although he had previously volunteered for service, he now found that the life of a soldier was far more irksome and far less romantic than he had imagined. he was unhappy and disconsolate, and deplored the slavery attached to the life of a mounted artilleryman. he was not destined, however, to fulfil his arduous military duties to the full term of his proscription. barely a year had gone by when he was thrown from his horse and received what at first was thought a slight strain, but what later turned out to be a serious injury. the pommel of his saddle had compressed his chest, and the inflammation which set in necessitated his permanent withdrawal from service. for a long time nietzsche was under the care of the famous specialist, volkmann, to whom the military doctors had turned him over when they had begun to despair of his recovery. during convalescence, he busied himself with preparations for his coming university year and assisted in some intricate indexing for members of the faculty. in october, 1868, he was able to return to leipzig and resume his work. but another unexpected event--this one of an advantageous nature and destined to alter his whole future--came in the form of an inquiry from the university of bale in switzerland. the members of that institution's educational board, attracted by nietzsche's essays in the _rheinisches museum,_ wrote to ritschl for information regarding the young philologist. ritschl replied that nietzsche was a genius and could do whatever he put his mind to. thus it happened that, although only 24, he was offered the vacant post of classical philology at bâle, without even being put through the formalities of an examination. however, he was straightway granted a doctor's degree by the university of leipzig, and on the 13th of april, 1869, he left naumburg to assume the duties of his new appointment. his departure marked the passing of the nietzsche household. his grandmother and both the maiden aunts were dead, and because, no doubt, of religious differences, he and his mother became estranged. of that intimately welded family circle, only the deep friendship between nietzsche and his sister remained. on may 28, nietzsche delivered his inaugural address at bâle, using the personality of homer as his subject. the hall was crowded, and the address made a decided impression on both students and faculty. the lecture was an unusual one and well off the conventional track. it created riot a little mild excitement among the professors at leipzig, and the cut-and-dried philologists of that institution were frankly scandalised by its boldness. the address, however, was an index to nietzsche's character, and, in looking back on it, we can see that it unmistakably pointed the way along which the future development of his mind was to take place. at bâle, the young philologist, despite the people's kindly disposition toward him, suffered from solitude. his classes were small. although he had made an impassioned plea for his particular science, the interest in philology was slight, and his morning lectures were attended by only eight students. nietzsche was without a companion with whom he might exchange his ideas and personal thoughts. his only diversion came in the form of occasional trips to neighbouring parts of the country; and the letters he wrote to his sister and his former friends were tinged with melancholy. but he was conscientious in his work, and a year later he was given a professorship. before he could accept this later appointment it had been necessary for him to become a naturalised subject of switzerland, so that when the franco-german war of 1870 broke out, he could not serve as a combatant--a fact which caused him keen disappointment. he was able, however, to secure service as an ambulance attendant in the hospital corps, and set forth upon his patriotic duties with a glad heart. having been granted the leave he asked for at the university, he went to erlangen, where he entered for a course of surgery and medicine at the red cross society. after a brief training as a nurse, in which line of work he showed remarkable adaptability, he was sent to the seat of war at the head of an ambulance corps. he was untiring in his energies and laboured day and night in the midst of the battlefields. but the overwork proved too much for him, and he soon reached the limit of his endurance. one day, after long exposure in a cattle truck filled with severely wounded and diseased men, he began to show signs of serious illness, and when, after great difficulty, he managed to reach erlangen, it was discovered that he was suffering from diphtheria and severe dysentery. though he had seen but a few weeks' hospital service, it was now necessary for him to discontinue his duties entirely. his sister tells us that this illness greatly undermined his health, and was the first cause of his subsequent condition. to make matters worse, the slight medical education which he had received in preparation for his ambulance service led him to pursue a fateful course of self-doctoring--a practice which he continued to his own detriment throughout the remainder of his life. nietzsche did not even wait until he was well before resuming his duties at the university, and this new strain imposed on his already depleted system had much to do with bringing on his final breakdown. as a result of the philistinism which broke out all over germany at the end of the war, nietzsche delivered a course of lectures at bonn, which he entitled "on the future of our educational institutions." germany had insisted that her victory was due not only to physical bravery but also in a large measure to the superiority of germanic culture and teutonic ideals. nietzsche beheld in this snobbish attitude a very grave danger for his country, and endeavoured in a small way to rectify this attitude by a series of lectures. he severely criticised the german educational institutions of the day and went so far as to deny them the great culture which they so ardently claimed. while these lectures in no wise stemmed, even locally, the tide of philistinism at which they were aimed, the criticisms contained in them are of the greatest importance in reviewing the development of the philosopher himself. the lectures contained, perhaps unconsciously but none the less clearly, many of the elements of that philosophy which later was to have so tremendous an influence not only on germany but on the whole civilised world. in the same year, 1872, nietzsche's first important book appeared. this work, dedicated to richard wagner, had been begun in 1869, and was first called "the birth of tragedy from the spirit of music." when the third edition appeared in 1886 the title was changed to "the birth of tragedy, or hellenism and pessimism," and a preface called "an attempt at self-criticism" was added. in a large measure this book was a tribute to wagner, and was written by nietzsche in an effort to be of immediate benefit to the musician who at that time was passing through a period of despondency. wagner was then living at tribschen, not far from bâle, and nietzsche's visits to him were frequent. it was during these years that the great friendship between the two men developed. "the birth of tragedy," however, was not well received by the public. musicians were pleased with it, but philologists in particular deplored its utterances. they looked upon its author as a traitor to their science for having dared to venture beyond the narrow bounds of academic formalism. one well-known philologist, wilamowitz-moellendorf, attacked nietzsche in an ill-humoured pamphlet; and although erwin rohde answered it adequately with another pamphlet, the attack proved detrimental to nietzsche's standing at bale. during the following winter term the young philologist was entirely without pupils. his mind, however, was now undergoing decided and important changes. he was becoming bolder and surer of himself. new ideals were taking the place of old ones, and in 1873 he began a series of famous pamphlets which later were put into book form under the title of "thoughts out of season." his first attack was upon david strauss; the second was directed towards the german historians of the day; the third was aimed at schopenhauer; and the fourth was the famous panegyric, "richard wagner in bayreuth." these essays, together with his work at bâle, occupied him until 1876. nietzsche was now suffering severely from the malady he carried to his grave, catarrh of the stomach. this was accompanied by severe headaches, and during his holidays he alternated between switzerland and italy in an endeavour to recover his health. in the former place he was with wagner. in italy, at sorrento, he met dr. paul rée, who, if we are to believe max nordau, was the father of all nietzsche's ideas. credence, however, cannot be given to this accusation, for the nucleus of all of his later ideas was undeniably contained in his writings previous to his meeting with rée. that rée influenced him to some small extent no one will deny, for it was he who turned the young philosopher's attention to the latter day scientists of both england and france; and it was shortly after this meeting that nietzsche began his first independent philosophical work, "human, all-too-human." it was in the year 1876 that his famous friendship with wagner began to cool. nietzsche had gone to bayreuth to witness the performance of _"der ring des nibelungen."_ already he had begun to question his own high opinion of the composer, and bayreuth solidified his doubts. it had been two years since he had seen wagner, and after a brief conversation, nietzsche became bitter and disgusted. when he finally went away his revulsion was complete, and one of the greatest of historic friendships was at an end. whatever were the individual merits in the quarrel between these two great contemporaneous men, nietzsche's attitude was at least consistent with his innermost ideals. he had admired in wagner certain definite, revolutionary qualities, and when he was convinced, as he had every reason to be, that wagner was compromising his art for the purpose of popularity, the ideal was broken. he could no longer remain true to himself and also to his friendship for the great composer. "parsifal" was undoubtedly a decadent work, viewed from the standpoint of wagner's previous performances. decadence is simply the inability to create new tissue; and when wagner forswore modern ideas and reverted to the past, it attested to an entire change of mental attitude: and no purely æsthetic doctrine can controvert the fact. had cézanne in later life essayed the painting of conventionally posed saints--no matter what his technical means might have been--his art would have contained the elements of decadence, for an artist's mental attitude cannot be dissevered from his product. this, i believe, was nietzsche's theory in regard to wagner. that the breaking off of this friendship was a great blow to the philosopher we know from his diary and from his letters. in fact, his affection for wagner, the man, was so great that it was not until ten years had passed that he could bring himself to write the essay which he had long had in mind, "the fall of wagner." the year after the appearance of "human, all-too-human," nietzsche's ill-health compelled him to resign his professorship at bâle. he had a small income which, together with the three thousand francs retiring allowance granted him by the university, permitted him now to travel moderately and to devote his entire time to his literary labours. he first went to berne, where he stayed a few weeks. later he visited zürich and then st. moritz. it was a brief holiday, but the change of _locale,_ coupled with the relaxation from work, improved him both in physical health and in spirits. the winter of 1879-80 he spent with his mother at naumburg, his old home; but the climate and the uncongenial surroundings dragged down his health once more, and it was not until toward the following spring, when he went to venice, that he regained even a semblance of his normal condition. here he was in company with paul rée and his life-long friend and disciple, heinrich köselitz, commonly known as peter gast. nietzsche stayed at venice until october, when he went to genoa. the following year appeared "the dawn of day," his first book of constructive thinking. the remainder of nietzsche's life up to the time of his final breakdown in january, 1889, was spent in a fruitless endeavour to regain his undermined health. for eight years, during all of which time he was busily engaged in writing, he sought a climate that would revive him. his summers were spent for the most part in the quiet solitude of sils-maria, a little swiss village to which the tourist rarely ventured. in 1882 he visited genoa and, with paul rée as companion, made a trip to monaco. this journey ended disastrously for his health, and by his physician's order he made a trip to messina. soon after he settled at grunewald, near berlin; but the place depressed him, and we find him later in tautenburg. again genoa claimed him for several months, and then, addicted to chloral, and despondent, he sought relief at rome. but he could not stand the hot weather, and again he visited sils-maria, where, it seems, he was for the time greatly improved. in 1884, we find him again at naumburg, and a little later at nice and venice. in the autumn of the same year, he spent several weeks travelling with his sister in germany, but at the approach of winter, he proceeded to mentone. in 1885 he again sought the company of peter gast at venice, and spent the larger part of that year and the next at venice and nice. the lonely philosopher then paid a short visit to leipzig to be once again with his old friend rohde. but the years had estranged them; their views were now at opposites. another of his few friends thus lost to him, he immediately returned to nice. the year 1886 found him at the riviera, and in 1887 he was again at sils-maria. here he laboured incessantly, travelling to both venice and nice in the meantime. in the spring of 1888 he changed his plans and went to turin. then after his usual summer visit to sils-maria, he returned to turin, where he remained until the fatal winter of 1888-89. nietzsche was rarely happy during his travels. he was constantly ill and for the most part alone, and this perturbed and restless period of his life resolved itself into a continuous struggle against melancholy and physical suffering. during these eight years of solitary labour and futile seeking for health, nietzsche had written "thus spake zarathustra," "the joyful wisdom," "beyond good and evil," "the genealogy of morals," "the case of wagner," "the twilight of the idols," "the antichrist," _"ecce homo"_ "nietzsche _contra_ wagner," and an enormous number of notes which were to constitute his final and great philosophical work, "the will to power." the cold reception with which his books met tended to discourage him and to retard his physical recovery. his "zarathustra" was as greatly misunderstood by the critics as had been his earlier volumes. with the exception of burckhardt and taine, the critics were unfavourable to "beyond good and evil." "the genealogy of morals" met with scarcely more friendly a reception, and "the case of wagner," while arousing the ire of the wagnerians, caused no comment of any kind in any other quarter. "the twilight of the idols" appeared about the time of his breakdown, and "the antichrist" and _"ecce homo"_ were not published until long after his death. the notes on "the will to power" have only recently been put together and issued. the events during this period of nietzsche's career were few. perhaps the most important was his meeting with miss lou salomé. but even this episode had small bearing on his life, and has been unduly emphasised by biographers because of its isolation in an existence outwardly drab and uneventful. it was while nietzsche was at tautenburg that paul rée and another friend, malvida von mysenburg, hearing that he was in need of a secretary, sent to him miss salomé, a young russian jewess. that it would have been difficult to find a person less suited to the philosopher's needs was borne out by subsequent events. according to some accounts nietzsche fell mildly in love with her, and was upset and irritated by her aloofness. but such a hypothesis is substantiated only by the flimsiest of evidence, and, when we take into consideration the temperamental gulf between these two people, it is highly incredible that nietzsche had any desire to form an alliance with his amanuensis. the truth of the matter probably is that the philosopher was sadly disappointed in his secretary--if not indeed disgusted with her--and, in showing his regret, piqued her to retaliation. in fact, we have a letter from nietzsche to the young lady which bears out this contention. in any event, we know that their companionship lasted but a short time and that miss salomé wrote a most inept and unreliable book on nietzsche, _"friedrich nietzsche in seinen werken"_ published in vienna in 1894. the affair had other painful results. rée defended his protegée, and he and nietzsche became bitter enemies. nietzsche's sister also was dragged into the episode, and quarrelled with both rée and miss salomé. shortly after this unpleasant event, nietzsche, urged by his sister, made a half-hearted attempt to secure a professorship at the university of leipzig, but negotiations for the post fell through, due largely to nietzsche's own indifference in the matter. soon after this the philosopher became estranged from his sister because of her intention to marry dr. förster. nietzsche's opposition to the marriage--an opposition which was supported by his mother--was due to several reasons. first, it would necessitate his sister leaving him and accompanying her husband to paraguay. secondly, it had been rumoured that dr. förster had severely criticised his books. and thirdly, nietzsche had small respect for dr. förster himself, who was an impractical idealist and an anti-semite. however, despite all the family protestations, the marriage took place. nietzsche was disappointed and brooded over the event, but a year later he became reconciled with his sister, and she remained, to the end of his life, his closest friend and companion. in january, 1889, an apoplectic fit, which rendered nietzsche unconscious for two days, marked the beginning of the end. his manner suddenly became alarming. he exhibited numerous eccentricities, so grave as to mean but one thing: his mind was seriously affected. there has long been a theory extant that his insanity was of gradual growth. nordau holds that he was unbalanced from birth. but there is no evidence to substantiate these two theories. for seven years nietzsche's physical condition had been improving, and his mind up to the end of 1888 was perfectly clear and gave no indication of what his end would be. during this period his books were thought out in his most clarified manner; in all his intercourse with his friends he was restrained and normal; and his voluminous correspondence showed no change either in sentiment or in tone. the theory advanced in some quarters that his books, and especially his later ones, were the work of a madman, is entirely without foundation. his insanity was sudden; it came without warning; and it is puerile to point to his state of mind during the last years of his life as a criticism of his work. his books must stand or fall on internal evidence--and on nothing else. judged from that standpoint they are scrupulously sane. the direct cause of nietzsche's mental breakdown is not known. as a matter of fact, there was probably no direct cause. it was due to a number of influences--his excessive use of chloral which he took for insomnia, the tremendous strain to which he put his intellect, his constant disappointments and deprivations, his mental solitude, his prolonged physical suffering. we know little of his last days before he went insane. he was living alone in turin and working desperately. then suddenly to professor burckhardt at bâle he wrote a letter which was obviously the work of a madman. "i am ferdinand de lesseps," he wrote. "i am prado. i am schambige.[1] i have been buried twice this autumn." this was the first indication of his insanity. immediately after he wrote a similar letter to his old friend, professor overbeck. other of nietzsche's friends received disquieting and indecipherable notes. to georg brandes he sent a letter signed "the crucified." to peter gast he wrote, "sing me a new song. the world is clear and all the skies rejoice." to cosima wagner: "ariadne, i love you." there was now no doubt of his condition. overbeck went immediately to turin. he found the philosopher playing wildly on the piano, and crying blasphemies to the empty room. nietzsche was taken back to bâle, and then placed in a private psychiatric institution at jena. here he stayed until the following spring when he was permitted to be taken to the home of his mother at naumburg. it was three years later that his sister returned from paraguay, where her husband had died, and nietzsche was sufficiently recovered to meet her when she arrived. but though he lived for another seven years, his mind was irretrievably ruined. when his mother died in 1897, his sister removed him to a villa at weimar. there on a great veranda, overlooking the hills and the river valley, he remained until the end, receiving a few of his friends and taking his old delight in music. his sister watched over him tenderly, and though he was never strong enough to resume work, he would often talk of his books. when shown a portrait of wagner, he said, "him i loved dearly." he was all tenderness toward the end. the mighty yea-sayer had become as a little child. "elizabeth," he would say, "do not cry. are we not happy?" nietzsche died on the 25th of august, 1900, and was buried at röcken, his native village. [footnote 1: schambige and prado were two assassins whose exploits were then occupying the french journals.] ii "human, all-too-human" volumes i and ii "human, all-too-human" (_"menschliches allzu menschliches"_) was first published in 1878. previous to this time nietzsche had devoted himself to a sedulous study of the french philosophers--pascal, la rochefoucauld, vanergues, montaigne and others--and these men influenced him in his selection of the aphoristic style as a medium for his thoughts. his serious illness at the time made it impossible for him to attempt any large and co-ordinated philosophical task which would have required sustained thinking and continual physical labour, and the detached manner of writing employed by the french thinkers fitted in with the intermittent manner in which he was necessitated to work. "miscellaneous maxims and opinions," the second part of "human, all-too-human," appeared the following year; and "the wanderer and his shadow," the third section, was made public in 1880. six years later these three parts were put together in two volumes under the caption of the original book, and were subtitled "a book of free spirits." at that time nietzsche already had numerous writings to his credit. "the birth of tragedy" (_"die geburt der tragödie"_) was composed between 1869 and 1871, and issued in january, 1872. it was a treatise on pessimism and hellenism, and in it nietzsche endeavoured to ascertain the origin of greek tragedy. in his research he passed over many of the lesser philological discussions which were then occupying the minds of his academic confrères, and, mild as was this first published work of his, he suddenly found himself the centre of a discussion which augured ill for his future at the university of bâle. in this book he undertook to explain the constant conflict between the apollonian and dionysian ideals, and defined the differences underlying these two great influences in greek art. later in his writings we find him applying the theories stated in "the birth of tragedy" to all human transactions. "on the future of our educational institutions" and "homer and classical philology," contained in one volume, were addresses delivered during nietzsche's professorship of classical philology at bâle university. in these lectures he pointed out the necessity of protecting the man of genius, and denied the existence of actual culture in the educational institutions of modern germany, holding that true culture is only for the higher type of man. he made a plea for an institution where genuine culture, founded on the ideals of ancient greece, would be harboured for the few who would devote their lives to it. here unquestionably was the faint beginning of his conception of the superman. while these lectures dealt only with the educational institutions of germany, the criticisms in them may nevertheless be applied in a broader sense to the general principles underlying all schools. this book is the first visible step in the development of his thought. more evidences of what was to come later are found in a series of essays written during the early seventies, which are now published under the general caption of "early greek philosophy and other essays." the seven essays contained in this volume are: "the greek state" (1871), in which he attacked the modern conception of labour, and advanced a brief for slavery based on the assumption that without it true culture cannot exist; "the greek woman" (1871), an outline of nietzsche's ideal of woman; "on music and words" (1871), an analysis of the origins of music and language and a statement of the functions of each; "homer's contest" (1872), a comparison of the ancient and modern individualistic strife, in which was pointed out the necessity of competition in any successful commonwealth; "the relation of schopenhauer's philosophy to a german culture" (1872), a gay attack upon certain phases of german philistinism, with the suggestion that schopenhauer's philosophy would prove an excellent counter-irritant; "philosophy during the tragic age of the greeks" (1873), a brilliant account and exposition of those greek thinkers who preceded socrates; and "on truth and falsity in their ultramoral sense" (1873), a rhapsodic refutation of the theory of absolute truth, in which we find many denials of the values attached to current conventions. these denials we are constantly meeting in the major part of nietzsche's later work. in volume i of "thoughts out of season" we find two essays: "david strauss, the confessor and writer" (written in 1873), and "richard wagner at bayreuth" (written during the close of 1875 and at the beginning of 1876). the first essay is an attack upon an ex-clerical who set up a philosopher's shop in nietzsche's day and succeeded in sufficiently inflaming the popular mind to secure for himself a wide and ardent following. nietzsche, angered by the effect that strauss's sophistries had upon the german mind, undertook to answer them and show up their spuriousness. in the essay on richard wagner, nietzsche praised the composer in no uncertain terms, hailing him as a saviour of mankind through the medium of the drama. nietzsche thought he saw in wagner a kindred spirit, a man free from the narrow dictates of his time, one capable of establishing a new order of things in the realm of art. subsequently the philosopher turned against wagner and denounced him bitterly for his anti-hellenic tendencies. volume ii of "thoughts out of season" contains "the use and abuse of history" and "schopenhauer as educator," both written in 1874. in the first of these essays nietzsche attacked the study of history which was then the foremost educational fad in germany. he denied it a place in the curriculum of culture unless it had for its foundation a profound knowledge of the causes of history. also in this essay he made a plea for the individualistic interpretation of history, arguing that the events founded on the activities of majorities are useless to a true understanding of the fundamentals of racial development. here again we encounter the foreshadowing of the philosophy of the superman. nietzsche paid high tribute to schopenhauer in his essay "schopenhauer as educator." without subscribing unqualifiedly to all the doctrines of the great pessimist, he nevertheless allied himself philosophically with schopenhauer's theory that all logic is an outgrowth of the law of self-preservation. in the autumn of 1874 nietzsche wrote a series of brief comments dealing with the subject of education. these paragraphs contain about 20,000 words, and were to have constituted, when completed, the fifth part of "thoughts out of season." he never finished them, however, and they were not published until after his death. these fragments appear, under the caption of "we philologists," at the end of the volume entitled "the case of wagner." "we philologists" is a protest against the manner in which classical culture was promulgated in the universities. it offers a stinging criticism of those german professors, the philologists, to whom was entrusted the duty of disseminating greek cultural ideals, and in addition presents a concise outline of what genuine hellenic culture should consist. nietzsche protests against the filtering of pagan antiquity through christian doctrines--the method of teaching then in vogue--and insists that such a form of education entirely misses its aim. although "we philologists" is comparatively of small value to the student of nietzsche's later philosophy, it is interesting to note that as early as 1874, his anti-christian spirit was already well defined. the four essays contained in the two volumes of "thoughts out of season" and "we philologists" were the first of an intended series of pamphlets to be called _"unzeitgemässe betrachtungen"_[1] but the series was never finished. however, the nietzschean philosophical ideas had unquestionably begun to take definite form. already there had been attempts at idealistic and moralistic valuations. there had also been a considerable amount of that preliminary analysis which was to form a foundation for the destructive and constructive thoughts of later years. in these essays nietzsche had already begun to strike his bearings, and while they cannot be taken as a part of his philosophical scheme, they nevertheless form an excellent introduction for those students who care to go behind the final expression of his ideas and behold them in embryo. "human, all-too-human," following two years later, came as a distinct surprise even to nietzsche's most intimate friends: wagner especially was horrified at the heresies contained in it. there had not been sufficient indications in his earlier writings for one to predict so devastating an arraignment of modern life as was contained in this work. it was a departure, not only in thought but also in manner, from all else he had written. the conventional essay form had been set aside for an aphoristic style. here we find a series of paragraphs varying in length from a few lines to a page or more, each dealing with a separate and syllogistically detached idea. the epigram, which was to play such an important part in all of nietzsche's writings, is also found in abundance. the form in which these two volumes are cast gives the effect of a man felling a giant tree with a thousand blows of an axe, as distinguished from the method of the man who saws it down gradually and continuously. despite its muscular and incisive qualities, the manner of this work is calm. as a whole it is an excellent example of those writings which nietzsche himself has called apollonian. at times one even feels a tentativeness in its utterances not unlike that which attaches to the steps a man takes in a region he knows to be full of quicksands. in this regard it is interesting to note how a certain insecurity at the beginning of the work, which manifests itself in ultra-obscure passages, later gives way to a clarity and humour indicative of almost wanton temerity. in this book nietzsche passes from the academician to the iconoclast. he bridges the chasm from the doctor of philology to the independent thinker. it is the record of the psychological transition of his mind; and this record is evident in both his outlook and his habits of expression. nietzsche, at his birth as a thinker, presents himself as an arch-nihilist. he realised the necessity of destroying the universe before an understanding of it was possible, and so the two volumes of "human, all-too-human" are almost entirely destructive. in this work we have nietzsche the trail-blazer, the incendiary, the idol-smasher, the pessimist, the devastator. one by one the doctrines and tenets, strengthened by the accumulative acceptance of centuries, go down before his bludgeon. piece by piece the universe of reality is neutralised by his analyses. every human transaction, every phase of human hope and aspiration, is reduced to negation. ancient and modern cultures are dissected unsparingly. political systems are stripped of their integuments and their origins exposed. new valuations are attached to the great artists and writers. many of nietzsche's most famous definitions grow out of the ruthless inquests he makes in this work. this uncompassionate clearing away of accepted values prepared the way for the books which were to come. once having ascertained the foundation on which human actions are built, the path was clear for reconstruction and reorganisation. "human, all-too-human," then, was the first indirect voicing of nietzsche's philosophy. all else had been mere skirmishing with ideas. only vaguely and desultorily had his opinions been heretofore voiced. his analysis of history, his criticisms of ancient and modern thought, had actually pried away the superficial manifestations of existence and given him that insight into the undercurrents of causation which was later to inspire him in his work. for this reason we are more conscious of the man than of the philosopher when reading the series of aphorisms which constitute the main body of this document. "human, all-too-human" is in the main an inquiry into the fundamental reasons for human conduct. nietzsche devotes his efforts to showing that ideals, when pushed to their final analysis, reveal a basis in human need. especially does he concern himself with the causes underlying current moral doctrines. he points out that there is no static and absolute morality, but that all moral codes are systems of deportment founded on human conditions in accordance with the environmental needs of a people. from this he states the corollary that all morality is subject to alteration, amendment and abrogation. he asserts the relativity of the terms "good" and "evil," and denies the justice of any final criticism of right and wrong as applied to any human action. from this nietzsche deduces the formula which is at the bottom of all individualistic philosophy, namely: that what is immoral for one man is moral for another, and that the application of any moral code is undesirable for the reason that no system of conduct can apply alike to all men. thus any attempt on the part of any one man to direct the actions of any other man is in itself an immorality, because it is an attempt to hinder and retard the development of the individual. it must not be thought that nietzsche's arrival at this conclusion is a direct and simple affair based on superficial observation. nor is it in itself the end for which he strives. to the contrary, the conclusion is stated mainly by inference. the work he lays out for himself is one of analysis, and under his critical scalpel fall religions, political institutions and nations, as well as individuals. wherever he finds a belief whose origin is considered divine, he tears away its surface characteristics and inquires into it. in every instance he finds a human ground for it. going still further, he points out that all institutions, in order to meet the constantly fluctuating conditions of society, must subject themselves to change. a multiplicity of themes comes under nietzsche's observation in this work. not only is there a great deal of abstract reasoning but also a vast amount of brilliant and penetrating criticism of men and art. ancient and modern philosophers, novelists, poets, musicians, dramatists, as well as theories of art, literature and music, here come under his careful and acute analysis. there are passages of startling poetry interpolated between paragraphs of cynical and destructive research. nietzsche reveals himself as a scholar, the philologist, the historian and the scientist, as well as the thinker. the amount of general knowledge he displays in nearly every line of human endeavour is astonishing. in his most elaborate processes of ratiocination he is always capable of adhering to authenticated facts. he never side-steps into the purely metaphysical or denies the existence of corporeality once it has been assumed as a hypothesis. he breaks once and for all with the metaphysicians and word-jugglers. denying all reason in the kantian sense, he is always scrupulously reasonable. although no direct philosophical doctrines are propounded in "human, all-too-human," nietzsche had undoubtedly outlined in his mind the constructive works which were to come later. however, in reading this work one finds but little indication--and that only obscurely hinted at--of the transvaluation of values which was to follow the devaluation. we have no hint, for instance, of the doctrine of the superman other than an implied ideal of an intellectual aristocracy which will permit of the highest development; of the individual. evolution beyond the present is mentioned but indirectly. the future, to this destructive nietzsche, is non-existent. his eyes are continually turned toward the past and they shift no further than the present. only through implication is the hellenic ideal voiced, and then it is with a certain degree of speculation as to its efficacy in meeting the demands of the modern man. greek culture is used largely as a means of comparison, or as an arbitrary premise of his dialectic. the doctrine of eternal recurrence, which was to form one of the bases of "thus spake zarathustra," is not even suggested. the "will to power," the anti-schopenhauerian doctrine, which is the framework on which all of nietzsche's constructive thinking is hung, was, at the time of his writing "human, all-too-human," a hypothesis, vague and undeveloped. "human, all-too-human" is the first work of nietzsche one should read. in reality it is an elaborate introduction to his later works. in his following book, "the dawn of day," comes the birth of his philosophy; it is the first real battle in his righteous warfare, the first great blasphemous assault upon the accepted order of things. but it cannot be readily understood or appreciated unless we have prepared ourselves for it. the selection of the passages from the present two volumes has been extremely difficult, due to their multiplicity of themes and to the heterogeneity of their treatment. it is impossible to create a convincing effect of a razed forest by presenting a picture of an occasional fallen tree. herein has lain my chief difficulty. i have been able to show only sections of the destruction of human values which nietzsche here accomplishes. furthermore, it has been impossible to give any very adequate idea of the vast amount of brilliant criticism of men and art which is to be encountered in these two volumes. all this must be got direct. it has been possible only to suggest it here. those portions of the books which i have been able to comprehend in these excerpts are necessarily limited to nietzsche's more important destructive conclusions. [footnote 1: "inopportune speculations."] excerpts from "human, all-too-human" everything _essential_ in human development happened in pre-historic times, long before those four thousand years which we know something of.... 1, 15 everything has evolved; there are _no eternal facts,_ as there are likewise no absolute truths. 1, 15 it is probable that the objects of religious, moral, æsthetic and logical sentiment likewise belong only to the surface of things, while man willingly believes that here, at least, he has touched the heart of the world.... 1, 17 nothing could be said of the metaphysical world but that it would be a different condition, a condition inaccessible and incomprehensible to us; it would be a thing of negative qualities. were the existence of such a world ever so well proved, the fact would nevertheless remain that it would be precisely the most irrelevant of all forms of knowledge.... 1, 21-22 belief in the freedom of the will is an original error of everything organic, as old as the existence of the awakenings of logic in it; the belief in unconditioned substances and similar things is equally a primordial as well as an old error of everything organic. 1, 33 a degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitious and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul,--if he has attained to this degree of freedom, he has still also to overcome metaphysics with the greatest exertion of his intelligence. 1, 35 away with those wearisomely hackneyed terms optimism and pessimism!... we must get rid of both the calumniating and the glorifying conception of the world. 1, 43-44 _error_ has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. pure knowledge could not have been capable of it. 1, 44-45 the usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist. here there is inference from the ability to live to its suitability; from its suitability to its rightfulness. then: an opinion brings happiness; therefore it is the true opinion. its effect is good; therefore it is itself good and true. 1, 45 every belief in the value and worthiness of life is based on vitiated thought; it is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual. 1, 47-48 science ... has no consideration for ultimate purposes, any more than nature has, but just as the latter occasionally achieves things of the greatest suitableness without intending to do so, so also true science, as the _imitator of nature in ideas,_ will occasionally and in many ways further the usefulness and welfare of man,--_but also without intending to do so._ 1, 58 all single actions are called good or bad without any regard to their motives, but only on account of the useful or injurious consequences which result for the community. but soon the origin of these distinctions is forgotten, and it is deemed that the qualities "good" or "bad" are contained in the action itself without regard to its consequences.... 1, 59 the hierarchy of possessions ... is not fixed and equal at all times; if any one prefers vengeance to justice he is moral according to the standard of an earlier civilisation, but immoral according to the present one. 1, 63 people who are cruel nowadays must be accounted for by us as the grades of earlier civilisations which have survived.... 1, 63 certainly we should _exhibit_ pity, but take good care not to _feel_ it, for the unfortunate are so _stupid_ that to them the exhibition of pity is the greatest good in the world. 1, 68 the thirst for pity is the thirst for self-gratification.... 1, 69 there must be self-deception in order that this and that may _produce_ great _effects._ for men believe in the truth of everything that is visibly, strongly believed in. 1, 71 one of the commonest mistakes is this: because some one is truthful and honest towards us, he must speak the truth. 1, 71 why do people mostly speak the truth in daily life?... because ... the path of compulsion and authority is surer than that of cunning. 1,72 one may promise actions, but no sentiments, for these are involuntary. 1,76 our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals. 1,79 every virtue has its privileges; for example, that of contributing its own little fagot to the scaffold of every condemned man. 1, 80 why do we over-estimate love to the disadvantage of justice, and say the most beautiful things about it, as if it were something very much higher than the latter? is it not visibly more stupid than justice? certainly, but precisely for that reason all the _pleasanter_ for every one. 1, 81 hope,--in reality ... is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man. 1, 82 one will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear. 1, 83 religion is rich in excuses to reply to the demand for suicide, and thus it ingratiates itself with those who wish to cling to life. 1, 85-86 the injustice of the powerful, which, more than anything else, rouses indignation in history, is by no means so great as it appears.... one unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other. 1, 86-87 when virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher. 1, 87 what a great deal of pleasure morality gives! only think what a sea of pleasant tears has been shed over descriptions of noble and unselfish deeds! this charm of life would vanish if the belief in absolute irresponsibility were to obtain supremacy. 1, 90 justice (equity) has its origin amongst powers which are fairly equal.... the character of _exchange_ is the primary character of justice.... because man, according to his intellectual custom, has _forgotten_ the original purpose of so-called just and reasonable actions, and particularly because for hundreds of years children have been taught to admire and imitate such actions, the idea has gradually arisen that such an action is un-egoistic; upon this idea, however, is based the high estimation in which it is held.... 1, 90-91 the feeling of pleasure on the basis of human relations generally makes man better; joy in common, pleasure enjoyed together is increased, it gives the individual security, makes him good-tempered, and dispels mistrust and envy, for we feel ourselves at ease and see others at ease. _similar manifestations of pleasure_ awaken the idea of the same sensations, the feeling of being like something; a like effect is produced by common sufferings, the same bad weather, dangers, enemies. upon this foundation is based the oldest alliance, the object of which is the mutual obviating and averting of a threatening danger for the benefit of each individual. and thus the social instinct grows out of pleasure. 1, 97 the aim of malice is _not_ the suffering of others in itself, but our own enjoyment.... 1, 102 if self-defence is allowed to pass as moral, then almost all manifestations of the so-called immoral egoism must also stand.... 1, 104 he who is punished does not deserve the punishment, he is only used as a means of henceforth warning away from certain actions; equally so, he who is rewarded does not merit this reward, he could not act otherwise than he did. 1, 105 between good and evil actions there is no difference of species, but at most of degree. good actions are sublimated evil ones; evil actions are vulgarised and stupefied good ones. 1, 108 the religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man.... 1, 121 christianity ... oppressed man and crushed him utterly, sinking him as if in deep mire; then into the feeling of absolute depravity it suddenly threw the light of divine mercy, so that the surprised man, dazzled by forgiveness, gave a cry of joy and for a moment believed that he bore all heaven within himself. 1, 124 people to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous. 1, 125 no man _ever_ did a thing which was done only for others and without any personal motive.... 1, 134 in every ascetic morality man worships one part of himself as a god, and is obliged, therefore, to diabolise the other parts. 1, 140 what is it that we long for at the sight of beauty? we long to be beautiful, we fancy it must bring much happiness with it. but that is a mistake. 1, 156 there is an art of the ugly soul side by side with the art of the beautiful soul.... 1, 157 artists of representation are especially held to be possessed of genius, but not scientific men. in reality, however, the former valuation and the latter under-valuation are only puerilities of reason. 1, 166-167 a good author possesses not only his own intellect, but also that of his friends. 1, 178 to look upon writing as a regular profession should justly be regarded as a form of madness. 1, 181 a conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends. 1, 183 complete praise has a weakening effect. 1, 184 there will always be a need of bad authors; for they meet the taste of readers of an undeveloped, immature age.... 1, 185 the born aristocrats of the mind are not in too much of a hurry; their creations appear and fall from the tree on some quiet autumn evening, without being rashly desired, instigated, or pushed aside by new matter. the unceasing desire to create is vulgar, and betrays envy, jealousy, and ambition. if a man _is_ something, it is not really necessary for him to do anything--and yet he does a great deal. there is a human species higher even than the "productive" man.... 1, 189 deviating natures are of the utmost importance wherever there is to be progress. every wholesale progress must be preceded by a partial weakening. the strongest natures _retain_ the type, the weaker ones help it to _develop_. 1, 208 in the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the _possession_ of it, not the impulse under which it was sought, the way in which it was found. 1, 210 the fettered spirit does not take up his position from conviction, but from habit; he is a christian, for instance, not because he had a comprehension of different creeds and could take his choice; he is an englishman, not because he decided for england, but he found christianity and england ready-made and accepted them without any reason, just as one who is born in a wine-country becomes a wine-drinker. 1, 211 the restriction of views, which habit has made instinct, leads to what is called strength of character. 1, 212-213 the highest intelligence and the warmest heart cannot exist together in one person, and the wise man who passes judgment upon life looks beyond goodness and only regards it as something which is not without value in the general summing-up of life. the wise man must _oppose_ those digressive wishes of unintelligent goodness, because he has an interest in the continuance of his type and in the eventual appearance of the highest intellect; at least, he will not advance the founding of the "perfect state," inasmuch as there is only room in it for wearied individuals. 1, 218-219 interest in education will acquire great strength only from the moment when belief in a god and his care is renounced.... an education that no longer believes in miracles must pay attention to three things: first, how much energy is inherited? secondly, by what means can new energy be aroused? thirdly, how can the individual be adapted to so many and manifold claims of culture without being disquieted and destroying his personality,--in short, how can the individual be initiated into the counterpoint of private and public culture, how can he lead the melody and at the same time accompany it. 1, 224-225 a higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain-chambers, so to speak, one to feel science and the other to feel non-science, which can lie side by side, without confusion, divisible, exclusive; this is a necessity of health. in one part lies the source of strength, in the other lies the regulator; it must be heated with illusions, onesidednesses, passions; and the malicious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be averted by the help of conscious science. 1, 232 simultaneous things hold together, it is said. a relative dies far away, and at the same time we dream about him,--consequently! but countless relatives die and we do not dream about them.... this species of superstition is found again in a refined form in historians and delineators of culture, who usually have a kind of hydrophobic horror of all that senseless mixture, in which individual and national life is so rich. 1, 235 it is true that in the spheres of higher culture there must always be a supremacy, but henceforth this supremacy lies in the hands of the _oligarchs of the mind._ in spite of local and political separation they form a cohesive society, whose members _recognise and acknowledge_ each other, whatever public opinion and the verdicts of review and newspaper writers who influence the masses may circulate in favour of or against them. mental superiority, which formerly divided and embittered, nowadays generally _unites._ ... oligarchs are necessary to each other, they are each other's best joy, they understand their signs, but each is nevertheless free, he fights and conquers in _his_ place and perishes rather than submit. 1, 243 the greatest advance that men have made lies in their acquisition of the art to _reason rightly._ 1, 249-250 the strength and weakness of mental productiveness depend far less on inherited talents than on the accompanying amount of _elasticity._ 1, 250 whoever, in the present day, still derives his development from religious sentiments, and perhaps lives for some length of time afterwards in metaphysics and art, has assuredly gone back a considerable distance and begins his race with other modern men under unfavourable conditions; he apparently loses time and space. but because he stays in those domains where ardour and energy are liberated and force flows continuously as a volcanic stream out of an inexhaustible source, he goes forward all the more quickly as soon as he has freed himself at the right moment from those dominators.... 1, 252 whoever wishes to reap happiness and comfort in life should always avoid higher culture. 1, 255-250 all mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave.... 1, 259 if idleness is really the _beginning_ of all vice, it finds itself, therefore, at least in near neighbourhood of all the virtues; the idle man is still a better man than the active. you do not suppose that in speaking of idleness and idlers i am alluding to you, you sluggards? 1, 260 i believe that every one must have his own opinion about everything concerning which opinions are possible, because he himself is a peculiar, unique thing, which assumes towards all other things a new and never hitherto existing attitude. 1, 260-261 whoever earnestly desires to be free will therewith and without any compulsion lose all inclination for faults and vices; he will also be more rarely overcome by anger and vexation. 1, 261-262 you must have loved religion and art as you loved mother and nurse,--otherwise you cannot be wise. but you must be able to see beyond them, to outgrow them; if you remain under their ban you do not understand them. 1, 264 the rage for equality may so manifest itself that we seek either to draw all others down to ourselves (by belittling, disregarding, and tripping up), or ourselves and all others upwards (by recognition, assistance, and congratulation). 1, 268 we set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we perceive that it is entirely lacking in our adversary. 1, 269 we forget our pretensions when we are always conscious of being amongst meritorious people; being alone implants presumption in us. the young are pretentious, for they associate with their equals, who are all ciphers but would fain have a great significance. 1, 271 in warring against stupidity, the most just and gentle of men at last become brutal. they are thereby, perhaps, taking the proper course for defence; for the most appropriate argument for a stupid brain is the clenched fist. but because, as has been said, their character is just and gentle, they suffer more by this means of protection than they injure their opponents by it. 1, 284 the perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. 1, 295 every one bears within him an image of woman, inherited from his mother: it determines his attitude towards woman as a whole, whether to honour, despise, or remain generally indifferent to them. 1, 295-296 mothers are readily jealous of the friends of sons who are particularly successful. as a rule mother loves _herself_ in her son more than the son. 1, 296 if married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent. 1, 298 as a rule women love a distinguished man to the extent that they wish to possess him exclusively. they would gladly keep him under lock and key, if their vanity did not forbid, but vanity demands that he should also appear distinguished before others. 1, 299 those girls who mean to trust exclusively to their youthful charms for their provision in life, and whose cunning is further prompted by worldly mothers, have just the same aims as courtesans, only they are wiser and less honest. 1, 300 for goodness' sake let us not give our classical education to girls! 1, 301 the intellect of woman manifests itself as perfect mastery, presence of mind, and utilisation of all advantages. they transmit it as a fundamental quality to their children, and the father adds thereto the darker background of the will. his influence determines as it were the rhythm and harmony with which the new life is to be performed; but its melody is derived from the mother. for those who know how to put a thing properly: women have intelligence, men have character and passion. this does not contradict the fact that men actually achieve so much more with their intelligence: they have deeper and more powerful impulses; and it is these which carry their understanding (in itself something passive) to such an extent. women are often silently surprised at the great respect men pay to their character. when, therefore, in the choice of a partner men seek specially for a being of deep and strong character, and women for a being of intelligence, brilliancy, and presence of mind, it is plain that at bottom men seek for the ideal man, and women for the ideal woman,--consequently not for the complement but for the completion of their own excellence. 1, 302-303. it is a sign of women's wisdom that they have almost always known how to get themselves supported, like drones in a bee-hive. let us just consider what this meant originally, and why men do not depend upon women for their support. of a truth it is because masculine vanity and reverence are greater than feminine wisdom; for women have known how to secure for themselves by their subordination the greatest advantage, in fact, the upper hand. even the care of children may originally have been used by the wisdom of women as an excuse for withdrawing themselves as much as possible from work. and at present they still understand when they are really active (as housekeepers, for instance) how to make a bewildering fuss about it, so that the merit of their activity is usually ten times over-estimated by men. 1, 303 marriage is a necessary institution for the twenties; a useful, but not necessary, institution for the thirties; for later life it is often harmful, and promotes the mental deterioration of the man. 1, 308 marriage regarded in its highest aspect, as the spiritual friendship of two persons of opposite sexes, and accordingly such as is hoped for in future, contracted for the purpose of producing and educating a new generation,--such marriage, which only makes use of the sensual, so to speak, as a rare and occasional means to a higher purpose, will, it is to be feared, probably need a natural auxiliary, namely, _concubinage._ for if, on the grounds of his health, the wife is also to serve, for the sole satisfaction of the man's sexual needs, a wrong perspective, opposed to the aims indicated, will have most influence in the choice of a wife. the aims referred to: the production of descendants, will be accidental, and their successful education highly improbable. 1, 309 we always lose through too familiar association with women and friends; and sometimes we lose the pearl of of our life thereby. 1, 312 women always intrigue privately against the higher souls of their husbands; they want to cheat them out of their future for the sake of a painless and comfortable present. 1, 315 it is laughable when a company of paupers decree the abolition of the right of inheritance, and it is not less laughable when childless persons labour for the practical law-giving of a country: they have not enough ballast in their ship to sail safely over the ocean of the future. but it seems equally senseless if a man who has chosen for his mission the widest knowledge and estimation of universal existence, burdens himself with personal considerations of a family, with the support, protection, and care of wife and child, and in front of his telescope hangs that gloomy veil through which hardly a ray from the distant firmament can penetrate. thus 1, too, agree with the opinion that in matters of the highest philosophy all married men are to be suspected. 1, 316 a higher culture can only originate where there are two distinct castes of society: that of the working class, and that of the leisured class who are capable of true leisure; or, more strongly expressed, the caste of compulsory labour and the caste of free labour. 1, 319 against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful. in favour of war it may be said that it barbarises in both its above-named results, and thereby makes more natural; it is the sleep or the winter period of culture; man emerges from it with greater strength for good and for evil. 1, 322 as regards socialism, in the eyes of those who always consider higher utility, if it is _really_ a rising against their oppressors of those who for centuries have been oppressed and downtrodden, there is no problem of _right_ involved (notwithstanding the ridiculous, effeminate question, "how far _ought_ we to grant its demands?") but only a problem of _power_ ("how far _can_ we make use of its demands?") 1, 322 well may noble (if not exactly very intelligent) representatives of the governing classes asseverate: "we will treat men equally and grant them equal rights"; so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on _justice_ is possible; but, as has been said, only within the ranks of the governing class, which in this case _practises_ justice with sacrifices and abnegations. on the other hand, to _demand_ equality of rights, as do the socialists of the subject caste, is by no means the outcome of justice, but of covetousness. if you expose bloody pieces of flesh to a beast, and withdraw them again, until it finally begins to roar, do you think that roaring implies justice? 1, 326-327 when the socialists point out that the division of property at the present day is the consequence of countless deeds of injustice and violence, and, _in summa,_ repudiate obligation to anything with so unrighteous a basis, they only perceive something isolated. the entire past of ancient civilisation is built up on violence, slavery, deception, and error; we, however, cannot annul ourselves, the heirs of all these conditions, nay, the concrescences of all this past, and are not entitled to demand the withdrawal of a single fragment thereof. 1, 327 those who are bent on revolutionising society may be divided into those who seek something for themselves thereby and those who seek something for their children and grandchildren. the latter are the more dangerous, for they have the belief and the good conscience of disinterestedness. 1, 329 the fact that we regard the gratification of vanity as of more account than all other forms of well-being (security, position, and pleasures of all sorts), is shown to a ludicrous extent by every one wishing for the abolition of slavery and utterly abhorring to put any one into this position.... we protest in the name of the "dignity of man"; but, expressed more simply, that is just our darling vanity which feels non-equality, and inferiority in public estimation, to be the hardest lot of all. 1, 330 in all institutions into which the sharp breeze of public criticism does not penetrate an innocent corruption grows up like a fungus (for instance, in learned bodies and senates). 1, 336 the belief in a divine regulation of political affairs, in a mystery in the existence of the state, is of religious origin: if religion disappears, the state will inevitably lose its old veil of isis, and will no longer arouse veneration. the sovereignty of the people, looked at closely, serves also to dispel the final fascination and superstition in the realm of these sentiments; modern democracy is the historical form of the _decay of the state._ 1, 342 socialism is the fantastic younger brother of almost decrepit despotism, which it wants to succeed; its efforts are, therefore, in the deepest sense reactionary. for it desires such an amount of state power as only despotism has possessed,--indeed, it outdoes all the past, in that it aims at the complete annihilation of the individual, whom it deems an unauthorised luxury of nature, which is to be improved by it into an appropriate _organ of the general community._ owing to its relationship, it always appears in proximity to excessive developments of power, like the old typical socialist, plato, at the court of the sicilian tyrant; it desires (and under certain circumstances furthers) the cæsarian despotism of this century, because, as has been said, it would like to become its heir. but even this inheritance would not suffice for its objects, it requires the most submissive prostration of all citizens before the absolute state, such as has never yet been realised, and as it can no longer even count upon the old religious piety towards the state, but must rather strive involuntarily and continuously for the abolition thereof,--because it strives for the abolition of all existing _states,_--it can only hope for existence occasionally, here and there for short periods, by means of the extremest terrorism. it is therefore silently preparing itself for reigns of terror, and drives the word "justice" like a nail into the heads of the half-cultured masses in order to deprive them completely of their understanding (after they had already suffered seriously from the half-culture), and to provide them with a good conscience for the bad game they are to play. socialism may serve to teach, very brutally and impressively, the danger of all accumulations of state power, and may serve so far to inspire distrust of the state itself. 1, 343-344 it is nothing but fanaticism and beautiful soulism to expect very much (or even, much only) from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war. 1, 349 wealth necessarily creates an aristocracy of race, for it permits the choice of the most beautiful women and the engagement of the best teachers; it allows a man cleanliness, time for physical exercises, and, above all, immunity from dulling physical labour. 1, 351 public opinion--private laziness. 1, 354 convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. 1, 355 the unreasonableness of a thing is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition thereof. 1, 361 people who talk about their importance to mankind have a feeble conscience for common bourgeois rectitude, keeping of contracts, promises, etc. 1, 363 the demand to be loved is the greatest of presumptions. 1, 363 when a man roars with laughter he surpasses all the animals by his vulgarity. 1, 369 the first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about anything is not usually our own, but only the current opinion belonging to our caste, position, or family; our own opinions seldom float on the surface. 1, 372 nobody talks more passionately of his rights than he who, in the depths of his soul, is doubtful about them. 1, 380. unconsciously we seek the principles and opinions which are suited to our temperament, so that at last it seems as if these principles and opinions had formed our character and given it support and stability, whereas exactly the contrary has taken place. our thoughts and judgments are, apparently, to be taken subsequently as the causes of our nature, but as a matter of fact _our_ nature is the cause of our so thinking and judging. 1, 384 the man of unpleasant character, full of distrust, envious of the success of fellow-competitors and neighbours, violent and enraged at divergent opinions, shows that he belongs to an earlier grade of culture, and is, therefore, an atavism; for the way in which he behaves to people was right and suitable only for an age of club-law; he is an _atavist._ the man of a different character, rich in sympathy, winning friends everywhere, finding all that is growing and becoming amiable, rejoicing at the honours and successes of others and claiming no privilege of solely knowing the truth, but full of a modest distrust,--he is a forerunner who presses upwards towards a higher human culture. 1, 388 he who has not passed through different phases of conviction, but sticks to the faith in whose net he was first caught, is, under all circumstances, just on account of this unchangeableness, a representative of _atavistic_ culture.... 1, 400 opinions evolve out of _passions; indolence of intellect_ allows those to congeal into _convictions_. 1, 404 he who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth--and not even as a traveller _towards_ a final goal, for there is no such thing. 1, 405 if we make it clear to any one that, strictly, he can never speak of truth, but only of probability and of its degrees, we generally discover, from the undisguised joy of our pupil, how greatly men prefer the uncertainty of their intellectual horizon, and how in their heart of hearts they hate truth because of its definiteness. 2, 15 with all that enthusiasts say in favour of their gospel or their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport themselves as the judges and not the accused: because they are involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and have to assert their legitimacy. 2, 18 the belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed. 2, 20 philosophic brains will ... be distinguished from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical significance of morality. 2, 29 you hold that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--just consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice. 2, 30 it is more convenient to follow one's conscience than one's intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. that is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people. 2, 33 all moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. besides, they are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from the work. 2, 42 no one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. all complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. whether we do one or the other, we always make some one responsible. 2, 44 we must know how to emerge cleaner from unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with dirty water. 2, 44 the origin of morality may be traced to two ideas: "the community is of more value than the individual," and "the permanent interest is to be preferred to the temporary." the conclusion drawn is that the permanent interest of the community is unconditionally to be set above the temporary interest of the individual, especially his momentary well-being, but also his permanent interest and even the prolongation of his existence. 2, 46-47 we should not shrink from treading the road to a virtue, even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism, and accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, considerations of health, reputation, or glory, are the impelling motives. these motives are styled ignoble and selfish. very well, but if they stimulate us to some virtue--for example, self-denial, dutifulness, order, thrift, measure, and moderation--let us listen to them, whatever their epithets may be! 2, 48 the tendency of a talent towards moral subjects, characters, motives, towards the "beautiful soul" of the work of art, is often only a glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful soul. 2, 78 art is above all and meant to embellish life, to make us ourselves endurable and if possible agreeable in the eyes of others. with this task in view, art moderates us and holds us in restraint, creates forms of intercourse, binds over the uneducated to laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed speech and silence. hence art must conceal or transfigure everything that is ugly--the painful, terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of every effort will always break out afresh in accordance with the very origin of human nature. art has to perform this duty especially in regard to the passions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to cause the significant factor to shine through unavoidable or unconquerable ugliness. to this great, super-great task the so-called art proper, that of works of art, is a mere accessory. a man who feels within himself a surplus of such powers of embellishment, concealment, and transfiguration will finally seek to unburden himself of this surplus in works of art. the same holds good, under special circumstances, of a whole nation. 2, 01-92 on great minds is bestowed the terrifying all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust aroused by such qualities. 2, 100 original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and overlooked by every one, as something new. the first discoverer is usually that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary--chance. 2, 105 the obvious satisfaction of the individual with his own form excites imitation and gradually creates the form of the many--that is, fashion. 2, 107 who of us could dare to call himself a "free spirit" if he could not render homage after his fashion, by taking on his own shoulders a portion of that burden of public dislike and abuse, to men to whom this name is attached as a reproach? 2, 108 immediate self-observation is not enough, by a long way, to enable us to learn to know ourselves. we need history, for the past continues to flow through us in a hundred channels. we ourselves are, after all, nothing but our own sensation at every moment of this continued flow. 2, 117 to young and fresh barbarian nations ... christianity is a poison. 2, 120 faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although i do not know who assumed that it could. but it can put mountains where there was none. 2, 121 among travellers we may distinguish five grades. the first and lowest grade is of those who travel and are seen--they become really travelled and are, as it were, blind. next come those who really see the world. the third class experience the results of their seeing. the fourth weave their experience into their life and carry it with them henceforth. lastly, there are some men of the highest strength who, as soon as they have returned home, must finally and necessarily work out in their lives and productions all the things seen that they have experienced and incorporated in themselves.--like these five species of travellers, all mankind goes through the whole pilgrimage of life, the lowest as purely passive, the highest as those who act and live out their lives without keeping back any residue of inner experiences. 2, 125 to treat all men with equal good-humour, and to be kind without distinctions of persons, may arise as much from a profound contempt for mankind as from an in-grained love of humanity. 2, 127 towards science women and self-seeking artists entertain a feeling that is composed of envy and sentimentality. 2, 134 the intellectual strength of a woman is best proved by the fact that she offers her own intellect as a sacrifice out of love for a man and his intellect, and that nevertheless in the new domain, which was previously foreign to her nature, a second intellect at once arises as an aftergrowth, to which the man's mind impels her. 2, 136 by women nature shows how far she has hitherto achieved her task of fashioning humanity, by man she shows what she has had overcome, and what she still proposes to do for humanity. 2, 137 whence arises the sudden passion of a man for a woman, a passion so deep, so vital? least of all from sensuality only: but when a man finds weakness, need of help, and high spirits united in the same creature, he suffers a sort of overflowing of soul, and is touched and offended at the same moment. at this point arises the source of great love. 2, 140 profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. 2, 140 the only remedy against socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking socialism--in other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as possible all lavish display, and to aid the state as far as possible in its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. 2, 145 only a man of intellect should hold property: otherwise property is dangerous to the community. for the owner, not knowing how to make use of the leisure which his possessions might secure to him, will continue to strive after more property.... it excites envy in the poor and uncultured--who at bottom always envy culture and see no mask in the mask--and gradually paves the way for a social revolution. 2, 147-148 only up to a certain point does possession make men feel freer and more independent; one step farther, and possession becomes lord, the possessor a slave. 2, 149 the governments of the great states have two instruments for keeping the people independent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. 2, 152 to call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier--that is the only way to keep joy pure. 2, 158 to honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it _pleases_ one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small. 2, 158-159 when life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. for now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner. 2, 162 you rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule. 2, 167 the most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, "the ego is always hateful," the most childish in the still more famous saying, "love thy neighbour as thyself."--with the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun. 2, 172 you find your burden of life too heavy? then you must increase the burden of your life. 2, 176 that the world is _not_ the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that _bit of the world_ which we know--i mean our human reason--is none too reasonable. and if _this_ is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. 2, 184 there exists a simulated contempt for all things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. for instance, we say "we only eat to live"--an abominable _lie,_ like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. conversely, the reverence for "the most important things" is hardly ever quite genuine. 2, 185 the doctrine of free will is an invention of the ruling classes. 2, 190 if a god created the world, he created man to be his ape, as a perpetual source of amusement in the midst of his rather tedious eternities. 2, 193 the robber and the man of power who promises to protect a community from robbers are perhaps at bottom beings of the same mould, save that the latter attains his ends by other means than the former--that is to say, through regular imposts paid to him by the community, and no longer through forced contributions. 2, 200 the sting of conscience, like the gnawing of a dog at a stone, is mere foolishness. 2, 217 rights may be traced to traditions, traditions to momentary agreements. 2, 217 morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence. its motives are fear and hope, and these in a more coarse, rough, and powerful form, the more the propensity towards the perverse, one-sided, and personal still persists. 2, 221 moral prohibitions, like those of the decalogue, are only suited to ages when reason lies vanquished. 2, 223 it is difficult to explain why pity is so highly prized, just as we need to explain why the unselfish man, who is originally despised or feared as being artful, is praised. 2, 224 the sum-total of our conscience is all that has regularly been demanded of us, without reason, in the days of our childhood, by people whom we respected or feared. 2, 224 every word is a preconceived judgment. 2, 225 the fatalism of the turk has this fundamental defect, that it contrasts man and fate as two distinct things. man, says this doctrine, may struggle against fate and try to baffle it, but in the end fate will always gain the victory. hence the most rational course is to resign oneself or to live as one pleases. as a matter of fact, every man is himself a piece of fate. when he thinks that he is struggling against fate in this way, fate is accomplishing its ends even in that struggle. the combat is a fantasy, but so is the resignation in fate--all these fantasies are included in fate.--the fear felt by most people of the doctrine that denies the freedom of the will is a fear of the fatalism of the turk. they imagine that man will become weakly resigned and will stand before the future with folded hands, because he cannot alter anything of the future. or that he will give a free rein to his caprices, because the predestined cannot be made worse by that course. the follies of men are as much a piece of fate as are his wise actions, and even that fear of belief in fate is a fatality. you yourself, you poor timid creature, are that indomitable _moira,_ which rules even the gods; whatever may happen, you are a curse or a blessing, and in any case the fetters wherein the strongest lies bound: in you the whole future of the human world is predestined, and it is no use for you to be frightened of yourself. 2, 228-229 in the first era of the higher humanity courage is accounted the most noble virtue, in the next justice, in the third temperance, in the fourth wisdom. 2, 230 superficial, inexact observation sees contrasts everywhere in nature (for instance, "hot and cold"), where there are no contrasts, only differences of degree. 2, 231 on two hypotheses alone is there any sense in prayer, that not quite extinct custom of olden times. it would have to be possible either to fix or alter the will of the godhead, and the devotee would have to know best himself what he needs and should really desire. both hypotheses, axiomatic and traditional in all other religions, are denied by christianity. 2, 235-233 distrust is the touchstone for the gold of certainty. 2, 266 wrath and punishment are our inheritance from the animals. man does not become of age until he has restored to the animals this gift of the cradle.--herein lies buried one of the mightiest ideas that men can have, the idea of a progress of all progresses.--let us go forward together a few millenniums, my friends! there is still reserved for mankind a great deal of joy, the very scent of which has not yet been wafted to the men of our day! indeed, we may promise ourselves this joy, nay summon and conjure it up as a necessary thing, so long as the development of human reason does not stand still. some day we shall no longer be reconciled to the logical sin that lurks in all wrath and punishment, whether exercised by the individual or by society--some day, when head and heart have learnt to live as near together as they now are far apart. that they no longer stand so far apart as they did originally is fairly palpable from a glance at the whole course of humanity. the individual who can review a life of introspective work will become conscious of the _rapprochement_ arrived at, with a proud delight at the distance he has bridged, in order that he may thereupon venture upon more ample hopes. 2, 284-285 natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist.... 2, 286 the more fully and thoroughly we live, the more ready we are to sacrifice life for a single pleasurable emotion. 2, 288 all intellectual movements whereby the great may hope to rob and the small to save, are sure to prosper. 2, 311-312 the desire for victory and pre-eminence is an ineradicable trait of human nature, older and more primitive than any respect of or joy in equality. 2, 312 if all alms were given only out of compassion, the whole tribe of beggars would long since have died of starvation.... the greatest of almsgivers is cowardice. 2, 317 the exertion of power is laborious and demands courage. that is why so many do not assert their most valid rights, because their rights are a kind of power, and they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise them. _indulgence_ and _patience_ are the names given to the virtues that cloak these faults. 2, 319-320 "stupid as a man," say the women; "cowardly as a woman," say the men. stupidity in a woman is unfeminine. 2, 328 all political work, even with great statesmen, is an improvisation that trusts to luck. 2, 332 the so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, of a disposition that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly from hate, partly from fear, refuses to lay down its weapons. better to perish than to hate and fear, and twice as far better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared--this must some day become the supreme maxim of every political community!... 2, 236 in order that property may henceforth inspire more confidence and become more moral, we should keep open all the paths of work for small fortunes, but should prevent the effortless and sudden acquisition of wealth. accordingly, we should take all the branches of transport and trade which favour the accumulation of large fortunes--especially, therefore, the money market--out of the hands of private persons or private companies, and look upon those who own too much, just as upon those who own nothing, as types fraught with danger to the community. 2, 340 if we try to determine the value of labour by the amount of time, industry, good or bad will, constraint, inventiveness or laziness, honesty or make-believe bestowed upon it, the valuation can never be a just one. for the whole personality would have to be thrown into the scale, and this is impossible. 2, 340 the _exploitation_ of the worker was, as we now understand, a piece of folly, a robbery at the expense of the future, a jeopardisation of society. we almost have the war now, and in any case the expense of maintaining peace, of concluding treaties and winning confidence, will henceforth be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and long-lasting. 2, 341 the masses are as far as possible removed from socialism as a doctrine of altering the acquisition of property. if once they get the steering-wheel into their hands, through great majorities in their parliaments, they will attack with progressive taxation the whole dominant system of capitalists, merchants, and financiers, and will in fact slowly create a middle class which may forget socialism like a disease that has been overcome. 2, 343 the two principles of the new life.--_first principle:_ to arrange one's life on the most secure and tangible basis, not as hitherto upon the most distant, undetermined, and cloudy foundation. _second principle:_ to establish the rank of the nearest and nearer things, and of the more and less secure, before one arranges one's life and directs it to a final end. 2, 351 through the certain prospect of death a precious, fragrant drop of frivolity might be mixed with every day life--and now, you singular druggist-souls, you have made of death a drop of poison, unpleasant to taste, which makes the whole of life hideous. 2, 355 we speak of nature, and, in doing so, forget ourselves: we ourselves are nature, _quand même_. 2, 356-357 we should not let ourselves be burnt for our opinions--we are not so certain of them as all that. but we might let ourselves be burnt for the right of possessing and changing our opinions. 2, 358 man has been bound with many chains, in order that he may forget to comport himself like an animal. and indeed he has become more gentle, more intellectual, more joyous, more meditative than any animal. but now he still suffers from having carried his chains so long, from having been so long without pure air and free movement--these chains, however, are, as i repeat again and again, the ponderous and significant errors of moral, religious, and metaphysical ideas. only when the disease of chains is overcome is the first great goal reached--the separation of man from the brute. 2, 362-363 iii "the dawn of day" the first work to follow the transitional and preparatory criticism and comment of "human, all-too-human" was "the dawn of day" ("_morgen-röte_"). such a treatise dealing with nietzsche's constructive and analytical thinking, was no doubt expected. no man could so effectively rattle the bones of the older gods, could so wantonly trample down the tenets strengthened by the teachings of centuries, could so ruthlessly annihilate the accepted ethical standards and religious formulæ, unless there existed back of his bludgeon a positivity of will which implied creation and construction. nietzsche realised the significance of this new book, and at its completion, early in 1881, sent an urgent letter to his publisher requesting its immediate printing. the publisher, however, failing to attach any importance to the document, delayed its issuance until late in the summer, at which time its appearance caused no excitement and but little comment. "the dawn of day" nevertheless ranks among nietzsche's best works. its title, frankly symbolic, reflects the nature of its contents. it was the beginning of nietzsche's positive philosophy. in it he begins his actual work of reconstruction. many of its passages form the foundation of those later books wherein he augmented and developed his theories. however, there is here no radical change in his thought. the passages are logical sequences to that simple nihilism of prevailing customs which occupied him in his former essays. in his earliest beginnings we can see evidences of the direction his teachings were to take. his books up to the last were mainly developments and elaborations of the thoughts which were in his mind from the first. though often vaguely conceived and unco-ordinated, these thoughts were the undeniable property of his own thinking. although there have been many attempts to trace eclectic influences to the men of his time, and especially to schopenhauer, the results of such critical endeavours have been easily controverted by the plainest of internal evidence. the philosophical nietzsche has his roots firmly implanted in the scholastic nietzsche; and though in superficial and non-important phases of his thought he changed from time to time, the most diligent research fails to reveal direct contradictions in any of his fundamental doctrines. in "the dawn of day" nietzsche goes again into the origin of morality. he carries his analyses further and supports them by additional enquiries and by more complicated processes of reasoning. having ascertained the place which morals assume in the human scale and determined their relation to racial necessities, he points out that their application as permanent and unalterable mandates works havoc in any environment save that in which they were conceived. inasmuch as all morality is at bottom but an expression of expediency, it follows that, since the means of expediency change under varying conditions, morality must change to meet the constantly metamorphosing conditions of society. and since the conditions of life are never the same in all nations, moral codes must likewise adapt themselves to geography in order to fulfil their function. the existing code of morals, namely: the christian doctrine, grew out of conditions which were not only different from those in which we live to-day, but in many instances diametrically opposed to them. nietzsche saw a grave danger in adhering to an ethical system which was not relative to the modern man, and argues that the result of such a morality would produce effects which would have no intelligent bearing on the racial problems of the present day. knowing the deep-rooted superstition in man regarding the "divine" origin of moral laws, he undertakes the task of relating all ancient codes to the racial conditions existent at their inception, thus constructing a human origin for them. christianity, being the greatest moral force of the day, attracted nietzsche's attention the most, and in "the dawn of day" much space is devoted to a consideration of it. while in tone these paragraphs are milder than those which followed in "the antichrist," they nevertheless are among the profoundest criticisms which nietzsche made of nazarene morality. though only a portion of the aphorisms contained in this work are devoted to an evaluation of theological modes of conduct, stumbling blocks are thrown in the path of an acceptance of jewish ethics which the most sapient of modern ecclesiastics have been unable to remove. out of certain aphorisms found here grew "the antichrist" which is the most terrible and effective excoriation that christianity has ever called forth. beginning on page 66 of "the dawn of day" there appears one of nietzsche's most fundamental passages dealing with christianity. it is called "the first christian," and is an analysis of the apostle paul. no theological dialectician has been able to answer it. here is an aphorism so illuminating, so profound, yet so brief, as to dazzle completely the lay mind. however, christianity is but one of the subjects dealt with in "the dawn of day." the book covers the whole field of modern morality. says nietzsche in his introduction; "in this book we find a 'subterrestrial' at work, digging, mining, undermining.... i went down into the deepest depths; i tunnelled to the very bottom; i started to investigate and unearth an old _faith_ which for thousands of years we philosophers used to build on as the safest of all foundations.... i began to undermine our _faith in morals."_ it is true that from the beginning of history there has existed a ruling scale of values determining the acts of humanity. morality implies the domination of certain classes which, in order to inspire reverence in arbitrary dictates, have invested their codes with an authority other than a human one. thus has criticism been stifled. morality has had the means of intimidation on its side, and has discouraged investigation by exercising severe penalties. consequently morality has accumulated and grown, gathered power and swept on without its thinkers, its philosophers or its analysts. of all the sciences, the science of conduct has been the last to attract investigators. the vogue of that style of philosophy which was founded on the tradition of speculation and honeycombed with presuppositions, did not pass out until the advent of darwin's evolutionism. but even the inauguration of biology and sociology did not entirely eliminate the metaphysical assumption from constructive thinking. the scientists themselves, not excluding darwin, hesitated to acknowledge the laws of natural selection and of the survival of the fit. neo-lamarckism was but one of the reactions against this tough and unpleasant theory. alfred russel wallace and, to take an even more significant figure, herbert spencer, endeavoured to refute the possibility of a biological basis in thought and thus to avoid an acquiescence to the darwinian research. john fiske, an avowed evolutionist, indirectly repudiated the scientific origin of philosophy; and likewise most of the lesser thinkers, following the exposition of darwin's theories, refused to apply to man the biological laws governing the animal kingdom. balfour and huxley sensed the incongruities and variances in this new mode of thinking, and strove to bridge the chasm between natural science and human conduct, and to construct a system of ethics which would possess a logical and naturalistic foundation. but in both cases the question was begged. we find balfour building up a moral system which, while it did not deny darwinism, had for its end the destruction, or at least the alteration, of natural laws. and huxley defines human progress as an overcoming of biological principles. thus, even in the most materialistic of physio-psychologists, the subjugation of natural laws was the primary thesis. biology, therefore, instead of being used as a basis to further philosophy, was considered an obstacle which philosophy had to overcome. nietzsche saw that a science of conduct based on natural and physiological laws was a possible and logical thing. and in him, for the first time in the history of philosophical thought, do we find a scholarly and at the same time an intellectual critic of authorised standards. the biological point of view was never lost sight of by him. if at times he seemed to abandon it, it was but for a brief period; he ever came back to it. even his most abstract passages have their feet implanted in the fact that all phenomena are answerable to the law of vital fitness. before the tribunal of biology nietzsche arraigns and tries every phase of his thought, whether it deals with physical phenomena, ethical conduct or with abstract reasoning. philosophy, for centuries divorced from science, is here clothed in the garments of scientific experimentation; a relationship is established between these two planes of rationalism and empiricism which have always been considered by other thinkers as detached and unrelated. nor does nietzsche ally himself, either consciously or unconsciously, with such philosophers as bruno and plato (who stood between the scientific thinkers on the one hand and the abstract dialecticians on the other), and attempt a formulation of a system of thought founded on intuitive processes. such poetic conceptions had no fascination for him except as they were directly applicable to the problem of the universe. those men who busied themselves with the mere theory of knowledge he held as supererogatory cobweb-spinners; and even in the realm of metaphysicians such as descartes, spinoza and leibniz, he dallied but casually. his aim was to relate all thought to determinable values of life. in his introduction nietzsche calls morality the circe of philosophies, and adds: "for, to what is it due that, from plato onwards, all the philosophic architects in europe have built in vain?" later beneath his analysis--which never assumes the negative qualities of the metaphysical--the moral phenomenon goes to pieces, not by a few simple strokes, nor yet by the effrontery of cynicism or pessimism, but by the most careful and intricate surgery. he points out the great heretics of history as examples of the men who, looked at through the eyes of contemporaries, were "wicked" men, but who, under different environmental circumstances, were considered "good." he denies the static hypothesis on which morality is built, and postulates the theory that immorality is not without its place in the development of the reason. he is constantly attempting to translate the existing moral values into terms of their true nature, not necessarily into immoralities, but into natural unmoralities. the accepted virtues, such as pity, honesty, faith, obedience, service, loyalty and self-sacrifice, are questioned in their relation to racial needs; and modern attitudes toward all human activities are traced to their causes and judged as to their influence. the research work in the present book differs from that contained in previous volumes. heretofore nietzsche indulged in inquiry without speculation; he dealt mainly with generalities. his analyses were along broad lines of human conduct. he confined himself for the most part to principles. but in "the dawn of day" these principles are balanced with existent morality. specific modes of moral and ethical endeavour are weighed against expediency. nietzsche presents a diagnosis of the fundamental nature of society to-day, and discovers many contradictions and inconsistencies between modern social needs and those virtues held in the highest reverence. he finds that deportmental means made use of by weak and subjugated peoples of ancient times to protect themselves against hostile invaders, are retained and practised to-day by nations whose position has been reversed to one of domination. in short, he points out that certain moralities have, by the alteration of national and racial conditions, become irrelevancies. consequently there is often a compromise between ethical beliefs and ethical practices--a compromise made necessary by the demands of social intercourse. even when the practice of these ancient moralities is conscientiously indulged in, nietzsche denies their adequacy in coping with modern conditions, pointing out specific instances in which necessity and habit are constantly impinging. for instance, the softer virtues of a democratic and socialistic morality are shown to be desirable only in weakened nations where the hardier virtues of egotism, cruelty, efficiency, hard-mindedness, selfishness and retaliation would work directly against preservation. out of these conclusions grows a plea for individualism, and out of this individualism the superman can be seen rearing his head above the horizon of present-day humanity. the qualities of this man of the future are defined, and a finger is pointed along the necessary lines of racial culture. nietzsche's first definite voicing of marriage ideals follows in the train of the superman's appearance, and the first comments of this philosopher in his criticism of woman are set down. in this latter regard nietzsche has been unfairly interpreted by those who have considered his attitude toward woman superficially or without relating it to his general theories. it would be well therefore for the student to withhold judgment in this particular until the various elements of nietzsche's philosophical system have been co-ordinated and understood. woman plays an important, if small, part in his writings, and his passages dealing with women should be carefully weighed in conjunction with his theory of the superman. in "the dawn of day" nietzsche's conception of class distinction is defined and related to his later teachings. throughout his analyses runs a subtle undercurrent of his doctrine, of social segregation which finds definite expression toward the end of the volume where modern socialism, with its altruism and philanthropy, is traced to its birth in nazarene morality. in place of this present popular form of ethics nietzsche proposes a social régime in which aristocratic culture will be set apart from mere utilitarian culture by very definite boundaries. he argues that not only is this disassociation in accord with the instincts of mankind, but that, as a workable theorem, it adequately answers the needs of present conditions. the slave-morality and the master-morality which he develops in his later works are defined tentatively and suggested by inference in many of the aphorisms. out of this conception grew his dominant principle of the "will to power," and in "the dawn of day" we find this principle set forth in adequate definition for the first time, although the development of the idea is left till later. however, nietzsche makes clear its point of divergence from the schopenhauerian theory of the "will to live" as well as from the darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. but it is not alone abstract theory that occupies the pages of this book. nietzsche is never the mere metaphysician battling in an unreal world. there are few dark closets and secret passageways in his thought. beyond a metaphysical hypothesis he does not go. he adheres to demonstrable formulas, and reasons along lines of strictest reality. the practical man he holds in high esteem, and constantly praises the advance of science. he devotes pages to the blowing to pieces of metaphysical air-castles. but, as i have previously pointed out, he is in no sense of the word a materialist; nor is his assumption of the world that of the realists. life to nietzsche is an eternal struggle toward--no goal. the lessons the world has to teach are as so much false doctrine. the meaning of life--the so-called absolute truth--is but a chimera. intelligence is a process, not an ultimatum. the truth is mobile and dual, dependent on varying causes. in accepting the material world, nietzsche does not grant it. in assuming natural laws, he denies them. in his adherence to logic and to the processes of cause and effect, he is accepting phantoms and inconsistencies, and yet it is along these lines that the race progresses. in "the dawn of day" nietzsche makes use of the same aphoristic style as that employed in "human, all-too-human." (this broken, staccato form he uses throughout the remainder of his works, except in certain parts of "thus spake zarathustra.") each paragraph is captioned and deals with a specific phase of morality or with a definite critical attitude toward human conduct. some of these paragraphs are scarcely a line in length--mere definitions or similes. others extend over several pages. but they always pertain to a single idea. occasionally they are in the form of a brief conversation; at other times they are short queries. one of these aphorisms is entitled "the battle dispensary of the soul," and this is what follows: "what is the most efficacious remedy? victory." that is all--brief, and perhaps, on first reading, inconsequent. but study it a moment, and you will find in it the nucleus of a great revolutionary doctrine. on the other hand, turn to aphorism 142, called "sympathy," and you will discover several pages of flashing commentary. out of the chaos of his style springs a feeling of plastic form. these brief paragraphs are not detached and desultory. they are pyramided on one another, and beneath them runs an undercurrent of unified thinking. when the end of the book is reached we have a carefully fabricated edifice, and we realise that each paragraph has been some necessary beam or decoration in its construction. excerpts from "the dawn of day" morality is nothing else (and, above all, nothing more) than obedience to customs, of whatsoever nature they may be. but customs are simply the traditional way of acting and valuing. where there is no tradition there is no morality; and the less life is governed by tradition, the narrower the circle of morality. the free man is immoral, because it is his _will_ to depend upon himself and not upon tradition: in all the primitive states of humanity "evil" is equivalent to "individual," "free," "arbitrary," "unaccustomed," "unforeseen," "incalculable." in such primitive conditions, always measured by this standard, any action performed--_not_ because tradition commands it, but for other reasons _(e.g.,_ on account of its individual utility), even for the same reasons as had been formerly established by custom--is termed immoral, and is felt to be so even by the very man who performs it, for it has not been done out of obedience to tradition. 14-15 popular medicines and popular morals are closely related, and should not be considered and valued, as is still customary, in so different a way: both are most dangerous and make-believe sciences. 19 all those superior men, who felt themselves irresistibly urged on to throw off the yoke of some morality or other, had no other resource--_if they were not really mad--_than to feign madness, or actually to become insane. and this holds good for innovators in every department of life, and not only in religion and politics. 21 every one who has hitherto overthrown a law of established morality has always at first been considered as a _wicked man:_ but when it was afterwards found impossible to re-establish the law, and people gradually became accustomed to the change, the epithet was changed by slow degrees. history deals almost exclusively with these _wicked men,_ who later on came to be recognised as _good men._ 28 a man who is under the influence of the morality of custom comes to despise causes first of all, secondly consequences, and thirdly reality, and weaves all his higher feelings (reverence, sublimity, pride, gratitude, love) _into an imaginary world:_ the so-called higher world. and even to-day we can see the consequences of this: wherever, and in whatever fashion, man's feelings are raised, that imaginary world is in evidence. 40 the history of the moral feelings is entirely different from the history of moral conceptions. the first-mentioned are powerful before the action, and the latter especially after it, in view of the necessity for making one's self clear in regard to them. 41 trusting in our feelings simply means obeying our grandfather and grandmother more than the gods within _ourselves:_ our reason and experience. 41 the same impulse, under the impression of the blame cast upon it by custom, develops into the painful feeling of cowardice, or else the pleasurable feeling of _humility,_ in case a morality, like that of christianity, has taken it to its heart and called it _good._ 43 _the origin becomes of less significance in proportion as we acquire insight into it;_ whilst things nearest to ourselves, around and within us, gradually begin to manifest their wealth of colours, beauties, enigmas, and diversity of meaning, of which earlier humanity never dreamed. 52 only when man shall have acquired a knowledge of all things will he be able to know himself. for things are but the boundaries of man. 53 to whatever height mankind may have developed--and perhaps in the end it will not be so high as when they began!--there is as little prospect of their attaining to a higher order as there is for the ant and the earwig to enter into kinship with god and eternity at the end of their career on earth. what is to come will drag behind it that which has passed: why should any little star, or even any little species on that star, form an exception to that eternal drama? away with such sentimentalities! 54 those earnest, able, and just men of profound feelings, who are still christians at heart, owe it to themselves to make one attempt to live for a certain space of time without christianity! they owe it to _their faith_ that they should thus for once take up their abode "in the wilderness"--if for no other reason than that of being able to pronounce on the question as to whether christianity is needful. 63 christianity has the instinct of a hunter for finding out all those who may by hook or by crook be driven to despair--only a very small number of men can be brought to this despair. christianity lies in wait for such as those, and pursues them. 65 the "demon" eros becomes an object of greater interest to mankind than all the angels and saints put together, thanks to the mysterious mumbo-jumboism of the church in all things erotic: it is due to the church that love stories, even in our own time, have become the one common interest which appeals to all classes of people--with an exaggeration which would be incomprehensible to antiquity, and which will not fail to provoke roars of laughter in coming generations. 78 it is only those who never--or always--attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of _the art of false reading._ 85 christianity wants blindness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above the waves under which reason has been drowned!... 90 what if god were not exactly truth, and if this were proved? and if he were instead of vanity, the desire for power, the ambitious, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?... 93 one becomes moral--but not because one is moral! submission to morals may be due to slavishness or vanity, egoism or resignation, dismal fanaticism or thoughtlessness. it may, again, be an act of despair, such as submission to the authority of a ruler; but there is nothing moral about it _per se._ 97 morals are constantly undergoing changes and transformations, occasioned by successful crimes. 97 i deny morality in the same way as i deny alchemy, _i.e.,_ i deny its hypotheses; but i do not deny that there have been alchemists who believed in these hypotheses and based their actions upon them. i also deny immorality--not that innumerable people feel immoral, but that there is any true reason why they should feel so, should not, of course, deny--unless i were a fool--that many actions which are called immoral should be avoided and resisted; and in the same way that many which are called moral should be performed and encouraged; but i hold that in both cases these actions should be performed from motives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time. we must learn anew in order that at last, perhaps very late in the day, we may be able to do something more: feel anew. 100 it is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of the reason than immorality. it is erroneous to suppose that the unconscious aim in the development of every conscious being (namely, animal, man, humanity, etc.) is its "great happiness"; on the contrary, there is a particular and incomparable happiness to be attained at every stage of our development, one that is neither high nor low, but quite an individual happiness. evolution does not make happiness its goal; it aims merely at evolution, and nothing else. it is only if humanity had a universally recognised goal that we could propose to do this or that: for the time being there is no such goal. it follows that the pretensions of morality should not be brought into any relationship with mankind: this would be merely childish and irrational. it is quite another thing to recommend a goal to mankind: this goal would then be something that would depend upon our own will and pleasure. provided that mankind in general agreed to adopt such a goal, it could then impose a moral law upon itself, a law which would, at all events, be imposed by their own free will. 105 our duties are the claims which others have upon us. how did they acquire these claims? by the fact that they considered us as capable of making and holding agreements and contracts, by assuming that we were their like and equals, and by consequently entrusting something to us, bringing us up, educating us, and supporting us. 110 my rights consist of that part of my power which others have not only conceded to me, but which they wish to maintain for me. 111 the desire for distinction is the desire to subject one's neighbor.... 113 on this mirror--and our intellect is a mirror--something is going on that indicates regularity: a certain thing is each time followed by another certain thing. when we perceive this and wish to give it a name, we call it cause and effect,--fools that we are! as if in this we had understood or could understand anything! for, of course, we have seen nothing but the images of causes and effects, and it is just this figurativeness which renders it impossible for us to see a more substantial relation than that of sequence!... 129 pity, in so far as it actually gives rise to suffering--and this must be our only point of view here--is a weakness, like every other indulgence in an injurious emotion. it increases suffering throughout the world, and although here and there a certain amount of suffering may be indirectly diminished or removed altogether as a consequence of pity, we must not bring forward these occasional consequences, which are on the whole insignificant, to justify the nature of pity which, as has already been stated, is prejudicial. supposing that it prevailed, even if only for one day, it would bring humanity to utter ruin. in itself the nature of pity is no better than that of any other craving; it is only where it is called for and praised--and this happens when people do not understand what is injurious in it, but find in it a sort of joy--that a good conscience becomes attached to it; it is only then that we willingly yield to it, and do not shrink from acknowledging it. in other circumstances where it is understood to be dangerous, it is looked upon as a weakness; or, as in the case of the greeks, as an unhealthy periodical emotion the danger of which might be removed by temporary and voluntary discharges. 144-145 you say that the morality of pity is a higher morality than that of stoicism? prove it! but take care not to measure the "higher" and "lower" degrees of morality once more by moral yardsticks; for there are no absolute morals. so take your yardstick from somewhere else, and be on your guard!... 149 if, in accordance with the present definition, only those actions are moral which are done for the sake of others, and for their sake only, then there are no moral actions at all! if, in accordance with another definition, only those actions are moral which spring from our own free will, then there are no moral actions in this case either! what is it, then, that we designate thus, which certainly exists and wishes as a consequence to be explained? it is the result of a few intellectual blunders; and supposing that we were able to free ourselves from these errors, what would then become of "moral actions"? it is due to these errors that we have up to the present attributed to certain actions a value superior to what was theirs in reality: we separated them from "egoistic" and "non-free" actions. when we now set them once more in the latter categories, as we must do, we certainly reduce their value (their own estimate of value) even below its reasonable level, because "egoistic" and "non-free" actions have up to the present been undervalued owing to that alleged profound and essential difference. 158-159 if i were a god, and a benevolent god, the marriages of men would cause me more displeasure than anything else. 162 we ought publicly to declare invalid the vows of lovers, and to refuse them permission to marry: and this because we should treat marriage itself much more seriously, so that in cases where it is now contracted it would not usually be allowed in future! are not the majority of marriages such that we should not care to have them witnessed by a third party? and yet this third party is scarcely ever lacking--the child--and he is more than the witness; he is the whipping-boy and scapegoat. 163 shame! you wish to form part of a system in which you must be a wheel, fully and completely, or risk being crushed by wheels! where it is understood that each one will be that which his superiors make of him! where the seeking for "connections" will form a part of one's natural duties! where no one feels himself offended when he has his attention drawn to some one with the remark, "he may be useful to you some time"; where people do not feel ashamed of paying a visit to ask for somebody's intercession, and where they do not even suspect that by such a voluntary submission to these morals, they are once and for all stamped as the common pottery of nature, which others can employ or break up of their free will without feeling in any way responsible for doing so,--just as if one were to say, "people of my type will never be lacking, therefore, do what you will with me! do not stand on ceremony!" 169 in the glorification of "work" and the never-ceasing talk about the "blessing of labour," i see the same secret _arrière-pensée_ as i do in the praise bestowed on impersonal acts of a general interest, viz., a fear of everything individual. 176 behind the principle of the present moral fashion: "moral actions are actions performed out of sympathy for others," i see the social instinct of fear, which thus assumes an intellectual disguise.... 177 whatever may be the influence in high politics of utilitarianism and the vanity of individuals and nations, the sharpest spur which urges them onwards is their need for the feeling of power--a need which rises not only in the souls of princes and rulers, but also gushes forth from time to time from inexhaustible sources in the people. 186 as the aristocrat is able to preserve the appearance of being possessed of a superior physical force which never leaves him, he likewise wishes by his aspect of constant serenity and civility of disposition, even in the most trying circumstances, to convey the impression that his mind and soul are equal to all dangers and surprises.... this indisputable happiness of aristocratic culture, based as it is on the feeling of superiority, is now beginning to rise to ever higher levels; for now, thanks to the free spirits, it is henceforth permissible and not dishonourable for people who have been born and reared in aristocratic circles to enter the domain of knowledge, where they may secure more intellectual consecrations and learn chivalric services even higher than those of former times, and where they may look up to that ideal of victorious wisdom which as yet no age has been able to set before itself with so good a conscience as the period which is about to dawn. 203-205 what induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the stock exchange: what gives rise to all this? it is not real want,--for their existence is by no means precarious; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying--but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. in this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of peru and mexico). the means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done "for the love of god" is now done for the love of money, _i.e.,_ for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience. 209-210 "enthusiastic sacrifice," "self-immolation"--these are the catch-words of your morality.... in reality ... you only _appear_ to sacrifice yourselves; for your imagination turns you into gods and you enjoy yourselves as such. 226-227 ceremonies, official robes and court dresses, grave countenances, solemn aspects, the slow pace, involved speech--everything, in short, known as dignity--are all pretences adopted by those who are timid at heart: they wish to make themselves feared (themselves or the things they represent). the fearless (_i.e.,_ originally those who naturally inspire others with awe) have no need of dignity and ceremonies.... 230 a strange thing, this punishment of ours! it does not purify the criminal; it is not a form of expiation; but, on the contrary, it is even more defiling than the crime itself. 235 when a vigorous nature has not an inclination towards cruelty, and is not always preoccupied with itself, it involuntarily strives after gentleness--this is its distinctive characteristic. weak natures, on the other hand, have a tendency towards harsh judgments.... 236 kindness has been best developed by the long dissimulation which endeavoured to appear as kindness: wherever great power existed the necessity for dissimulation of this nature was recognised--it inspires security and confidence, and multiplies the actual sum of our physical power. falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. in the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. the persistent exercise of such a dissimulation ends by bringing about the actual nature of the thing itself: the dissimulation in the long run suppresses itself, and organs and instincts are the unexpected fruits in this garden of hypocrisy. 242 neither necessity nor desire, but the love of power, is the demon of mankind. you may give men everything possible--health, food, shelter, enjoyment--but they are and remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits; and must be satisfied. 243 it is probable that there are no pure races, but only races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare. 253 how many married men have some morning awakened to the fact that their young wife is dull, although she thinks quite the contrary! not to speak of those wives whose flesh is willing but whose intellect is weak! 255 could there be anything more repugnant than the sentimentality which is shown to plants and animals--and this on the part of a creature who from the very beginning has made such ravages among them as their most ferocious enemy--and who ends by even claiming affectionate feelings from his weakened and mutilated victims! before this kind of "nature" man must above all be serious, if he is any sort of a thinking being. 258 among cowards it is thought bad form to say anything against bravery, for any expression of this kind would give rise to some contempt; and unfeeling people are irritated when anything is said against pity. 259 it is the most sensual men who find it necessary to avoid women and to torture their bodies. 261 a young man can be most surely corrupted when he is taught to value the like-minded more highly than the differently minded. 262 the general knowledge of mankind has been furthered to a greater extent by fear than by love. 267 the sum-total of those internal movements which come naturally to men, and which they can consequently set in motion readily and gracefully, is called the soul--men are looked upon as void of soul when they let it be seen that their inward emotions are difficult and painful to them. 268 all rules have this effect: they distract our attention from the fundamental aim of the rule, and make us more thoughtless. 273 we are most certain to find idealistic theories among unscrupulously practical men; for such men stand in need of the lustre of these theories for the sake of their reputation. they adopt them instinctively without by any means feeling hypocritical in doing so--no more hypocritical than englishmen with their christianity and their sabbath-keeping. 277 it is not sufficient to prove a case, we must also tempt or raise men to it. 278 asceticism is the proper mode of thinking for those who must extirpate their carnal instincts, because these are ferocious beasts,--but only for such people! 278 you refuse to be dissatisfied with yourselves or to suffer from yourselves, and this you call your moral tendency! very well; another may perhaps call it your cowardice! one thing, however, is certain, and that is, that you will never take a trip round the world (and you yourselves are this world), and you will always remain in yourselves an accident and a clod on the face of the earth! 282 the first effect of happiness is the feeling of power, and this feeling longs to manifest itself, whether towards ourselves or other men, or towards ideas and imaginary beings. its most common modes of manifestation are making presents, derision, and destruction--all three being due to a common fundamental instinct. 286 we approve of marriage in the first place because we are not yet acquainted with it, in the second place because we have accustomed ourselves to it, and in the third place because we have contracted it--that is to say, in most cases. and yet nothing has been proved thereby in favour of the value of marriage in general. 287 the criminal who has been found out does not suffer because of the crime he has committed, but because of the shame and annoyance caused him either by some blunder which he has made or by being deprived of his habitual element. 289 where our deficiencies are, there also is our enthusiasm. the enthusiastic principle "love your enemies" had to be invented by the jews, the best haters that ever existed; and the finest glorifications of chastity have been written by those who in their youth led dissolute and licentious lives. 293 women turn pale at the thought that their lover may not be worthy of them; men turn pale at the thought that they may not be worthy of the women they love. i speak of perfect women, perfect men. 300-301 you wish to bid farewell to your passion? very well, but do so without hatred against it! otherwise you have a second passion.--the soul of the christian who has freed himself from sin is generally ruined afterwards by the hatred for sin. just look at the faces of the great christians! they are the faces of great haters. 302 men have become suffering creatures in consequence of their morals, and the sum-total of what they have obtained by those morals is simply the feeling that they are far too good and great for this world, and that they are enjoying merely a transitory existence on it. as yet the "proud sufferer" is the highest type of mankind. 309-310 rights can only be conferred by one who is in full possession of power. 317 "the rule always appears to me to be more interesting than the exception"--whoever thinks thus has made considerable progress in knowledge, and is one of the initiated. 319 through our love we have become dire offenders against truth, and even habitual dissimulators and thieves, who give out more things as true than seem to us to be true. 337-333 all the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. 351 even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions as truth, we should nevertheless not wish them alone to exist. i cannot see why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth: it is sufficient for me to know that it is a great power. truth, however, must meet with opposition and be able to fight, and we must be able to rest from it at times in falsehood--otherwise truth will grow tiresome, powerless, and insipid, and will render us equally so. 352-353. to hear every day what is said about us, or even to endeavour to discover what people think about us, will in the end kill even the strongest man. our neighbours permit us to live only that they may exercise a daily claim upon us! they certainly would not tolerate us if we wished to claim rights over them, and still less if we wished to be right! in short, let us offer up a sacrifice to the general peace, let us not listen when they speak of us, when they praise us, blame us, wish for us, or hope for us--nay, let us not even think of it. 357 how many really individual actions are left undone merely because before performing them we perceive or suspect that they will be misunderstood!--those actions, for example, which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil. the more highly an age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and the more right and ascendency we accord them, the more will actions of this kind venture to make themselves known, 359-360. love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. and all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle)! 361 truth in itself is no power at all.... truth must either attract power to its side, or else side with power, for otherwise it will perish again and again. 363 we should ... take the greatest precautions in regard to everything connected with old age and its judgment upon life.... the reverence which we feel for an old man, especially if he is an old thinker and sage, easily blinds us to the deterioration of his intellect. 368 we must not make passion an argument for truth. 372 have you experienced history within yourselves, commotions, earthquakes, long and profound sadness, and sudden flashes of happiness? have you acted foolishly with great and little fools? have you really undergone the delusions and woe of the good people? and also the woe and the peculiar happiness of the most evil? then you may speak to me of morality, but not otherwise! 376 "what do i matter?" is written over the door of the thinker of the future. 379 the great man ever remains invisible in the greatest thing that claims worship, like some distant star: his victory over power remains without witnesses, and hence also without songs and singers. the hierarchy of the great men in all the past history of the human race has not yet been determined. 380 whether what we are looking forward to is a thought or a deed, our relationship to every essential achievement is none other than that of pregnancy, and all our vainglorious boasting about "willing" and "creating" should be cast to the winds! true and ideal selfishness consists in always watching over and restraining the soul, so that our productiveness may come to a beautiful termination. ... still, these pregnant ones are funny people! let us therefore dare to be funny also, and not reproach others if they must be the same. 384-385 honest towards ourselves, and to all and everything friendly to us; brave in the face of our enemy; generous towards the vanquished; polite at all times: such do the four cardinal virtues wish us to be. 387 there is no "eternal justice" which requires that every fault shall be atoned and paid for,--the belief that such a justice existed was a terrible delusion, and useful only to a limited extent; just as it is also a delusion that everything is guilt which is felt as such. it is not the things themselves, but the opinions about things that do not exist, which have been such a source of trouble to mankind. 391 what is the most efficacious remedy?--victory. 393 the snake that cannot cast its skin perishes. so too with those minds which are prevented from changing their views: they cease to be minds. 394 iv "the joyful wisdom" in 1882 nietzsche wrote and published "the joyful wisdom" ("_la gay a scienza_"). although originally intended as a supplement to "the dawn of day," under which title it was to have been issued in a later edition of this earlier work, it differs greatly, not only from "the dawn of day," but from everything else nietzsche ever wrote. the destructive spirit of "human, all-too-human" is nowhere to be found in it. the revolutionary doctrines of "the dawn of day" are but vaguely echoed. it is a book which shows nietzsche in a unique and isolated mood--a mood which, throughout his whole life did not return to him. temperamentally "the joyful wisdom" comes nearer being a parallel to "thus spake zarathustra" than to any of his other writings. but even this comparison goes to pieces when pushed beyond the most superficial aspects of the two books. nietzsche was at naumburg at the time of writing this work. a long-standing stomach malady had suddenly shown signs of leaving him, and the period during which he wrote "the joyful wisdom" was one of the happiest of his life. heretofore a sombre seriousness had marked both his thoughts and the expression of them. in the two volumes of "human, all-too-human" he had attempted a complete devastation of all codes and ideals. in "the dawn of day" he waged a bitter and serious warfare on modern moral standards and made attempts at supplanting them with new dogma. in "the joyful wisdom" he revealed an entirely new phase of his character--a lenient, jovial, almost buoyant attitude toward the world. although "the joyful wisdom" may be considered in the light of an interpolation into nietzsche's philosophical works, the book is nevertheless among the most interesting of his output--not so much because it gives us any additions to the sum of his thinking, but because it throws a light on the philosopher himself. it may be lifted bodily out of his works without leaving a gap in the development of his doctrines, but it cannot be set aside without closing up a very important and significant facet in the man's nature. unfortunately nietzsche is looked upon as a man who was entirely consumed with rancour and hatred--a man unconscious of the comic side of existence--a thinker with whom pessimism was chronic. but this is only a half truth, a conclusion founded on partial evidence. nietzsche's very earnestness at times defeated his own ends. "the joyful wisdom" is one of the most fundamentally hilarious books ever written. it deals with life as a supreme bit of humour. yet there is little in it to provoke laughter. nietzsche's humour is deeper than the externals. one finds no superficial jesting here, no smartness, no transient buffoonery. the book is a glorification of that subtle joy which accompanies the experiencing of knowledge. in order to catch its spirit it is necessary that one be familiar with the serious and formulating nietzsche, for on his most serious doctrines is founded that attitude which makes "the joyful wisdom" hilarious. once familiar with nietzsche's earlier writings one may read the present book with a feeling of exhilaration unlike that produced by his more manifestly solemn writings. however, despite the buoyancy of this document, it is, beneath the surface, as serious as anything nietzsche has ever written. his conception of the world and his assumption of the underlying aspects of existence are founded on deeply conceived formulas. it must be borne in mind that nietzsche's thought is in a large measure personal, that the development of his doctrines is due to very definite biographical causes and to the flux and reflux of his own emotions. his system is not a spontaneous and complete conception, the sudden fruit of his entire research given to the world in a unified body. to the contrary, it is an amassing of data, a constant building up of ideas. no one book contains his entire teachings, logically thought out and carefully organised. rather is his philosophy an intricate structure which begins with his earliest essays and does not reach completion until the end of "the will to power." each book has some specific place in his thought: each book assumes a position relative to all the rest. thus in "the joyful wisdom" we have the turning point between the denying and destructive nietzsche and the asserting and fashioning nietzsche. says he in the fourth and most important section called "sanctus januarius": _"amor fati:[1]_ let that henceforth be my love! i do not want to wage war with the ugly. i do not want to accuse, i do not want even to accuse the accusers. _looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation! and all in all, to sum up: i wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!" in "the joyful wisdom" begins nietzsche's almost fanatical joy in life. here, too, we encounter for the first time the symbol of the dance. nietzsche constantly makes use of this figure in his later writings. especially in "thus spake zarathustra" does he exhort his readers to indulge themselves in dancing. the blasphemies and hatreds characteristic of the philosopher in his more solemn moods are nowhere discernible in this new book. it is therefore of considerable importance to the student in forming a just estimate of nietzsche. here the hater has departed; the idol-smasher has laid down his weapons; the analyst has become the satyr; the logician has turned poet; the blasphemer has become the child. only occasionally does the pendulum swing toward the sombre apollonian pole: the dionysian ideal of joy is dominant. the month of january inspired the book, and nietzsche says in his _ecce homo_ that it was the most wonderful month of january he had ever spent. this spirit of gaiety was to remain with him in some degree throughout the remainder of his life. he realised that his preparatory work was completed. he saw his way clear to forge ahead as his doctrines led him; and his exuberance no doubt grew out of the satisfaction he took in this prospect. although the contents of "the joyful wisdom" are not inherently a part of nietzsche's philosophy, but only detached applications of his theories--ideas which floated to the surface of his doctrines--the material encountered here is of wide and varied interest. there are criticisms of german and southern culture; valuations of modern authors; views on the developments of art; theories of music; analyses of schopenhauer and an explanation of his vogue; judgments of the ancient and the modern theatre; excursions into philological fields; arraignments of contemporary classicism; doctrines of creative artistry; personal paragraphs on mental culture, politics and commerce. ... the book is, in fact, more critical than philosophical. nietzsche never entirely dissevered himself from his time and from the habits, both of thought and action, which characterised his contemporaries. from his first academic essays to his last transvaluation of values, he remained the patient and analytical observer of the life about him. for this reason it has been argued among disciples of "pure" thinking that he was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a "philosopher," but rather a critically intellectual force. this diagnosis might carry weight had not nietzsche avowedly built his philosophical structure on a repudiation of abstract thinking. this misunderstanding of him arose from the adherents of rational thinking overlooking the fact that, where the older philosophers had detached themselves from reality because of the instability of natural hypotheses, nietzsche re-established human bases on which he founded his syllogisms. therefore one should not attempt to divorce the purely critical from the purely philosophical in his writings. even in a book so frankly critical as "the joyful wisdom" there is a directing force of theoretical unity. this is especially true of the third section. this division is made up almost entirely of comments on men and affairs, short analyses of human attitudes, desultory excursions into the sociological, brief remarks on man's emotional nature, apothegms dealing with human attributes, bits of racy philosophical gossip, religious and scientific maxims, and the like. sometimes these observations are cynical, sometimes gracious, sometimes bitter, sometimes buoyant, sometimes merely witty. but all of them are welded together by a profound conception of humanity. the most stimulating division of the book is the fourth, in which nietzsche's good humour is at its height. this section is a glorification of victory and of all those hardy qualities which go into the perfecting of the individual. nietzsche reverses schiller's famous doctrine expressed in "_die braut von messina_": "life is not of all good the highest." he sees no good over and beyond that of human relationships. the normal instincts to him are the ones which affirm life; the abnormal instincts are those which deny it. the former are summed up in the ethics of greece under the sway of dionysus; the latter are epitomised in the christian religion. the fifth book, called "we fearless ones," and the appendix of "songs of prince free-as-a-bird" were written four years later than the other material and added with an introduction in a later edition of the book. these addenda, while less specific and of a more dialectic nature than the preceding parts, are in spirit manifestly the same as the rest of the book. in "the joyful wisdom" we have again an aphoristic style of writing, although it has become keener and more sure of itself since "human, all-too-human" and "the dawn of day." in making selections from this book i have chosen those passages which are more general in tone. the connection between the various aphorisms is here even slighter than is nietzsche's wont, and for that reason no attempt has been made to present a continuous perception of the work. however, the excerpts which follow, though of a less popular nature, are more intimately related to his thoughts than the ones omitted, and consequently are of more interest to the student. [footnote 1: love of (one's) destiny.] excerpts from "the joyful wisdom" whether i look with a good or an evil eye upon men, i find them always at one problem, each and all of them: to do that which conduces to the conservation of the human species. 31 to laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh _out of the veriest truth,_--to do this the best have not hitherto had enough of the sense of truth, and the most endowed have had far too little genius! there is perhaps still a future even for laughter! 32 the ignoble nature is distinguished by the fact that it keeps its advantage steadily in view, and that this thought of the end and advantage is even stronger than its strongest impulse: not to be tempted to inexpedient activities by its impulses--that is its wisdom and inspiration. in comparison with the ignoble nature the higher nature is more irrational:--for the noble, magnanimous, and self-sacrificing person succumbs in fact to his impulses, and in his best moments his reason _lapses_ altogether. 37 the strongest and most evil spirits have hitherto advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions--all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep. 39 the lust of property and love: what different associations each of these ideas evokes!--and yet it might be the same impulse twice named. 51 the poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual--and he does not call it poison. 56-57 the virtues of a man are called _good,_ not in respect of the results they have for himself, but in respect of the results which we expect therefrom for ourselves and for society.... the praise of the virtues is the praise of something which is privately injurious to the individual; it is praise of impulses which deprive man of his noblest self-love, and the power to take the best care of himself.... the "neighbour" praises unselfishness because _he profits by it!_ if the neighbour were "unselfishly" disposed himself, he would reject that destruction of power, that injury for _his advantage,_ he would thwart such inclinations in their origin, and above all he would manifest his unselfishness just by _not giving it a good name!_ 58-60 living--that is to be cruel and inexorable towards all that becomes weak and old in ourselves, and not only in ourselves. 68 it is probable that the manufacturers and great magnates of commerce have hitherto lacked too much all those forms and attributes of a _superior race,_ which alone make persons interesting; if they had had the nobility of the newly-born in their looks and bearing, there would perhaps have been no socialism in the masses of the people. for these are really ready for _slavery_ of every kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and _born_ to command--by its noble presence! 78 when one continually prohibits the expression of the passions as something to be left to the "vulgar," to coarser, bourgeois, and peasant natures--that is, when one does not want to suppress the passions themselves, but only their language and demeanour, one nevertheless realises _therewith_ just what one does not want: the suppression of the passions themselves, or at least their weakening and alteration.... 83 in magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge.... 86-87 where bad eyesight can no longer see the evil impulse as such, on account of its refinement,--there man sets up the kingdom of goodness.... 88 to become the advocate of the rule--that may perhaps be the ultimate form and refinement in which nobility of character will reveal itself on earth. 90 women are all skilful in exaggerating their weaknesses, indeed they are inventive in weaknesses, so as to seem quite fragile ornaments to which even a grain of dust does harm; their existence is meant to bring home to man's mind his coarseness, and to appeal to his conscience. 101 there is something quite astonishing and extraordinary in the education of women of the higher class; indeed, there is perhaps nothing more paradoxical. all the world is agreed to educate them with as much ignorance as possible _in erotics,_ and to inspire their soul with a profound shame of such things, and the extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of them. it is really here only that all the "honour" of women is at stake; what would one not forgive in them in other respects! but here they are intended to remain ignorant to the very backbone:--they are intended to have neither eyes, ears, words, nor thoughts for this, their "wickedness"; indeed knowledge here is already evil. and then! to be hurled as with an awful thunderbolt into reality and knowledge with marriage--and indeed by him whom they most love and esteem: to have to encounter love and shame in contradiction, yea, to have to feel rapture, abandonment, duty, sympathy, and fright at the unexpected proximity of god and animal, and whatever else besides! all at once!--there, in fact, a psychic entanglement has been effected which is quite unequalled! even the sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does not suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along with the solution of this enigma and the enigma of this solution; what dreadful, far-reaching suspicions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged soul; and forsooth, how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of the woman casts anchor at this point!--afterwards the same profound silence as before: and often even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes to herself.--young wives on that account make great efforts to appear superficial and thoughtless; the most ingenious of them simulate a kind of impudence.--wives easily feel their husbands as a question-mark to their honour, and their children as an apology or atonement,--they require children, and wish for them in quite another spirit than a husband wishes for them.--in short, one cannot be gentle enough towards women! 104-105 of what consequence is all our art in artistic products, if that higher art, the art of the festival, be lost by us? 124 the best thing i could say in honour of shakespeare, _the man,_ is that he believed in brutus and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which brutus represents! 131 we must rest from ourselves occasionally by contemplating and looking down upon ourselves, and by laughing or weeping _over_ ourselves from an artistic remoteness: we must discover the _hero,_ and likewise the _fool,_ that is hidden in our passion for knowledge; we must now and then be joyful in our folly, that we may continue to be joyful in our wisdom! and just because we are heavy and serious men in our ultimate depth, and are rather weights than men, there is nothing that does us so much good as the _fool's cap and bells:_ we need them in presence of ourselves--we need all arrogant, soaring, dancing, mocking, childish and blessed art, in order not to lose the _free dominion over things_ which our ideal demands of us. 146 the general character of the world ... is to all eternity chaos; not by the absence of necessity, but in the sense of the absence of order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever else our æsthetic humanities are called. judged by our reason, the unlucky casts are far oftenest the rule, the exceptions are not the secret purpose; and the whole musical box repeats eternally its air, which can never be called a melody,--and finally the very expression, "unlucky cast" is already an anthropomorphising which involves blame. but how could we presume to blame or praise the universe! let us be on our guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man! it is altogether unaffected by our æsthetic and moral judgments! neither has it any self-preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also knows no law. 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. when you know that there is no design, you know also that there is no chance: for it is only where there is a world of design that the word "chance" has a meaning. let us be on our guard against saying that death is contrary to life. the living being is only a species of dead being, and a very rare species.--let us be on our guard against thinking that the world eternally creates the new. there are no eternally enduring substances; matter is just another such error as the god of the eleatics. 152-153. man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. when one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity." 160 morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. 161 there is no such thing as health in itself, and all attempts to define a thing in that way have lamentably failed. it is necessary to know thy aim, thy horizon, thy powers, thy impulses, thy errors, and especially the ideals and fantasies of thy soul, in order to determine _what_ health implies even for thy _body._ 163 mystical explanations are regarded as profound; the truth is that they do not even go the length of being superficial. 169 i set the following propositions against those of schopenhauer --firstly, in order that will may arise, an idea of pleasure and pain is necessary. secondly, that a vigorous excitation may be felt as pleasure or pain, is the affair of the interpreting intellect, which, to be sure, operates thereby for the most part unconsciously to us, and one and the same excitation _may_ be interpreted as pleasure or pain. thirdly, it is only in an intellectual being that there is pleasure, displeasure and will; the immense majority of organisms have nothing of the kind. 171 prayer has been devised for such men as have never any thoughts of their own, and to whom an elevation of the soul is unknown, or passes unnoticed. 171 sin, as it is at present felt wherever christianity prevails or has prevailed, is a jewish feeling and a jewish invention. 174 a jesus christ was only possible in a jewish landscape--i mean in one over which the gloomy and sublime thunder-cloud of the angry jehovah hung continually. 176 where there is ruling there are masses: where there are masses there is need of slavery. where there is slavery the individuals are but few, and have the instincts and conscience of the herd opposed to them. 183 we love the _grandeur_ of nature and have discovered it; that is because human grandeur is lacking in our minds. 186 egoism is the _perspective_ law of our sentiment, according to which the near appears large and momentous, while in the distance the magnitude and importance of all things diminish. 187 he who knows that he is profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to the multitude strives for obscurity. the multitude thinks everything profound of which it cannot see the bottom; it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water. 190 thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments--always, however, obscurer, emptier, and simpler. 192 **to laugh means to love mischief, but with a good conscience. 196 virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only to those who have a strong faith in their virtue:--not, however, to the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of themselves and of all virtue. after all, therefore, it is "faith that saves" here also!--and be it well observed, not _virtue_! 198 although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt, nevertheless, was not there. so it is with all guilt. 205 it makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! i would fain do something to make the idea of life even a hundred times _more worthy of their attention._ 215-216 i greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour! for it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age, and gather the force which the latter will one day require,--the age which will carry heroism into knowledge, and _wage war_ for the sake of ideas and their consequences. 218-219 they are disagreeable to me, those men in whom every natural inclination forthwith becomes a disease, something disfiguring, or even disgraceful. _they_ have seduced us to the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are evil; _they_ are the cause of our great injustice to our own nature, and to all nature! there are enough of men who _may_ yield to their impulses gracefully and carelessly: but they do not do so, for fear of that imaginary "evil thing" in nature! _that is the cause_ why there is so little nobility to be found among men: the indication of which will always be to have no fear of oneself, to expect nothing disgraceful from oneself, to fly without hesitation whithersoever we are impelled--we free-born birds! wherever we come, there will always be freedom and sunshine around us. 229 every one knows at present that the ability to endure contradiction is a high indication of culture. some people even know that the higher man courts opposition, and provokes it, so as to get a cue to his hitherto unknown partiality. but the _ability_ to contradict, the attainment of _good_ conscience in hostility to the accustomed, the traditional and the hallowed,--that is more than both the above-named abilities, and is the really great, new and astonishing thing in our culture, the step of all steps of the emancipated intellect: who knows that? 232 in the main all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: "do not do this! renounce! overcome thyself!" on the other hand i am favourable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning till evening, and dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do it _well,_ as well as it is possible for _me_ alone!... 238 in pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self-preservatives of a species. were it not so, pain would long ago have been done away with; that it is hurtful is no argument against it, for to be hurtful is its very essence. 247 one form of honesty has always been lacking among founders of religions and their kin:--they have never made their experiences a matter of the intellectual conscience. ... but we who are different, who are thirsty for reason, want to look as carefully into our experiences, as in the case of a scientific experiment, hour by hour, day by day! we ourselves want to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of experiment. 248 let us no longer think so much about punishing, blaming, improving! we shall seldom be able to alter an individual, and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed, perhaps unawares: _we_ may have been altered by him! let us rather see to it that our own influence on _all that is to come_ outweighs and overweighs his influence! let us not struggle in direct conflict!--all blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category. 249 who could know how to laugh well and live well, who did not first understand the full meaning of war and victory? 250 that delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good-humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes "serious"! and "where there is laughing and gaiety, thinking cannot be worth anything:"--so speaks the prejudice of this serious animal against all "joyful wisdom." 252-253 if you had thought more acutely, observed more accurately, and had learned more, you would no longer under all circumstances call this and that your "duty" and your "conscience": the knowledge _how moral judgments have in general always originated,_ would make you tired of these pathetic words.... 261 we _would seek to become what we are,_--the new, the unique, the incomparable, making laws for ourselves and creating ourselves! and for this purpose we must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. we must be _physicists_ in order to be _creators_ in that sense,--whereas hitherto all appreciations and ideals have been based on _ignorance_ of physics, or in _contradiction_ to it. 203 our "benefactors" lower our value and volition more than our enemies. 265 it is always a _metaphysical belief_ on which our belief in science rests,--and that even we knowing ones of to-day, the godless and anti-metaphysical, still take _our_ fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the christian belief, which was also the belief of plato, that god is truth, that the truth is divine. 279 belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will: for the will, as emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty and power. that is to say, the less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for one who commands, who commands sternly,--a god, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma, a party conscience. 286 to seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension of power,_ and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it. 289 the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in proportion to the _capacity for communication_ of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion to the _necessity for_ communication. ... _consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure of the necessity for communication,_ --that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying), and has only developed in proportion to its utility. 296-297 the church is under all circumstances a _nobler_ institution than the state. 314 it seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances that i have learned to distinguish the cause of the action generally from the cause of action in a particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. the first kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique and definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder. 317 i will never admit that we should speak of _equal_ rights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. the reason is that man and woman understand something different by the term love,--and it belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does _not_ presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in the other sex. what woman understands by love is clear enough: complete surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive, without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought of a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. in this absence of conditions her love is precisely a _faith:_ woman has no other.--man, when he loves a woman, _wants_ precisely this love from her; he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the prerequisites of feminine love; granted, however, that there should also be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is not unfamiliar,--well, they are really--not men. a man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave: a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby a _more perfect_ woman.... woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently she wants one who _takes,_ who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"--by the increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him. woman gives herself, man takes her.--i do not think one will get over this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very best will to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing the severe, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism constantly before our eyes. for love, regarded as complete, great, and full, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something "unmoral."--_fidelity_ is accordingly included in woman's love, it follows from the definition thereof; with man fidelity _may_ readily result in consequence of his love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy of taste, and so-called elective affinity, but it does not belong to the _essence_ of his love--and indeed so little, that one might almost be entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and fidelity in man, whose love is just a desire to possess, and _not_ a renunciation and giving away; the desire to possess, however, comes to an end every time with the possession. 321-323 everything that is thought, versified, painted and composed, yea, even built and moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to art before witnesses. under the latter there is also to be included the apparently monologic art which involves the belief in god, the whole lyric of prayer; because for a pious man there is no solitude,--we, the godless, have been the first to devise this invention. 328 a "scientific" interpretation of the world as you understand it might consequently still be one of the _stupidest,_ that is to say, the most destitute of significance, of all possible world-interpretations.... an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially _meaningless world!_ 339-340 we, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future--we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any healthiness hitherto. 351 another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal, full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's _right thereto:_ the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, inviolable, divine; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which may often enough appear _inhuman._ ... 352-353 v "thus spake zarathustra" he student of nietzsche can well afford to leave the reading of "thus spake zarathustra" _("also sprach zarathustra")_ until he has prepared himself for the task by studying nietzsche's other and less obscure books. in both its conception and execution it differs markedly from all the works which preceded and followed it. it is written in an archaic and poetical style, and in many places is purposely obscure. nietzsche did not intend it for the general public, and the fourth part was not published until seven years after its completion. it would have been better had "zarathustra" been withheld from the presses until nietzsche's other works had gained a wider recognition, for it unfortunately lays itself open to all manner of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. in fact, it is impossible to read "thus spake zarathustra" comprehendingly until several of the other books of this philosopher, such as "the dawn of day," "the genealogy of morals" and "beyond good and evil," have been consumed and assimilated. unfortunately this book, because of the attractive medium of its style, was one of the first to fall into the hands of english speaking people. for many years it was the principal source of the many false accusations against nietzsche which gained wide circulation. the figures of speech contained in it and the numerous parables which are used to set forth its ideas lend themselves all too easily to falsities of judgment and erroneous evaluations. reading the book unpreparedly one may find what appear to be unexplainable contradictions and ethical sophistries. above all, one may wrongly sense the absence of that higher ethical virtue which is denied nietzsche in quarters where he is least understood, but which every close student of his works knows to form the basis of his thought. nietzsche began the writing of "thus spake zarathustra" early in the year 1883, and he did not finish it until the middle of february, 1885. the actual conception of the book came much before this time even, as far back as the summer of 1881. this is when the idea of eternal recurrence first took possession of him. at once he began making notes, using this idea as the basis of zarathustra's teachings. at this time nietzsche was just recovering from a siege of ill health which had extended over many years, and no doubt the buoyant and rhapsodic form in which he conceived this work was due to his sudden acquisition of bodily health. the first part was written in ten days, the second part a few months later, and the third part in the autumn of the same year. but it was not until after a lapse of eighteen months that the fourth and last section was completed. because of this long interval we see a radical difference between the first three parts of the book and the last part. the language remains very much the same throughout--spectacular, poetic and symbolic--but the form is changed. the epigrammatic and non-sequacious mandates give way to a long connected parable. the psalmodie brevity of the utterances of the first three sections is supplanted by description and narrative. a story runs through the entire fourth part; and it is in the obscurities of this fable, rather than in any specific statements, that we must seek the gist of nietzsche's doctrines. this would be an impossible task were we not more or less familiar with his other books. yet, once we understand the general trend of his thought, we can penetrate at once to the meanings hidden in the fantastic divagations of his story and can understand the dithyrambic utterances of both zarathustra and the "higher men" in the cave. "thus spake zarathustra" is unique for the reason that there are few points in nietzsche's system of ethic--and for the most part they are the unimportant ones--which we cannot find somewhere in its pages. but do not think that one can grasp an idea of the sweep of his entire thought merely by reading this book. even in the most simply worded and most lucidly phrased passages one would find difficulty in following the steps in his philosophy, unless there had been considerable preparatory study. to be sure, there are numerous isolated epigrams and bits of observation which are easily understood, but their mere isolation very often robs them of the true meaning they hold when related to the other precepts. the very literalness with which these passages have been taken by those who have read "zarathustra" before studying any of the other works of nietzsche, accounts in a large measure for the ignorance in which he is held even by those who profess to have read him and understood him. a philosophy such as his, the outposts of which are so far removed from the routine of our present social life, is naturally hampered by the restricted connotation of current words--even those technical words used to express abstract and infinite things. for this reason it is inevitable that false meanings should attach to many of his statements, and that misunderstandings should arise in quarters where there does not exist a previous general knowledge of the co-ordinated structure of his teachings. this general knowledge cannot be gained from "thus spake zarathustra." many of its pages are entirely without significance to the reader not already acquainted with nietzsche's thought. and much of its nomenclature is meaningless without the explanations to be found in the main body of his work. for the reader, however, who picks up this book after having equipped himself for an understanding of it, there is much of fascination and stimulation. nietzsche regarded it as his most intimate and personal, and therefore his most important, work. he even had plans for two more parts which were to be included in it. but these were never finished. the indifference with which the book was received, even by those on whose sympathy and understanding he had most counted, reacted unfavourably upon him. it is nevertheless, just as it stands, one of the most remarkable pieces of philosophic literature of modern times. its form alone makes it unique. instead of stating his beliefs directly and without circumlocution, as was always his method both before and after the writing of this book, nietzsche chose for his mouthpiece a poet and philosopher borrowed from the persians, namely: zoroaster. this sage of the ancients was used as a symbol of the higher man. into his mouth were put nietzsche's own ideas in the form of parables, admonitions, exhortations and discourses. the wanderings and experiences of this zoroaster are chronicled, and each event in his life embodies a meaning in direct accord with the nietzschean system of conduct. because of the persian origin of zoroaster one might imagine that influences of persian philosophy would be discoverable in the teachings of this nomadic poet. but with the name all similarity between the spokesman and his doctrines ends. nietzsche's choice of zoroaster as his mouthpiece grew out of his early admiration for the persians who, he declared, "were the first to take a broad and comprehensive view of history." as we see zoroaster in this book we recognise him at once as none other than nietzsche himself; and the experiences through which he goes in his wanderings are but picturesquely stated accounts of nietzsche's own sufferings, raptures, aspirations and disappointments. to those familiar with nietzsche's life, many of the characters introduced in the book will be recognised as portraitures of men whose lives crossed that of the philosopher. likewise, many of the parables and fables are thinly disguised accounts of the incidents in his own life. in the last part of the book we find nietzsche creating a fantastic poet to represent wagner, and holding him up to severe and uncompromising criticism. zoroaster, as he appears in this book, is an itinerant law-giver and prophet who seeks the waste places of the earth, the mountains, plains and sea shores, avoiding mankind and carrying with him two symbolic animals, an eagle and a snake. at the end of his wanderings he discovers a lion which is for him the sign that his journey is drawing to a close, for this lion represents all that is best and most powerful in nature. the book is comprised of the discourses and sermons which zoroaster delivers from day to day to the occasional disciples and unbelievers who cross the path of his wanderings. there are conversations between him and his accompanying animals; and in the last part of the book he gathers together in his cave a number of men representing types of the higher man and talks with them. in all his discourses he makes use of a rhapsodic and poetic style, not unlike that found in the psalms of david. the text telling of zoroaster's wanderings and experiences is cast in the manner of the early religious books of the orientals. "thus spake zarathustra" was the first book to follow "human, all-too-human," "the dawn of day" and "the joyful wisdom," and many of nietzsche's constructive ideas are presented here for the first time. part i is more lucid and can be more easily understood than the parts which follow. in it nietzsche designates the classes of humanity and differentiates between them. his three famous metamorphoses of the spirit--symbolised by the camel, the lion and the child--are stated and explained. here we find the philosopher's most widely quoted passages pertaining to marriage and child-bearing; his doctrine of war and peace; and those passages wherein he reverses the beatitudes. the passions and preferences of the individual are criticised in their relation to the higher man, and the more obvious instincts are analysed. nietzsche outlines methods of conduct, and dissects the actions and attitudes of his disciples, praising them or blaming them in accordance with his own values. he presents an illuminating analysis of charity, and outlines in his chapter, "the bestowing virtue," the conditions under which it may become a means to existence. he poses the problem of relative morality, and suggests the lines along which his thesis will be developed at a later date. the superman is defined briefly but with a completeness sufficient for us to sense his relation to the philosophical scheme of which he is a part. the conception of the superman was founded on darwin's doctrine of organic evolution, and nietzsche seeks to bring this superman about by the application of the law of natural selection and by giving the law of the survival of the fittest an open field for operation. here, too, we have the statement of nietzsche's racial ideal: the highest exemplars of the race, and not a standardized goal, is the aim of his philosophy. in part ii the doctrine of the will to power is clearly set forth in its framework. the chapter wherein this appears--"self-surpassing"--is merely a brief exposition founded on observation. the development of this idea is not to be found until toward the end of nietzsche's life; but that the theory was clearly conceived in his mind is evidenced by the fact that it is constantly being applied throughout the remainder of his works. in its present form it is no more than a statement, but so clearly is it presented that one is able to grasp its significance and to determine in just what manner it differed from the darwinian and spencerian doctrines. in this same section are contained many personal chapters, including an excoriation of his early critics, a comparison between himself and schopenhauer, an account of his early anti-scholastic warfare, a criticism of modern scientific methods, a reference to his friendship with wagner, and an expression of regret at the misunderstanding which greeted his earlier works. one of the final chapters offers a definition of "profundity" which goes deep into the very undercurrents of his philosophy. the most important material to be found in the book is encountered in part iii. under the caption, "the old and the new tables," we have an important summing up of the principal teachings in the nietzschean philosophical scheme. here also we meet the doctrine of eternal recurrence which, as i have said, generated the conception of this book. its present statement is limited to a few tentative speculations; later on it was developed and set forth with greater force and certainty. but despite the fact that in his autobiography nietzsche calls this speculative philosophic doctrine "the highest of all possible formulæ of a yea-saying philosophy," too much importance must not be attached to it in its relation to his writings. in the first place it was by no means new with him: he himself reconnoitred a bit in one of his early essays looking for its possible origin. and in the second place it had little influence on his main doctrine of the superman. although he spent considerable time and space in its elucidation, it never became an integral part of any of his teachings. rather was it something superimposed on his other formulæ--a condition introduced into the actualities of his conception of the universe. i am inclined to think that he flirted with this idea of recurrence largely because it was the most disheartening obstacle he could conceive in the path of the superman; and as no obstacle was too great to be faced triumphantly by this man of the future, he imposed this condition of eternal recurrence upon him as an ultimate test of fortitude. this idea would have added the final touch of futility to ambition, and nietzsche could not conceive of true greatness in man unless futility was at the bottom of all ambitions. however, it is possible to eliminate the entire idea of eternal recurrence from nietzsche's work without altering fundamentally any of his main teachings, for it is, in his very conception of it, a deputy condition of existence. part iv, the narrative section, answers the query often raised: for whom is nietzsche's philosophy intended? it does away once and for all with the assumption of certain critics that his writings were for all classes. in fact, this assumption, constantly posited by scholars--even those who claim to possess an intimate knowledge of nietzsche's work--is nowhere borne out in his text. as far back as "thoughts out of season" the reverse of this supposition was inferentially stated; and in "the antichrist" and "the will to power" we have definite denials that his doctrines were intended for every one. yet one is constantly encountering critical refutations of his philosophy based on the theory that he addressed his teachings to all men. nothing could be further from the truth. he held no vision of a race of supermen: a millennium founded on the exertion of power was neither his aim nor his hope. his philosophy was entirely aristocratic. it was a system of ethics designed for the masters of the race; and his books were gifts for the intelligent man alone. locke, rousseau and hume are often brought forward by critics as answers to his attempts at transvaluation; but a close inspection of nietzsche's definition of slave-morality, which was an important factor in his ethical scheme, will show that it is possible to accept the philosophy of the superman without abrogating the softer ethics of these three other thinkers. nietzsche's stand in regard to his audience is made obvious in the fable of zarathustra. the poet-philosopher experiences the instinct for pity, but on going out into the world, he recognises this instinct as pertaining only to the "higher men." when he finds numerous of these men in danger from the ignorance of the populace and from the restrictions of environment, he leads them to his cave, and there, isolated from the inferior man, discourses with them on the problems of life and points out to them the course they must take in order to bring about the superman. because of the nature of the book it is extremely difficult to select detached passages from it which will give an entirely adequate idea of its contents. often a single philosophical point will be contained in a long parable, and the only way to present that point in nietzsche's own words would have been to embody the whole parable in this chapter. that, of course, would have been impossible. therefore, many of the ideas set forth in the book have not been included in the following excerpts. part iv does not lend itself at all to mutilation, and i have been unable to take anything save a few general passages from this section. however, "thus spake zarathustra" is not a book to which one should go to become familiar with nietzsche's teachings. when one sits down to read it, my advice is that the notes of mr. anthony m. ludovici which are to be found in the appendix of the standard english edition, be followed closely. excerpts from "thus spake zarathustra" _i teach you the superman.._. man is something that is to be surpassed. 6 what is the ape to man? a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. and just the same shall man be to the superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. 6 ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes. 7 i conjure you, my brethren, _remain true to the earth._ and believe not those who speak unto you of super-earthly hopes! poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. 7 to blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin.... 7 man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman--a rope over an abyss. 9 what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.... 9 i tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.... 12 three metamorphoses of the spirit do i designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength. what is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden. what is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that i may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. is it not this: to humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's pride? to exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom? or is it this: to desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? to ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter? or is it this: to feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul? or is it this: to be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of the deaf, who never hear thy requests? or is it this: to go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads? or is it this: to love those who despise us, and give one's hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us? all these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness. but in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness. its last lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last god; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon. what is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call lord and god? "thou shalt," is the great dragon called. but the spirit of the lion saith, "i will." "thou shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold--a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, "thou shalt!" the values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: "all the values of things--glitter on me." "all values have already been created, and all created values--do i represent. verily, there shall be no 'i will' any more." thus speaketh the dragon. my brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent? to create new values--that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating--that can the might of the lion do. to create itself freedom, and give a holy nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion. to assume the right to new values--that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey. as its holiest, it once loved "thou shalt": now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture. but tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? why hath the preying lion still to become a child? innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy yea. aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy yea unto life: _its own_ will, willeth now the spirit; _his own_ world winneth the world's outcast. three metamorphoses of the spirit have i designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. 25-27 a new pride ... teach i unto men: no longer to thrust the head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth! a new will teach i unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it--and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing! the sick and perishing--it was they who despised the body and the earth, and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth! 33-34 the awakened one, the knowing one, saith: "body am i entirely, and nothing more; and soul is only the name of something in the body." 35 the body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd. an instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother, which thou callest "spirit"--a little instrument and plaything of thy big sagacity. instruments and playthings are sense and spirit: behind them there is still the self. the self seeketh with the eyes of the senses, it hearkeneth also with the ears of the spirit. 36 behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage--it is called self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body. 36 when thou hast a virtue, and it is thine own virtue, thou hast it in common with no one. 38 if thou be fortunate, then wilt thou have one virtue and no more: thus goest thou easier over the bridge. 39 "enemy" shall ye say but not "villain," "invalid" shall ye say but not "wretch," "fool" shall ye say but not "sinner." 41 of all that is written, i love only what a person hath written with his blood. write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. 43 ye look aloft when ye long for exaltation; and i look downward because i am exalted. who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? he who climbeth on the highest mountains, laugheth at all tragic plays and tragic realities. courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive--so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth a warrior. 44 it is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love. 44 i should only believe in a god that would know how to dance. 45 not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! 45 full is the earth of the superfluous; marred is life by the many-too-many. may they be decoyed out of this life by the "life eternal"! 49 ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. then be great enough not to be ashamed of them! 51 ye shall love peace as a means to new wars--and the short peace more than the long. you i advise not to work, but to fight. you, i advise not to peace, but to victory. let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory! 52 ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? i say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. 52 "what is good?" ye ask. to be brave is good. 52 ye shall only have enemies to be hated, but not enemies to be despised. ye must be proud of your enemies; then, the successes of your enemies are also your successes. 53 a state is called the coldest of all cold monsters. coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: "i, the state, am the people." 54 just see these superfluous ones! they steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. culture, they call their theft--and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! 56 around the devisers of new values revolveth the world:--invisibly it revolveth. but around the actors revolve the people and the glory: such is the course of things. 58 would that ye were perfect--at least as animals! but to animals belongeth innocence. 61 chastity is a virtue with some, but with many almost a vice. 61 to whom chastity is difficult, it is to be dissuaded: lest it become the road to hell--to filth and lust of soul. 62 if one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be _capable_ of being an enemy. 63 in one's friend one shall have one's best enemy. thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him. 63 art thou a slave? then thou canst not be a friend. art thou a tyrant? then thou canst not have friends. far too long hath there been a slave and a tyrant concealed in woman. on that account woman is not yet capable of friendship: she knoweth only love. in woman's love there is injustice and blindness to all she doth not love. and even in woman's conscious love, there is still always surprise and lightning and night, along with the light. 65 values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself--he created only the significance of things, a human significance! therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator. 67 a thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. as yet humanity hath not a goal. 69 do i advise you to neighbour-love? rather do i advise you to neighbour-flight and to furthest love! higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms. the phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones?... 69 art thou one _entitled_ to escape from a yoke? many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude. free from what? what doth that matter to zarathustra! clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free _for what?_ 71 everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman hath one solution--it is called pregnancy. man is for woman, a means: the purpose is always the child. but what is woman for man? two different things wanteth the true man: danger and diversion. therefore wanteth he woman, as the most dangerous plaything. man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly. two sweet fruits--these the warrior liketh not. therefore liketh he woman;--bitter is ever the sweetest woman. better than man doth woman understand children, but man is more childish than woman. in the true man there is a child hidden: it wanteth to play. up then, ye women, and discover the child in man! a plaything let woman be, pure and fine like the precious stone, illumined with the virtues of a world not yet come. let the beam of a star shine in your love! let your hope say: "may i bear the superman!" in your love let there be valour! with your love shall ye assail him who inspireth you with fear! in your love be your honour! little doth woman understand otherwise about honour. but let this be your honour: always to love more than ye are loved, and never be the second. let man fear woman when she loveth: then maketh she every sacrifice, and everything else she regardeth as worthless. let man fear woman when she hateth: for man in his innermost soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean. whom hateth woman most?--thus spake the iron to the loadstone: "i hate thee most, because thou attractest, but art too weak to draw unto thee." the happiness of man is, "i will." the happiness of woman is, "he will." 76 thou goest to women? do not forget thy whip! 77 when ... ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. but prove that he hath done something good to you. and rather be angry than abash any one! and when ye are cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. rather curse a little also! 78 tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes? 78 thou art young, and desirest child and marriage. but i ask thee: art thou a man entitled to desire a child? art thou the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the ruler of thy passions, the master of thy virtues? thus do i ask thee. or doth the animal speak in thy wish, and necessity? or isolation? or discord in thee? i would have thy victory and freedom long for a child. living monuments shalt thou build to thy victory and emancipation. beyond thyself shalt thou build. but first of all must thou be built thyself, rectangular in body and soul. 79 marriage: so call i the will of the twain to create the one that is more than those who created it. 80 that which the many-too-many call marriage, those superfluous ones--ah, what shall i call it? ah, the poverty of soul in the twain! ah, the filth of soul in the twain! ah, the pitiable self-complacency in the twain! marriage they call it all; and they say their marriages are made in heaven. well, i do not like it, that heaven of the superfluous; no, i do not like them, those animals tangled in the heavenly toils! far from me also be the god who limpeth thither to bless what he hath not matched! laugh not at such marriages! what child hath not had reason to weep over its parents? 80 every one regardeth dying as a great matter: but as yet death is not a festival. not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals. 82 my death, praise i unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me because i want it. and when shall i want it?--he that hath a goal and an heir, wanteth death at the right time for the goal and the heir. 83 it is your thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves: and therefore have ye the thirst to accumulate all riches in your soul. insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow. ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love. verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing love become; but healthy and holy, call i this selfishness. 86 when ye are exalted above praise and blame, and your will would command all things, as a loving one's will: there is the origin of your virtue. 87 remain true to the earth, my brethren, with the power of your virtue! let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! thus do i pray and conjure you. let it not fly away from the earthly and beat against eternal walls with its wings! 88 the man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. 90 once did people say god, when they looked out upon distant seas; now, however, have i taught you to say, superman. 98 could ye _conceive_ a god?--but let this mean will to truth unto you, that everything be transformed into the humanly conceivable, the humanly visible, the humanly sensible! your own discernment shall ye follow out to the end! 99 creating--that is the great salvation from suffering, and life's alleviation. but for the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed, and much transformation. 100 what would there be to create if there were--? gods! 101 man himself is to the discerning one: the animal with red cheeks. 102 verily, i like them not, the merciful ones, whose bliss is in their pity: too destitute are they of bashfulness. if i must be pitiful, i dislike to be called so; and if i be so, it is preferably at a distance. 102 since humanity came into being, man hath enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brethren, is our original sin! 103 great obligations do not make grateful, but revengeful; and when a small kindness is not forgotten, it becometh a gnawing worm. 103 the sting of conscience teacheth one to sting. 103 ah, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the pitiful? and what in the world hath caused more suffering than the follies of the pitiful? woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity! thus spake the devil unto me, once a time: "even god hath his hell: it is his love for man." 105 all great love is above all its pity: for it seeketh--to create what is loved! "myself do i offer unto my love, _and my neighbour as myself"_--such is the language of all creators. 105 "here are priests: but although they are mine enemies, pass them quietly and with sleeping swords!" even among them there are heroes; many of them have suffered too much:--so they want to make others suffer. bad enemies are they: nothing is more revengeful than their meekness. 106 when a person goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that prove! it is more, verily, when out of one's own burning cometh one's own teaching! 108 that _your_ very self be in your action, as the mother is in the child: let that be _your_ formula of virtue! 112 life is a well of delight; but where the rabble also drink, there all fountains are poisoned. 113 ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of _equality!_ tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones! 116 ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words! fretted conceit and suppressed envy--perhaps your fathers' conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance. 117 distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! they are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound. distrust all those who talk much of their justice! verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking. and when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for them to be pharisees, nothing is lacking but--power! 118 with these preachers of equality will i not be mixed up and confounded. for thus speaketh justice _unto me:_ "men are not equal." and neither shall they become so! 118 good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself! 119 steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends i divinely will we strive _against_ one another! 120 hungry, fierce, lonesome, god-forsaken: so doth the lion-will wish itself. free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from deities and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: so is the will of the conscientious. 122 wherever i found a living thing, there found i will to power; and even in the will of the servant found i the will to be master. that to the stronger the weaker shall serve--thereto persuadeth he his will who would be master over a still weaker one. that delight alone he is unwilling to forego. and as the lesser surrendereth himself to the greater that he may have delight and power over the least of all, so doth even the greatest surrender himself, and staketh--life, for the sake of power. it is the surrender of the greatest to run risk and danger, and play dice for death. 136 good and evil which would be everlasting--it doth not exist! of its own accord must it ever surpass itself anew. 137 he who hath to be a creator in good and evil--verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values in pieces. 138 ye tell me, friends, that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? but all life is a dispute about taste and tasting. taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and scales and weigher! 139 alien to me, and a mockery, are the present-day men, to whom of late my heart impelled me; and exiled am i from fatherlands and motherlands. thus do i love only my _children's land,_ the undiscovered in the remotest sea: for it do i bid my sails search and search. unto my children will i make amends for being the child of my fathers: and unto all the future--for _this_ present-day! 145 where is innocence? where there is will to procreation. and he who seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will. where is beauty? where i _must will_ with my whole will; where i will love and perish, that an image may not remain merely an image. loving and perishing: these have rhymed from eternity. will to love: that is to be ready also for death. 147 dare only to believe in yourselves--in yourselves and in your inward parts! he who doth not believe in himself always lieth. 147 all gods are poets-symbolisations, poet-sophistications! 153 "freedom" ye all roar most eagerly: but i have unlearned the belief in "great events," when there is much roaring and smoke about them. and believe me, friend hollaballoo! the greatest events--are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours. not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world revolve: _inaudibly_ it revolveth. 158 to redeem what is past, and to transform every "it was" into "thus would have it!"--that only do i call redemption! 168 _the spirit of revenge:_ my friends, that hath hitherto been man's best contemplation; and where there was suffering, it was claimed there was always penalty. "penalty," so calleth itself revenge. with a lying word it feigneth a good conscience. 169 this is my first manly prudence, that i allow myself to be deceived, so as not to be on my guard against deceivers. 172 he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses; and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water. 172 verily, there is still a future even for evil! and the warmest south is still undiscovered by man. how many things are now called the worst wickedness, which are only twelve feet broad and three months long! some day, however, will greater dragons come into the world. for that the superman may not lack his dragon, the superdragon that is worthy of him, there must still much warm sun glow on moist virgin forests! out of your wild cats must tigers have evolved, and out of your poison-toads, crocodiles: for the good hunter shall have a good hunt! and verily, ye good and just! in you there is much to be laughed at, and especially your fear of what hath hitherto been called "the devil"! so alien are ye in your souls to what is great, that to you the superman would be _frightful_ in his goodness! and ye wise and knowing ones, ye would flee from the solar-glow of the wisdom in which the superman joyfully batheth his nakedness! ye highest men who have come within my ken! this is my doubt of you, and my secret laughter: i suspect ye would call my superman--a devil! ah, i became tired of those highest and best ones: from their "height" did i long to be up, out, and away to the superman! a horror came over me when i saw those best ones naked: then there grew for me the pinions to soar away into distant futures. into more distant futures, into more southern souths than ever artist dreamed of: thither, where gods are ashamed of all clothes! but disguised do i want to see _you,_ ye neighbours and fellowmen, and well-attired and vain and estimable, as "the good and just";-and disguised will i myself sit amongst you--that i may _mistake_ you and myself: for that is my last manly prudence. 174-175 he who would become a child must surmount even his youth. 178 thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee! thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth written: impossibility. 184 from the gateway, this moment, there runneth a long eternal lane _backwards:_ behind us lieth an eternity. must not whatever _can_ run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? must not whatever _can_ happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by? and if everything have already existed, what thinkest thou, dwarf, of this moment? must not this gateway also--have already existed? and are not all things closely bound together in such wise that this moment draweth all coming things after it? _consequently_--itself also? for whatever _can_ run its course of all things, also in this long lane _outward--must_ it once more run!-and this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and thou and i in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things--must we not all have already existed? 186 and must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane--must we not eternally return? 190-191 all things are baptised at the font of eternity, and beyond good and evil; good and evil themselves, however, are but fugitive shadows and damp afflictions and passing clouds. verily, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when i teach that "above all things there standeth, the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of hazard, the heaven of wantonness." "of hazard"--that is the oldest nobility in the world; that gave i back to all things; i emancipated them from bondage under purpose. this freedom and celestial serenity did i put like an azure bell above all things, when i taught that over them and through them, no "eternal will"--willeth. this wantonness and folly did i put in place of that will, when i taught that "in everything there is one thing impossible--rationality!" 201 i pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they do not forgive me for not envying their virtues. they bite at me, because i say unto them that for small people, small virtues are necessary--and because it is hard for me to understand that small people are _necessary!_ 203 only he who is man enough, will--_save the woman_ in woman. 205 so much kindness, so much weakness do i see. so much justice and pity, so much weakness. round, fair, and considerate are they to one another, as grains of sand are round, fair, and considerate to grains of sand. modestly to embrace a small happiness--that do they call "submission"! and at the same time they peer modestly after a new small happiness. in their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them. thus do they anticipate every one's wishes and do well unto every one. that, however, is _cowardice,_ though it be called "virtue." and when they chance to speak harshly, those small people, then do _i_ hear therein only their hoarseness--every draught of air maketh them hoarse. shrewd indeed are they, their virtues have shrewd fingers. but they lack fists: their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists. virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame: therewith have they made the wolf a dog, and man himself man's best domestic animal. "we set our chair in the _midst_"--so saith their smirking unto me--"and as far from dying gladiators as from satisfied swine." that, however, is--_mediocrity,_ though it be called moderation. 206 those teachers of submission! wherever there is aught puny, or sickly, or scabby, there do they creep like lice; and only my disgust preventeth me from cracking them. 207 too tender, too yielding: so is your soil! but for a tree to become _great,_ it seeketh to twine hard roots around hard rocks! 208 do ever what ye will--but first be such as _can will._ 208 love ever your neighbour as yourselves--but first be such as _love themselves._ 208 out of love alone shall my contempt and my warning bird take wing; but not out of the swamp! 216 in indulging and pitying lay ever my greatest danger; and all human hubbub wisheth to be indulged and tolerated. 226 he who liveth amongst the good--pity teacheth him to lie. pity maketh stifling air for all free souls. for the stupidity of the good is unfathomable. 227 voluptuousness: to free hearts, a thing innocent and free, the garden-happiness of the earth, all the future's thanks overflow to the present. voluptuousness: only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, however, the great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines. voluptuousness: the great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope. for to many is marriage promised, and more than marriage. to many that are more unknown to each other than man and woman:--and who hath fully understood _have unknown_ to each other are man and woman! voluptuousness:--but i will have hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into my gardens! 230 passion for power: the earthquake which breaketh and upbreaketh all that is rotten and hollow; the rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative-sign beside premature answers. passion for power: before whose glance man creepeth and croucheth and drudgeth, and becometh lower than the serpent and the swine:--until at last great contempt crieth out of him,-passion for power: the terrible teacher of great contempt, which preacheth to their face to cities and empires: "away with thee!"--until a voice crieth out of themselves: "away with _me!_" passion for power: which; however, mounteth alluringly even to the pure and lonesome, and up to self-satisfied elevations, glowing like a love that painteth purple felicities alluringly on earthly heavens. passion for power: but who would call it _passion,_ when the height longeth to stoop for power! verily, nothing sick or diseased is there in such longing and descending! that the lonesome height may not for ever remain lonesome and self-sufficing: that the mountains may come to the valleys and the winds of the heights to the plains: oh, who could find the right prenomen and honouring name for such longing! "bestowing virtue"--thus did zarathustra once name the unnamable. and then it happened also,--and verily, it happened for the first time!--that his word blessed _selfishness,_ the wholesome, healthy selfishness, that springeth from the powerful soul:-from the powerful soul, to which the high body appertaineth, the handsome, triumphing, refreshing body, around which everything becometh a mirror: the pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment calleth itself "virtue." 232 he who wisheth to become light, and be a bird, must love himself:--thus do i teach. not, to be sure, with the love of the sick and infected, for with them stinketh even self-love! one must learn to love oneself--thus do i teach--with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about. such roving about christeneth itself "brotherly love"; with these words hath there hitherto been the best lying and dissembling, and especially by those who have been burdensome to every one. and verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to _learn_ to love oneself. rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last and patientest. 235 _no one yet knoweth_ what is good and bad:--unless it be the creating one! it is he however createth man's goal, and giveth to the earth its meaning and its future: he only _effecteth_ it _that_ aught is good and bad. 240 man is a bridge and not a goal. 241 _be not considerate of thy neighbour!_ man is something that must be surpassed. 243 he who cannot command himself shall obey. and many a one _can_ command himself, but still sorely lacketh self-obedience! 243 he who is of the populace wisheth to live gratuitously; we others, however, to whom life hath given itself--we are ever considering _what_ we can best give _in return!_ 243 one should not wish to enjoy where one doth not contribute to the enjoyment. and one should not _wish_ to enjoy! 243 "thou shalt not rob! thou shalt not slay!"--such precepts were once called holy; before them did one bow the knee and the head, and took off one's shoes. but i ask you: where have there ever been better robbers and slayers in the world than such holy precepts? is there not even in all life--robbing and slaying? and for such precepts to be called holy, was not _truth_ itself thereby--slain? 246 let it not be your honour henceforth whence ye come, but whither ye go! your will and your feet which seek to surpass you--let these be your new honour! 248 the best shall rule, the best also _willeth_ to rule! and where the teaching is different, there--the best _is lacking._ 257 thus would i have man and woman: fit for war, the one, fit for maternity, the other; both, however, fit for dancing with head and legs. and lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. and false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it! 257 the stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise. the good _must_ crucify him who deviseth his own virtue! that _is_ the truth! the second one, however, who discovered their country--the country, heart and soil of the good and just,--it was he who asked: "whom do they hate most?" the _creator,_ hate they most, him who breaketh the tables and old values, the breaker,--him they call the law-breaker. for the good--they _cannot_ create; they are always the beginning of the end:-they crucify him who writeth new values on new tables, they sacrifice _unto themselves_ the future--they crucify the whole human future! 260 this new table, o my brethren, put i up over you: _become hard!_ 262 everything goeth, everything returneth; eternally rolleth the wheel of existence. everything dieth, everything blossometh forth again; eternally runneth on the year of existence. everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew; eternally buildeth itself the same house of existence. all things separate, all things again greet one another; eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of existence. every moment beginneth existence, around every "here" rolleth the ball "there." the middle is everywhere. 266 for man his baddest is necessary for his best. that all that is baddest is the best _power,_ and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better _and_ badder:--267 the plexus of causes returneth in which i am intertwined,--it will again create me! i myself pertain to the causes of the eternal return. 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 its smallest, to teach again the eternal return of all things,-to speak again the word of the great noontide of earth and man, to announce again to man the superman. 270-271 "ye higher men,"--so blinketh the populace--"there are no higher men, we are all equal; man is man, before god--we are all equal!" before god!--now, however, this god hath died. before the populace, however, we will not be equal. ye higher men, away from the market-place! 351 have a good distrust to-day, ye higher men, ye enheartened ones! ye open-hearted ones! and keep your reasons secret! for this to-day is that of the populace. what the populace once learned to believe without reasons, who could--refute it to them by means of reasons? and on the market-place one convinceth with gestures. but reasons make the populace distrustful. and when truth hath once triumphed there, then ask yourselves with good distrust: "what strong error hath fought for it?" 355 unlearn, i pray you, this "for," ye creating ones: your very virtue wisheth you to have naught to do with "for" and "on account of" and "because." against these false little words shall ye stop your ears. "for one's neighbour," is the virtue only of the petty people: there it is said "like and like" and "hand washeth hand":--they have neither the right nor the power for _your_ self-seeking! 356-357 what hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? was it not the word of him who said: "woe unto them that laugh now!" did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? then he sought badly. a child even findeth cause for it. 359-360 vi "the eternal recurrence" he following excerpts from nietzsche's notes relating to eternal recurrence are set down here merely as supplementary passages to "thus spake zarathustra," in which book this doctrine of the eternally recurring irrationality of all things first made its appearance. nietzsche's notations on this subject were undoubtedly written in the latter part of 1881, when the idea of zarathustra first came to him. they were not published, however, until years later, and now form a section of volume xvi of nietzsche's complete works in english, along with "the twilight of the idols," "the antichrist" and some explanatory notes on "thus spake zarathustra." this is the only material in nietzsche's writings which i have not put in chronological order, and my reason for placing these extracts here, and not between "the dawn of day" and "the joyful wisdom," is due to the fact that after conceiving this doctrine and making notes pertaining to it, nietzsche put the idea aside and wrote "the joyful wisdom" in which this doctrine was not embodied. not until "thus spake zarathustra" appeared did he make use of this principle of recurrence, and inasmuch as this was the first published statement of it, i have placed that book first and have followed it with these explanatory notes. another section of nietzsche's works also deals with eternal recurrence, namely: the last part of the second volume of "the will to power." but here too we find but fragmentary jottings which contain no material not found in the present quotations. it is true that nietzsche intended to elaborate these notes, but even had he done so i doubt if this doctrine would have assumed a different aspect from the one it at present possesses, or would have become more closely allied with the main structure of his thought; for, even though it is not fully elucidated in its present form, it at least is complete in its conclusions. in my introduction to the quotations from "thus spake zarathustra" in the preceding chapter will be found a statement relating to this doctrine, in which i have endeavoured to point out just what influence it had on nietzsche's philosophy, and to offer an explanation for its appearance in his thought. a reading of the following notes is not at all necessary for an understanding of the nietzschean ethic, and i have placed these passages here solely for the student to whom every phase of nietzsche's philosophy is of interest. excerpts from "the eternal recurrence" the extent of universal energy is limited; it is not "infinite": we should beware of such excesses in our concepts! consequently the number of states, changes, combinations, and evolutions of this energy, although it may be enormous and practically incalculable, is at any rate definite and not unlimited. the time, however, in which this universal energy works its changes is infinite--that is to say, energy remains eternally the same and is eternally active:--at this moment an infinity has already elapsed, that is to say, every possible evolution must already have taken place. consequently the present process of evolution must be a repetition, as was also the one before it, as will also be the one which will follow. and so on forwards and backwards! inasmuch as the entire state of all forces continually returns, everything has existed an infinite number of times. 237 energy remains constant and does not require to be infinite. it is eternally active but it is no longer able eternally to create new forms, it must repeat itself: that is my conclusion. 238 the energy of the universe can only have a given number of possible qualities. 238 the assumption that the universe is an organism contradicts the very essence of the organic. 239 we are forced to conclude: (1) either that the universe began its activity at a given moment of time and will end in a similar fashion,--but the beginning of activity is absurd; if a state of equilibrium had been reached it: would have persisted to all eternity; (2) or there is no such thing as an endless number of them which continually recurs: activity is eternal, the number of the products and states of energy is limited. 239 the last physical state of energy which we can imagine must necessarily be the first also. the absorption of energy in latent energy must be the cause of the production of the most vital energy. for a highly positive state must follow a negative state. space like matter is a subjective form, time is not. the notion of space first arose from the assumption that space could be empty. but there is no such thing as empty space. everything is energy. 240 anything like a static state of energy in general is impossible. if stability were possible it would already have been reached. 241 physics supposes that energy may be divided up: but every one of its possibilities must first be adjusted to reality. there can therefore be no question of dividing energy into equal parts; in every one of its states it manifests a certain quality, and qualities cannot be subdivided: hence a state of equilibrium in energy is impossible. 241 if equilibrium were possible it would already have been reached.--and if this momentary state has already existed then that which bore it and the previous one also would likewise have existed and so on backwards,--and from this it follows that it has already existed not only twice but three times,--just as it will exist again not only twice but three times,--in fact an infinite number of times backwards and forwards. that is to say, the whole process of becoming consists of a repetition of a definite number of precisely similar states. 242 imaginic matter, even though in most cases it may once have been organic, can have stored up no experience as it is always without a past! if the reverse were the case a repetition would be impossible--for then matter would for ever be producing new qualities with new pasts. 247 let us guard against believing that the universe has a tendency to attain to certain forms, or that it aims at becoming more beautiful, more perfect, more complicated! all that is anthropomorphism! 248 our whole world consists of the ashes of an incalculable number of living creatures: and even if living matter is ever so little compared with the whole, everything has already been transformed into life once before and thus the process goes on. if we grant eternal time we must assume the eternal change of matter. 249 the world of energy suffers no diminution: otherwise with eternal time it would have grown weak and finally have perished altogether. the world of energy suffers no stationary state, otherwise this would already have been reached, and the clock of the universe would be at a standstill. the world of energy does not therefore reach a state of equilibrium; for no instant in its career has it had rest; its energy and its movement have been the same for all time. whatever state this world could have reached must ere now have been attained, and not only once but an incalculable number of times. 249 my doctrine is: live so that thou mayest desire to live again,--that is thy duty,--for in any case thou wilt live again! he unto whom striving is the greatest happiness, let him strive; he unto whom peace is the greatest happiness, let him rest; he unto whom subordination, following, obedience, is the greatest happiness, let him obey. 251 the mightiest of all thoughts absorbs a good deal, of energy which formerly stood at the disposal of other aspirations, and in this way it exercises a modifying influence; it creates new laws of motion in energy, though no new energy. 252 ye fancy that ye will have a long rest ere your second birth takes place,--but do not deceive yourselves! 'twixt your last moment of consciousness and the first ray of the dawn of your new life no time will elapse,--as a flash of lightning will the space go by, even though living creatures think it is millions of years.... 253 are ye now prepared? ye must have experienced every form of scepticism and ye must have wallowed with voluptuousness in ice-cold baths,--otherwise ye have no right to this thought; i wish to protect myself against those who gush over anything! i would defend my doctrine in advance. it must be the religion of the freest, most cheerful and most sublime souls, a delightful pastureland somewhere between golden ice and a pure heaven! 256 vii "beyond good and evil" double purpose animated nietzsche in his writing of "beyond good and evil" _("jenseits von gut und böse")._ it is at once an explanation and an elucidation of "thus spake zarathustra," and a preparatory book for his greatest and most important work, "the will to power." in it nietzsche attempts to define the relative terms of "good" and "evil," and to draw a line of distinction between immorality and unmorality. he saw the inconsistencies evolved in the attempt to harmonise an ancient moral code with the needs of modern life, and recognised the compromises which were constantly being made between moral theory and social practice. his object was to establish a relationship between morality and necessity, and to formulate a workable basis for human conduct. consequently "beyond good and evil" is one of his most important contributions to a new system of ethics, and touches on many of the deepest principles of his philosophy. as it stands, it is by no means a complete expression of nietzsche's doctrines, but it is sufficiently profound and suggestive to be of valuable service in an understanding of his later works. the book was begun in the summer of 1885 and finished the following winter. again there was difficulty with publishers, and finally the book was issued at the author's own expense in the autumn of 1886. nietzsche opens "beyond good and evil" with a long chapter headed "prejudices of philosophers," in which he outlines the course to be taken by his dialectic. the exposition is accomplished by two methods: first, by an analysis and a refutation of the systems of thinking made use of by antecedent doctrinaires, and secondly, by defining the hypotheses on which his own philosophy is built. this chapter is a most important one, setting forth, as it does, the _rationale_ of his doctrine of the will to power. it has been impossible to make extracts of any unified sequence from this chapter because of its intricate and compact reasoning, and the student would do well to read it in its entirety. it establishes nietzsche's philosophic position and presents a closely knit explanation of the course pursued in the following chapters. the relativity of all truth--the hypothesis so often assumed in his previous work--nietzsche here defends by analogy and argument. using other leading forms of philosophy as a ground for exploration, he questions the absolutism of truth and shows wherein lies the difficulty of a final definition. here we become conscious of that plasticity of mind which was the dominating quality of his thinking. it is not, however, that form of plasticity which on inspection resolves itself into amorphic and unstable reasoning, but a logical, almost scientific, method of valuing. the mercurial habits of the metaphysicians who deny absolutism are nowhere discernible in nietzsche's thought. his mind is definite without being static. the basis of his argumentation is what one might call floating. it rises and falls with the human tide of causation; yet the structure built upon it remains at all times upright and unchanged. nietzsche points out that the numerous "logical" conclusions of philosophers have been for the most part _a priori_ propositions, the results of prejudices or desires, and that the syllogistic structures reared to them came as explanations and defences, rather than as dialectic preambles. in their adopting a hypothetical truth as a premise, he sees only the advocacy for a point of view, arguing that in order to erect a system of logic the initial thesis must be proved. therefore he questions the fundamental worth of certainty as opposed to uncertainty, and of truth as opposed to falsity, thus striking at the very foundations reared by those philosophers who have assumed, without substantiation, that only certainty and truth are valuable. nietzsche calls these absolutists astute defenders of prejudices, and characterises the verbalistic prestidigitation of kant as a highly developed form of prejudice-defending. spinoza, with his mathematical system of reasoning, likewise falls in the category of those thinkers who first assume conclusions and then prepare explanations for them by a process of inverted reasoning. nietzsche proceeds to pose the instinctive functions against conscious thinking. he asserts that the channels taken by thought are defined by the thinker's nature, and that even logic is influenced by physiological considerations. the whole fabric of philosophic thought is held up to the light of immediate necessity. going further, he inquires into the "impulse to knowledge." he finds that a specific purpose has always been the actuating force of any philosophy, and that consequently philosophy, even in its most abstract form, has had a residuum of autobiography in it. in fine, that philosophy, far from being a search, has been an aim toward a definite preconceived result. the moral or ethical impulse, being always imperious, has not infrequently resulted in philosophising, and in all such cases knowledge has been used as an instrument. thus knowledge which led to a philosophical conclusion has been the outgrowth of a personal instinct. in those cases where an impersonal "impulse to knowledge" may have existed, it has led, not into philosophical channels, but into practical and often commercial activities. the scholar has ever remained personal in his quest for philosophical formulas. in kant's "table of categories," wherein that philosopher claimed to have found the faculty of synthetic judgment _a priori,_ nietzsche finds only a circle of reasoning which begins and ends in personal instinct. and in kant's discovery of a new moral faculty, nietzsche sees only sophistical invention, and accounts for its widespread acceptance by the moral state of the germans at that period. ignoring the _possibility_ of synthetic judgments _a priori,_ nietzsche advances the query as to their _necessity,_ and lays stress on the impracticability of truth without _belief._ the inherent falsity or truth of a proposition has no bearing on philosophical doctrines so long as a contrary belief is present, a belief such as we exert toward the illusions of the world of reality when we make practical use of that world's perspective. the schemes of personal philosophy, such, for instance, as we find in schopenhauer, are dealt with by nietzsche in a single paragraph: "when i analyse the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'i think,' i find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is i who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking--that i _know_ what thinking is. for if i had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could i determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? in short, the assertion 'i think,' assumes that i _compare_ my state at the present moment with other states of myself which i know, in order to determine what it is: on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has at any rate no immediate certainty for me." thus the smug materialistic philosopher finds himself necessitated to fall back on purely metaphysical explanations for answers to the questions arising out of his definition of truth. locke falls under a critical survey in this chapter. in answer to this thinker's theory regarding the origin of ideas, nietzsche names the great cycles of philosophical systems and calls attention to the similarity of processes in such cycles. furthermore, he shows that the foundations of all previous philosophies are discoverable in the new styles of contemporaneous thought. and in those national schools of philosophy conceived in languages which stem from the same origin, he finds an undeniable resemblance. all of which leads to a conclusion incompatible with locke's theory. nietzsche attacks the conclusions of the physicists, denying them any place in philosophy because their research consists solely in interpretations of natural laws in accordance with their own prejudices and beliefs. the theories which might be deduced from natural phenomena are not discoverable in their doctrines; their activities have consisted in twisting natural events to suit preconceived valuations. finally nietzsche inquires into the habits and practices of psychologists. not even among these workers does he find a basis for philosophy. psychology, he argues, has been guided, not by a detached and lofty desire to ascertain truth in its relation to the human mind, but by prejudices and fears grounded in moral considerations. he finds a constant desire on the part of experimenters to account for "good" impulses as distinguished from "bad" ones. and in this desire lies the superimposing of moral prejudices on a science which, more than all others, deals with problems farthest removed from moral influences. these prejudices in psychology, as well as in all branches of philosophy, are the obstacles which stand in the way of any deep penetration into the motives beneath human conduct. nietzsche, in his analyses and criticisms, is not solely destructive: he is subterraneously constructing his own philosophical system founded on the will to power. this phrase is used many times in the careful research of the first chapter. as the book proceeds, this doctrine develops. nietzsche's best definition of what he calls the "free spirit," namely: the thinking man, the intellectual aristocrat, the philosopher and ruler, is contained in the twenty-six pages of the second chapter of "beyond good and evil." in a series of paragraphs--longer than is nietzsche's wont--the leading characteristics of this superior man are described. the "free spirit," however, must not be confused with the superman. the former is the "bridge" which the present-day man must cross in the process of surpassing himself. in the delineation and analysis of him, as presented to us here, we can glimpse his most salient mental features. heretofore, as in "thus spake zarathustra," he has been but partially and provisionally defined. now his instincts and desires, his habits and activities are outlined. furthermore, we are given an explanation of his relation to the inferior man and to the organisms of his environment. the chapter is an important one, for at many points it is a subtle elucidation of many of nietzsche's dominant philosophic principles. by inference, the differences of class distinction are strictly drawn. the slave-morality _(sklavmoral)_ and the master-morality (_herrenmoral_), though as yet undefined, are balanced against each other; and the deportmental standards of the masters and slaves are defined by way of differentiating between these two opposing human factions. while the serving class is constantly manifesting its need of a guiding dogma, the ruling class is constantly approaching the state wherein the arbitrary moral mandates are denied. nietzsche sees a new order of philosophers appearing--men who will stand beyond good and evil, who will be not only free spirits, "but something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different." in describing these men of the future, of which the present free men are the heralds and forerunners, nietzsche establishes an individualistic ideal which he develops fully in later chapters. a keen and far-reaching analysis of the various aspects assumed by religious faith constitutes a third section of "beyond good and evil." though touching upon various influences of christianity, this section is more general in its religious scope than even "the antichrist," many indications of which are to be found here. this chapter has to do with the numerous inner experiences of man, which are directly or indirectly attributable to religious doctrines. the origin of the instinct for faith itself is sought, and the results of this faith are balanced against the needs of the individuals and of the race. the relation between religious ecstasy and sensuality; the attempt on the part of religious practitioners to arrive at a negation of the will; the transition from religious gratitude to fear; the psychology at the bottom of saint-worship;--to problems such as these nietzsche devotes his energies in his inquiry of the religious mood. the geographical considerations which enter into the character and intensity of religious faith form an important basis for study; and the differences between comte's sociology and sainte-beuve's anti-jesuit utterances are explained from a standpoint of national influences. nietzsche examines the many phases of atheism and the principal anti-christian tendencies of all philosophy since descartes. there is an illuminating exposition of the important stages in religious cruelty and of the motives underlying the various forms of religious sacrifices. again we run upon the doctrine of eternal recurrence, but here, as elsewhere, it may be regarded, not as a basic element in nietzsche's philosophical scheme, but as a by-product of his thought. nietzsche emphasises the necessity of idleness in all religious lives, and shows how the adherence to the religious mood works against the activities, both of mind and of body, which make for the highest efficiency. a very important phase of nietzsche's teaching is contained in this criticism of the religious life. the detractors of the nietzschean doctrine, almost without exception, base their judgments on the assumption that the universal acceptation of his theories would result in social chaos. as i have pointed out before, nietzsche desired no such general adoption of his beliefs. in his bitterest diatribes against christianity, his object was not to shake the faith of the great majority of mankind in their idols. he sought merely to free the strong men from the restrictions of a religion which fitted the needs of only the weaker members of society. he neither hoped nor desired to wean the mass of humanity from christianity or any similar dogmatic comfort. on the contrary, he denounced those superficial atheists who endeavoured to weaken the foundations of religion. he saw the positive necessity of such religions as a basis for his slave morality, and in the present chapter he exhorts the rulers to preserve the religious faith of the serving classes, and to use it as a means of government--as an instrument in the work of disciplining and educating. in paragraph 61 he says: "the selecting and disciplining influence--destructive as well as creative and fashioning--which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection." not only is this an expression of the utilitarian value of religious formulas, but a definite voicing of one of the main factors in his philosophy. his entire system of ethics is built on the complete disseverance of the dominating class and the serving class; and his doctrine of "beyond good and evil" should be considered only as it pertains to the superior man. to apply it to all classes would be to reduce nietzsche's whole system of ethics to impracticability, and therefore to an absurdity. passing from a consideration of the religious mood, nietzsche enters a broader sphere of ethical research, and endeavours to trace the history and development of morals. he accuses the philosophers of having avoided the real problem of morality, namely: the testing of the faith and motives which lie beneath moral beliefs. this is the task he sets for himself, and in his chapter, "the natural history of morals," he makes an examination of moral origins--an examination which is extended into an exhaustive treatise in "the genealogy of morals." however, his dissection here is carried out on a broader and far more general scale than in his previous books, such as "human, all-too-human" and "the dawn of day." heretofore he had confined himself to codes and systems, to _acts_ of morality and immorality, to judgments of conducts. in "beyond good and evil" he treats of moral prejudices as forces working hand in hand with human progress. in addition, there is a definite attitude of constructive thinking here which is absent from his earlier work. he outlines the course to be taken by the men of the future, and points to the results which have accrued from the moralities of modern nations. he offers the will to power in place of the older "will to belief," and characterises the foundations of acceptance for all moral codes as "fictions" and "premature hypotheses." he defines the racial ideals which have grown up out of moral influences, and, applying them to the needs of the present day, finds them inadequate and dangerous. the conclusion to which his observations and analyses point is that, unless the rulers of the race take a stand beyond the outposts of good and evil and govern on a basis of expediency divorced from all moral influences, the individual is in constant danger of being lowered to the level of the gregarious conscience. in the chapter, "we scholars," nietzsche continues his definition of the philosopher, whom he holds to be the highest type of man. besides being a mere description of the intellectual traits of this "free spirit," the chapter is also an exposition of the shortcomings of those modern men who pose as philosophers. in the path of these new thinkers nietzsche sees many difficulties both from within and from without, and points out methods whereby these obstacles may be overcome. also the man of science and the man of genius are analyzed and weighed as to their relative importance in the community. in fact, we have here nietzsche's most concise and complete definition of the individuals upon whom rests the burden of progress. these valuations of the intellectual leaders are important to the student, for by one's understanding them, along with the reasons for such valuations, a comprehension of the ensuing volumes is facilitated. nietzsche hereby establishes the qualities of those entitled to the master-morality code; and, by thus drawing the line of demarcation in humanity, he defines at the same time that class whose constitutions and predispositions demand the slave-morality. in addition, he affixes, according to his philosophical formula, a scale of values to such mental attributes as objectivity, power to will, scepticism, positivity and constraint. important material touching on many of the fundamental points of nietzsche's philosophy is embodied in the chapter entitled "our virtues." the more general inquiries into conduct and the research along the broader lines of ethics are supplanted by inquiries into specific moral attributes. the current virtues are questioned, and their historical significance is determined. the value of such virtues is tested in their relation to different types of men. sacrifice, sympathy, brotherly love, service, loyalty, altruism and similar ideals of conduct are examined, and the results of such virtues are shown to be incompatible with the demands of modern social intercourse. nietzsche poses against these virtues the sterner and more rigid forms of conduct, pointing out wherein they meet with the present requirements of human progress. the chapter is a preparation for his establishment of a new morality and also an explanation of the dual ethical code which is one of the main pillars in his philosophical structure. before presenting his precept of a dual morality, nietzsche endeavours to determine woman's place in the political and social scheme, and points out the necessity, not only of individual feminine functioning, but of the preservation of a distinct polarity in sexual relationship. in the final chapter many of nietzsche's philosophical ideas take definite shape. the doctrine of slave-morality and master-morality, prepared for and partially defined in preceding chapters, is here directly set forth, and those virtues and attitudes which constitute the "nobility" of the master class are specifically defined. nietzsche designates the duty of his aristocracy, and segregates the human attributes according to the rank of individuals. the dionysian ideal, which underlies all the books that follow "beyond good and evil," receives its first direct exposition and application. the hardier human traits such as egotism, cruelty, arrogance, retaliation and appropriation are given ascendency over the softer virtues such as sympathy, charity, forgiveness, loyalty and humility, and are pronounced necessary constituents in the moral code of a natural aristocracy. at this point is begun the transvaluation of values which was to have been completed in "the will to power." the student should read carefully this chapter, for it is an introduction as well as an explanation for what follows, and was written with that purpose in view. excerpts from "beyond good and evil" _to recognise untruth as a condition of life:_ that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. 9 psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. a living thing seeks above all to _discharge its strength_--life itself is _will to power;_ self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent _results_ thereof. 20 it is the business of the very few to be independent; it is the privilege of the strong. and whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being _obliged_ to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. 43 the virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be possible for a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone, for the sake of which he would have to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which he had sunk. 44 books for the general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odour of paltry people clings to them. where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink. one should not go into churches if one wishes to breathe pure air. 44 "will" can naturally only operate on "will"--and not on "matter" (not on "nerves," for instance): in short, the hypothesis must be hazarded, whether will does not operate on will wherever "effects" are recognised--and whether all mechanical action, inasmuch as a power operates therein, is not just the power of will, the effect of will. granted, finally, that we succeed in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will--namely, the will to power, as _my_ thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this will to power, and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition--it is one problem--could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define _all_ active force unequivocally as _will to power._ the world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its "intelligible character"--it would simply be "will to power," and nothing else. 52 happiness and virtue are no arguments. it is willingly forgotten, however, even on the part of thoughtful minds, that to make unhappy and to make bad are just as little counter-arguments. a thing could be _true,_ although it were in the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full knowledge of it--so that the strength of a mind might be measured by the amount of "truth" it could endure--or to speak more plainly, by the extent to which it _required_ truth attenuated, veiled, sweetened, damped, and falsified. 53-54 everything that is profound loves the mask; the profoundest things have a hatred even of figure and likeness. should not the _contrary_ only be the right disguise for the shame of a god to go about in? 54-55 one must renounce the bad taste of wishing to agree with many people. "good" is no longer good when one's neighbour takes it into his mouth. and how could there be a "common good." the expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of small value. in the end things must be as they are and have always been--the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare. 57-58 in every country of europe, and the same in america, there is at present ... a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits.... briefly and regrettably, they belong to the _levellers,_ these wrongly named "free spirits"--as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas"; all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied; only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost _all_ human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed--a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely. 53-59 we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and revelry of every kind,--that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite.... 59 the christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. 65 the mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation.--why did they thus bow? they divined in him--and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance--the superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint.... the mighty ones of the world learned to have a new fear before him, they divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy:--it was the "will to power" which obliged them to halt before the saint. 70-71 perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions "god" and "sin," will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to an old man.... 75 to love mankind _for god's sake_--this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. 79 for those who are strong and independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming, betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. 80 asceticism and puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upward to future supremacy. and finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. 81 "knowledge for its own sake"--that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more. 85 he who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. 86 sympathy for all--would be harshness and tyranny for _thee,_ my good neighbour! 88 to be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality. 89 a discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalisation of god. 90 not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the christians of to-day--burning us. 91 there is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. 91 the criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it. 91 the great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptise our badness as the best in us. 92 it is a curious thing that god learned greek when he wished to turn author--and that he did not learn it better. 93 even concubinage has been corrupted--by marriage. 93 a nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men--yes, and then to get round them. 94 from the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. 95 our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us.--concerning the origin of many systems of morals. 96 when a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if i may say so, is "the barren animal." 96 that which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal. 97 what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. 98 objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 98 the jews---a people "born for slavery," as tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as they themselves say and believe--the jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. in this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the jewish people is to be found; it is with _them_ that the _slave-insurrection in morals_ commences. 117 the beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, cæsar borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths.... 118 all the systems of morals which address themselves to individuals with a view to their "happiness," as it is called--what else are they but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of _danger_ from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad propensities in so far as such have the will to power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form--because they address themselves to "all," because they generalise where generalisation is not authorised; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of "the other world." 118-119 in view ... of the fact that obedience has been most practised and fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one, as a kind of _formal conscience._... 120 the history of the influence of napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its worthiest individuals and periods. 121 as long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be no "morality of love to one's neighbour." 123 "love of our neighbour," is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our _fear of our neighbour._ 123 everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called _evil;_ the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the _mediocrity_ of desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. 125 the _democratic_ movement is the inheritance of the christian movement. 127 we, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organisation, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where have _we_ to fix our hopes? in _new philosophers_--there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take _new_ paths. to teach men the future of humanity as his _will,_ as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last form)--for that purpose a new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed. 128-129 the _universal degeneracy of mankind_ to the level of the "man of the future"--as idealised by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates--this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalising of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly _possible!_ he who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows _another_ loathing unknown to the rest of mankind--and perhaps also a new _mission!_ 130-131 supposing ... that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be sceptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be designated thereby--and _not_ they themselves. with equal right they might call themselves critics; and assuredly they will be men of experiments.... they will be _sterner_ (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) ... they will not deal with the "truth" in order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them--they will rather have little faith in _"truth"_ bringing with it such revels for the feelings. they will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one says in their presence: "that thought elevates me, why should it not be true?" or; "that artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" perhaps they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine and hermaphroditic; and if any one could look into their inmost heart, he would not easily find therein the intention to reconcile "christian sentiments" with "antique taste," or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even amongst philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century). critical discipline, and every habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters, will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future; they may even make a display thereof as their special adornment--nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that account. it will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is criticism and critical science--and nothing else whatever!" 149-151 _the real philosophers ... are commanders and law-givers;_ they say: "thus _shall_ it be." they determine first the whither and the why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past--they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. their "knowing" is _creating,_ their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is--_will to tower._... 52 at present ... when throughout europe the herding animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of right" can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong: i mean to say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness--at present it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative; and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts: "he shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of superabundance of will; precisely this shall be called _greatness:_ as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full." 154-155 morality as attitude is opposed to our taste nowadays. this is _also_ an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste.... 161 the practice of judging and condemning morally is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so.... 162 whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained something for it--perhaps something from himself for something from himself; that he relinquished here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more." 164 wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays ... let the psychologist have his ears open: through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of _self-contempt._ 65 we are prepared as no other age has ever been for a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual festival-laughter and arrogance, for the transcendental height of supreme folly and aristophanic ridicule of the world. perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our _invention_ just here, the domain where even we can still be original, probably as parodists of the world's history and as god's merry-andrews,--perhaps, though nothing else of the present have a future, our _laughter_ itself may have a future! 168 the discipline of suffering, of _great_ suffering--know ye not that it is only _this_ discipline that has produced all the elevations of humanity hitherto? 171 it is desirable that as few people as possible should reflect upon morals, and consequently it is _very_ desirable that morals should not some day become interesting! 174 not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken herding-animals (who undertake to advocate the cause of egoism as conducive to the general welfare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of the facts that the "general welfare" is no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum,--that what is fair to one _may not_ at all be fair to another, that the requirement of one morality for all is really a detriment to higher men, in short, that there is a _distinction of rank_ between man and man, and consequently between morality and morality. 175 that which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is cruelty; that which operates agreeably in so-called tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate thrills of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the intermingled ingredient of cruelty. 177 enlightenment hitherto has fortunately been men's affair, men's gift--we remained therewith "among ourselves"; and in the end, in view of all that women write about "woman," we may well have considerable doubt as to whether woman really _desires_ enlightenment about herself--and _can_ desire it. if woman does not thereby seek a new _ornament_ for herself--i believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine?--why, then, she wishes to make herself feared; perhaps she thereby wishes to get the mastery. but she does not _want_ truth--what does woman care for truth. from the very first nothing is more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than truth--her great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appearance and beauty. 183 it betrays corruption of the instincts--apart from the fact that it betrays bad taste--when a woman refers to madame roland, or madame de staël, or monsieur george sand, as though something were proved thereby in _favour_ of "woman as she is." among men, these are the three _comical_ women as they are--nothing more--and just the best involuntary _counter-arguments_ against feminine emancipation and autonomy. 184 stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of the house is managed. woman does not understand what food _means,_ and she insists on being cook. if woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the healing art. through bad female cooks--through the entire lack of reason in the kitchen--the development of mankind has been longest retarded and most interfered with. 184-185 to be mistaken in the fundamental problem of "man and woman," to deny here the profoundest antagonism and the necessity for an eternally hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations: that is a _typical_ sign of shallow-mindedness; and a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this dangerous spot--shallow in instinct--may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered: he will probably prove too "short" for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as present, and will be unable to descend into _any_ of the depths. on the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has also the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and harshness, and easily confounded with them, can only think of woman as orientals do: he must conceive of her as a possession, as confinable property, as a being predestined for service and accomplishing her mission therein.... 186-187 the weaker sex has in no previous age been treated with so much respect by men as at present--this belongs to the tendency and fundamental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age--what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately made of this respect? they want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling.... 187 wherever the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the economic and legal independence of a clerk: "woman as clerkess" is inscribed on the portal of the modern society which is in course of formation. while she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to be "master," and inscribes "progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: _woman retrogrades._ since the french revolution the influence of woman in europe has _declined_ in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of woman," in so far as it is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not only by masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a remarkable symptom of the increased weakening and deadening of the most womanly instincts. there is _stupidity_ in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a well-reared woman--who is always a sensible woman--might be heartily ashamed. 187-188 every elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society--and so will it always be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. 223 the essential thing ... in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should _not_ regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the _significance_ and highest justification thereof--that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, _for its sake,_ must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is _not_ allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher _existence._... 225 life itself is _essentially_ appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation.... 226 people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent:--that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the _nature_ of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power, which is precisely the will to life. 226 in a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, i found certain traits recurring regularly together and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. there is _master-morality_ and _slave-morality;_--i would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities; but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed, sometimes their close juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. 227 the noble type of man regards _himself_ as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "what is injurious to me is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a _creator_ of values. he honours whatever he recognises in himself: such morality is self-glorification. in the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the conscientiousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:--the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or scarcely--out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the superabundance of power. the noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard. 229 a morality of the ruling class ... is ... especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the heart desires," and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place. the ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge--both only within the circle of equals,--artfulness in retaliation, _raffinement_ of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be a good _friend:_ all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality. 229-230 slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility. here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and "_evil":_--power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. according to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good" man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being. the contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at last attaches itself even to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the _safe_ man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, _un bonhomme._ everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendency, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words "good" and "stupid."--a last fundamental difference: the desire for _freedom,_ the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave-morals and morality, as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating. 231 a _species_ originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant _unfavourable_ conditions. on the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive superabundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection and care, immediately tend in the most marked way to develop variations, and are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). 234 i submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, i mean the unalterable belief that to a being such as "we," other beings must naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves. 240 woman would like to believe that love can do _everything_--it is the _superstition_ peculiar to her. alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blundering even the best and deepest love is--he finds that it rather _destroys_ than saves! 246 signs of nobility: never to think of lowering our duties to the rank of duties for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibilities; to count our prerogatives, and the exercise of them, among our _duties._ 249 a man strives after great things, looks upon every one whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and hindrance--or as a temporary resting-place. 249 if one wishes to praise at all, it is a delicate and at the same time a noble self-control, to praise only where one _does not_ agree.... 254 all society makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometimes--"commonplace." 254-255 _the noble soul has reverence for itself._ 256 a man who can conduct a case, carry out a resolution, remain true to an opinion, keep hold of a woman, punish and overthrow insolence; a man who has his indignation and his sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the animals willingly submit and naturally belong; in short, a man who is a _master_ by nature--when such a man has sympathy, well, _that_ sympathy has value! 259 i would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing--up to those who are capable of _golden_ laughter. 260 viii "the genealogy of morals" ("_zur genealogie der moral_") was written by nietzsche primarily as an elaboration and elucidation of the philosophic points which were merely sketched in "beyond good and evil." this former work had met with small success, and the critics, failing to understand its doctrines, read converse meanings in it. one critic hailed nietzsche at once as an anarchist, and this review went far in actuating him in drawing up the three essays which comprise the present book. as will be remembered, several of nietzsche's most important principles were stated and outlined in "beyond good and evil," especially his doctrine of slave-morality and master-morality. now he undertakes to develop this proposition, as well as many others which he set forth provisionally in his earlier work. this new polemic may be looked upon both as a completing of former works and as a further preparation for "the will to power." the book, a comparatively brief one (it contains barely 40,000 words), was written in a period of about two weeks during the early part of 1887. in july the manuscript was sent to the publisher, but was recalled for revisions and addenda; and most of nietzsche's summer was devoted to correcting it. later that same year the book appeared; and thereby its author acquired another friendly reader, georg brandes, to whom, more than to any other critic, nietzsche owes his early recognition. the style of "the genealogy of morals" is less aphoristic than any of the books which immediately preceded or followed it. few new doctrines are propounded in it; and since it was for the most part an analytic commentary on what had gone before, its expositional needs were best met by nietzsche's earlier style of writing. i have spoken before of the desultory and sporadic manner in which nietzsche was necessitated to present his philosophy. nowhere is his method of work better exemplified than in this new work. nearly every one of his books overlaps another. propositions are sketchily stated in one essay, which receive elucidation only in future volumes. "beyond good and evil" was a commentary on "thus spake zarathustra"; "the genealogy of morals" is a commentary on the newly propounded theses in "beyond good and evil" and is in addition an elaboration of many of the ideas which took birth as far back as "human, all-too-human." out of "the genealogy of morals" in turn grew "the antichrist" which dealt specifically with the theological phase of the former's discussion of general morals. and all of these books were but preparations for "the will to power." for this reason it is difficult to acquire a complete understanding of nietzsche's philosophy unless one follows it consecutively and chronologically. the book at present under discussion is a most valuable one from an academic standpoint, for, while it may not set forth any new and important doctrines, it goes deep into the origins and history of moral concepts, and explains many of the important conclusions in nietzsche's moral code. it brings more and more into prominence the main pillars of his ethical system and explains at length the steps in the syllogism which led to his doctrine of master-morality. it ascertains the origin of the concept of sin, and describes the racial deterioration which has followed in the train of christian ideals. in many ways this book is the profoundest of all the writings nietzsche left us. for the first time he separates theological and moral prejudices and traces them to different origins. this is one of the most important steps taken by him. by so doing he became an explorer of entirely new fields. the moral historians and psychologists who preceded him had considered moral precepts and christian injunctions as stemming from the same source: their genealogies had led them to the same common spring. nietzsche entered the search with new methods. he applied the philologie test to all moral values. he brought to his task, in addition to a historical sense, what he calls "an innate faculty of psychological discrimination _par excellence._" he posed the following questions, and endeavoured to answer them by inquiring into the minutest aspects of historical conditions: "under what conditions did man invent for himself those judgments of value, 'good' and 'evil'? _and what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves?_ have they up to the present hindered or advanced human well-being"? are they a symptom of the distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of human life? or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the will of life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future?" in his research, nietzsche first questioned the value of pity. he found it to be a symptom of modern civilisation--a quality held in contempt by the older philosophers, even by such widely dissimilar minds as plato, spinoza, la rochefoucauld and kant--but a quality given high place by the more modern thinkers. despite the seemingly apparent isolation of the problem of pity-morality, nietzsche saw that in truth it was a question which underlay all other moral propositions; and, using it as a ground-work for his research, he began to question the utility of all those values held as "good," to apply the qualities of the "good man" to the needs of civilisation, and to inquire into the results left upon the race by the "bad man." so great was the misunderstanding which attached to his phrase, "beyond good and evil," and so persistently was this phrase interpreted in its narrow sense of "beyond good and bad," that he felt the necessity of drawing the line of distinction between these two diametrically opposed conceptions and of explaining the origin of each. his first essay in "the genealogy of morals" is devoted to this task. at the outset he devotes considerable space criticising the methods and conclusions of former genealogists of morals, especially of the english psychologists who attribute an _intrinsic_ merit to altruism because at one time altruism possessed a utilitarian value. herbert spencer's theory that "good" is the same as "purposive" brings from nietzsche a protest founded on the contention that because a thing was at one time useful, and therefore "good," it does not follow that the thing is good _in itself._ by the etymology of the descriptive words of morality, nietzsche traces the history of modern moral attributes through class distinctions to their origin in the instincts of the "nobles" and the "vulgarians." he shows the relationship between the latin _bonus_ and the "warrior," by deriving _bonus_ from _duonus. bellum,_ he shows, equals _duellum_ which equals _duen-lum,_ in which word _duonus_ is contained. likewise, he points out the aristocratic origin of "happiness"--a quality arising from an abundance of energy and the consciousness of power. "good and evil," according to nietzsche, is a sign of slave-morality; while "good and bad" represents the qualities in the master-morality. the one stands for the adopted qualities of the subservient races; the other embodies the natural functioning of dominating races. the origin of the "good" in these two instances is by no means the same. in the strong man "good" represented an entirely different condition than the "good" in the resentful and weak man; and these two "goods" arose out of different causes. the one was spontaneous and natural--inherent in the individual of strength: the other was a manufactured condition, an optional selection of qualities to soften and ameliorate the conditions of existence. "evil" and "bad," by the same token, became attributes originating in widely separated sources. the "evil" of the weak man was any condition which worked against the manufactured ideals of goodness, which brought about unhappiness--it was the beginning of the conception of a slave-morality, a term applied to all enemies. the "bad" of the strong man was the concept which grew directly out of his feeling for "good," and which had no application to another individual. thus the ideas of "good" and "bad" are directly inherited from the nobles of the race, and these ideas included within themselves the tendency toward establishing social distinctions. the second section of "the genealogy of morals," called "'guilt,' 'bad conscience,' and the like," is another important document, the reading of which is almost imperative for the student who would understand the processes of thought which led to nietzsche's philosophic conclusions. in this essay nietzsche traces the origin of sin to debt, thereby disagreeing with all the genealogists of morals who preceded him. he starts with the birth of memory in man and with the corresponding will to forgetfulness, showing that out of these two mental qualities was born responsibility. out of responsibility in turn grew the function of promising and the accepting of promises, which at once made possible between individuals the relationship of "debtor" and "creditor." as soon as this relationship was established, one man had rights over another. the creditor could exact payment from the debtor, either in the form of material equivalent or by inflicting an injury in which was contained the sensation of satisfaction. thus the creditor had the right to punish in cases where actual repayment was impossible. and in this idea of punishment began not only class distinction but primitive law. later, when the power to punish was transferred into the hands of the community, the law of contract came into existence. here, says nietzsche, we find the cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of "guilt," "conscience," and "duty"; and adds, "their commencement, like the commencement of all great things in the world, is thoroughly and continuously saturated in blood." carrying out the principle underlying the relationship of debtor and creditor we arrive at the formation of the community. in return for protection and for communal advantages the individual pledged his good behaviour. when he violated this contract with the community, the community, in the guise of the defrauded creditor, took its revenge, or exacted its payment, from the debtor, the criminal. and, as was the case in early history, the community deprived the violator of future advantages and protection. the debtor was divested of all rights, even of mercy, for then there were no degrees in law-breaking. primitive law was martial law. says nietzsche, "this shows why war itself (counting the sacrificial cult of war) has produced all the forms under which punishment has manifested itself in history." later, as the community gathered strength, the offences of the individual debtors were looked upon as less serious. out of its security grew leniency toward the offender: the penal code became mitigated, and, as in all powerful nations to-day, the criminal was protected. only when there was a consciousness of weakness in a community did the acts of individual offenders take on an exaggerated seriousness, and under such conditions the law was consequently harshest. thus, justice and the infliction of legal penalties are direct outgrowths of the primitive relation of debt between individuals. herein we have the origin of guilt. nietzsche attempts an elaborate analysis of the history of punishment, in an effort to ascertain its true meaning, its relation to guilt and to the community, and its final effects on both the individual and society. it has been impossible to present the sequence of this analysis by direct excerpts from his own words, due to the close, synthetic manner in which he has made his research. therefore i offer the following brief exposition of pages 88 to 99 inclusive, in which he examines the causes and effects of punishment. to begin with, nietzsche disassociates the "origin" and the "end" of punishment, and regards them as two separate and distinct problems. he argues that the final utility of a thing, in the sense that revenge and deterrence are the final utilities of punishment, is in all cases opposed to the origin of that thing; that every force or principle is constantly being put to new purposes by forces greater than itself, thus making it impossible to determine its inception by the end for which it is used. therefore the "function" of punishing was not conceived with a view to punishing, but may have been employed for any number of ends, according as a will to power has overcome that function and made use of it for its own purpose: in short; punishment, like any organ or custom or "thing," has passed through a series of new interpretations and adjustments and meanings--and is _not_ a direct and logical _progress as_ to an end. having established this point, nietzsche endeavours to determine the utilisation to which the custom of punishment has been put--to ascertain the meaning which has been interpreted into it. he finds that even in modern times not one but many uses have been made of punishment, and that in ancient times so diverse have been the utilisations of punishment that it is impossible to define them all. in fact, one cannot determine the _precise reason_ for punishment. to emphasise this point, nietzsche gives a long list of possible meanings. taking up the more popular _supposed_ utilities of punishment at the present time--such as creating in the wrong-doer the consciousness of guilt, which is supposed to evolve into conscience and remorse--he shows wherein punishment fails in its object. against this theory of the creation of remorse, he advances psychology and shows that, to the contrary, punishment numbs and hardens. he argues also that punishment for the purpose of making the wrong-doer conscious of the intrinsic reprehensibility of his crime, fails because the very act for which he is chastened is practised in the service of justice and is called "good." eliminating thus the _supposed_ effects of punishment, nietzsche arrives at the conclusion (included in the excerpts at the end of this chapter) that punishment makes only for caution and secrecy, and is therefore detrimental. in his analysis of the origin of the "bad conscience," nietzsche lends himself to quotation. therefore i have been able to present in his own words a fair _resume_ of the course pursued by him in his examination of the history of conscience. this particular branch of his research is carried into the formation of the "state" which, according to him, grew out of "a herd of blonde beasts." the older theory of the state, namely: that it originated in the adoption of a contract, is set aside as untenable when dealing with a peoples who possessed conquerors or masters. these masters, argues nietzsche, had no need of contracts. by using the "bad conscience" as a ground for inquiry, the causes for the existence of altruism are shown to be included in the self-cruelty which followed in the wake of the instinct for freedom. (this last point is developed fully in the discussion of ascetic ideals which is found at the end of the book now under consideration.) nietzsche traces the birth of deities back along the lines of credit and debt. first came the fear of ancestors. then followed the obligation to ancestors. at length the sacrifice to ancestors marked the beginning of a conception of duty (debt) to the supernatural. the ancestors of powerful nations in time became heroes, and finally evolved into gods. later monotheism came as a natural consequence, and god became the creditor. in the expiation of sin, as symbolised in the crucifixion of christianity, we have this same relationship of debtor and creditor carried out into a more complex form through the avenues of self-torture. the most important essay in "the genealogy of morals" is the last, called "what is the meaning of ascetic ideals?" nietzsche examines this question in relation to the artist, to the philosopher, to the priest, and to the race generally. in his examination of the problem in regard to artists he uses wagner as a basis of inquiry, comparing the two phases of wagner's art--the parsifalian and the ante-parsifalian. artists, asserts nietzsche, need a support of constituted authority; they are unable to stand alone--"standing alone is opposed to their deepest instincts"--and so they make use of asceticism as a rampart, as building material, to give their work authority. in his application of the ascetic ideal to philosophers, nietzsche presents the cases of schopenhauer and kant, and concludes that asceticism in such instances is used as an escape from torture--a means to recreation and happiness. with the philosopher the ideal of asceticism is not a denial of existence. rather is it an affirmation of existence. it permits him freedom of the intellect. it relieves him of the numerous obligations of life. furthermore, the philosophic spirit, in order to establish itself, found it necessary to disguise itself as "one of the _previously fixed_ types of the contemplative man," as a priest or soothsayer. only in such a religious masquerade was philosophy taken with any seriousness or reverence. the history of asceticism in the priest i have been able to set forth with a certain degree of completeness in nietzsche's own words. the priest was the sick physician who administered to the needs of a sick populace. his was the mission of mitigating suffering and of performing every kind of consolation. wherein he failed, says nietzsche, was in not going to the source, the cause, of suffering, but in dealing merely with its manifestations. these manifestations were the result of physiological depressions which prevailed at intervals among portions of the population. these depressions were the outgrowth of diverse causes, such as long wars, emigration to unsuitable climates, wrong diet, miscegenation on a large scale, disease, etc. according to nietzsche the cure for such physiological phenomena can be found only in the realm of moral psychology, for here the origin is considered and administered to by disciplinary systems grounded in true knowledge. but the method employed by the priest was far from scientific. he combated these depressions by reducing the consciousness of life itself to the lowest possible degree--that is, by a doctrine of asceticism, of self-abnegation, equanimity, self-hypnotism. by thus minimising the consciousness of life, these depressions took on more and more the aspect of normality. the effects of this treatment, however, were transient, for the starving of the physical desires and the abstinence from exercising the physical impulses paved the way for all manner of mental disorders, excesses and insanity. herein lies nietzsche's explanation for religious ecstasies, hallucinations, and sensual outbursts. another form of treatment devised by the ascetic priests for a depressed people gave birth to the "blessedness" which, under the christian code, attaches to work. these priests attempted to turn the attention of the people from their suffering by the establishment of mechanical activity, namely: work, routine and obedience. the sick man forgot himself in the labour which had received sanctification. the priests also combated depression by permitting pleasure through the creation and production of joy. that is, they set men to helping and comforting each other, by instilling in them the notion of brotherly love. thereby the community mutually strengthened itself, and at the same time it reaped the joy of service which had been sanctioned by the priests. out of this last method sprang many of the christian virtues, especially those which benefit others rather than oneself. such methods as these--devitalisation, labour, brotherly love--are called by nietzsche the "innocent" prescriptions in the fight against depression. the "guilty" ones are far different, and are embodied in the one method: the production of emotional excess. this, the priests understood, was the most efficacious manner in overcoming protracted depression and pain. confronted by the query: by what means can this emotional excess be produced? they made use of "the whole pack of hounds that rage in the human kennel"--rage, fear, lust, revenge, hope, despair, cruelty and the like. and once these emotional excesses became established, the priests, when asked by the "patients" for a "cause" of their suffering, declared it to be within the man himself, in his own guiltiness. thus was the sick man turned into a sinner. here originated also the conception of suffering as a _state of punishment,_ the fear of retribution, the iniquitous conscience, and the hope of redemption. nietzsche goes further, and shows the racial and individual decadence which has followed in the train of this system of treatment. dr. oscar levy says with justice that this last essay, considered in the light which it throws upon the attitude of the ecclesiast to the man of resentment and misfortune, "is one of the most valuable contributions to sacerdotal psychology." excerpts from "the genealogy of morals" the pathos of nobility and distance,... the chronic and despotic _esprit de corps_ and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race coming into association with a meaner race, an "under race," this is the origin of the antitheses of good and bad. 20 the knightly-aristocratic "values" are based on a careful cult of the physical, on a flowering, rich, and even effervescing healthiness, that goes considerably beyond what is necessary for maintaining life, on war, adventure, the chase, the dance, the tourney--on everything, in fact, which is contained in strong, free, and joyous action. the priestly aristocratic mode of valuation is--we have seen--based on other hypotheses: it is bad enough for this class when it is a question of war! yet the priests are, as is notorious, _the worst enemies_--why? because they are the weakest. 29 the slave-morality requires as the condition of its existence an external and objective world, to employ physiological terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be of action at all--its action is fundamentally a reaction. the contrary is the case when we come to the aristocrat's system of values: it acts and grows spontaneously, it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful and exultant "yes" to its own self.... 35 the aristocratic man conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then creates for himself a concept of "bad"! this "bad" of aristocratic origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred--the former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter, on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in the conception of a slave-morality--these two words "bad" and "evil," how great a difference do they mark in spite of the fact that they have an identical contrary in the idea "good." 39 it is impossible not to recognise at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the magnificent _blonde brute,_ avidly rampant for spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must get loose again, must return into the wilderness--the roman, arabic, german, and japanese nobility, the homeric heroes, the scandinavian vikings, are all alike in this need. it is the aristocratic races who have left the idea "barbarian" on all the tracks in which they have marched; nay, a consciousness of this very barbarianism, and even a pride in it, manifests itself even in their highest civilisation. 40 what produces to-day our repulsion towards "man"?--for we _suffer_ from "man," there is no doubt about it. it is not fear; it is rather that we have nothing more to fear from men; it is that the worm "man" is in the foreground and pullulates; it is that the "tame man," the wretched mediocre and unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal and a pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a "higher man." ... 42-43 in the dwarfing and levelling of the european man lurks _our_ greatest peril, for it is this outlook which fatigues--we see to-day nothing which wishes to be greater, we surmise that the process is always still backwards, still backwards towards something more attenuated, more inoffensive, more cunning, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent, more chinese, more christian. 44 to require of strength that it should _not_ express itself as strength, that it should not be a wish to overpower, a wish to overthrow, a wish to become master, a thirst for enemies and antagonisms and triumphs, is just as absurd as to require of weakness that it should express itself as strength. a quantum of force is just such a quantum of movement, will, action. 45 the impotence which requites not, is turned to "goodness," craven baseness to meekness, submission to those whom one hates, to obedience (namely, obedience to one of whom they say that he ordered this submission--they call him god). the inoffensive character of the weak, the very cowardice in which he is rich, his standing at the door, his forced necessity of waiting, gain here fine names, such as "patience," which is also called "virtue"; not being able to avenge one's self, is called not wishing to avenge one's self, perhaps even forgiveness. 48 they are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is a favour and distinction given to them by god, just as one beats the dogs one likes best; that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in gold, nay in happiness. this they call "blessedness." 45-49 the two _opposing values_ "good and bad," "good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune of the fight is still undecisive. it can almost be said that in the meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark of the _higher nature,_ of the more psychological nature, than to be in that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battle-ground for those two opposites. the symbol of this fight, written in a writing which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history up to the present time, is called "rome against judæa, judæa against rome." hitherto there has been no greater event than _that_ fight, the putting of _that_ question, _that_ deadly antagonism. rome found in the jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in rome the jew was held to be _convicted of hatred_ of the whole human race: and rightly so, in so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of the roman values. what, conversely, did the jews feel against rome? one can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to carry one's mind back to the johannian apocalypse, that most obscene of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. 53-54 _beyond good and evil_--at any rate that is not the same as "beyond good and bad." 57 the proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of _responsibility,_ the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct--what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct if he needs to have a word for it? but there is no doubt about it--the sovereign man calls it his _conscience._ 65 have these current genealogists of morals ever allowed themselves to have even the vaguest notion, for instance, that the cardinal moral idea of "ought" originates from the very material idea of "owe"? or that punishment developed as a _retaliation_ absolutely independently of any preliminary hypothesis of the freedom or determination of the will?--and this to such an extent, that a _high_ degree of civilisation was always first necessary for the animal man to begin to make those much more primitive distinctions of "intentional," "negligent," "accidental," "responsible," and their contraries, and apply them in the assessing of punishment. that idea--"the wrong-doer deserves punishment _because_ he might have acted otherwise," in spite of the fact that it is nowadays so cheap, obvious, natural, and inevitable, and that it has had to serve as an illustration of the way in which the sentiment of justice appeared on earth is in point of fact an exceedingly late, and even refined form of human judgment and inference; the placing of this idea back at the beginning of the world is simply a clumsy violation of the principles of primitive psychology. 69 the sight of suffering does one good, the infliction of suffering does one more good--this is a hard maxim, but none the less a fundamental maxim, old, powerful, and "human, all-too-human"; one, moreover, to which perhaps even the apes as well would subscribe: for it is said that in inventing bizarre cruelties they are giving abundant proof of their future humanity, to which, as it were, they are playing the prelude. without cruelty, no feast: so teaches the oldest and longest history of man--and in punishment too is there so much of the _festive._ 75 the darkening of the heavens over man has always increased in proportion to the growth of man's shame _before man._the tired pessimistic outlook, the mistrust of the riddle of life, the icy negation of disgusted ennui, all those are not the signs of the _most evil_ age of the human race: much rather do they come first to the light of day, as the swamp-flowers, which they are, when the swamp to which they belong comes into existence--i mean the diseased refinement and moralisation, thanks to which the "animal man" has at last learnt to be ashamed of all his instincts. 75 the curve of human sensibilities to pain seems indeed to sink in an extraordinary and almost sudden fashion, as soon as one has passed the upper ten thousand or ten millions of over-civilised humanity, and i personally have no doubt that, by comparison with one painful night passed by one single hysterical chit of a cultured woman, the suffering of all the animals taken together who have been put to the question of the knife, so as to give scientific answers, are simply negligible. 76-77 man ... arrived at the great generalisation "everything has its price, _all_ can be paid for," the oldest and most naïve moral canon of _justice_ the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity" in the world. 80 the self-destruction of justice! we know the pretty name it calls itself--_grace!_ it remains, as is obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law. 83-84 the aggressive man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, and also _freer_ outlook, the _better_ conscience. on the other hand, we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the invention of the "bad conscience,"--the resentful man! 86 to talk of intrinsic right and intrinsic wrong is absolutely nonsensical; intrinsically, an injury, an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, inasmuch as life is _essentially_ (that is, in its cardinal functions) something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. 88 evildoers have throughout thousands of years felt when overtaken by punishment _exactly like spinoza,_ on the subject of their "offence": "here is something which went wrong contrary to my anticipation, _not_ i ought not to have done this."--they submitted themselves to punishment, just as one submits one's self to a disease, to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism which gives the russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage over us westerners, in the handling of life. if at that period there was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real _effect_ of punishment is unquestionably chiefly to be found in a sharpening of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond one's capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. the broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires: so it is that punishment _tames_ man, but does not make him "better"--it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert the contrary. 99 all instincts which do not find a vent without, _turn inwards_--this is what i mean by the growing "internalisation" of man: consequently we have the first growth in man, of what subsequently was called his soul. the whole inner world, originally as thin as if it had been stretched between two layers of skin, burst apart and expanded proportionately, and obtained depth, breadth, and height, when man's external outlet became _obstructed._ these terrible bulwarks, with which the social organisation protected itself against the old instincts of freedom (punishments belong pre-eminently to these bulwarks), brought it about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man became turned backwards _against man himself._ enmity, cruelty, the delight in persecution, in surprises, change, destruction--the turning all these instincts against their own possessors: this is the origin of the "bad conscience." it was man, who, lacking external enemies and obstacles, and imprisoned as he was in the oppressive narrowness and monotony of custom, in his own impatience lacerated, persecuted, gnawed, frightened, and ill-treated himself; it was this animal in the hands of the tamer, which beat itself against the bars of its cage; it was this being who, pining and yearning for that desert home of which it had been deprived, was compelled to create out of its own self, an adventure, a torture-chamber, a hazardous and perilous desert--it was this fool, this homesick and desperate prisoner--who invented the "bad conscience." 100-101 a herd of blonde beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, which with all its warlike organisation and all its organising power pounces with its terrible claws on a population, in numbers possibly tremendously superior, but as yet formless, as yet nomad. such is the origin of the "state." that fantastic theory that makes it begin with a contract is, i think, disposed of. he who can command, he who is a master by "nature," he who comes on the scene forceful in deed and gesture--what has he to do with contracts? such beings defy calculation, they come like fate, without cause, reason, notice, excuse, they are there like the lightning is there, too terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too "different," to be personally even hated. their work is an instinctive creating and impressing of forms, they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists that there are.... 103 it is only the bad conscience, only the will for self-abuse, that provides the necessary conditions for the existence of altruism as a _value._ 105 the feeling of owing a debt to the deity has grown continuously for several centuries, always in the same proportion in which the idea of god and the consciousness of god have grown and become exalted among mankind. (the whole history of ethnic fights, victories, reconciliations, amalgamations, everything, in fact, which precedes the eventual classing of all the social elements in each great race synthesis, are mirrored in the hotch-potch genealogy of their gods, in the legends of their fights, victories, and reconciliations, progress towards universal empires invariably means progress towards universal deities; despotism, with its subjugation of the independent nobility, always paves the way for some system or other of monotheism.) the appearance of the christian god, as the record god up to this time, has for that very reason brought equally into the world the record amount of guilt consciousness. 109 this is a kind of madness of the will in the sphere of psychological cruelty which is absolutely unparalleled:--man's _will_ to find himself guilty and blameworthy to the point of inexpiability, his _will_ to think of himself as punished, without the punishment ever being able to balance the guilt, his _will_ to infect and to poison the fundamental basis of the universe with the problem of punishment and guilt, in order to cut off once and for all any escape out of this labyrinth of "fixed ideas," his will for rearing an ideal--that of the "holy god"--face to face with which he can have tangible proof of his own unworthiness. alas for this mad melancholy beast man! 112-113 what is the meaning of ascetic ideals? in artists, nothing, or too much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of "flair" and instinct for the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in women, at best an _additional_ seductive fascination, a little _morbidezza_ on a fine piece of flesh, the angelhood of a fat, pretty animal; in physiological failures and whiners (in the _majority_ of mortals), an attempt to pose as "too good" for this world, a holy form of debauchery, their chief weapon, in the battle with lingering pain and ennui; in priests, the actual priestly faith, their best engine of power, and also the supreme authority for power; in saints, finally a pretext for hibernation, their _novissima gloria cupido,_ their peace in nothingness ("god"), their form of madness. 121 all good things were once bad things; from every original sin has grown an original virtue. marriage, for example, seemed for a long time a sin against the rights of the community; a man formerly paid a fine for the insolence of claiming one woman to himself. 144-145 the soft, benevolent yielding, sympathetic feelings--eventually valued so highly that they almost become "intrinsic values," were for a very long time actually despised by their possessors; gentleness was then a subject for shame, just as hardness is now. 145 _the ascetic ideal springs from the prophylactic and self-preservative instincts which mark a decadent life,_ which seeks by every means in its power to maintain its position and fight for its existence; it points to a partial physiological depression and exhaustion, against which the most profound and intact life-instincts fight ceaselessly with new weapons and discoveries. the ascetic ideal is such a weapon: its position is consequently exactly the reverse of that which the worshippers of the ideal imagine--life struggles in it and through it with death and _against_ death; the ascetic ideal is a dodge for the _preservation_ of life. 154 the ascetic priest is the incarnate wish for an existence of another kind, an existence on another plane,--he is, in fact, the highest point of this wish, its official ecstasy and passion: but it is the very _power_ of this wish which is the fetter that binds him here; it is just that which makes him into a tool that must labour to create more favourable conditions for earthly existence, for existence on the human plane--it is with this very _power_ that he keeps the whole herd of failures, distortions, abortions, unfortunates, _sufferers from themselves_ of every kind, fast to existence, while he as the herdsman goes instinctively on in front. 154-155 the _sick_ are the great danger of man, _not_ the evil, _not_ the "beasts of prey." they who are from the outset botched, oppressed, broken, those are they, the weakest are they, who most undermine the life beneath the feet of man, who instil the most dangerous venom and scepticism into our trust in life, in man, in ourselves. 157 preventing the sick making the healthy sick ... this ought to be our supreme object in the world--but for this it is above all essential that the healthy should remain _separated_ from the sick, that they should even guard themselves from the look of the sick, that they should not even associate with the sick. or may it, perchance, be their mission to be nurses or doctors? but they could not mistake or disown _their_ mission more grossly--the higher _must_ not degrade itself to be the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance must to all eternity keep their missions also separate. the right of the happy to existence, the right of bells with a full tone over the discordant cracked bells, is verily a thousand times greater: they alone are the _sureties_ of the future, they alone are _bound_ to man's future. 160-161 the ascetic priest must be accepted by us as the predestined saviour, herdsman, and champion of the sick herd: thereby do we first understand his awful historic mission. 162 "i suffer: it must be somebody's fault"--so thinks every sick sheep. but his herdsman, the ascetic priest, says to him, "quite so, my sheep, it must be the fault of some one; but thou thyself art that some one, it is all the fault of thyself alone--_it is the fault of thyself alone against thyself":_ that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is at least attained; thereby, as i have said, the course of resentment is--_diverted_. 165 all sick and diseased people strive instinctively after a herd-organisation, out of a desire to shake off their sense of oppressive discomfort and weakness; the ascetic priest divines this instinct and promotes it; wherever a herd exists it is the instinct of weakness which has wished for the herd, and the cleverness of the priests which has organised it, for, mark this: by an equally natural necessity the strong strive as much for _isolation_ as the weak for _union:_ when the former bind themselves it is only with a view to an aggressive joint action and joint satisfaction of their will for power, much against the wishes of their individual consciences; the latter, on the contrary, range themselves together with positive _delight_ in such a muster--their instincts are as much gratified thereby as the instincts of the "born master" (that is the solitary beast-of-prey species of man) are disturbed and wounded to the quick by organisation. 176-177 the keynote by which the ascetic priest was enabled to get every kind of agonising and ecstatic music to play on the fibres of the human soul--was, as every one knows, the exploitation of the feeling of _"guilt."_ 182 the ascetic ideal and its sublime moral cult, this most ingenious, reckless, and perilous systématisation of all methods of emotional excess, is writ large in a dreadful and unforgettable fashion on the whole history of man, and unfortunately not only on history. i was scarcely able to put forward any other element which attacked the _health_ and race efficiency of europeans with more destructive power than did this ideal; it can be dubbed, without exaggeration, _the real fatality_ in the history of the health of the european man. 186-187 the ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted--i shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should i get to the end?). 190 the periods in a nation in which the learned man comes into prominence; they are the periods of exhaustion, often of sunset, of decay--the effervescing strength, the confidence of life, the confidence in the future are no more. the preponderance of the mandarins never signifies any good, any more than does the advent of democracy, or arbitration instead of war, equal rights for women, the religion of pity, and all the other symptoms of declining life. 200 the ascetic ideal simply means this: that something _was lacking,_ that a tremendous _void_ encircled man--he did not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself, he _suffered_ from the problem of his own meaning. he suffered also in other ways, he was in the main a _diseased_ animal; but his problem was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying question, "_to what purpose_ do we suffer?" man, the bravest animal and the one most inured to suffering, does _not_ repudiate suffering in itself: he _wills_ it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown a meaning for it, a _purpose_ of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread over humanity--_and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning!_ it was up till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning; the ascetic ideal was in that connection the _"faute de mieux" par excellence_ that existed at that time. in that ideal suffering _found an explanation;_ the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all suicidal nihilism was closed. the explanation--there is no doubt about it--brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering under the perspective of _guilt;_ but in spite of all that--man was _saved_ thereby, he had _a meaning,_ and from henceforth was no more like a leaf in the wind, a shuttlecock, of chance, of nonsense, he could now "will" something--absolutely immaterial to what end, to what purpose, with that means he wished: _the will itself was saved._ it is absolutely impossible to disguise _what_ in point of fact is made clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring--all this means--let us have the courage to grasp it--a will for nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains _a will!_--and to say at the end that which i said at the beginning--man will wish _nothingness_ rather than not wish _at all._ 210-211 ix "the twilight of the idols" nietzsche followed "the genealogy of morals" with "the case of wagner," that famous pamphlet in which he excoriated the creator of parsifal. immediately after the publication of this attack, he began work on what was to be still another preparatory book for "the will to power." for its title he first chose "idle hours of a psychologist." the book, a brief one, was already on the presses when he changed the caption to _"götzendämmerung"_--"the twilight of the idols"--a titular parody on wagner's _"götterdämmerung"_ for a subtitle he appended a characteristically nietzschean phrase--"how to philosophise with the hammer." the writing of this work was done with great rapidity: it was accomplished in but a few days during august, 1888. in september it was sent to the publisher, but during its printing nietzsche added a chapter headed "what the germans lack," and several aphorisms to the section called "skirmishes in a war with the age." in january, 1889, the book appeared. nietzsche was then stricken with his fatal illness, and this was the last book of his to appear during his lifetime. "the antichrist" was already finished, having been written in the fall of 1888 immediately after the completion of "the twilight of the idols." _"ecce homo"_ his autobiography, was written in october, 1888; and during december nietzsche again gave his attention to wagner, drafting "nietzsche _contra_ wagner," a pamphlet made up entirely of excerpts from his earlier writings. this work, intended to supplement "the case of wagner," was not published until 1895, although it had been printed and corrected before the author's final breakdown. "the antichrist" appeared at the same time as this second wagner document, while _"ecce homo"_ was withheld from publication until 1908. "the twilight of the idols" sold 9,000 copies, but nietzsche's mind was too clouded to know or care that at last he was coming into his own, that the public which had denied him so long had finally begun to open its eyes to his greatness. in many ways "the twilight of the idols" is one of nietzsche's most brilliant books. being more compact, it consequently possesses a greater degree of precision and clarity than is found in his more analytical writings. it is not, however, a treatise to which one may go without considerable preparation. with the exception of "thus spake zarathustra," it demands more on the part of the reader than any of nietzsche's other books. it is, for the most part, composed of conclusions and comments which grow directly out of the laborious ethical research of his preceding volumes, and presupposes in the student an enormous amount of reading, not only of nietzsche's own writings but of philosophical works in general. but once equipped with this preparation, one will find more of contemporary interest in it than in the closely organised books such as "beyond good and evil" and "the genealogy of morals." there are few points in nietzsche's philosophy not found here. for a compact expression of his entire teaching i know of no better book to which one might turn. nietzsche himself, to judge from a passage in his _"ecce homo"_ intended this book as a statement of his whole ethical system. he probably meant that it should present _in toto_ the principal data of his foregoing studies, in order that the reader might be familiar with all the steps in his philosophy before setting forth upon the formidable doctrines of "the will to power." obviously, therefore, it is not a book for beginners. being expositional rather than argumentative, it is open to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. it contains apparent contradictions which might confuse the student who has not followed nietzsche in the successive points which led to his conclusions, and who is unfamiliar with the exact definitions attached to certain words relating to human conduct. other qualities of a misleading nature are to be encountered in this book. many of the paragraphs have about them an air of mere cleverness, although in reality they embody profound concepts. the reader ignorant of the inner seriousness of nietzsche will accept these passages only at their surface value. of the forty-four short epigrams which comprise the opening chapter, i have appended but three, for fear they would be judged solely by their superficial characteristics. many of the other aphorisms throughout the book lend themselves all too easily to the same narrow judgment. again, "the problem of socrates," the second division of the book, because of its profundity, presents many difficulties to the unprepared student. here is a criticism of the socratic ideals which requires, in order that it be intelligently grasped, not only a wide general knowledge, but also a specific training in the uprooting of prejudices and of traditional ethical conceptions--such a training as can be acquired only by a close study of nietzsche's own destructive works. the explanation of socrates's power, the condemnation of that ancient philosopher's subtle glorification of the _canaille,_ the reasons for his secret fascination, and the interpretation of his whole mental progress culminating in his death--all this is profound and categorical criticism which has its roots in the very fundamentals of nietzsche's philosophy. but because it is so deep-rooted, it therefore presents a wide and all-inclusive vista of that philosophy from which it stems. furthermore, this criticism of socrates poses a specific problem which can be answered only by resorting to the doctrines which underlie nietzsche's entire thought. in like manner the chapter, "reason in philosophy," is understandable only in the light of those investigations set forth in "beyond good and evil." under the caption, "the four great errors," nietzsche uproots a series of correlated beliefs which have the accumulated impetus of centuries of acceptance behind them. these "errors," as stated, are (1) the error of the confusion of cause and effect, (2) the error of false causality, (3) the error of imaginary causes, and (4) the error of free will. the eradication of these errors is necessary for a complete acceptance of nietzsche's philosophy. but unless one is familiar with the vast amount of criticism which has led up to the present discussion of them, one will experience difficulty in following the subtly drawn arguments and analogies presented against them. to demonstrate briefly the specific application of the first error, namely: the confusion of cause and effect, i offer an analogy stated in the passage. we know that christian morality teaches us that a people perish through vice and luxury--that is to say, that these two conditions are _causes_ of racial degeneration. nietzsche's contention to the contrary is that when a nation is approaching physiological degeneration, vice and luxury result in the guise of stimuli adopted by exhausted natures. by this it can be seen how the christian conscience is developed by a misunderstanding of causes; and it can also be seen how this error may affect the very foundation on which morality is built. i am here stating merely the conclusion: for the reasons leading up to this conclusion one must go to the book direct. nietzsche denies the embodiment of the motive of an action in the "inner facts of consciousness" where, so we have been taught by psychologists and physicists, the responsibilities of conduct are contained. the will itself, he argues, is not a motivating force; rather is it an effect of other deeper causes. this is what he discusses in his paragraphs dealing with the second error of false causality. in his criticism of the third error relating to imaginary causes, he points to the comfort we obtain by attributing a certain unexplained fact to a familiar cause--by tracing it to a commonplace source--thereby doing away with its seeming mystery. thus ordinary maladies or afflictions, or, to carry the case into moral regions, misfortunes and unaccountable strokes of fate, are explained by finding trite and plausible reasons for their existence. as a consequence the habit of postulating causes becomes a fixed mental habit. in the great majority of cases, and especially in the domain of morality and religion, the causes are false, inasmuch as the operation of finding them depends on the mental characteristics of the searcher. the error of free will nietzsche attributes to the theologians' attempt to make mankind responsible for its acts and therefore amenable to punishment. i have been able to present his own words in explanation of this error, and they will be found at the end of this chapter--41-42 and 43. in "skirmishes in a war with the age," the longest section in the book, nietzsche gives us much brilliant and incisive criticism of men, art and human attributes. he is here at his best, both in clarity of mind and in his manner of expression. this passage, one of the last things to come from his pen, contains the full ripeness of his nature, and is a portion of his work which no student can afford to overlook. it contains the whole of the nietzschean philosophy applied to the conditions of his age. because it is not a direct voicing of his doctrines it does not lend itself to mutilation except where it touches on principles of conduct and abstract aspects of morality. many of the most widely read passages of all of nietzsche's work are contained in it. but here again, as in the case of "thus spake zarathustra," one regrets that the surface brilliance of its style attracted readers in england and america before these nations were acquainted with the books which came before. the casual reader, unfamiliar with the principles underlying nietzsche's ethic, will see only a bold and satanic flippancy in his definition of zola--"the love of stinking," or in his characterisation of george sand as "the cow with plenty of beautiful milk," or in his bracketing of "tea-grocers, christians, cows, women, englishmen and other democrats." yet it is significant that nietzsche did not venture upon these remarks until he had the great bulk of his life's work behind him. in this chapter are discussions of renan, sainte-beuve, george eliot, george sand, emerson, carlyle, darwin, schopenhauer, goethe and other famous men and women. in the short essays devoted to these writers we have, however, more than mere detached valuations. beneath all the criticisms is a _rationale_ of judgment based on definite philosophical doctrines. this same basis of appreciation is present in the discussion of art and artists, to which subjects many pages are devoted. in fact, "the twilight of the idols" contains most of the art theories and æsthetic doctrines which nietzsche advanced. he defines the psychology of the artist, and draws the line between the two concepts, apollonian and dionysian, as applied to art. he analyses the meaning of beauty and ugliness, and endeavours to show in what manner the conceptions of these qualities are related to the racial instincts. he also inquires into the doctrine of _"l'art pour l'art"_ and points out wherein it fails in its purpose. a valuable explanation of "genius" is put forth in the theory that the accumulative power of generations breaks forth in the great men of a nation, and that these great men mark the end of an age, as in the case of the renaissance. the most significant brief essay in this section is an answer made to certain critics who, in reviewing "beyond good and evil," claimed a superiority for the present age over the older civilisations. nietzsche calls this essay "have we become moral?" and proceeds to make comparisons of contemporaneous virtues with those of the ancients. he denies that to-day, without our decrepit humanitarianism and our doctrines of weakness, we would be able to withstand, either nervously or muscularly, the conditions that prevailed during the renaissance. he points out that our morals are those of senility, and that we have deteriorated, physically as well as mentally, as a result of an adherence to a code of morality invented to meet the needs of a weak and impoverished people. our virtues, he says, are determined and stimulated by our weakness, so that we have come to admire the moralities of the slave, the most prominent among which is the doctrine of equality. in the decline of all the positive forces of life nietzsche sees only racial decadence. in this regard it is important to take note of one of the passages relative to the discussion of this decadence, namely: the one wherein he characterises the anarchist as "the mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society." the appellation of "anarchist" has not infrequently been applied to nietzsche himself by those who have read him superficially or whose acquaintance with him has been the result of distorted hearsay. i know of no better analysis of anarchistic motives or of no keener dissection of anarchistic weakness than is set forth here. nor do i know of any better answer to those critics who have accused nietzsche of anarchy, than the criticism contained in this passage. in a final chapter, under the caption of "things i owe to the ancients," nietzsche outlines the inspirational source of many of his doctrines and literary habits. this chapter is important only to the student who wishes to go to the remoter influences in nietzsche's writings, and for that reason i have omitted from the following excerpts any quotation from it. excerpts from "the twilight of the idols" man thinks woman profound--why? because he can never fathom her depths. woman is not even shallow. 5 the trodden worm curls up. this testifies to its caution. it thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. in the language of morality: humility. 5-6 the church combats passion by means of excision of all kinds: its practise, its "remedy," is _castration._ it never inquires "how can a desire be spiritualised, beautified, deified?"--in all ages it has laid the weight of discipline in the process of extirpation (the extirpation of sensuality, pride, lust of dominion, lust of property, and revenge).--but to attack the passions at their roots, means attacking life itself at its source: the method of the church is hostile to life. 27 only degenerates find radical methods indispensable: weakness of will, or more strictly speaking, the inability not to react to a stimulus, is in itself simply another form of degeneracy. radical and mortal hostility to sensuality, remains a suspicious symptom: it justifies one in being suspicious of the general state of one who goes to such extremes. 27 a man is productive only in so far as he is rich in contrasted instincts; he can remain young only on condition that his soul does not begin to take things easy and to yearn for peace. 28-29 all naturalism is morality--that is to say, every sound morality is ruled by a life instinct--any one of the laws of life is fulfilled by the definite canon "thou shalt," "thou shalt not," and any sort of obstacle or hostile element in the road of life is thus cleared away. conversely, the morality which is antagonistic to nature--that is to say, almost every morality that has been taught, honoured and preached hitherto, is directed precisely against the life-instincts.... 30 morality, as it has been understood hitherto, is the instinct of degeneration itself, which converts itself into an imperative: it says: "perish!" it is the death sentence of men who are already doomed. 31 morality, in so far it condemns _per se,_ and _not_ out of any aim, consideration or motive of life, is a specific error, for which no one should feel any mercy, a degenerate idiosyncrasy, that has done an unutterable amount of harm. 32 every mistake is in every sense the sequel to degeneration of the instincts to disintegration of the will. this is almost the definition of evil. 35 morality and religion are completely and utterly parts of the psychology of error: in every particular case cause and effect are confounded. 41 at present we no longer have any mercy upon the concept "free-will": we know only too well what it is--the most egregious theological trick that has ever existed for the purpose of making mankind "responsible" in a theological manner--that is to say, to make mankind dependent upon theologians. 41 the doctrine of the will was invented principally for the purpose of punishment,--that is to say, with the intention of tracing guilt. the whole of ancient psychology, or the psychology of the will, is the outcome of the fact that its originators, who were the priests at the head of ancient communities, wanted to create for themselves a right to administer punishments--or the right for god to do so. men were thought of as "free" in order that they might be held guilty.... 42 the fact that no one shall any longer be made responsible, that the nature of existence may not be traced to a _causa prima,_ that the world is an entity neither as a sensorium nor as a spirit--_this alone is the great deliverance,_--thus alone is the innocence of becoming restored. ... the concept "god" has been the greatest objection to existence hitherto.... we deny god, we deny responsibility in god: thus alone do we save the world. 43 moral judgment has this in common with the religious one, that it believes in realities which are not real. morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena: or more strictly speaking, a misinterpretation of them. moral judgment, like the religious one, belongs to a stage of ignorance in which even the concept of reality, the distinction between real and imagined things, is still lacking.... 44 in the early years of the middle ages, during which the church was most distinctly and above all a menagerie, the most beautiful examples of the "blond beast" were hunted down in all directions,--the noble germans, for instance, were "improved." but what did this "improved" german, who had been lured to the monastery look like after the process? he looked like a caricature of man, like an abortion: he had become a "sinner," he was caged up, he had been imprisoned behind a host of appalling notions. he now lay there, sick, wretched, malevolent even toward himself: full of hate for the instincts of life, full of suspicion in regard to all that is still strong and happy. in short a "christian." in physiological terms: in a fight with an animal, the only way of making it weak may be to make it sick. the church understood this: it ruined man, it made him weak,--but it laid claim to having "improved" him. 45-46 all means which have been used heretofore with the object of making man moral, were through and through immoral. 49 _my impossible people_--seneca, or the toreador of virtue.--rousseau, or the return to nature, _in impuris naturalibus._--schiller, or the moral trumpeter of säckingen.--dante, or the hyæna that writes poetry in tombs.--kant, or _cant_ as an intelligible character.--victor hugo, or the lighthouse on the sea of nonsense.--liszt, or the school of racing--after women.--george sand, or _lactea ubertas,_ in plain english: the cow with plenty beautiful milk.--michelet, or enthusiasm in its shirt sleeves.--carlyle, or pessimism after undigested meals.--john stuart mill, or offensive lucidity.--the brothers goncourt, or the two ajaxes fighting with homer. music by offenbach.--zola, or the love of stinking. 60 for art to be possible at all--that is to say, in order that an æsthetic mode of action and of observation may exist, a certain preliminary physiological state is indispensable: ecstasy. this state of ecstasy must first have intensified the susceptibility of the whole machine: otherwise, no art is possible. all kinds of ecstasy, however differently produced, have this power to create art, and above all the state dependent upon sexual excitement--this most venerable and primitive form of ecstasy. the same applies to that ecstasy which is the outcome of all great desires, all strong passions; the ecstasy of the feast, of the arena, of the act of bravery, of victory, of all extreme action; the ecstasy of cruelty; the ecstasy of destruction; the ecstasy following upon certain meteorological influences, as for instance that of springtime, or upon the use of narcotics; and finally the ecstasy of will, that ecstasy which results from accumulated and surging will-power. 68-68 what is the meaning of the antithetical concepts _apollonian_ and _dionysian_ which i have introduced into the vocabulary of æsthetic, as representing two distinct modes of ecstasy?--apollonian ecstasy acts above all as a force stimulating the eye, so that it acquires the power of vision. the painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are essentially visionaries. in the dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole system of passions is stimulated and intensified, so that it discharges itself by all the means of expression at once, and vents all its power of representation, of imitation, of transfiguration, of transformation, together with every kind of mimicry and histrionic display at the same time. 67-68 as to the famous "struggle for existence," it seems to me, for the present, to be more of an assumption than a fact. it does occur, but as an exception. the general condition of life is not one of want or famine, but rather of riches, of lavish luxuriance, and even of absurd prodigality,--where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power. 71 the most intellectual men, provided they are also the most courageous, experience the most excruciating tragedies: but on that very account they honour life, because it confronts them with its more formidable antagonism. 73 when the anarchist, as the mouthpiece of the decaying strata of society, raises his voice in splendid indignation for "right," "justice," "equal rights," he is only groaning under the burden of his ignorance, which cannot understand _why_ he actually suffers,--what his poverty consists of--the poverty of life. 86 to bewail one's lot is always despicable: it is always the outcome of weakness. whether one ascribes one's afflictions to others or to _one's self,_ it is all the same. the socialist does the former, the christian, for instance, does the latter. that which is common to both attitudes, or rather that which is equally ignoble in them both, is the fact that somebody must be to _blame_ if one suffers--in short that the sufferer drugs himself with the honey of revenge to allay his anguish. 86 why a beyond, if it be not a means of splashing mud over a "here," over this world? 87 an "altruistic" morality, a morality under which selfishness withers, is in all circumstances a bad sign. this is true of individuals and above all of nations. the best are lacking when selfishness begins to be lacking. instinctively to select that which is harmful to one, to be _lured_ by "disinterested" motives,--these things almost provide the formula for decadence. "not to have one's own interests at heart"--this is simply a moral fig-leaf concealing a very different fact, a physiological one, to wit:--"i no longer know how to find what is to my interest."... disintegration of the instincts!--all is up with man when he becomes altruistic. 87 one should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. death should be chosen freely,--death at the right time, faced clearly and joyfully and embraced while one is surrounded by one's children and other witnesses. it should be affected in such a way that a proper farewell is still possible, that he who is about to take leave of us is still _himself,_ and really capable not only of valuing what he has achieved and willed in life, but also of _summing-up_ the value of life itself. everything precisely the opposite of the ghastly comedy which christianity has made of the hour of death. we should never forgive christianity for having so abused the weakness of the dying man as to do violence to his conscience, or for having used his manner of dying as a means of valuing both man and his past!--in spite of all cowardly prejudices, it is our duty, in this respect, above all to reinstate the proper--that is to say, the physiological, aspect of so-called _natural_ death, which after all is perfectly "unnatural" and nothing else than suicide. one never perishes through anybody's fault but one's own. the only thing is that the death which takes place in the most contemptible circumstances, the death that is not free, the death which occurs at the wrong time, is the death of a coward. out of the very love one bears to life, one should wish death to be different from this--that is to say, free, deliberate, and neither a matter of chance nor of surprise. finally let me whisper a word of advice to our friends the pessimists and all other decadents. we have not the power to prevent ourselves from being born: but this error--for sometimes it is an error--can be rectified if we choose. the man who does away with himself performs the most estimable of deeds: he almost deserves to live for having done so. 88-89 the decline of the instincts of hostility and of those instincts that arouse suspicion,--for this if anything is what constitutes our progress--is only one of the results manifested by the general decline in _vitality:_ it requires a hundred times more trouble and caution to live such a dependent and senile existence. in such circumstances everybody gives everybody else a helping hand, and, to a certain extent, everybody is either an invalid or an invalid's attendant. this is then called "virtue": among those men who knew a different life--that is to say, a fuller, more prodigal, more superabundant sort of life, it might have been called by another name,--possibly "cowardice," or "vileness," or "old woman's morality." 91-92 ages should be measured according to their _positive forces;_--valued by this standard that prodigal and fateful age of the renaissance, appears as the last _great_ age, while we moderns with our anxious care of ourselves and love of our neighbours, with all our unassuming virtues of industry, equity, and scientific method--with our lust of collection, of economy and of mechanism--represent a _weak_ age. 93 liberalism, or, in plain english, the _transformation of mankind into cattle._ 94 freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. it is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. to grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself. to be ready to sacrifice men for one's cause, one's self included. freedom denotes that the virile instincts which rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over other instincts; for instance, over the instincts of "happiness." the man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore, the spirit that has won his freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that contemptible kind of comfort which tea-grocers, christians, cows, women, englishmen and other democrats worship in their dreams. the free man is a _warrior._ 94-95 by showing ever more and more favour to _love-marriages,_ the very foundation of matrimony, that which alone makes it an institution, has been undermined. no institution ever has been nor ever will be built upon an idiosyncrasy; as i say, marriage cannot be based upon "love." 97-98 the mere fact that there is such a thing as the question of the working-man is due to stupidity, or at bottom to degenerate instincts which are the cause of all the stupidity of modern times. concerning certain things _no questions ought to be put:_ the first imperative principle of instinct. for the life of me i cannot see what people want to do with the working-man of europe; now that they have made a question of him. he is far too comfortable to cease from questioning, ever more and more, and with ever less modesty. after all, he has the majority on his side. there is now not the slightest hope that an unassuming and contented sort of man, after the style of the chinaman, will come into being in this quarter: and this would have been the reasonable course, it was even a dire necessity. what has been done? everything has been done with the view of nipping the very pre-requisite of this accomplishment in the bud,--with the most frivolous thoughtlessness those self-same instincts by means of which a working-class becomes possible, and _tolerable_ even to its members themselves, have been destroyed root and branch. the working-man has been declared fit for military service; he has been granted the right of combination, and of franchise: can it be wondered at that he already regards his condition as one of distress (expressed morally, as an injustice)? but, again i ask, what do people want? if they desire a certain end, then they should desire the means thereto. if they will have slaves, then it is madness to educate them to be masters. 98-99 great men, like great ages, are explosive material, in which a stupendous amount of power is accumulated; the first conditions of their existence are always historical and physiological; they are the outcome of the fact that for long ages energy has been collected, hoarded up, saved up and preserved for their use, and that no explosion has taken place. when the tension in the bulk has become sufficiently excessive, the most fortuitous stimulus suffices in order to call "genius," "great deeds," and momentous fate into the world. 101-102 the criminal type is the type of the strong man and unfavourable conditions, a strong man made sick. he lacks the wild and savage state, a form of nature and existence which is freer and more dangerous, in which everything that constitutes the shield and the sword in the instinct of the strong man, takes a place by right. society puts a ban upon his virtues; the most spirited instincts inherent in him immediately become involved with the depressing passions, with suspicion, fear and dishonour. but this is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration. when a man has to do that which he is best suited to do, which he is most fond of doing, not only clandestinely, but also with long suspense, caution and ruse, he becomes anæmic; and inasmuch as he is always having to pay for his instincts in the form of danger, persecution and fatalities, even his feelings begin to turn against these instincts--he begins to regard them as fatal. it is society, our tame, mediocre, castrated society, in which an untutored son of nature who comes to us from his mountains or from his adventures at sea, must necessarily degenerate into a criminal. or almost necessarily: for there are cases in which such a man shows himself to be stronger than society: the corsican napoleon is the most celebrated case of this. 103-104 as long as the _priest_ represented the highest type of man, every valuable kind of man was depreciated.... the time is coming--this i guarantee--when he will pass as the _lowest_ type, as our chandala, as the falsest and most disreputable kind of man. 105 everything good is an inheritance: that which is not inherited is imperfect, it is simply a beginning. 107 christianity with its contempt of the body is the greatest mishap that has ever befallen mankind. 108 i also speak of a "return to nature," although it is not a process of going back but of going up--up into lofty, free and even terrible nature and naturalness; such a nature as can play with great tasks and _may_ play with them. 108 the doctrine of equality!... but there is no more deadly poison than this for it _seems_ to proceed from the very lips of justice, whereas in reality it draws the curtain down on all justice.... "to equals equality, to unequals inequality"--that would be the real speech of justice and that which follows from it. "never make unequal things equal." the fact that so much horror and blood are associated with this doctrine of equality, has lent this "modern idea" _par excellence_ such a halo of fire and glory, that the revolution as a drama has misled even the most noble minds. 108-109 x "the antichrist" ("_der antichrist_") was written in september, 1888, work evidently having been begun on it as soon as "the twilight of the idols" had been sent to the publisher. its composition could not have occupied more than a few weeks at most, for the former book was not despatched until september 7, and the present work was completed before october. at this time nietzsche was working at high pressure. he must have had some presentiment of his impending breakdown for he filled in every available minute with ardent and rapid writing. the fall of 1888 was the most prolific period of his life. no less than four books "the twilight of the idols," "the antichrist," "nietzsche _contra_ wagner" and _"ecce homo"_--were completed by him between the late summer and the first of the year; and in addition to this he made many notes for his future volumes and read and corrected a considerable amount of proofs. "the antichrist," however, though completed in 1888, was not published until the end of 1894, six years after he had laid aside his work forever, and at a time when his mind was too darkened to know or care about the circumstances of its issuance. it appeared in vol. xiii of _nietzsches werke_ which, although published at the close of 1894, bore the date of the following year. "the antichrist" which, like "beyond good and evil," "the genealogy of morals" and "the twilight of the idols," forms a part of nietzsche's final philosophic scheme, was intended--to judge from the evidence contained in his notebooks--as the first division of a work to be entitled "the trans valuation of all values" ("_die umwertung aller werte_"). in fact this title and also "the will to power" were considered alternately for his _magnum opus_ which he intended writing after the completion of "the transvaluation of all values." he finally decided on the latter title for his great work, although he used the former caption as a subtitle. the complete outline for the volumes which were to be called "the transvaluation of all values" and which were to be incorporated in his final general plan, is as follows: 1. "the antichrist. an attempted criticism of christianity." ("_der antichrist: versuch einer kritik des christenthums._") 2. "the free spirit. a criticism of philosophy as a nihilistic movement." ("_der freie geist: kritik der philosophie als einer nihilistischen bewegung_") 3. "the immoralist. a criticism of the most fatal species of ignorance, morality." ("_der immoralist: kritik der verhängnissvollsten art von unwissenheit, der moral_") 4. "dionysus, the philosophy of eternal recurrence." ("_dionysus, philosophie der ewigen wiederkunft_") but nietzsche did not finish this task, although "the antichrist" is in the form in which he intended it to be published. nevertheless, it must be considered merely as a fragment of a much more extensive plan. though nietzsche was far from being the first, he yet was the most effective critic who ever waged war against christianity. this was due to the fact that he went about his destructive work from an entirely new angle. before him there had been many competent anti-christian writers and scientists. even during his own time there was a large and loud school of atheists at work undermining the foundations of nazarene morality. with the methods of his predecessors and contemporaries, however, he had nothing in common. he saw that, despite the scientific denial of the miracles of christianity and the biological opposition to the origin of christian history, the theologian was always able to reply to the denial of christian truth with the counter-argument of christian practicability. thus, while the reasoning of such men as darwin, huxley and spencer held good so far as the scientific aspects of christianity went, the results of christianity were not involved. the church, meeting the onslaughts of the "higher criticism," denied the necessity of a literal belief in the gospels, and asserted that, while all the anti-christian critics might be accurate in their purely scientific and logical conclusions, christianity itself as a workable code was still efficient and deserving of consideration as the most perfect system of conduct the world had ever known. nietzsche therefore did not go into the field already ploughed by voltaire, hume, huxley, spencer, paine and a host of lesser "free thinkers." the preliminary battles in the great warfare against christianity had already been won, and he saw the futility of proceeding along historical and scientific lines. consequently he turned his attention to a consideration of the _effects_ of christian morality upon the race, to an inquiry into the _causes_ of pity-morality, and to a comparison of moral codes in their relation to the needs of humanity. whether or not the origins of christianity conformed to biological laws did not concern him, although he assumed as his hypothesis the conclusions of the scientific investigators. the only way of determining the merits and demerits of the christian code, he argued, was to ascertain the actual results of its application, and to compare these with the results which had accrued from the application of hardier and healthier codes. to this investigation nietzsche devotes practically the whole of "the antichrist," although there are a few analytical passages relating to the early dissemination of jewish ethics. but with these passages the student need not seriously concern himself. they are speculative and non-essential. nietzsche's criticism of the effects of christian virtues, however, did not begin in "the antichrist," although this book is the final flowering of those anti-christian ideas which cropped up continually throughout his entire work. this religious antipathy was present even in his early academic essays, and in "human, all-too-human" we find him well launched upon his campaign. no book of his, with the exception of his unfinished pamphlet, "the eternal recurrence," is free from this criticism. but one will find all his earlier conclusions and arguments drawn together in a compact and complete whole in the present volume. nietzsche's accusation against christianity, reduced to a few words, is that it works against the higher development of the individual; that, being a religion of weakness, it fails to meet the requirements of the modern man; in short, that it is _dangerous._ this conclusion is founded on the principle of biological monism. nietzsche assumes darwin's law of the struggle for existence, and argues that the christian virtues oppose not only this law but the law of natural selection as well. by this opposition the race has been weakened, for self-sacrifice, the basis of christian morality, detracts from the power of the individual and consequently lessens his chances for existence. furthermore, the christian ideal in itself is opposed to progress and all that progress entails, such as science and research. knowledge of any kind tends to make man more independent, and thereby reduces his need for theological supervision. as a result of the passing over of power from the strong to the weak, in accordance with the morality of christianity, the strength of the race as a whole is depleted. furthermore, such a procedure is in direct opposition to the laws of nature, and so long as man lives in a natural environment the only way to insure progress is to conform to the conditions of that environment. nietzsche therefore makes a plea for the adoption of other than christian standards--standards compatible with the laws of existence. he points out that already the race has been almost irremediably weakened by its adherence to anti-natural doctrines, that each day of christian activity is another step in the complete degeneration of man. and he asserts that the only reason the race has maintained its power as long as it has is because the stronger members of society, despite their voiced belief, do not live up to the christian code, but are continually compromising with it. the problem of the origin of christianity interests nietzsche, because he sees in it an explanation of the results which it wished to accomplish. christianity, says he, can be understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew. when the jewish people, subjugated and in a position of slavery, were confronted with the danger of extermination at the hands of a stronger people, they invented a system of conduct which would insure their continued existence. they realised that the adherence to such virtues as retaliation, aggressiveness, initiative, cruelty, arrogance and the like would mean death; the stronger nations would not have countenanced such qualities in a weak and depleted nation. as a result the jews replaced retaliation with "long suffering," aggressiveness with peacefulness, cruelty with kindness, and arrogance with humility. these _negative_ virtues took the place of positive virtues, and were turned into "beatitudes." by thus "turning the other cheek" and "forgiving one's enemies," instead of resenting persecution and attempting to avenge the wrongs perpetrated against them, they were able to prolong life. this system of conduct, says nietzsche, was a direct falsification of all natural conditions and a perversion of all healthy instincts. it was the morality of an impoverished and subservient people, and was adopted by the jews only when they had been stripped of their power. nietzsche presents a psychological history of israel as an example of the process by which natural values were denaturalised. the god of israel was jehovah. he was the expression of the nation's consciousness of power, of joy and of hope. victory and salvation were expected from him: he was the god of justice. the assyrians and internal anarchy changed the conditions of israel. jehovah was no longer able to bring victory to his people, and consequently the nature of this god was changed. in the hands of the priest he became a weapon, and unhappiness was interpreted as punishment for "sins." jehovah became a moral dictator, and consequently morality among the israelites ceased to be an expression of the conditions of life and became an abstract theory opposed to life. nor did the jewish priesthood stop at this. it interpreted the whole of history with a view to showing that all sin against jehovah led to punishment and that all pious worship of jehovah resulted in reward. a moral order of the universe was thus substituted for a natural one. to bolster up this theory a "revelation" became necessary. accordingly a "stupendous literary fraud" was perpetrated, and the "holy scriptures" were "discovered" and foisted upon the people. the priests, avid for power, made themselves indispensable by attributing to the will of god all those acts they desired of the people. repentance, namely: submission to the priests, was inaugurated. thus christianity, hostile to all reality and power, gained its footing. the psychology of christ, as set forth in "the antichrist," and the use made of his doctrines by those who directly followed him, form an important part of nietzsche's argument against christian morality. christ's doctrine, according to nietzsche, was one of immediacy. it was a mode of conduct and not, according to the present christian conception, a preparation for a future world. christ was a simple heretic in his rebellion against the existing political order. he represented a reactionary mode of existence---a system of conduct which said nay to life, a code of inaction and non-interference. his death on the cross was meant as a supreme example and proof of this doctrine. it remained for his disciples to attach other meanings to it. loving christ as they did, and consequently blinded by that love, they were unable to forgive his execution at the hands of the state. at the same time they were unprepared to follow his example and to give their own lives to the cause of his teachings. a feeling of revenge sprang up in them, and they endeavoured to find an excuse for his death. to what was it attributable? and the answer they found, says nietzsche, was "dominant judaism, its ruling class." for the moment they failed to realise that the "kingdom of god," as preached by christ, was an earthly thing, something contained within the individual; and after the crucifixion it was necessary for them either to follow christ's example or to interpret his death, a voluntary one, as a promise of future happiness, that is, to translate his _practical_ doctrine into symbolic terms. they unhesitatingly chose the latter. in their search for an explanation as to how god could have allowed his "son" to be executed, they fell upon the theory that christ's death was a sacrifice for their sins, an expiation for their guilt. from that time on, says nietzsche, "there was gradually imported into the type of the saviour the doctrine of the last judgment, and of the 'second coming,' the doctrine of sacrificial death, and the doctrine of _resurrection,_ by means of which the whole concept 'blessedness,' the entire and only reality of the gospel, is conjured away--in favour of a state _after_ death." st. paul then rationalised the conception by introducing into it the doctrine of personal immortality by means of having christ rise from the dead; and he preached this immortality as a reward for virtue. thus, asserts nietzsche, christ's effort toward a buddhistic movement of peace, "toward real and _not_ merely promised _happiness on earth"_ was controverted by his posterity. nothing of christ's original doctrine remained, once paul, the forger, set to work to twist it to his own ends. paul went further and by changing and falsifying it turned all jewish history into a _prophecy_ for his own teachings. thus the whole doctrine of christ, the true meaning of his death and the realities which he taught, were altered and distorted. in short, christ's life was used as a means for furthering the religion of paul, who gave to it the name of christianity. a most important part of "the antichrist" is that passage wherein nietzsche defines his order of castes. every healthy society, says he, falls naturally into three separate and distinct types. these classes condition one another and "gravitate differently in the psychological sense." each type has its own work, its own duties, its own emotions, its own compensations and mastership. the first class, comprising the rulers, is distinguished by its intellectual superiority. it devolves upon this class "to represent happiness, beauty and goodness on earth." the members of this superior class are in the minority, but they are nevertheless the creators of values. "their delight is self-mastery: with them asceticism becomes a second nature, a need, an instinct. they regard a difficult task as their privilege; to play with burdens which crush their fellows is to them a _recreation."_ they are at once the most honourable, cheerful and gracious of all men. the second class is composed of those who relieve the first class of their duties and execute the will of the rulers. they are the guardians of the law, the merchants and professional men, the warriors and the judges. in brief, they are the executors of the race. the third class is made up of the workers, the lowest order of man--those destined for menial and disagreeable tasks. "the fact," says nietzsche, "that one is publicly useful, a wheel, a function, presupposes a certain natural destiny: it is not _society,_ but the only kind of _happiness_ of which the great majority are capable, that makes them intelligent machines. for the mediocre it is a joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing, a specialty, is a natural instinct." the conception of these classes contains the nucleus of nietzsche's doctrine. it embodies his whole idea of a natural aristocracy as opposed to the spurious european aristocracy of the present day, wherein the rulers are in reality merely members of the second class. the charge is constantly brought against nietzsche by the ecclesiastic dialecticians that his criticism of christianity is fraught with the very nihilism against which he so eloquently argues. there is perhaps a slight basis for such a contention if we confine ourselves strictly to those of his utterances against the jewish morality which appear in his previous books. but in "the antichrist" this does not hold true even in the slightest manner. nietzsche is constantly supplanting modes of action for every christian virtue he denies. he is as constructive as he is destructive. "the antichrist" contains, not only a complete denial of all christian morality, but a statement of a new and consistent system of ethics based on the research of all his works. excerpts from "the antichrist" what is good? all that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and power itself in man. what is bad?--all that proceeds from weakness. what is happiness?--the feeling that power is _increasing,-_ that resistance has been overcome. not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the renaissance sense, _virtu,_ free from all moralic acid). the weak and botched shall perish: first principle of our humanity. and they ought even to be helped to perish. what is more harmful than any vice?--practical sympathy with all the botched and the weak--christianity. 128 we must not deck out and adorn christianity: it has waged a deadly war upon this _higher_ type of man, it has set a ban upon all the fundamental instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the devil himself out of these instincts:--the strong man as the typical pariah, the villain. christianity has sided with everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ against all the self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has corrupted even the reason of the strongest intellects, by teaching that the highest values of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations. 130 i call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it selects and _prefers_ that which is detrimental to it. 131 life itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less than the instinct of growth, of permanence, of accumulating forces, of power: where the will to power is lacking, degeneration sets in. 131 pity is opposed to the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: its action is depressing. a man loses power when he pities. by means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. 131 on the whole, pity thwarts the law of development which is the law of selection. it preserves that which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and the condemned of life. 131-132 this depressing and infectious instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and enhancement of the value of life: by _multiplying_ misery quite as much as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in promoting decadence. 132 that which a theologian considers true, _must_ of necessity be false: this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. it is his most profound self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. whithersoever the influence of the theologian extends, _valuations_ are topsy-turvy, and the concepts "true" and "false" have necessarily changed places: that which is most deleterious to life, is here called "true," that which enhances it, elevates it, says yea to it, justifies it and renders it triumphant, is called "false." 135 what is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work, think, feel, as an automaton of "duty," without internal promptings, without a profound personal predilection, without joy? this is the recipe _par excellence_ of decadence and even of idiocy. 137 in christianity, neither morality nor religion comes in touch at all with reality. nothing but imaginary _causes_ (god, the soul, the ego, spirit, free will--or even non-free will); nothing but imaginary _effects_ (sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness of sins). imaginary beings are supposed to have intercourse (god, spirits, souls); imaginary natural history (anthropocentric: total lack of the notion, "natural causes"); an imaginary _psychology_ (nothing but misunderstandings of self, interpretations of pleasant or unpleasant general feelings; for instance of the states of the _nervus sympathicus,_ with the help of the sign language of a religio-moral idiosyncrasy,--repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of the devil, the presence of god); an imaginary teleology (the kingdom of god, the last judgment, everlasting life). 141-142 a proud people requires a god, unto whom it can _sacrifice_ things.... religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude. a man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a god.--such a god must be able to profit and to injure him, he must be able to act the friend and the foe. he must be esteemed for his good as well as for his evil qualities. 143 when a people is on the road to ruin; when it feels its belief in a future, its hope of freedom vanishing for ever; when it becomes conscious of submission as the most useful quality, and of the virtues of the submissive as self-preservative measures, then its god must also modify himself. he then becomes a tremulous and unassuming sneak; he counsels "peace of the soul," the cessation of all hatred, leniency and "love" even towards friend and foe. he is for ever moralising, he crawls into the heart of every private virtue, becomes a god for everybody. 143 the christian concept of god--god as the deity of the sick, god as a spider, god as a spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of god that has ever been attained on earth. maybe it represents the low-water mark in the evolutionary ebb of the godlike type. god degenerated into the _contradiction of life,_ instead of being its transfiguration and eternal yea! with god war is declared on life, nature, and the will to life! god is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every lie concerning a beyond! 146 christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey;_ its expedient is to make them _ill,_--to render feeble is the christian recipe for taming, for "civilisation." 151 if _faith_ is above all necessary, then reason, knowledge, and scientific research must be brought into evil repute: the road to truth becomes the _forbidden_ road.--strong _hope_ is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be. sufferers must be sustained by a hope which no actuality can contradict,--and which cannot ever be realised: the hope of another world. (precisely on account of this power that hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most _mischievous_ evil: it remained behind in pandora's box.) in order that _love_ may be possible, god must be a person. in order that the lowest instincts may also make their voices heard god must be young. for the ardour of the women a beautiful saint, and for the ardour of the men a virgin mary has to be pressed into the foreground. all this on condition that christianity wishes to rule over a certain soil, on which aphrodisiac or adonis cults had already determined the _notion_ of a cult. to insist upon _chastity_ only intensifies the vehemence and profundity of the religious instinct--it makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.--love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. the force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. when a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything. the thing was to discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means the worst in life is overcome--it is no longer even seen.--so much for three christian virtues faith, hope, and charity: i call them the three christian _precautionary measures._ 152-153 what is jewish morality, what is christian morality? chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of "sin"; well being interpreted as a danger, as a "temptation"; physiological indisposition poisoned by means of the cankerworm of conscience. 157-158 what does a "moral order of the universe" mean? that once and for all there is such a thing as will of god which determines what man has to do and what he has to leave undone; that the value of a people or of an individual is measured according to how much or how little the one or the other obeys the will of god; that in the destinies of a people or of an individual, the will of god shows itself dominant, that is to say it punishes or rewards according to the degree of obedience. in the place of this miserable falsehood _reality_ says: a parasitical type of man, who can flourish only at the cost of all the healthy elements of life, the priest abuses the name of god: he calls that state of affairs in which the priest determines the value of things "the kingdom of god"; he calls the means whereby such a state of affairs is attained or maintained, "the will of god"; with cold-blooded cynicism he measures peoples, ages and individuals according to whether they favour or oppose the ascendency of the priesthood. 158-159 i fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which rightly or _wrongly_ jesus is understood to have been the promoter, if it were not directed against the jewish church. 162 this saintly anarchist who called the lowest of the low, the outcasts and "sinners," the chandala of judaism, to revolt against the established order of things (and in language which, if the gospels are to be trusted, would get one sent to siberia even to-day)--this man was a political criminal in so far as political criminals were possible in a community so absurdly non-political. this brought him to the cross: the proof of this is the inscription found thereon. he died for _his_ sins--and no matter how often the contrary has been asserted there is absolutely nothing to show that he died for the sins of others. 162-163 _the instinctive hatred of reality_ is the outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to be "touched" at all, because every sensation strikes too deep. _the instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all boundaries and distances in feeling,_ is the outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which regards all resistance, all compulsory resistance as insufferable _anguish_(--that is to say, as harmful, as _deprecated_ by the self-preservative instinct), and which knows blessedness (happiness) only when it is no longer obliged to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental,--love as the only ultimate possibility of life.... these are the two _physiological realities_ upon which and out of which the doctrine of salvation has grown. 166 with a little terminological laxity jesus might be called a "free spirit"--he cares not a jot for anything that is established: the word _killeth,_ everything fixed _killeth._ the idea, _experience, "life"_ as he alone knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. he speaks only of the innermost things: "life" or "truth" or "light," is his expression for the innermost things,--everything else the whole of reality, the whole of nature, language even, has only the value of a sign, of a simile for him. 169-170 the whole psychology of the "gospels" lacks the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that of reward. "sin," any sort of aloofness between god and man, is done away with,--_this is precisely what constitutes the "glad tidings."_ eternal bliss is not promised, it is not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality--the rest consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it.... the results of such a state project themselves into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical practice. it is not a "faith" which distinguishes himself by means of a _different_ mode of action.... 171 the life of the saviour was naught else than this practice,--neither was his death. he no longer required any formulæ, any rites for his relations with god--not even prayer. he has done with all the jewish teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows the _mode_ of life which makes one feel "divine," "saved," "evangelical," and at all times a "child of god." not "repentance," not "prayer and forgiveness" are the roads to god: the _evangelical mode of life alone_ leads to god, it _is_ "god."--that which the gospels abolished was the judaism of the concepts "sin," "forgiveness of sin," "faith," "salvation through faith,"--the whole doctrine of the jewish church was denied by the "glad tidings." the profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel "in heaven," in order to feel "eternal," while in every other respect one feels by _no_ means "in heaven": this alone is the psychological reality of "salvation."--a new life and _not_ a new faith.... 171-172 this "messenger of glad tidings" died as he lived and as he taught--_not_ in order "to save mankind," but in order to show how one ought to live. it was a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind: his behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners, his accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,--his demeanour on the _cross._ 174 the history of christianity--from the death on the cross onwards--is the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism. 175 "the world" to christianity means that a man is a soldier, a judge, a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values his honour, that he desires his own advantage, that he is _proud._ ... the conduct of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that leads to a deed, is at present anti-christian: what an _abortion of falsehood_ modern man must be, in order to be able _without a blush_ still to call himself a christian! 178 the very word "christianity" is a misunderstanding,--truth to tell, there never was more than one christian, and he _died_ on the cross. the "gospel" _died_ on the cross. that which thenceforward was called "gospel" was the reverse of that "gospel" that christ had lived: it was "evil tidings," a _dysangel._ it is false to the point of nonsense to see in "faith," in the faith in salvation through christ, the distinguishing trait of the christian; the only thing that is christian is the christian mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the cross.... to this day a life of this kind is still possible; for certain men, it is even necessary: genuine, primitive christianity will be possible in all ages.... _not_ a faith, but a course of action. 173-179 to regard a man like st.-paul as honest (a man whose home was the very headquarters of stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof of the continued existence of the saviour out of a hallucination; or even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination, would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: st.-paul desired the end, consequently he also desired the means.... even what he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom he spread _his_ doctrine.--what he wanted was power; with st.-paul the priest again aspired to power. 185 when the centre of gravity of life is laid, _not_ in life, but in a beyond--in _nonentity,_ life is utterly robbed of its balance. the great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in the instincts,--everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that promotes life and that is a guarantee of the future, henceforward aroused suspicion. the very meaning of life is now construed as the effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point.... why show any public spirit? why be grateful for one's origin and one's forebears? why collaborate with one's fellows, and be confident? why be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?... all these things are merely so many "temptations," so many deviations from the "straight path." "one thing only is necessary" ... that everybody, as an "immortal soul," should have equal rank, that in the totality of beings, the "salvation" of each individual may lay claim to eternal importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistently _broken_ on their account,--any such magnification of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to _insolence,_ cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. and yet it is to this miserable flattery of personal vanity that christianity owed its _triumph,--_by this means it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity, over to its side. 185-186 with christianity, the art of feeling holy lies, which constitutes the whole of judaism, reaches its final mastership, thanks to many centuries of jewish and most thoroughly serious training and practice. 188 only read the gospels as books calculated to seduce by means of morality--morality is appropriated by these petty people,--they know what morality can do! the best way of leading mankind by the nose is with morality! the fact is that the most conscious _conceit_ of people who believe themselves to be _chosen,_ here simulates modesty: in this way they, the christian community, the "good and the just" place themselves once and for all on a certain side, the side "of truth"--and the rest of mankind, "the world" on the other.... this was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had ever yet existed on earth; insignificant little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay sole claim to the concepts "god," "truth," "light," "spirit," "love," "wisdom," "life," as if these things were, so to speak, synonyms of themselves, in order to fence themselves off from "the world"; little ultra-jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in order to suit themselves, just as if the christian, alone, were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the _"ultimate tribunal"_ of all the rest of mankind. 189-190 one does well to put on one's gloves when reading the new testament. the proximity of so much pitch almost defiles one. we should feel just as little inclined to hobnob with "the first christians" as with polish jews: not that we need explain our objections.... they simply smell bad.--in vain have i sought for a single sympathetic feature in the new testament; there is not a trace of freedom, kindliness, openheartedness and honesty to be found in it. humaneness has not even made a start in this book, while _cleanly_ instincts are entirely absent from it.... only evil instincts are to be found in the new testament, it shows no sign of courage, these people lack even the courage of these evil instincts. all is cowardice, all is a closing of one's eyes and self-deception. every book becomes clean, after one has just read the new testament. 193-194 in the whole of the new testament only _one_ figure appears which we cannot help respecting. pilate, the roman governor. to take a jewish quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself to do. one jew more or less--what did it matter?... the noble scorn of a roman, in whose presence the word "truth" had been shamelessly abused, has enriched the new testament with the only saying which _is of value,_--and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the shattering of that testament: "what is truth!" 195-196 no one is either a philologist or a doctor, who is not also an _antichrist._ as a philologist, for instance, a man sees _behind_ the "holy books" as a doctor he sees _behind_ the physiological rottenness of the typical christian. the doctor says "incurable," the philologist says "forgery." 197 the priest knows only one great danger, and that is science,--the healthy concept of cause and effect. but, on the whole, science flourishes only in happy conditions,--a man must have time, he must also have superfluous mental energy in order to "pursue knowledge." ... _"consequently_ man must be made unhappy,"--this has been the argument of the priest of all ages.--you have already divined what, in accordance with such a manner of arguing, must first have come into the world:--"sin."... the notion of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the universe," was invented against science. 199 the notion of guilt and punishment, including the doctrine of "grace," of "salvation" and of "forgiveness"--all lies through and through without a shred of psychological reality--were invented in order to destroy man's _sense of causality:_ they are an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! but one actuated by the most cowardly, most crafty, and most ignoble instincts! a _priest's_ attack! a _parasite's_ attack! a vampyrism of pale subterranean leeches! 200 "faith saveth; _therefore_ it is true."--it might be objected here that it is precisely salvation which is not probed but only _promised;_ salvation is bound up with the condition "faith,"--one _shall_ be saved, _because_ one has faith.... but how prove _that_ that which the priest promises to the faithful really will take place, to wit: the "beyond" which defies all demonstration?--the assumed "proof of power" is at bottom once again only a belief in the fact that the effect which faith promises will not fail to take place. in a formula: "i believe that faith saveth;--_consequently_ it is true."--but with this we are at the end of our tether. 201 holiness in itself is simply a symptom of an impoverished, enervated and incurably deteriorated body! 203-204 christianity is built upon the rancour of the sick; its instinct is directed _against_ the sound, against health. everything well-constituted, proud, high-spirited, and beautiful is offensive to its ears and eyes. 204 "faith" simply means the refusal to know what is true. 205 the conclusion which all idiots, women and common people come to, that there must be something in a cause for which some one lays down his life (or which, as in the case of primitive christianity, provokes an epidemic of sacrifices),--this conclusion put a tremendous check upon all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and of caution. martyrs have _harmed_ the cause of truth. 208 convictions are prisons. they never see far enough, they do not look down from a sufficient height: but in order to have any say in questions of value and non-value, a man must see five hundred convictions _beneath_ him--_behind_ him.... a spirit who desires great things, and who also desires the means thereto, is necessarily a sceptic. freedom from every kind of conviction _belongs_ to strength, to the _ability_ to open one's eyes freely. 209-210 whom do i hate most among the rabble, the chandala apostles, who undermine the working man's instinct, his happiness and his feeling of contentedness with his insignificant existence,--who make him envious, and who teach him revenge.... the wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the claim to equal rights. 220 the christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both incapable of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously and witheringly, like _bloodsuckers;_ they are both actuated by an instinct of _mortal hatred_ of everything that stands erect, that is great, that is lasting, and that is a guarantee of the future. 221-222 christianity destroyed the harvest we might have reaped from the culture of antiquity, later it also destroyed our harvest of the culture of islam. the wonderful moorish world of spanish culture, which in its essence is more closely related to _us,_ and which appeals more to our sense and taste than rome and greece, was _trampled to death_(--i do not say by what kind of feet), why?--because it owed its origin to noble, to manly instincts, because it said yea to life, even that life so full of the race, and refined luxuries of the moors! 226 i condemn christianity and confront it with the most terrible accusation that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. to my mind it is the greatest of all conceivable corruptions, it has had the will to the last imaginable corruption. the christian church allowed nothing to escape from its corruption; it converted every value into its opposite, every truth into a lie, and every honest impulse into an ignominy of the soul. let any one dare to speak to me of its humanitarian blessings! to _abolish_ any sort of distress was opposed to its profoundest interests; its very existence depended on states of distress; it created states of distress in order to make itself immortal.... the cancer germ of sin, for instance: the church was the first to enrich mankind with this misery!--the "equality of souls before god," this falsehood, this _pretext_ for the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded, this anarchist bomb of a concept, which has ultimately become the revolution, the modern idea, the principle of decay of the whole of social order,--this is _christian_ dynamite.... the "humanitarian" blessings of christianity! to breed a self-contradiction, an art of self-profanation, a will to lie at any price, an aversion, a contempt of all good and honest instincts out of _humanitas!_ is this what you call the blessings of christianity?--parasitism as the only method of the church; sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope of life out of mankind with anæmic and sacred ideals. a "beyond" as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the trade-mark of the most subterranean form of conspiracy that has ever existed,--against health, beauty, well-constitutedness, bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul, _against life itself...._ this eternal accusation against christianity i would fain write on all walls, wherever there are walls,--i have letters with which i can make even the blind see.... i call christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too _petty,_--i call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.... 230-231 xi "the will to power" volume i all the evidences of what was to be nietzsche's final and complete philosophical work in four volumes, are contained in two volumes of desultory and often highly condensed notes which were recently issued under the single caption of "the will to power" _("die wille zur macht")._ on this culminating work nietzsche had laboured from 1883 until his final breakdown. he made two plans for "the will to power"--one in 1886 and the other in 1887. as the 1887 plan was the one ultimately adhered to, there seems no reason to hesitate about accepting it as the right one. the titles of the four books which comprised this final work as it stands to-day are "european nihilism," "a criticism of the highest values that have prevailed hitherto," "the principles of a new valuation" and "discipline and breeding." these headings are according to the last plan made at nice in 1887, and although, as i stated in the preceding chapter, there was some hesitation between the general title of "the will to power" and "the transvaluation of all values," "the antichrist," which fell under the latter heading, must not be considered as forming a part of "the will to power." however, "the antichrist" and also "beyond good and evil," "the genealogy of morals" and "the twilight of the idols," are closely related in thought to "the will to power." this fact is borne out not only by internal evidence, by the manner in which the books overlap, and by the constant redistribution of titles which sometimes prove the unity of the last phase of his thought, but also by the testimony of those who had nietzsche's confidence and could watch him at close quarters. nietzsche intended to embody in the four books of "the will to power" the entire sweep of his philosophical teachings. this work was to be a summary, not only in statement but also in analysis, of his ethical system. his preceding books had been replete in repetitions, and lacked both organisation and sequence. his health was such that he could work only sporadically and in short shifts, with the result that he was constantly trying to crowd an enormous amount of material into a short space. he was able to deal with but one point at a time, and, as his working period was frequently too short to develop that point as fully as he desired, we find him constantly going back over old ground, altering his syllogisms, making addenda, interpolating analogies, and in numerous other ways changing and clarifying what he had previously written. "the will to power" was to be, then, a colossal organisation of all his writings, with every step intact, and every conclusion in its place. and throughout the four volumes emphasis was to be put on his motivating doctrine, the will to power, an oppositional theory to darwin's theory of struggle for mere existence. but although we have two large volumes of notes, these jottings lack in a large degree the co-ordination which would have characterised them had nietzsche been able to carry out his plan. the notes of these two books are the work of many years, and the putting together of them for publication has been done without any attempt to alter their original text. they are just as nietzsche left them--in some cases completed and closely argued paragraphs, in others mere notations and memoranda, elliptic and unelaborated. it is possible, however, to gain a very adequate idea of what was to be the contents of this final work, due to the copiousness of the material at hand. from the time of finishing "thus spake zarathustra" to 1889, nietzsche was constantly making notes for his great work, and there is no phase of his thought which is not touched upon in these two remaining volumes. by following their pages closely, in the light of his foregoing works, one gets a very definite impression of the synthesis of his thoughts. especially true is this of the second volume of "the will to power," for it is here that his cardinal doctrine is most strongly and consistently emphasised and its relationship to all human relationships most concisely drawn. because of this fact i have chosen to consider the two volumes separately. the first volume is full of material more or less familiar to those who have followed nietzsche in his earlier works. the notes are, in the majority of cases, elaborations and explanations of doctrines contained in those books which followed "thus spake zarathustra." as such they are important. the first volume is divided into two sections--"european nihilism" and "a criticism of the highest values that have prevailed hitherto." two subdivisions are found under section one--"nihilism" and "concerning the history of european nihilism." in this first subdivision nietzsche defines nihilism and attempts to trace its origin. he states that it is an outcome of the valuations and interpretations of existence which have formerly prevailed, namely: the result of the doctrines of christianity. for our adherence to christian morality, nietzsche says, we must pay dearly: by this adherence we are losing our equilibrium and are on the verge of adopting opposite valuations--those consisting of nihilistic elements. he defines the nihilistic movement as an expression of decadence, and declares that this decadence is spreading throughout all our modern institutions. under his second subdivision, he explains that modern gloominess is a result of the "slow advance and rise of the middle and lower classes," and asserts that this gloominess is accompanied by moral hypocrisy and the decadent virtues of sympathy and pity. in this connection he denies that the nineteenth century shows an improvement over the sixteenth. no better analysis of the effects of christian morality on modern man is to be found in any of nietzsche's writings than in this treatise of nihilism; and a close study of this analysis will greatly help one in grasping the full significance of the doctrine of the will to power. although the notes in this book are the least satisfactory of all the portions of "the will to power," being both tentative and incomplete, i have been able to select enough definite statements from them to give an adequate idea of both nietzsche's theories and conclusions in regard to nihilism. in the second section of volume i, "a criticism of the highest values that have prevailed hitherto," the notes are fuller and more closely organised. this is due to the fact that the ground covered by them is in the main the same ground covered by "the antichrist," "the genealogy of morals" and "beyond good and evil." in fact, there is in these notes much repetition of passages to be found in the three previous volumes. the first subdivision of this second section is called "criticism of religion," and there is little material in it which does not appear in "the antichrist." even in the manner of expression there exists so strong a similarity that i am inclined to think nietzsche used these notes in composing his famous philippic against christianity. consequently i have made but few quotations from this division, choosing in each instance only such passages as do not possess a direct parallel in his earlier work. we find here the same inquiry into the origin of religions, the same analysis of christian ideals, the same history of christian doctrines, and the same argument against the dissemination of christian faiths as are contained in "the antichrist." however, these present notes are sufficiently different from this previous book to interest the thorough student, and there are occasional speculations advanced which are not to be encountered elsewhere in nietzsche's writings. for the casual reader, however, there is little of new interest in this subdivision. the same criticism holds true to a large extent when we come to the second subdivision of the second section "a criticism of morality." in "the genealogy of morals" we have a discussion of practically all the subjects considered in the present notes, such as the origin of moral valuations, the basis of conscience, the influence of the herd, the dominance of virtue, the slander of the so-called evil man, and the significance of such words as "improving" and "elevating." however, there is sufficient new material in these notes to warrant a reading, for although, despite a few exceptions, there are no new issues posed, certain points which were put forth only in a speculative and abridged manner in earlier books, are here enlarged upon. this is especially true in regard to the doctrine of rank. nietzsche has been accused of advocating only an individualistic morality. but the truth is that he advanced two codes. he preached a morality for the herd, a definite system which suited the needs of the serving classes. for the superior individuals, on the other hand, he taught another code, one which fitted and met the needs of the rulers. the herd morality has always sought to create and maintain a single type of mediocre man. nietzsche preached the necessity of the superior, as well as the inferior, type of man; and in his present notes he goes into this doctrine more fully than heretofore. furthermore, he makes clear his stand in regard to the weak. on page 291 he states, "i have declared war against the anæmic christian ideal (together with what is closely related to it), not because i want to annihilate it, but only to put an end to its _tyranny_ and clear the way for other _ideals,_ for _more robust_ ideals." it has been stated, even in quarters where we have a right to look for more intelligent criticism, that nietzsche favoured the complete elimination of the weak and incompetent. no such advocacy is to be found in his teachings. to the contrary, as will be seen from the above quotation, he preached only against the _dominance_ of the weak. he resented their supremacy over the intelligent man. their existence, he maintained, was a most necessary thing. this belief is insisted upon in many places, and one should bear the point in mind when reading the criticisms of socialism to be found throughout the present volume. another new point to be found in these notes relates to the immoral methods used by the disseminators of morals. from the passages in which these new points are raised i have taken the quotations which follow at the end of this chapter. in the third and last subdivision of this second section, "criticism of philosophy," we have an extension of chapter i in "beyond good and evil," "prejudices of philosophers," and of the two chapters in "the twilight of the idols"--"the problem of socrates" and "reason in philosophy." the notes (excepting a few pages of general remarks) occupy themselves with a criticism of greek philosophy and with an analysis of philosophical truths and errors. these notes touch only indirectly on nietzsche's doctrines, and may be looked upon as explanations of his intellectual methods. despite their fragmentariness, the notes in this volume, as i have said, permit one to gain an adequate idea of nietzsche's purpose. in making my excerpts from this book, i have chosen those passages which will throw new light upon his philosophy rather than those statements of conclusions which have been previously encountered. excerpts from "the will to power" volume i what does nihilism mean?--_that the highest values are losing their value._ 8 thorough nihilism is the conviction that life is absurd, in the light of the highest values already discovered; it also includes the view that we have not the smallest right to assume the existence of transcendental objects or things in themselves, which would be either divine or morality incarnate. this view is the result of fully developed "truthfulness": therefore a consequence of the belief in morality. 8 _moral valuations are condemnations, negations; morality is the abdication of the will to live._ 12 all values with which we have tried, hitherto, to lend the world some worth, from our point of view, and with which we have therefore _deprived it of all worth_ (once these values have been shown to be inapplicable)--all these values, are, psychologically, the results of certain views of utility, established for the purpose of maintaining and increasing the dominion of certain communities: but falsely projected into the nature of things. it is always man's _exaggerated ingenuousness_ to regard himself as the sense and measure of all things. 15 every purely _moral_ valuation (as, for instance, the buddhistic) _terminates in nihilism:_ europe must expect the same thing! it is supposed that one can get along with a morality bereft of a religious background; but in this direction the road to nihilism is opened. 19 nihilism is not only a meditating over the "in vain"--not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plough; _one destroys._ 22 the time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been _christians_ for two thousand years: we are losing the equilibrium which enables us to live--for a long while we shall not know in what direction we are travelling. we are hurling ourselves headlong into the _opposite_ valuations, with that degree of energy which could only have been engendered in man by an _overvaluation_ of himself. now, everything is false from the root, words and nothing but words, confused, feeble, or overstrained. 25 modern pessimism is an expression of the uselessness only of the _modern_ world, not of the world and existence as such. 29 the "preponderance of _pain over pleasure_" or the reverse (hedonism); both of these doctrines are already signposts to nihilism.... for here, in both cases, no other final purpose is sought than the phenomenon pleasure or pain. 29 "life is not worth living"; "resignation"; "what is the good of tears?"--this is a feeble and sentimental attitude of mind. 29-30 people have not yet seen what is so terribly obvious--namely, that pessimism is not a problem but a _symptom,_--that the term ought to be replaced by "nihilism,"--that the question, "to be or not to be," is itself an illness, a sign of degeneracy, an idiosyncrasy. the nihilistic movement is only an expression of physiological decadence. 32 _decay, decline,_ and _waste,_ are, _per se,_ in no way open to objection; they are the natural consequences of life and vital growth. the phenomenon of decadence is just as necessary to life as advance or progress is: we are not in a position which enables us to _suppress_ it. on the contrary, reason _would have it retain its rights._ it is disgraceful on the part of socialist-theorists to argue that circumstances and social combinations could be devised which would put an end to all vice, illness, crime, prostitution, and poverty.... but that is tantamount to condemning _life._ 33 decadence itself is not a thing _that can be withstood:_ it is absolutely necessary and is proper to all ages and all peoples. that which must be withstood, and by all means in our power, is the spreading of the contagion among the sound parts of the organism. 33-34 all those things which heretofore have been regarded as the _causes of degeneration,_ are really its effects. 34 if nature have no pity on the degenerate, it is not therefore immoral: the growth of physiological and moral evils in the human race, is rather the _result of morbid and unnatural morality._ 44 the whole of our sociology knows no other instinct than that of the herd, _i.e.,_ of a _multitude of mere ciphers_--of which every cipher has "equal rights," and where it is a virtue to be--naught. 45 nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled have no longer any consolation, that they destroy in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the opposite principle, and _will also exercise power_ themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. 52 our age, with its indiscriminate endeavours to mitigate distress, to honour it, and to wage war in advance with unpleasant possibilities, is an age of the _poor._ 57 overwork, curiosity and sympathy--our _modern vices._ 64 christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights, philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as _showwords,_ for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to what they mean!). 68 the nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the sixteenth: and the german spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement when compared with that of 1788.... mankind does not advance, it does not even exist. the aspect of the whole is much more like that of a huge experimenting workshop where some things in all ages succeed, while an incalculable number of things fail; where all order, logic, co-ordination, and responsibility is lacking. how dare we blink the fact that the rise of christianity is a decadent movement?--that the german reformation was a recrudescence of christian barbarism?--that the revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisation of society on a large scale?... man is not an example of progress as compared with animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the arab or the corsican; the chinaman is a more successful type--that is to say, richer in sustaining power than the european. 72-73 i know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers so excruciatingly that he was _compelled_ to invent laughter. the unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as might have been expected, the most cheerful. 74 socialism--or the _tyranny_ of the meanest and the most brainless,--that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the mummers, brought to its zenith,--is, as a matter of fact, the logical conclusion of "modern ideas" and their latent anarchy: but in the genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming resolutions or even for coming _to an end_ at all, is paralysed. men will follow--but no longer their reason. that is why socialism is on the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces of present-day socialists--and what wretched and nonsensical feelings does not their style reveal to us!--and the childish lamblike happiness of their hopes and desires. 102 this is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things: the morality of development. to have and to wish to have more, in a word, growth--that is life itself. in the teaching of socialism "a will to the denial of life" is but poorly concealed: botched men and races they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. 102 _spiritual enlightenment_ is an unfailing means of making men uncertain, weak of will, and needful of succour and support; in short, of developing the herding instincts in them. 105 when the _feeling of power_ suddenly seizes and overwhelms a man,--and this takes place in the case of all the great passions,--a doubt arises in him concerning his own person: he dare not think himself the cause of this astonishing sensation--and thus he posits a stronger person, a godhead as its cause, 114-115 religion has lowered the concept "man"; its ultimate conclusion is that all goodness, greatness, and truth are superhuman, and are only obtainable by the grace of god. 116 _in short:_ what is the price paid for the _improvement_ supposed to be due to morality?--the unhinging of _reason,_ the reduction of all motives to fear and hope (punishment and reward); _dependence_ upon the tutelage of priests, and upon a formulary exactitude which is supposed to express a divine will; the implantation of a "conscience" which establishes a false science in the place of experience and experiment: as though all one had to do or had not to do were predetermined--a kind of contraction of the seeking and striving spirit;--_in short:_ the worst _mutilation_ of man that can be imagined, and it is pretended that "the good man" is the result. 122-123 paganism is that which says yea to all that is natural, it is innocence in being natural, "naturalness." _christianity_ is that which says no to all that is natural, it is a certain lack of dignity in being natural; hostility to nature. 127 _christianity_ is a degenerative movement, consisting of all kinds of decaying and excremental elements: it is _not_ the expression of the downfall of a race, it is, from the root, an agglomeration of all the morbid elements which are mutually attractive and which gravitate to one another. it is therefore _not_ a national religion, _not_ determined by race: it appeals to the disinherited everywhere; it consists of a foundation of resentment against all that is successful and dominant: it is in need of a symbol which represents the damnation of everything successful and dominant. it is opposed to every form of _intellectual_ movement, to all philosophy: it takes up the cudgels for idiots, and utters a curse upon all intellect. resentment against those who are gifted, learned, intellectually independent: in all these it suspects the element of success and domination. 130 all christian "truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first christian movement. 133 to be really christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology. 133 a god who died for our sins, salvation through faith, resurrection after death--all these things are the counterfeit coins of real-christianity, for which that pernicious blockhead paul must be held responsible. 138 christianity has, from the first, always transformed the symbolical into crude realities: (1) the antitheses "true life" and "false life" were misunderstood and changed into "life here" and "life beyond." (2) the notion "eternal life," as opposed to the personal life which is ephemeral, is translated into "personal immortality"; (3) the process of fraternising by means of sharing the same food and drink, after the hebrew-arabian manner, is interpreted as the "miracle of transubstantiation." (4) "resurrection" which was intended to mean the entrance to the "true life," in the sense of being intellectually "born again," becomes an historical contingency, supposed to take place at some moment after death; (5) the teaching of the son of man as the "son of god,"--that is to say, the life-relationship between man and god,--becomes the "second person of the trinity," and thus the filial relationship of every man--even the lowest--to god, is _done away with;_ (6) salvation through faith (that is to say, that there is no other way to this filial relationship to god save through the _practice of life_ taught by christ) becomes transformed into the belief that there is a miraculous way of _atoning_ for all _sin;_ though not through our own endeavours, but by means of christ: for all these purposes, "christ on the cross" had to be interpreted afresh. the _death_ itself would certainly not be the principal feature of the event ... it was only another sign pointing to the way in which one should behave towards the authorities and the laws of the world _--that one was not to defend oneself--this was the exemplary life._ 139-140 the gospel is the announcement that the road to happiness lies open for the lowly and the poor--that all one has to do is to emancipate one's self from all institutions, traditions, and the tutelage of the higher classes. thus christianity is no more than the _typical teaching of socialists._ property, acquisitions, mother-country, status and rank, tribunals, the police, the state, the church, education, art, militarism: all these are so many obstacles in the way of happiness, so many mistakes, snares, and devil's artifices, on which the gospel passes sentence--all this is typical of socialistic doctrines. behind all this there is the outburst, the explosion of a concentrated loathing of the "masters"--the instinct which discerns the happiness of freedom after such long oppression. 173-174 christianity is a denaturalisation of gregarious morality: under the power of the most complete misapprehensions and self-deceptions. democracy is a more natural form of it, and less sown with falsehood. it is a fact that the oppressed, the low, and whole mob of slaves and half-castes, _will prevail._ first step: they make themselves free--they detach themselves, at first in fancy only; they recognise each other; they make themselves paramount. second step: they enter the lists, they demand acknowledgment, equal rights, "justice." third step: they demand privileges (they draw the representatives of power over to their side). fourth step: they _alone_ want all power, and they _have_ it. 177 when and where has any man, _of any note at all,_ resembled the christian ideal?--at least in the eyes of those who are psychologists and triers of the heart and reins. look at all plutarch's heroes! 180 the _higher_ man distinguishes himself from the _lower_ by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune: it is a sign of _degeneration_ when eudemonistic values begin to prevail (physiological fatigue and enfeeblement of will-power). christianity, with its prospect of "blessedness," is the typical attitude of mind of a suffering and impoverished species of man. abundant strength will be active, will suffer, and will go under. 182 all ideals are dangerous; because they lower and brand realities; they are all poisons. 183 these "conditions of salvation" of which the christian is conscious are merely variations of the same diseased state--the interpretation of an attack of epilepsy by means of a particular formula which is provided, _not_ by science, but by religious mania. 190 _a pang of conscience_ in a man is a sign that his character is not yet equal to his _deed._ there is such a thing as a pang of conscience after _good deeds:_ in this case it is their unfamiliarity, their incompatibility with an old environment. 192 we immoralists prefer to disbelieve in "faults." we believe that all deeds, of what kind soever, are identically the same at root; just as deeds which turn _against_ us may be useful from an economical point of view, and even _generally desirable._ in certain individual cases, we admit that we might well have been _spared_ a given action; the circumstances alone predisposed us in its favour. which of us, if _favoured_ by circumstances, would not already have committed every possible crime? ... that is why, one should never say: "thou shouldst never have done such and such a thing," but only: "how strange it is that i have not done such and such a thing hundreds of times already!"--as a matter of fact, only a very small number of acts are _typical_ acts and real epitomes of a personality, and seeing what a small number of people really are personalities, a single act very rarely characterises a man. acts are mostly dictated by circumstances; they are superficial or merely reflex movements performed in response to a stimulus, long before the depths of our beings are affected or consulted in the matter. 192-193. experience teaches us that, in every case in which a man has elevated himself to any great extent above the average of his fellows, every high degree of _power_ always involves a corresponding degree of _freedom_ from good and evil as also from "true" and "false," and cannot take into account what goodness dictates. 200 what is christian "virtue" and "love of men," if not precisely this mutual assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak, this thwarting of selection? what is christian altruism, if it is not the mob-egotism of the weak which divines that, if everybody looks after everybody else, every individual will be preserved for a longer period of time?... he who does not consider this attitude of mind as _immoral,_ as a crime against life, himself belongs to the sickly crowd, and also shares their instincts.... genuine love of mankind exacts sacrifice for the good of the species--it is hard, full of self-control, because it needs human sacrifices. 203 what deserves the most rigorous condemnation, is the ambiguous and cowardly infirmity of purpose of a religion like _christianity,_--or rather like the _church,--_which, instead of recommending death and self-destruction, actually protects all the botched and bungled, and encourages them to propagate their kind. 204 let us see what the "genuine christian" does of all the things which his instincts forbid him to do:--he covers beauty, pride, riches, self-reliance, brilliancy, knowledge, and power with suspicion and _mud_--in short, _all culture:_ his object is to deprive the latter of its _clean conscience._ 200 what is it we combat in christianity? that it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves--until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation. 209 all virtues should be looked upon as physiological _conditions._ 213 formerly it was said of every form of morality, "ye shall know them by their fruits." i say of every form of morality: "it is a fruit, and from it i learn the _soil_ out of which it grew." 214 my leading doctrine is this: _there are no moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. the origin of this interpretation itself lies beyond the pale of morality._ 214 the whole of morality of europe is based upon the values _which are useful to the herd._ 228 the herd regards the _exception,_ whether it be above or beneath its general level, as something which is antagonistic and dangerous to itself. their trick in dealing with the exceptions above them, the strong, the mighty, the wise, and the fruitful, is to persuade them to become guardians, herdsmen, and watchmen--in fact, to become their _head-servants:_ thus they convert a danger into a thing which is useful. 231 my teaching is this, that the herd seeks to maintain and preserve one type of man, and that it defends itself on two sides--that is to say, against those which are decadents from its ranks (criminals, etc.), and against those who rise superior to its dead level. 236 my philosophy aims at a new _order of rank: not_ at an individualistic morality. the spirit of the herd should rule within the herd--but not beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their actions. 237 conscience condemns an action because that action has been condemned for a long period of time: all conscience does is to imitate: it does not create values. that which first led to the condemnation of certain actions, was _not_ conscience: but the knowledge of (or the prejudice against) its consequences.... the approbation of conscience, the feeling of well-being, of "inner peace," is of the same order of emotions as the artist's joy over his work--it proves nothing. 242 _by what means does a virtue attain to power?_--with precisely the same means as a political party: slander, suspicion, the undermining of opposing virtues that happen to be already in power, the changing of their names, systematic persecution and scorn; in short, _by means of acts of general "immorality."_ 252 cruelty has become transformed and elevated into tragic pity, so that we no longer recognise it as such. the same has happened to the love of the sexes which has become amour-passion; the slavish attitude of mind appears as christian obedience; wretchedness becomes humility; the disease of the _nervus sympathicus,_ for instance, is eulogised as pessimism, pascalism, or carlylism, etc. 253 the qualities which constitute the strength of an _opposing race_ or class are declared to be the most evil and pernicious things it has: for by means of them it may be harmful to us. 255 i recognise virtue in that: (1) it does not insist upon being recognised; (2) it does not presuppose the existence of virtue everywhere, but precisely something else; (3) it does _not suffer_ from the absence of virtue, but regards it rather as a relation of perspective which throws virtue into relief: it does not proclaim itself; (4) it makes no propaganda; (5) it allows no one to pose as judge because it is always a personal virtue; (6) it does precisely what is generally _forbidden:_ virtue as i understand it is the actual _vetitum_ within all gregarious legislation; (7) in short, i recognise virtue in that it is in the renaissance style--_virtu_--free from all moralic acid. 258 lust of property, lust of power, laziness, simplicity, fear; all these things are interested in virtue; that is why it stands so securely. 261 vice is a somewhat arbitrary epitome of certain effects resulting from physiological degeneracy. a general proposition such as that which christianity teaches, namely, "man is evil," would be justified provided one were justified in regarding a given type of degenerate man as normal. but this may be an exaggeration. of course, wherever christianity prospers and prevails, the proposition holds good: for then the existence of an unhealthy soil--of a degenerate territory--is demonstrated. 269 it is difficult to have sufficient respect for man, when one sees how he understands the art of fighting his way, of enduring, of turning circumstances to his own advantage, and of overthrowing opponents; but when he is seen in the light of his _desires,_ he is the most absurd of all animals. 269 as to the whole socialistic ideal: it is nothing but a blockheaded misunderstanding of the christian moral ideal. 275 an ideal which is striving to prevail or to assert itself endeavours to further its purpose (a) by laying claim to a _spurious_ origin; (b) by assuming a relationship between itself and the powerful ideals already existing; (c) by means of the thrill produced by mystery, as though an unquestionable power were manifesting itself; (d) by the slander of its opponents' ideals; (e) by a lying teaching of the advantages which follow in its wake, for instance: happiness, spiritual peace, general peace, or even the assistance of a mighty god. 278 my view: all the forces and instincts which are the source of life are lying beneath the _ban of morality:_ morality is the life-denying instinct. morality must be annihilated if life is to be emancipated. 278 every one's desire is that there should be no other teaching and valuation of things than those by means of which he himself succeeds. thus the _fundamental tendency_ of the _weak_ and _mediocre_ of all times, has been to _enfeeble the strong and to reduce them to the level of the weak: their chief weapon in this process_ was the _moral principle._ the attitude of the strong towards the weak is branded as evil; the highest states of the strong become bad bywords. 279 every small community (or individual), finding itself involved in a struggle, strives to convince itself of this: "good taste, good judgment, and virtue are ours." war urges people to this exaggerated self-esteem. 281 whatever kind of eccentric ideal one may have (whether as a "christian," a "free-spirit," an "immoralist," or a german imperialist), one should try to avoid insisting upon its being _the_ ideal; for, by so doing, it is deprived of all its privileged nature. one should have an ideal as a distinction; one should not propagate it, and thus level one's self down to the rest of mankind. 281 real heroism consists, _not_ in fighting under the banner of self-sacrifice, submission and disinterestedness, but in _not fighting at all_.... "i am thus: i will be thus--and you can go to the devil!" 282 modest, industrious, benevolent, and temperate: thus you would that men were?--that _good men_ were? but such men i can only conceive as slaves, the slaves of the future. 289 industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance, are just so many _obstacles_ in the way of _sovereign sentiments,_ of great _ingenuity,_ of an heroic purpose, of noble existence for one's self. 290 i have declared war against the anæmic christian ideal (together with what is closely related to it), not because i want to annihilate it, but only to put an end to its _tyranny_ and clear the way for other _ideals,_ for _more robust_ ideals. 291 if one does good merely out of pity, it is one's self and not one's neighbour that one is succouring. 294 "one is continually promoting the interests of one's _'ego'_ at the cost of other people"; "living consists in living at the cost of others"--he who has not grasped this fact, has not taken the first step towards truth to himself. 294 a morality and a religion of "love," the _curbing_ of the self-affirming spirit, and a doctrine encouraging patience, resignation, helpfulness, and co-operation in word and deed may be of the highest value within the confines of such classes, even in the eyes of their rulers: for it restrains the feelings of rivalry, of resentment, and of envy,--feelings which are only too natural in the bungled and the botched,--and it even deifies them under the ideal of humility, of obedience, of slave-life, of being-ruled, of poverty, of illness, and of lowliness. this explains why the ruling classes (or races) and individuals of all ages have always upheld the cult of unselfishness, the gospel of the lowly and of "god on the cross." 296 the _hatred of egoism,_ whether it be one's own (as in the case of the socialists) appears as a valuation reached under the predominance of revenge; and also as an act of prudence on the part of the preservative instinct of the suffering, in the form of an increase in their feelings of co-operation and unity.... at bottom, the discharge of resentment which takes place in the act of judging, rejecting, and punishing egoism (one's own or that of others) is still a self-preservative measure on the part of the bungled and the botched. in short: the cult of altruism is merely a particular form of egoism, which regularly appears under certain definite physiological circumstances. when the socialist, with righteous indignation, cries for "justice," "rights," "equal rights," it only shows that he is oppressed by his inadequate culture, and is unable to understand why he suffers: he also finds pleasure in crying;--if he were more at ease he would take jolly good care not to cry in that way: in that case he would seek his pleasure elsewhere. the same holds good of the christian: he curses, condemns, and slanders the "world"--and does not even except himself. but that is no reason for taking him seriously. in both cases we are in the presence of invalids who feel better for crying, and who find relief in slander. 298 i value a man according to the _quantum of power and fulness of his will;_ not according to the enfeeblement and moribund state thereof. i consider that a philosophy which _teaches_ the denial of will is both defamatory and slanderous.... i test the _power_ of a _will_ according to the amount of resistance it can offer and the amount of pain and torture it can endure and know how to turn to its own advantage; i do not point to the evil and pain of existence with the finger of reproach, but rather entertain the hope that life may one day be more evil and more full of suffering than it has ever been. 304 my ultimate conclusion is, that the real man represents a much higher value than the "desirable" man of any ideal that has ever existed hitherto; that all "desiderata" in regard to mankind have been absurd and dangerous dissipations by means of which a particular kind of man has sought to establish his measures of preservation and of growth as a law for all; that every "desideratum" of this kind which has been made to dominate has _reduced_ man's worth, his strength, and his trust in the future; that the indigence and mediocre intellectuality of man becomes most apparent, even to-day, when he reveals a _desire;_ that man's ability to fix values has hitherto been developed too inadequately to do justice to the actual, not merely to the "desirable," _worth of man;_ that, up to the present, ideals have really been the power which has most slandered man and power, the poisonous fumes which have hung over reality, and which have _seduced men to yearn for nonentity_.... 311 one must be very immoral in order to _make people moral by deeds._ the moralist's means are the most terrible that have ever been used; he who has not the courage to be an immoralist in deeds may be fit for anything else, but not for the duties of a moralist. 314 the priests of all ages have always pretended that they wished to "improve."... but we, of another persuasion, would laugh if a lion-tamer ever wished to speak to us of his "improved" animals. as a rule, the taming of a beast is only achieved by deteriorating it: even the moral man is not a better man; he is rather a weaker member of his species. 319 up to the present, morality has developed at the _cost_ of: the ruling classes and their specific instincts, the well-constituted and _beautiful_ natures, the independent and privileged classes in all respects. morality, then, is a sort of counter-movement opposing nature's endeavours to arrive at a _higher type._ its effects are: mistrust of life in general (in so far as its tendencies are felt to be immoral),--hostility towards the senses (inasmuch as the highest values are felt to be opposed to the higher instincts).--degeneration and self-destruction of "higher natures," because it is precisely in them that the conflict becomes _conscious._321 suppose the _strong_ were masters in all respects, even in valuing: let us try and think what their attitude would be towards illness, suffering, and sacrifice. self-contempt on the part of the weak would be the result: they would do their utmost to disappear and to extirpate their kind. and would this be desirable?--should we really like a world in which the subtlety, the consideration, the intellectuality, the _plasticity_--in fact, the whole influence of the weak--was lacking? ... 323 under "spiritual freedom" i understand something very definite: it is a state in which one is a hundred times superior to philosophers and other disciples of "truth" in one's severity towards one's self, in one's uprightness, in one's courage, and in one's absolute will to say nay even when it is dangerous to say nay. i regard the philosophers that have appeared heretofore as _contemptible libertines_ hiding behind the petticoats of the female "truth." 384 xii "the will to power" volume ii the second volume of "the will to power," even in its present fragmentary form, is the most important of nietzsche's works. it draws together under one cover many of the leading doctrines voiced in his principal constructive books, and in addition states them in terms of his fundamental postulate--the will to power. in volume i of this work we had the application of this doctrine to morality, religion and philosophy. in the present book it is applied to science, nature, society, breeding and art. the notes are more analytical than in the former volume; and the subject-matter is in itself of greater importance, being more directly concerned with the exposition of nietzsche's main theory. volume ii is also fuller and more homogeneous, and contains much new material. so compact is its organisation that one is able to gain a very adequate idea of the purpose which animated nietzsche at the time of making these notes. the will to power, the principle which nietzsche held to be the elementary expression of life, must be understood in order for one to comprehend the nietzschean system of ethics. throughout all the books which followed "the joyful wisdom" we have indirect references to it and conclusions based on its assumption as a hypothesis. and, although it was never definitely and finally defined until the publication of the notes comprising "the will to power," it nevertheless was the actuating motive in all nietzsche's constructive writings. simply stated, the will to power is the biological instinct to maintenance, persistence and development. nietzsche holds that darwin's universal law of the instinct to mere survival is a misinterpretation of the forces at work in life. he points out that existence is a condition--a medium of action--and by no means an end. it is true that only the fittest survive in nature as a result of the tendency to exist; but this theory does not account for the activities which take place after existence has been assured. in order to explain these activities nietzsche advances the theory of the will to power and tests all actions by it. it will be seen that by this theory the universal law of darwin is by no means abrogated, but rather is it explained and developed. in the operation of darwin's biological law there are many forces at work. that is to say, once the fact of existence is established, numerous forces can be found at work within the limits of existence. we know that the forces of nature--acting within the medium of existence which is an _a priori_ condition--are rarely unified and directed toward the same result. in short, they are not reciprocal. to the contrary, they work more often against each other--they are antagonistic. immediately a war of forces takes place; and it is this war that constitutes all action in nature. a force in nature directed at another force calls forth a resistance and counter-force; and this instinct to act and to resist is in itself a will to act. otherwise, inertia would be the condition of life, once mere existence was assured by the fittest. but life is not inert. even when certain organisms have accomplished the victory for existence, and are no longer moved by a necessity to struggle for mere being, the will to action persists; and this will to action, according to nietzsche, is the will for power, for in every clash of forces, there is an attempt on the part of each force to overcome and resist the antagonistic one. the greater the action, the greater the antagonism. hence, this tendency in all forces to _persist_ is at bottom a tendency of self-assertion, of overcoming counter-forces, of augmenting individual power. wherever this will to persist is found, nietzsche argues that the will to act is present; and there can be no will to act without a will to power, because the very desire for existence and development is a desire for power. this, in brief, is nietzsche's doctrine applied to the organic and inorganic world. in its application to the ideological world, the reasoning is not changed. in ideas nietzsche finds this same will to power. but in them it is the reflection of the principle inherent in the material world. there is no will inherent in ideas. this assumption of a reflected will to power in the ideological world is one of nietzsche's most important concepts, for it makes all ideas the outgrowth of ourselves, and therefore dependent on natural laws. it does away with the conception of supernatural power and with the old philosophical belief that ideas are superior forces to those of the organic and inorganic world. nietzsche once and for all disposes of the theory that there is anything more powerful than force, and by thus doing away with this belief, he rationalises all ideas and puts thought on a tangible and stable basis. in the opening section of the present book where he applies the will to power to scientific research, the whole of this new theory is made clear, and i advise the student to read well this section, for i have been unable to present as clear and complete an expositional statement of it in nietzsche's own words as i would have liked to do, owing to the close and interrelated manner in which these notes were written. volume ii of "the will to power" is in two books. the first is called "the principles of a new valuation"; the second, "discipline and breeding." the first book is divided into four sections--"the will to power in science," "the will to power in nature," "the will to power as exemplified in society and in the individual" and "the will to power in art." the second book has three divisions--"the order of rank," "dionysus" and "eternal recurrence." of the first section of book one, "the will to power in science," i have already spoken. in this section nietzsche shows how arbitrary a thing science is, and how closely related are its conclusions to the instinct of the scientists, namely: the instinct of the will to power. scientists, he holds, are confronted by the necessity of translating all phenomena into terms compatible with the struggle for persistence and maintenance. a fact in nature unaccounted for is a danger, an obstacle to the complete mastery of natural conditions. consequently the scientist, directed and influenced by his will to power, invents explanations which will bring all facts under his jurisdiction and control, and will thereby increase his feeling of power. as a result, the great facts of life are looked upon as of secondary importance to their explanations, and science becomes, not an intelligent search for knowledge, but a system of interpretations tending to increase the feeling of mastery in the men directly connected with it. thus the law of the will to power, as manifest in the organic and inorganic world, becomes the dominating instinct in the ideological world as well. it is well to speak here of truth as nietzsche conceived it. we have seen how he denied its absolutism and declared it to be relative. but in his present work he goes further and contends that the feeling of the increase of power is the determining factor in truth. if, as we have seen, the "truths" of science are merely those interpretations which grow out of the scientists' will to power, then truth itself must be the outgrowth of this instinct. that which makes for the growth and development of the individual--or in other words, that which increases the feeling of strength--is necessarily the truth. from this it is easy to deduce the conclusion that in many instances truth is a reversal of facts, for preservation very often consists in an adherence to actual falsity. thus, the false causality of certain phenomena--the outcome of logic engendered by a will to power--has not infrequently masqueraded as truth. nietzsche holds that this doctrine contains the only possible definition of truth; and in this doctrine we find an explanation for many of the apparent paradoxes in his teachings when the matter of truth and falsity are under discussion. the second part of the first book relates to the will to power in nature, and contains the most complete and lucid explanation of nietzsche's basic theory to be found anywhere in his writings. this section opens with an argument against a purely mechanical interpretation of the world, and a refutation of the physicists' concept of "energy." the chemical and physical laws, the atomic theory and the mechanical concept of movement, he characterises as "inventions" on the part of scientists and researchers for the purpose of understanding natural phenomena and therefore of increasing their feeling of power. the apparent sequence of phenomena which constitutes "law" is, according to nietzsche, only a "relation of power between two or more forces"--a matter of interdependence, a process wherein the "procession of moments do _not_ determine each other after the manner of cause and effect." in these observations we see the process of reasoning with which nietzsche refutes the current methods of ascertaining facts and the manner in which he introduces the principle of will to power into the phenomena of nature. it is in this section that nietzsche discusses at length the points of divergence between his life principle and that of darwin. and it is here also that he treats of the psychology of pleasure and pain in their relation to the will to power. this latter statement is of great importance in an understanding of the instincts of life as he taught them, for it denies both pleasure and pain a place in the determining of acts. they are both, according to him, but accompanying factors, never causes, and are but second-rate valuations derived from a dominating value. he denies that man struggles for happiness. to the contrary, he holds that all expansion and growth and resistance--in short, all movement--is related to states of pain, and that, although the modern man is master of the forces of nature and of himself, he is no happier than the primeval man. why, then, does man struggle for knowledge and growth, knowing that it does not bring happiness? not for existence, because existence is already assured him. but for power, for the feeling of increased mastery. thus nietzsche answers the two common explanations of man's will to action--the need for being and the desire for happiness--by his doctrine of the will to power. the entire teaching of nietzsche in regard to classes and to the necessity of divergent moral codes to meet the needs of higher and lower castes, is contained in the third part of the first book. here again he emphasises the need of two codes and makes clear his stand in relation to the superior individual. as i have pointed out in preceding chapters, nietzsche did not attempt to do away with the morality of the inferior classes. he saw that some such religious belief as christianity was imperative for them. his fight was against its application to all classes, against its dominance. i mention this point again because it is the basis of the greatest misunderstanding of nietzsche's philosophy. part iii is written for the higher man, and if this viewpoint is assumed on the part of the reader, there will be no confusion as to doctrines encountered. the statements in this section are in effect similar to those to be found in nietzsche's previous works, but in every instance in the present case they are directly related to the will to power. because of this they possess a significance which does not attach to them in antecedent volumes. the whole of nietzsche's art theories are to be found in part iv, "the will to power in art." it is not merely a system of æsthetics that occupies the pages under this section, for nietzsche never divorces art from life itself; and the artist, according to him, is the superior type, the creator of values. the concepts of beauty and ugliness are the outgrowths of an overflow of dionysian power; and it is to the great artists of the past, the instinctive higher men, that we owe our current concepts. the principle here is the dominant one in nietzsche's philosophy in relation to valuing:--_to the few individuals of the race are we indebted for the world of values._ to the student who wishes to go deeply into nietzsche's ideas of art and his conception of the artist, and to know in just what manner the dionysian and apollonian figure in his theories, i unhesitatingly recommend anthony m. ludovici's book, "nietzsche and art." the first section of the second book in this volume contains some of nietzsche's finest writing. its title, "the order of rank," explains in a large measure what material comprises it. it is a description of the various degrees of man, and a statement of the attributes which belong to each. no better definition of the different classes of men is to be found anywhere in this philosopher's writings. one part is devoted to a consideration of the strong and the weak, and the way in which they react on one another; another part deals with "the noble man" and contains (in aphorism 943) a list of the characteristics of the noble man, unfortunately too long a list to be quoted in the present chapter; another part defines "the lords of the earth"; another part delineates "the great man," and enumerates his specific qualities; and still another part treats of "the highest man as law-giver of the future." this section, however, is not a mere series of detached and isolated definitions, but an important summary of the ethical code which nietzsche advanced as a result of his application of the doctrine of the will to power to the order of individual rank. the two remaining sections--"dionysus" and "eternal recurrence"--are short, and fail to touch on new ground. there are a few robust and heroic passages in the former section which summarise nietzsche's definitions of apollonian and dionysian; but in the latter section there is nothing not found in the pamphlet called "the eternal recurrence" and in "thus spake zarathustra." i do not doubt that nietzsche had every intention of elaborating this last section, for he considered the principle of recurrence a most important one in his philosophy. but, as it stands, it is but a few pages in length and in no way touches upon his other philosophical doctrines. if importance it had in the philosophy of the superman, that importance was never shown either by nietzsche or by his critics. however, let us not overlook the importance of the doctrine of the will to power either in its relation to nietzsche's writings or in its application to ourselves. by this doctrine the philosopher wished to make mankind realise its great dormant power. the insistence on the human basis of all things was no more than a call to arms--an attempt to instil courage in men who had attributed all great phenomena to supernatural forces and had therefore acquiesced before them instead of having endeavoured to conquer them. nietzsche's object was to make man surer of himself, to infuse him with pride, to imbue him with more daring, to awaken him to a full realisation of his possibilities. this, in brief, is the teaching of the will to power reduced to its immediate influences. in this doctrine is preached a new virility. not the sedentary virility of compromise, but the virility which is born of struggle and suffering, which is a sign of one's great love of living. nietzsche offered a new set of vital ideals to supplant the decadent ones which now govern us. resolute faith, the power of affirmation, initiative, pride, courage and fearlessness--these are the rewards in the exercise of the will to power. the strength of great love and the vitality of great deeds, as well as the possibility of rare and vigorous growth, lie within this doctrine of will. its object is to give back to us the life we have lost--the life of beauty and plenitude, of strength and exuberance. excerpts from "the will to power" volume ii for hundreds of years, pleasure and pain have been represented as the _motives_ for every action. upon reflection, however, we are bound to concede that everything would have proceeded in exactly the same way, according to precisely the same sequence of cause and effect, if the states "pleasure" and "pain" had been entirely absent. 8-9 the _measure_ of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which _the will to power_ grows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality, _in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount in its service._ 12 it is our needs that _interpret the world;_ our instincts and their impulses for and against. every instinct is a sort of thirst for power.... 13 that a belief, however useful it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with the truth, may be seen from the fact that we _must_ believe in time, space, and motion, without feeling ourselves compelled to regard them as absolute realities. 16 _truth is that hind of error_ without which a certain species of living being cannot exist. 20 in the formation of reason, logic, and the categories, it was a _need_ in us that was the determining power: not the need "to know," but to classify, to schematise, for the purpose of intelligibility and calculation. 29 logic is the attempt on our part to understand the actual world according to a scheme of being devised by ourselves; or, more exactly, it is our attempt at making the actual world more calculable and more susceptible to formulation, for our own purposes.... 33 "truth" is the will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach consciousness; it is the will to _classify_ phenomena according to definite categories. in this way we start out with a belief in the "true nature" of things (we regard phenomena as real). the character of the world in the process of becoming _is not susceptible of formulation;_ it is "false" and "contradicts itself." _knowledge_ and the process of evolution exclude each other. _consequently,_ knowledge must be something else; it must be preceded by a will to make things knowable, a kind of becoming in itself must create the _impression_ of _being._ 33-34. _the chief error of psychologists:_ they regard the indistinct idea as of a lower _kind_ than the _distinct;_ but that which keeps at a distance from our consciousness and which is therefore _obscure, may_ on that very account be quite clear in itself. _the fact that a thing becomes obscure is a question of the perspective of consciousness._ 42 the criterion of truth lies in the enhancement of the feeling of power. 49 logic was intended to be a method of facilitating thought: _a means of expression,_--not truth.... later on it got to _act_ like truth.... 50 in a world which was essentially false, truthfulness would be an _anti-natural tendency:_ its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to a _higher degree of falsity._ 51 we have absolutely no experience concerning _cause;_ viewed psychologically we derive the whole concept from the subjective conviction, that _we_ ourselves are causes. 55 "truth" is not something which is present and which has to be found and discovered; it is something _which has to be created_ and which _gives_ its name _to a process,_ or, better still, to the will to overpower, which in itself has no purpose.... 60 the absolute is even an absurd concept: an "absolute mode of existence" is nonsense, the concept "being," "thing," is always _relative_ to us. the trouble is that, owing to the old antithesis "apparent" and "real," the correlative valuations "little value" and "absolute value" have been spread abroad. 83 man seeks "the truth": a world that does not contradict itself, that does not deceive, that does not change, a _real_ world--a world in which there is no suffering: contradiction, deception, variability--the causes of suffering. he does not doubt that there is such a thing as a world as it ought to be; he would fain find a road to it.... obviously, the will to truth is _merely_ the longing for a _stable world._ the senses deceive; reason corrects the errors: _therefore,_ it was concluded, reason is the road to a static state; the most _spiritual_ ideas must be nearest to the "real world." 88 the degree of a man's will-power may be measured from the extent to which he can dispense with the meaning in things, from the extent to which he is able to endure a world without meaning: _because he himself arranges a small portion of it._ 90 there is no such thing as an established fact, everything fluctuates, everything is intangible, yielding; after all, the most lasting of all things are our opinions. 103 that the _worth of the world_ lies in our interpretations (that perhaps yet other interpretations are possible somewhere, besides mankind's); that the interpretations made hitherto were perspective valuations, by means of which we were able to survive in life, _i. e._ in the will to power and in the growth of power; that every _elevation of man_ involves the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every higher degree of strength or power attained, brings new views in its train, and teaches a belief in new horizons--these doctrines lie scattered through all my works. 107 the triumphant concept _"energy"_ with which our physicists created god and the world, needs yet to be completer: it must be given an inner will which i characterise as the "will to power"--that is to say, as an insatiable desire to manifest power; or the application and exercise of power as a creative instinct, etc.... 110 the unalterable sequence of certain phenomena does not prove any "law," but a relation of power between two or more forces. 115 a quantum of power is characterised by the effect it produces and the influence it resists. the adiaphoric state which would be thinkable in itself, is entirely lacking. it is essentially a will to violence and a will to defend one's self against violence. it is not self-preservation: every atom exercises its influence over the whole of existence--it is thought out of existence if one thinks this radiation of will-power away. that is why i call it a quantum of "will to power." ... 117-118 my idea is that every specific body strives to become master of all space, and to extend its power (its will to power), and to thrust back everything that resists it. but inasmuch as it is continually meeting the same endeavours on the part of other bodies, it concludes by coming to terms with those (by "combining" with those) which are sufficiently related to it--_and thus they conspire together for power._ and the process continues. 121 the influence of "environment" is nonsensically _over-rated_ in darwin: the essential factor in the process of life is precisely the tremendous inner power to shape and to create forms, which merely _uses, exploits_ "environment." 127 the _feeling of being surcharged,_ the feeling accompanying an _increase in strength,_ quite apart from the utility of the struggle, is the actual _progress:_ from these feelings the will to war is first derived. 128 a living thing seeks above all to _discharge_ its strength: _"self-preservation"_ is only one of the results thereof.... 128 the most fundamental and most primeval activity of a protoplasm cannot be ascribed to a will to self-preservation, for it absorbs an amount of material which is absurdly out of proportion with the needs of its preservation: and what is more, it does _not_ "preserve itself" in the process, but actually falls to _pieces ..._. the instinct which rules here, must account for this total absence in the organism of a desire to preserve itself. the will to power can manifest itself only against _obstacles:_ it therefore goes in search of what resists it--this is the primitive tendency of the protoplasm when it extends its _pseudopodia_ and feels about it. the act of appropriation and assimilation is, above all, the result of an additional building and rebuilding, until at last the subjected creature has become completely a part of the superior creature's sphere of power, and has increased the latter.... 130 why is all _activity,_ even that of a _sense,_ associated with pleasure? because, before the activity was possible, an obstacle or a burden was done away with. or, rather, because all action is a process of overcoming, of becoming master of, and of _increasing_ the _feeling of power?_ 135 man is _not_ only an individual, but the continuation of collective organic life in one definite line. the fact that _man_ survives, proves that a certain species of interpretations (even though it still be added to) has also survived; that, as a system, this method of interpreting has not changed. 152 the fundamental phenomena: _innumerable individuals are sacrificed for the sake of a few,_ in order to make the few possible.--one must not allow one's self to be deceived; the case is the same with _peoples_ and _races:_ they produce the "body" for the generation of isolated and valuable _individuals,_ who continue the great process. 153 life is _not_ the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations, but will to power, which, proceeding from inside, subjugates and incorporates an ever-increasing quantity of "external" phenomena. 153-154 man as a species is not progressing. higher specimens are indeed attained; but they do not survive. the general level of the species is not raised.... man as a species does not represent any sort of progress compared with any other animal. 157 the domestication (culture) of man does not sink very deep. when it does sink far below the skin it immediately becomes degeneration (type: the christian). the "wild" man (or, in moral terminology, the _evil_ man) is a reversion to nature--and, in a certain sense, he represents a recovery, a _cure_ from the effects of "culture."... 158 the strong always have to be upheld against the weak; and the well-constituted against the ill-constituted, the healthy against the sick and physiologically botched. if we drew our morals from reality, they would read thus: the mediocre are more valuable than the exceptional creatures, and the decadent than the mediocre; the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life.... 159 that species show an ascending tendency, is the most nonsensical assertion that has ever been made: until now they have only manifested a dead level. there is nothing whatever to prove that the higher organisms have developed from the lower. 160 man as he has appeared up to the present is the embryo of the man of the future; _all_ the formative powers which are to produce the latter, already lie in the former: and owing to the fact that they are enormous, the more _promising for the future_ the modern individual happens to be, the more _suffering_ falls to his lot. 161 the will to power is the primitive motive force out of which all other motives have been derived. 162 from a psychological point of view the idea of "cause" is our feeling of power in the act which is called willing--our concept "effect" is the superstition that this feeling of power is itself the force which moves things.... 163 life as an individual case (a hypothesis which may be applied to existence in general) strives after the maximum feeling of power; life is essentially a striving after more power; striving itself is only a straining after more power; the most fundamental and innermost thing of all is this will. 165 man does not seek happiness and does not avoid unhappiness. everybody knows the famous prejudices i here contradict. pleasure and pain are mere results, mere accompanying phenomena--that which every man, which every tiny particle of a living organism will have, is an increase of power. in striving after this, pleasure and pain are encountered; it is owing to that will that the organism seeks opposition and requires that which stands in its way.... pain as the hindrance of its will to power is therefore a normal feature, a natural ingredient of every organic phenomenon; man does not avoid it; on the contrary, he is constantly in need of it; every triumph, every feeling of pleasure, every event presupposes an obstacle overcome. 172 man is now master of the forces of nature, and master too of his own wild and unbridled feelings (the passions have followed suit, and have learned to become useful)--in comparison with primeval man, the man of to-day represents an enormous quantum of power, but not an increase in happiness. how can one maintain, then, that he has striven after happiness? 174 "god" is the culminating moment: life is an eternal process of deifying and undeifying. _but withal there is no zenith of values,_ but only a zenith of _power._ 181 man has one terrible and fundamental wish; he desires power, and this impulse, which is called freedom, must be the longest restrained. hence ethics has instinctively aimed at such an education as shall restrain the desire for power; thus our morality slanders the would-be tyrant, and glorifies charity, patriotism, and the ambition of the herd. 186 when the instincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and renounce conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. 189 the maintenance of the military state is the last means of adhering to the great tradition of the past; or, where it has been lost, to revive it. by means of it the superior or strong type of man is preserved, and all institutions and ideas which perpetuate enmity and order of rank in states such as national feeling, protective tariffs, etc., may on that account seem justified. 190 _concerning the future of marriage._--a supertax on inherited property, a longer term of military service for bachelors of a certain minimum age within the community. privileges of all sorts for fathers who lavish boys upon the world, and perhaps plural votes as well. a medical certificate as a condition of any marriage, endorsed by the parochial authorities, in which a series of questions addressed to the parties and the medical officers must be answered ("family histories"). as a counter-agent to prostitution, or as its ennoblement, i would recommend leasehold marriages (to last for a term of years or months), with adequate provision for the children. every marriage to be warranted and sanctioned by a certain number of good men and true, of the parish, as a parochial obligation. 193 society ... should in many cases actually prevent the act of procreation, and may, without any regard for rank, descent, or intellect, hold in readiness the most rigorous forms of compulsion and restriction, and, under certain circumstances, have recourse to castration. 194 the idea of punishment ought to be reduced to the concept of the suppression of revolt, a weapon against the vanquished (by means of long or short terms of imprisonment). but punishment should not be associated in any way with contempt. a criminal is at all events a man who has set his life, his honour, his freedom at stake; he is therefore a man of courage. neither should punishment be regarded as penance or retribution, as though there were some recognised rate of exchange between crime and punishment. punishment does not purify, simply because crime does not sully. 198 should not the punishment fit the crime? 200 "the will to power" is so loathed in democratic ages that the whole of the psychology of these ages seems directed towards its belittlement and slander. 205 i am opposed to socialism because it dreams ingenuously of "goodness, truth, beauty, and equal rights" (anarchy pursues the same ideal, but in a more brutal fashion). i am opposed to parliamentary government and the power of the press, because they are the means whereby cattle become masters. 206 the idea of a higher order of man is hated much more profoundly than monarchs themselves. hatred of aristocracy always uses hatred of monarchy as a mask. 207 utility and pleasure are slave theories of life. "the blessing of work" is an ennobling phrase for slaves. incapacity for leisure. 208 there is no such thing as a right to live, a right to work, or a right to be happy: in this respect man is no different from the meanest worm. 208 _fundamental errors:_ to regard the herd as an aim instead of the individual! the herd is only a means and nothing _more! _ but nowadays people are trying to understand _the herd_ as they would an individual, and to confer higher rights upon it than upon isolated personalities. in addition to this, all that makes for gregariousness, _e.g.,_ sympathy, is regarded as the _more valuable_ side of our natures. 214-215 _the will to power_ appears:- (a) among the oppressed and slaves of all kinds, in the form of will to _"freedom":_ the mere fact of breaking loose from something seems to be an end in itself (in a religio-moral sense: "one is only answerable to one's own conscience"; "evangelical freedom," etc., etc.). (b) in the case of a stronger species, ascending to power, in the form of the will to overpower. if this fails, then it shrinks to the "will to justice"--that is to say, to the will to the same measure of rights as the ruling caste possesses. (c) in the case of the strongest, richest, most independent, and most courageous, in the form of "love of humanity," of "love of the people," of the "gospel," of "truth," of "god," of "pity," of "self-sacrifice," etc., etc.; in the form of overpowering, of deeds of capture, of imposing service on some one, of an instinctive reckoning of one's self as part of a great mass of power to which one attempts to give a direction: the hero, the prophet, the cæsar, the saviour, the bell-wether. 220-221 _individualism_ is a modest and still unconscious form of will to power; with it a single human unit seems to think it sufficient to free himself from the preponderating power of society (or of the state or church). he does not set himself up in opposition as a _personality,_ but merely as a unit; he represents the rights of all other individuals as against the whole. that is to say, he instinctively places himself on a level with every other unit: what he combats he does not combat as a person, but as a representative of units against a mass. 227 there are no such things as moral actions: they are purely imaginary. not only is it impossible to demonstrate their existence (a fact which kant and christianity, for instance, both acknowledge)--but they are not even possible. owing to psychological misunderstanding, man invented an _opposite_ to the instinctive impulses of life, and believed that a new species of instinct was thereby discovered: a _primum mobile_ was postulated which does not exist at all. according to the valuation which gave rise to the antithesis "moral" and "immoral," one should say: _there is nothing else on earth but immoral intentions and actions._ the whole differentiation, "moral" and "immoral," arises from the assumption that both moral and immoral actions are the result of a spontaneous will--in short, that such a will exists; or in other words, that moral judgments can only hold good with regard to intuitions and actions _that are free._ but this whole order of actions and intentions is purely imaginary: the only world to which the moral standard could be applied does not exist at all: _there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral action._ 230-231 there are two conditions in which art manifests itself in man even as a force of nature, and disposes of him whether he consent or not: it may be as a constraint to visionary states, or it may be an orgiastic impulse. 240 _sexuality, intoxication, cruelty;_ all these belong to the oldest _festal joys_ of mankind, they also preponderate in budding artists. 243 the desire for art and beauty is an indirect longing for the ecstasy of sexual desire, which gets communicated to the brain. 248 all art works as a _tonic;_ it increases strength, it kindles desire (_i.e.,_ the feeling of strength), it excites all the more subtle recollections of intoxication.... 252 the inartistic states are: objectivity, reflection, suspension of the will.... the inartistic states are: those which impoverish, which subtract, which bleach, under which life suffers--the christian. 257 would any link be missing in the whole chain of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were excluded from it? let us acknowledge the exception--it proves the rule--that woman is capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork--in short, in everything which is not a craft.... 260-261 a man is an artist to the extent to which he regards everything that inartistic people call "form" as the actual substance, as the "principal" thing. 261 the essential feature in art is its power of perfecting existence, its production of perfection and plenitude; art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.... 263 the greatness of an artist is not to be measured by the beautiful feelings which he evokes: let this belief be left to the girls. it should be measured according to the extent to which he approaches the grand style, according to the extent to which he is capable of the grand style. this style and great passion have this in common--that they scorn to please; that they forget to persuade: that they command; that they will.... to become master of the chaos which is in one; to compel one's inner chaos to assume form; to become consistent, simple, unequivocal, mathematical, law--this is the great ambition here. 277 a preference for questionable and terrible things is a symptom of strength; whereas the taste for pretty and charming trifles is characteristic of the weak and the delicate. 287 art is the great means of making life possible, the great seducer to life, the great stimulus of life. art is the only superior counter-agent to all will to the denial of life; it is _par excellence_ the anti-christian, the anti-buddhistic, the anti-nihilistic force. 290 quanta of power alone determine rank and distinguish rank: nothing else does. 295 it is necessary for _higher_ men to declare war upon the masses! in all directions mediocre people are joining hands in order to make themselves masters. everything that pampers, that softens, and that brings the "people" or "woman" to the front, operates in favour of universal suffrage--that is to say, the dominion of _inferior_ men. 297 woman has always conspired with decadent types,--the priests, for instance,--against the "mighty," against the "strong," against _men._ women avail themselves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and love:--the _mother_ stands as the symbol of _convincing_ altruism. 300 it is _necessary_ to show _that a counter-movement is inevitably associated_ with any increasingly economical consumption of men and mankind, and with an ever more closely involved "machinery" of interests and services. i call this counter-movement the _separation of the luxurious surplus of mankind:_ by means of it a stronger kind, a higher type, must come to light, which has other conditions for its origin and for its maintenance than the average man. my concept, my metaphor for this type is, as you know, the word "superman." 305 readers are beginning to see what i am combating--namely, _economic_ optimism: as if the general welfare of everybody must necessarily increase with the growing self-sacrifice of everybody. the very reverse seems to me to be the case, _the self-sacrifice of everybody amounts to a collective loss;_ man becomes _inferior_--so that nobody knows what end this monstrous purpose has served. 306-307 _the root of all evil:_ that the slave morality of modesty, chastity, selfishness, and absolute obedience should have triumphed. dominating natures were thus condemned (1) to hypocrisy, (2) to qualms of conscience,--creative natures regarded themselves as rebels against god, uncertain and hemmed in by eternal values. 309 that which _men of power and will are able to demand of themselves_ gives them the standard for what they may also allow themselves. such natures are the very opposite of the _vicious_ and the _unbridled:_ although under certain circumstances they may perpetrate deeds for which an inferior man would be convicted of vice and intemperance. in this respect the concept, _"all men are equal before god"_ does an extraordinary amount of harm; actions and attitudes of mind were forbidden which belonged to the prerogative of the strong alone, just as if they were in themselves unworthy of man. all the tendencies of strong men were brought into disrepute by the fact that the defensive weapons of the most weak (even of those who were weakest towards themselves) were established as a standard of valuation. 311 _the degeneration of the ruler and of the ruling classes_ has been the cause of all the great disorders in history! 312 the solitary type should not be valued from the standpoint of the gregarious type, or _vice versa._ 320 who would dare to disgust the mediocre of their mediocrity! as you observe, i do precisely the reverse: every step away from mediocrity--thus do i teach--leads to _immorality._ 324 what i combat: that an exceptional form should make war upon the rule--instead of understanding that the continued existence of the rule is the first condition of the value of the exception. 325 one should not suppose the mission of a higher species to be the _leading_ of inferior men (as comte does, for instance); but the inferior should be regarded as the _foundation_ upon which a higher species may live their higher life--upon which alone they _can stand._ 329 my consolation is, that the nature of man is _evil,_ and this guarantees his _strength!_ 332 there is no true scholar who has not the instincts of a true soldier in his veins. to be able to command and to be able to obey in a proud fashion; to keep one's place in rank and file, and yet to be ready at any moment to lead; to prefer danger to comfort; not to weigh what is permitted and what is forbidden in a tradesman's balance; to be more hostile to pettiness, slyness, and parasitism than to wickedness. what is it that one _learns_ in a hard school?--to _obey_ and to _command._ 335 _the means by which a strong species maintains itself:--_ it grants itself the right of exceptional actions, as a test of the power of self-control and of freedom. it abandons itself to states in which a man is not allowed to be anything else than a barbarian. it tries to acquire strength of will by every kind of asceticism. it is not expansive; it practises silence; it is cautious in regard to all charms. it learns to obey in such a way that obedience provides a test of self-maintenance. casuistry is carried to its highest pitch in regard to points of honour. it never argues, "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"--but conversely! it regards reward, and the ability to repay, as a privilege, as a distinction. it does not covet _other_ people's virtues. 341 the _blind yielding_ to a passion, whether it be generosity, pity, or hostility, is the cause of the greatest evil. greatness of character does not consist in not possessing these passions--on the contrary, a man should possess them to a terrible degree: but he should lead them by the bridle.... 346 education: essentially a means of _ruining_ exceptions in favour of the rule. culture: essentially the means of directing taste against the exceptions in favour of the mediocre. 349 _what is noble?_--the fact that one is constantly forced to be playing a part. that one is constantly searching for situations in which one is forced to put on airs. that one leaves happiness to the _greatest number:_ the happiness which consists of inner peacefulness, of virtue, of comfort, and of anglo-angelic-back-parlour-smugness, à la spencer. that one instinctively seeks for heavy responsibilities. that one knows how to create enemies everywhere, at a pinch even in one's self. that one contradicts the _greatest number,_ not in words at all, but by continually behaving differently from them. 357 the first thing that must be done is to rear a _new kind_ of man in whom the duration of the necessary will and the necessary instincts is guaranteed for many generations. this must be a new kind of ruling species and caste--this ought to be quite as clear as the somewhat lengthy and not easily expressed consequences of this thought. the aim should be to prepare a _transvaluation of values_ for a particularly strong kind of man, most highly gifted in intellect and will, and, to his end, slowly and cautiously to liberate in him a whole host of slandered instincts hitherto held in check.... 363-364 the revolution, confusion, and distress of whole peoples is in my opinion of less importance than _the misfortunes which attend great individuals in their development._ we must not allow ourselves to be deceived: the many misfortunes of all these small folk do not together constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of _mighty_ men. 369 the greatest men may also perhaps have great virtues, but then they also have the opposites of these virtues. i believe that it is precisely out of the presence of these opposites and of the feelings they suscitate, that the great man arises,--for the great man is the broad arch which spans two banks lying far apart. 370 in _great men_ we find the specific qualities of life in their highest manifestation: injustice, falsehood, exploitation. but inasmuch as their effect has always been _overwhelming,_ their essential nature has been most thoroughly misunderstood, and interpreted as goodness. 370-371 we must _not_ make men "better," we must _not_ talk to them about morality in any form as if "morality in itself," or an ideal kind of man in general, could be taken for granted; but we must _create circumstances_ in which _stronger men are necessary,_ such as for their part will require a morality (or, better still: a bodily and spiritual discipline) which makes men strong, and upon which they will consequently insist! 379 we must not separate greatness of soul from intellectual greatness. for the former involves _independence;_ but without intellectual greatness independence should not be allowed; all it does is to create disasters even in its lust of well-doing and of practising "justice." inferior spirits _must_ obey, consequently they cannot be possessed of greatness. 380 i teach that there are higher and lower men, and that a single individual may under certain circumstances justify whole millenniums of existence--that is to say, a wealthier, more gifted, greater, and more complete man, as compared with innumerable imperfect and fragmentary men. 386 he who _determines_ values and leads the will of millenniums, and does this by leading the highest natures--he _is the highest man._ 386 we should attain to such a height, to such a lofty eagle's ledge, in our observation, as to be able to understand that everything happens, _just as it ought to happen:_ and that all "imperfection," and the pain it brings, belong to all that which is most eminently desirable. 389 _pleasure_ appears with the feeling of power. _happiness_ means that power and triumph have entered into our consciousness. _progress_ is the strengthening of the type, the ability to exercise great will-power: everything else is a misunderstanding and a danger. 403 man is a combination of the _beast and the superbeast:_ higher man a combination of the monster and the superman: these opposites belong to each other. with every degree of a man's growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible:... 405 the word _"dionysian"_ expresses: a constraint to unity, a soaring above personality, the commonplace, society, reality, and above the abyss of the _ephemeral;_ the passionately painful sensation of superabundance, in darker, fuller, and more fluctuating conditions; an ecstatic saying of yea to the collective character of existence, as that which remains the same, and equally mighty and blissful throughout all change; the great pantheistic sympathy with pleasure and pain, which declares even the most terrible and most questionable qualities of existence good, and sanctifies them; the eternal will to procreation, to fruitfulness, and to recurrence; the feeling of unity in regard to the necessity of creating and annihilating. 415-416 at this point i set up the dionysus of the greeks: the religious affirmation of life, of the whole of life, not of denied and partial life.... 420 god on the cross is a curse upon life, a signpost directing people to deliver themselves from it;--dionysus cut into pieces is a promise of life: it will be for ever born anew, and rise afresh from destruction. 421 bibliography in the following list no attempt has been made at completion. i have set down only the important and more useful works concerning nietzsche and his philosophy, and have further limited myself to such volumes as are in english. i have omitted entirely the large number of essays on nietzsche which have appeared in magazines, as well as those books which embody only the various nietzschean ideas. expositional books the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche, by h. l. mencken. a brilliantly written and extensive exposition of nietzsche's thought, including an account of the philosopher's life, a discussion of his origins, a reply to his critics, and a chapter on how to study him. mr. mencken's book, though untechnical, is comprehensive, concise and admirably conceived. it constitutes one of the most valuable nietzschean commentaries in english. friedrich nietzsche: his life and work, by m. a. mügge. a large and scholarly treatise of special value to the philosophical student. this work, a pioneer one, is somewhat ponderous and uninteresting, but none the less exhaustive; and contains a bibliography consisting of 850 titles. the philosophy of nietzsche, by georges h. chatterton-hill. a suggestive, academic study of the main points in the nietzschean ethic. this book is too technical in places to appeal strongly to the beginner, but is invaluable as supplementary reading. the quintessence of nietzsche, by j. m. kennedy. an interesting and unassuming survey of nietzsche's work, abounding with quotations. nietzsche: his life and works, by anthony m. ludovici. mr. ludovici is the translator of many of nietzsche's works into english, and has contributed to dr. levy's edition several prefaces and many explanatory notes. his book is complete and authoritative. other adequate commentaries are: the gospel of superman, by henri lichtenberger, translated from the french by j. m. kennedy; friedrich nietzsche, by a. r. orage; nietzsche as critic, philosopher, poet and prophet, by thomas common; the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche, by grace neal dolson; and friedrich nietzsche, by georg brandes, translated by a. g. chater. biographies the life of nietzsche, by frau förster-nietzsche. this work, in two volumes, is the standard biography of nietzsche, written by his sister. though elaborate in detail and replete in personal correspondence and papers, it is not all that might be hoped for. one's devoted sister does not always make the most penetrating biographer. the life of friedrich nietzsche, by daniel halévy, translated from the french by j. m. hone. m. halévy has founded his work on that of frau förster-nietzsche; and while his version improves on its model at many points, it is in places supposititious and over-drawn, and is conceived in too ironical a vein. unfortunately there is no adequate biography of nietzsche in existence. nor is there likely to be one, inasmuch as all the papers and data necessary for such an undertaking are in the possession of nietzsche's sister. books of selections the gist of nietzsche, by h. l. mencken. nietzsche in outline and aphorism, by a. r. orage. nietzsche: his maxims, by j. m. kennedy. 