1780 the metaphysical elements of ethics by immanuel kant translated by thomas kingsmill abbott preface if there exists on any subject a philosophy (that is, a system of rational knowledge based on concepts), then there must also be for this philosophy a system of pure rational concepts, independent of any condition of intuition, in other words, a metaphysic. it may be asked whether metaphysical elements are required also for every practical philosophy, which is the doctrine of duties, and therefore also for ethics, in order to be able to present it as a true science (systematically), not merely as an aggregate of separate doctrines (fragmentarily). as regards pure jurisprudence, no one will question this requirement; for it concerns only what is formal in the elective will, which has to be limited in its external relations according to laws of freedom; without regarding any end which is the matter of this will. here, therefore, deontology is a mere scientific doctrine (doctrina scientiae). * * one who is acquainted with practical philosophy is not, therefore, a practical philosopher. the latter is he who makes the rational end the principle of his actions, while at the same time he joins with this the necessary knowledge which, as it aims at action, must not be spun out into the most subtile threads of metaphysic, unless a legal duty is in question; in which case meum and tuum must be accurately determined in the balance of justice, on the principle of equality of action and action, which requires something like mathematical proportion, but not in the case of a mere ethical duty. for in this case the question is not only to know what it is a duty to do (a thing which on account of the ends that all men naturally have can be easily decided), but the chief point is the inner principle of the will namely that the consciousness of this duty be also the spring of action, in order that we may be able to say of the man who joins to his knowledge this principle of wisdom that he is a practical philosopher. now in this philosophy (of ethics) it seems contrary to the idea of it that we should go back to metaphysical elements in order to make the notion of duty purified from everything empirical (from every feeling) a motive of action. for what sort of notion can we form of the mighty power and herculean strength which would be sufficient to overcome the vice-breeding inclinations, if virtue is to borrow her "arms from the armoury of metaphysics," which is a matter of speculation that only few men can handle? hence all ethical teaching in lecture rooms, pulpits, and popular books, when it is decked out with fragments of metaphysics, becomes ridiculous. but it is not, therefore, useless, much less ridiculous, to trace in metaphysics the first principles of ethics; for it is only as a philosopher that anyone can reach the first principles of this conception of duty, otherwise we could not look for either certainty or purity in the ethical teaching. to rely for this reason on a certain feeling which, on account of the effect expected from it, is called moral, may, perhaps, even satisfy the popular teacher, provided he desires as the criterion of a moral duty to consider the problem: "if everyone in every case made your maxim the universal law, how could this law be consistent with itself?" but if it were merely feeling that made it our duty to take this principle as a criterion, then this would not be dictated by reason, but only adopted instinctively and therefore blindly. {preface ^paragraph 5} but in fact, whatever men imagine, no moral principle is based on any feeling, but such a principle is really nothing else than an obscurely conceived metaphysic which inheres in every man's reasoning faculty; as the teacher will easily find who tries to catechize his pupils in the socratic method about the imperative of duty and its application to the moral judgement of his actions. the mode of stating it need not be always metaphysical, and the language need not necessarily be scholastic, unless the pupil is to be trained to be a philosopher. but the thought must go back to the elements of metaphysics, without which we cannot expect any certainty or purity, or even motive power in ethics. if we deviate from this principle and begin from pathological, or purely sensitive, or even moral feeling (from what is subjectively practical instead of what is objective), that is, from the matter of the will, the end, not from its form that is the law, in order from thence to determine duties; then, certainly, there are no metaphysical elements of ethics, for feeling by whatever it may be excited is always physical. but then ethical teaching, whether in schools, or lecture-rooms, etc., is corrupted in its source. for it is not a matter of indifference by what motives or means one is led to a good purpose (the obedience to duty). however disgusting, then, metaphysics may appear to those pretended philosophers who dogmatize oracularly, or even brilliantly, about the doctrine of duty, it is, nevertheless, an indispensable duty for those who oppose it to go back to its principles even in ethics, and to begin by going to school on its benches. we may fairly wonder how, after all previous explanations of the principles of duty, so far as it is derived from pure reason, it was still possible to reduce it again to a doctrine of happiness; in such a way, however, that a certain moral happiness not resting on empirical causes was ultimately arrived at, a self-contradictory nonentity. in fact, when the thinking man has conquered the temptations to vice, and is conscious of having done his (often hard) duty, he finds himself in a state of peace and satisfaction which may well be called happiness, in which virtue is her own reward. now, says the eudaemonist, this delight, this happiness, is the real motive of his acting virtuously. the notion of duty, says be, does not immediately determine his will; it is only by means of the happiness in prospect that he is moved to his duty. now, on the other hand, since he can promise himself this reward of virtue only from the consciousness of having done his duty, it is clear that the latter must have preceded: that is, he must feel himself bound to do his duty before he thinks, and without thinking, that happiness will be the consequence of obedience to duty. he is thus involved in a circle in his assignment of cause and effect. he can only hope to be happy if he is conscious of his obedience to duty: and he can only be moved to obedience to duty if be foresees that he will thereby become happy. but in this reasoning there is also a contradiction. for, on the one side, he must obey his duty, without asking what effect this will have on his happiness, consequently, from a moral principle; on the other side, he can only recognize something as his duty when he can reckon on happiness which will accrue to him thereby, and consequently on a pathological principle, which is the direct opposite of the former. i have in another place (the berlin monatsschrift), reduced, as i believe, to the simplest expressions the distinction between pathological and moral pleasure. the pleasure, namely, which must precede the obedience to the law in order that one may act according to the law is pathological, and the process follows the physical order of nature; that which must be preceded by the law in order that it may be felt is in the moral order. if this distinction is not observed; if eudaemonism (the principle of happiness) is adopted as the principle instead of eleutheronomy (the principle of freedom of the inner legislation), the consequence is the euthanasia (quiet death) of all morality. {preface ^paragraph 10} the cause of these mistakes is no other than the following: those who are accustomed only to physiological explanations will not admit into their heads the categorical imperative from which these laws dictatorially proceed, notwithstanding that they feel themselves irresistibly forced by it. dissatisfied at not being able to explain what lies wholly beyond that sphere, namely, freedom of the elective will, elevating as is this privilege, that man has of being capable of such an idea, they are stirred up by the proud claims of speculative reason, which feels its power so strongly in the fields, just as if they were allies leagued in defence of the omnipotence of theoretical reason and roused by a general call to arms to resist that idea; and thus they are at present, and perhaps for a long time to come, though ultimately in vain, to attack the moral concept of freedom and if possible render it doubtful. introduction introduction to the metaphysical elements of ethics ethics in ancient times signified moral philosophy (philosophia moralis) generally, which was also called the doctrine of duties. subsequently it was found advisable to confine this name to a part of moral philosophy, namely, to the doctrine of duties which are not subject to external laws (for which in german the name tugendlehre was found suitable). thus the system of general deontology is divided into that of jurisprudence (jurisprudentia), which is capable of external laws, and of ethics, which is not thus capable, and we may let this division stand. i. exposition of the conception of ethics the notion of duty is in itself already the notion of a constraint of the free elective will by the law; whether this constraint be an external one or be self-constraint. the moral imperative, by its categorical (the unconditional ought) announces this constraint, which therefore does not apply to all rational beings (for there may also be holy beings), but applies to men as rational physical beings who are unholy enough to be seduced by pleasure to the transgression of the moral law, although they themselves recognize its authority; and when they do obey it, to obey it unwillingly (with resistance of their inclination); and it is in this that the constraint properly consists. * now, as man is a free (moral) being, the notion of duty can contain only self-constraint (by the idea of the law itself), when we look to the internal determination of the will (the spring), for thus only is it possible to combine that constraint (even if it were external) with the freedom of the elective will. the notion of duty then must be an ethical one. {introduction ^paragraph 5} * man, however, as at the same time a moral being, when he considers himself objectively, which he is qualified to do by his pure practical reason, (i.e. according to humanity in his own person), finds himself holy enough to transgress the law only unwillingly; for there is no man so depraved who in this transgression would not feel a resistance and an abhorrence of himself, so that he must put a force on himself. it is impossible to explain the phenomenon that at this parting of the ways (where the beautiful fable places hercules between virtue and sensuality) man shows more propensity to obey inclination than the law. for, we can only explain what happens by tracing it to a cause according to physical laws; but then we should not be able to conceive the elective will as free. now this mutually opposed self-constraint and the inevitability of it makes us recognize the incomprehensible property of freedom. the impulses of nature, then, contain hindrances to the fulfilment of duty in the mind of man, and resisting forces, some of them powerful; and he must judge himself able to combat these and to conquer them by means of reason, not in the future, but in the present, simultaneously with the thought; he must judge that he can do what the law unconditionally commands that he ought. now the power and resolved purpose to resist a strong but unjust opponent is called fortitude (fortitudo), and when concerned with the opponent of the moral character within us, it is virtue (virtus, fortitudo moralis). accordingly, general deontology, in that part which brings not external, but internal, freedom under laws is the doctrine of virtue. {introduction ^paragraph 10} jurisprudence had to do only with the formal condition of external freedom (the condition of consistency with itself, if its maxim became a universal law), that is, with law. ethics, on the contrary, supplies us with a matter (an object of the free elective will), an end of pure reason which is at the same time conceived as an objectively necessary end, i.e., as duty for all men. for, as the sensible inclinations mislead us to ends (which are the matter of the elective will) that may contradict duty, the legislating reason cannot otherwise guard against their influence than by an opposite moral end, which therefore must be given a priori independently on inclination. an end is an object of the elective will (of a rational being) by the idea of which this will is determined to an action for the production of this object. now i may be forced by others to actions which are directed to an end as means, but i cannot be forced to have an end; i can only make something an end to myself. if, however, i am also bound to make something which lies in the notions of practical reason an end to myself, and therefore besides the formal determining principle of the elective will (as contained in law) to have also a material principle, an end which can be opposed to the end derived from sensible impulses; then this gives the notion of an end which is in itself a duty. the doctrine of this cannot belong to jurisprudence, but to ethics, since this alone includes in its conception self-constraint according to moral laws. for this reason, ethics may also be defined as the system of the ends of the pure practical reason. the two parts of moral philosophy are distinguished as treating respectively of ends and of duties of constraint. that ethics contains duties to the observance of which one cannot be (physically) forced by others, is merely the consequence of this, that it is a doctrine of ends, since to be forced to have ends or to set them before one's self is a contradiction. now that ethics is a doctrine of virtue (doctrina officiorum virtutis) follows from the definition of virtue given above compared with the obligation, the peculiarity of which has just been shown. there is in fact no other determination of the elective will, except that to an end, which in the very notion of it implies that i cannot even physically be forced to it by the elective will of others. another may indeed force me to do something which is not my end (but only means to the end of another), but he cannot force me to make it my own end, and yet i can have no end except of my own making. the latter supposition would be a contradictionan act of freedom which yet at the same time would not be free. but there is no contradiction in setting before one's self an end which is also a duty: for in this case i constrain myself, and this is quite consistent with freedom. * but how is such an end possible? that is now the question. for the possibility of the notion of the thing (viz., that it is not self-contradictory) is not enough to prove the possibility of the thing itself (the objective reality of the notion). {introduction ^paragraph 15} * the less a man can be physically forced, and the more he can be morally forced (by the mere idea of duty), so much the freer he is. the man, for example, who is of sufficiently firm resolution and strong mind not to give up an enjoyment which he has resolved on, however much loss is shown as resulting therefrom, and who yet desists from his purpose unhesitatingly, though very reluctantly, when he finds that it would cause him to neglect an official duty or a sick father; this man proves his freedom in the highest degree by this very thing, that he cannot resist the voice of duty. ii. exposition of the notion of an end which is also a duty we can conceive the relation of end to duty in two ways; either starting from the end to find the maxim of the dutiful actions; or conversely, setting out from this to find the end which is also duty. jurisprudence proceeds in the former way. it is left to everyone's free elective will what end he will choose for his action. but its maxim is determined a priori; namely, that the freedom of the agent must be consistent with the freedom of every other according to a universal law. {introduction ^paragraph 20} ethics, however, proceeds in the opposite way. it cannot start from the ends which the man may propose to himself, and hence give directions as to the maxims he should adopt, that is, as to his duty; for that would be to take empirical principles of maxims, and these could not give any notion of duty; since this, the categorical ought, has its root in pure reason alone. indeed, if the maxims were to be adopted in accordance with those ends (which are all selfish), we could not properly speak of the notion of duty at all. hence in ethics the notion of duty must lead to ends, and must on moral principles give the foundation of maxims with respect to the ends which we ought to propose to ourselves. setting aside the question what sort of end that is which is in itself a duty, and how such an end is possible, it is here only necessary to show that a duty of this kind is called a duty of virtue, and why it is so called. to every duty corresponds a right of action (facultas moralis generatim), but all duties do not imply a corresponding right (facultas juridica) of another to compel anyone, but only the duties called legal duties. similarly to all ethical obligation corresponds the notion of virtue, but it does not follow that all ethical duties are duties of virtue. those, in fact, are not so which do not concern so much a certain end (matter, object of the elective will), but merely that which is formal in the moral determination of the will (e.g., that the dutiful action must also be done from duty). it is only an end which is also duty that can be called a duty of virtue. hence there are several of the latter kind (and thus there are distinct virtues); on the contrary, there is only one duty of the former kind, but it is one which is valid for all actions (only one virtuous disposition). the duty of virtue is essentially distinguished from the duty of justice in this respect; that it is morally possible to be externally compelled to the latter, whereas the former rests on free self-constraint only. for finite holy beings (which cannot even be tempted to the violation of duty) there is no doctrine of virtue, but only moral philosophy, the latter being an autonomy of practical reason, whereas the former is also an autocracy of it. that is, it includes a consciousnessnot indeed immediately perceived, but rightly concluded, from the moral categorical imperativeof the power to become master of one's inclinations which resist the law; so that human morality in its highest stage can yet be nothing more than virtue; even if it were quite pure (perfectly free from the influence of a spring foreign to duty), a state which is poetically personified under the name of the wise man (as an ideal to which one should continually approximate). virtue, however, is not to be defined and esteemed merely as habit, and (as it is expressed in the prize essay of cochius) as a long custom acquired by practice of morally good actions. for, if this is not an effect of well-resolved and firm principles ever more and more purified, then, like any other mechanical arrangement brought about by technical practical reason, it is neither armed for all circumstances nor adequately secured against the change that may be wrought by new allurements. {introduction ^paragraph 25} remark to virtue = + a is opposed as its logical contradictory (contradictorie oppositum) the negative lack of virtue (moral weakness) = 0; but vice = a is its contrary (contrarie s. realiter oppositum); and it is not merely a needless question but an offensive one to ask whether great crimes do not perhaps demand more strength of mind than great virtues. for by strength of mind we understand the strength of purpose of a man, as a being endowed with freedom, and consequently so far as he is master of himself (in his senses) and therefore in a healthy condition of mind. but great crimes are paroxysms, the very sight of which makes the man of healthy mind shudder. the question would therefore be something like this: whether a man in a fit of madness can have more physical strength than if he is in his senses; and we may admit this without on that account ascribing to him more strength of mind, if by mind we understand the vital principle of man in the free use of his powers. for since those crimes have their ground merely in the power of the inclinations that weaken reason, which does not prove strength of mind, this question would be nearly the same as the question whether a man in a fit of illness can show more strength than in a healthy condition; and this may be directly denied, since the want of health, which consists in the proper balance of all the bodily forces of the man, is a weakness in the system of these forces, by which system alone we can estimate absolute health. {introduction ^paragraph 30} iii. of the reason for conceiving an end which is also a duty an end is an object of the free elective will, the idea of which determines this will to an action by which the object is produced. accordingly every action has its end, and as no one can have an end without himself making the object of his elective will his end, hence to have some end of actions is an act of the freedom of the agent, not an affect of physical nature. now, since this act which determines an end is a practical principle which commands not the means (therefore not conditionally) but the end itself (therefore unconditionally), hence it is a categorical imperative of pure practical reason and one, therefore, which combines a concept of duty with that of an end in general. now there must be such an end and a categorical imperative corresponding to it. for since there are free actions, there must also be ends to which as an object those actions are directed. amongst these ends there must also be some which are at the same time (that is, by their very notion) duties. for if there were none such, then since no actions can be without an end, all ends which practical reason might have would be valid only as means to other ends, and a categorical imperative would be impossible; a supposition which destroys all moral philosophy. here, therefore, we treat not of ends which man actually makes to himself in accordance with the sensible impulses of his nature, but of objects of the free elective will under its own lawsobjects which he ought to make his end. we may call the former technical (subjective), properly pragmatical, including the rules of prudence in the choice of its ends; but the latter we must call the moral (objective) doctrine of ends. this distinction is, however, superfluous here, since moral philosophy already by its very notion is clearly separated from the doctrine of physical nature (in the present instance, anthropology). the latter resting on empirical principles, whereas the moral doctrine of ends which treats of duties rests on principles given a priori in pure practical reason. {introduction ^paragraph 35} iv. what are the ends which are also duties? they are: a. our own perfection, b. happiness of others. we cannot invert these and make on one side our own happiness, and on the other the perfection of others, ends which should be in themselves duties for the same person. {introduction ^paragraph 40} for one's own happiness is, no doubt, an end that all men have (by virtue of the impulse of their nature), but this end cannot without contradiction be regarded as a duty. what a man of himself inevitably wills does not come under the notion of duty, for this is a constraint to an end reluctantly adopted. it is, therefore, a contradiction to say that a man is in duty bound to advance his own happiness with all his power. it is likewise a contradiction to make the perfection of another my end, and to regard myself as in duty bound to promote it. for it is just in this that the perfection of another man as a person consists, namely, that he is able of himself to set before him his own end according to his own notions of duty; and it is a contradiction to require (to make it a duty for me) that i should do something which no other but himself can do. v. explanation of these two notions {introduction ^paragraph 45} a. our own perfection the word perfection is liable to many misconceptions. it is sometimes understood as a notion belonging to transcendental philosophy; viz., the notion of the totality of the manifold which taken together constitutes a thing; sometimes, again, it is understood as belonging to teleology, so that it signifies the correspondence of the properties of a thing to an end. perfection in the former sense might be called quantitative (material), in the latter qualitative (formal) perfection. the former can be one only, for the whole of what belongs to the one thing is one. but of the latter there may be several in one thing; and it is of the latter property that we here treat. when it is said of the perfection that belongs to man generally (properly speaking, to humanity), that it is in itself a duty to make this our end, it must be placed in that which may be the effect of one's deed, not in that which is merely an endowment for which we have to thank nature; for otherwise it would not be duty. consequently, it can be nothing else than the cultivation of one's power (or natural capacity) and also of one's will (moral disposition) to satisfy the requirement of duty in general. the supreme element in the former (the power) is the understanding, it being the faculty of concepts, and, therefore, also of those concepts which refer to duty. first it is his duty to labour to raise himself out of the rudeness of his nature, out of his animal nature more and more to humanity, by which alone he is capable of setting before him ends to supply the defects of his ignorance by instruction, and to correct his errors; he is not merely counselled to do this by reason as technically practical, with a view to his purposes of other kinds (as art), but reason, as morally practical, absolutely commands him to do it, and makes this end his duty, in order that he may be worthy of the humanity that dwells in him. secondly, to carry the cultivation of his will up to the purest virtuous disposition, that, namely, in which the law is also the spring of his dutiful actions, and to obey it from duty, for this is internal morally practical perfection. this is called the moral sense (as it were a special sense, sensus moralis), because it is a feeling of the effect which the legislative will within himself exercises on the faculty of acting accordingly. this is, indeed, often misused fanatically, as though (like the genius of socrates) it preceded reason, or even could dispense with judgement of reason; but still it is a moral perfection, making every special end, which is also a duty, one's own end. {introduction ^paragraph 50} b. happiness of others it is inevitable for human nature that man a should wish and seek for happiness, that is, satisfaction with his condition, with certainty of the continuance of this satisfaction. but for this very reason it is not an end that is also a duty. some writers still make a distinction between moral and physical happiness (the former consisting in satisfaction with one's person and moral behaviour, that is, with what one does; the other in satisfaction with that which nature confers, consequently with what one enjoys as a foreign gift). without at present censuring the misuse of the word (which even involves a contradiction), it must be observed that the feeling of the former belongs solely to the preceding head, namely, perfection. for he who is to feel himself happy in the mere consciousness of his uprightness already possesses that perfection which in the previous section was defined as that end which is also duty. if happiness, then, is in question, which it is to be my duty to promote as my end, it must be the happiness of other men whose (permitted) end i hereby make also mine. it still remains left to themselves to decide what they shall reckon as belonging to their happiness; only that it is in my power to decline many things which they so reckon, but which i do not so regard, supposing that they have no right to demand it from me as their own. a plausible objection often advanced against the division of duties above adopted consists in setting over against that end a supposed obligation to study my own (physical) happiness, and thus making this, which is my natural and merely subjective end, my duty (and objective end). this requires to be cleared up. adversity, pain, and want are great temptations to transgression of one's duty; accordingly it would seem that strength, health, a competence, and welfare generally, which are opposed to that influence, may also be regarded as ends that are also duties; that is, that it is a duty to promote our own happiness not merely to make that of others our end. but in that case the end is not happiness but the morality of the agent; and happiness is only the means of removing the hindrances to morality; permitted means, since no one has a right to demand from me the sacrifice of my not immoral ends. it is not directly a duty to seek a competence for one's self; but indirectly it may be so; namely, in order to guard against poverty which is a great temptation to vice. but then it is not my happiness but my morality, to maintain which in its integrity is at once my end and my duty. {introduction ^paragraph 55} vi. ethics does not supply laws for actions (which is done by jurisprudence), but only for the maxims of action the notion of duty stands in immediate relation to a law (even though i abstract from every end which is the matter of the law); as is shown by the formal principle of duty in the categorical imperative: "act so that the maxims of thy action might become a universal law." but in ethics this is conceived as the law of thy own will, not of will in general, which might be that of others; for in the latter case it would give rise to a judicial duty which does not belong to the domain of ethics. in ethics, maxims are regarded as those subjective laws which merely have the specific character of universal legislation, which is only a negative principle (not to contradict a law in general). how, then, can there be further a law for the maxims of actions? {introduction ^paragraph 60} it is the notion of an end which is also a duty, a notion peculiar to ethics, that alone is the foundation of a law for the maxims of actions; by making the subjective end (that which every one has) subordinate to the objective end (that which every one ought to make his own). the imperative: "thou shalt make this or that thy end (e. g., the happiness of others)" applies to the matter of the elective will (an object). now since no free action is possible, without the agent having in view in it some end (as matter of his elective will), it follows that, if there is an end which is also a duty, the maxims of actions which are means to ends must contain only the condition of fitness for a possible universal legislation: on the other hand, the end which is also a duty can make it a law that we should have such a maxim, whilst for the maxim itself the possibility of agreeing with a universal legislation is sufficient. for maxims of actions may be arbitrary, and are only limited by the condition of fitness for a universal legislation, which is the formal principle of actions. but a law abolishes the arbitrary character of actions, and is by this distinguished from recommendation (in which one only desires to know the best means to an end). vii. ethical duties are of indeterminate, juridical duties of strict, obligation {introduction ^paragraph 65} this proposition is a consequence of the foregoing; for if the law can only command the maxim of the actions, not the actions themselves, this is a sign that it leaves in the observance of it a latitude (latitudo) for the elective will; that is, it cannot definitely assign how and how much we should do by the action towards the end which is also duty. but by an indeterminate duty is not meant a permission to make exceptions from the maxim of the actions, but only the permission to limit one maxim of duty by another (e. g., the general love of our neighbour by the love of parents); and this in fact enlarges the field for the practice of virtue. the more indeterminate the duty, and the more imperfect accordingly the obligation of the man to the action, and the closer he nevertheless brings this maxim of obedience thereto (in his own mind) to the strict duty (of justice), so much the more perfect is his virtuous action. hence it is only imperfect duties that are duties of virtue. the fulfilment of them is merit (meritum) = + a; but their transgression is not necessarily demerit (demeritum) = a, but only moral unworth = o, unless the agent made it a principle not to conform to those duties. the strength of purpose in the former case is alone properly called virtue [tugend] (virtus); the weakness in the latter case is not vice (vitium), but rather only lack of virtue [untugend], a want of moral strength (defectus moralis). (as the word tugend is derived from taugen [to be good for something], untugend by its etymology signifies good for nothing.) every action contrary to duty is called transgression (peccatum). deliberate transgression which has become a principle is what properly constitutes what is called vice (vitium). although the conformity of actions to justice (i.e., to be an upright man) is nothing meritorious, yet the conformity of the maxim of such actions regarded as duties, that is, reverence for justice is meritorious. for by this the man makes the right of humanity or of men his own end, and thereby enlarges his notion of duty beyond that of indebtedness (officium debiti), since although another man by virtue of his rights can demand that my actions shall conform to the law, he cannot demand that the law shall also contain the spring of these actions. the same thing is true of the general ethical command, "act dutifully from a sense of duty." to fix this disposition firmly in one's mind and to quicken it is, as in the former case, meritorious, because it goes beyond the law of duty in actions and makes the law in itself the spring. but just for or reason, those duties also must be reckoned as of indeterminate obligation, in respect of which there exists a subjective principle which ethically rewards them; or to bring them as near as possible to the notion of a strict obligation, a principle of susceptibility of this reward according to the law of virtue; namely, a moral pleasure which goes beyond mere satisfaction with oneself (which may be merely negative), and of which it is proudly said that in this consciousness virtue is its own reward. {introduction ^paragraph 70} when this merit is a merit of the man in respect of other men of promoting their natural ends, which are recognized as such by all men (making their happiness his own), we might call it the sweet merit, the consciousness of which creates a moral enjoyment in which men are by sympathy inclined to revel; whereas the bitter merit of promoting the true welfare of other men, even though they should not recognize it as such (in the case of the unthankful and ungrateful), has commonly no such reaction, but only produces a satisfaction with one's self, although in the latter case this would be even greater. viii. exposition of the duties of virtue as intermediate duties (1) our own perfection as an end which is also a duty {introduction ^paragraph 75} (a) physical perfection; that is, cultivation of all our faculties generally for the promotion of the ends set before us by reason. that this is a duty, and therefore an end in itself, and that the effort to effect this even without regard to the advantage that it secures us, is based, not on a conditional (pragmatic), but an unconditional (moral) imperative, may be seen from the following consideration. the power of proposing to ourselves an end is the characteristic of humanity (as distinguished from the brutes). with the end of humanity in our own person is therefore combined the rational will, and consequently the duty of deserving well of humanity by culture generally, by acquiring or advancing the power to carry out all sorts of possible ends, so far as this power is to be found in man; that is, it is a duty to cultivate the crude capacities of our nature, since it is by that cultivation that the animal is raised to man, therefore it is a duty in itself. this duty, however, is merely ethical, that is, of indeterminate obligation. no principle of reason prescribes how far one must go in this effort (in enlarging or correcting his faculty of understanding, that is, in acquisition of knowledge or technical capacity); and besides the difference in the circumstances into which men may come makes the choice of the kind of employment for which he should cultivate his talent very arbitrary. here, therefore, there is no law of reason for actions, but only for the maxim of actions, viz.: "cultivate thy faculties of mind and body so as to be effective for all ends that may come in thy way, uncertain which of them may become thy own." (b) cultivation of morality in ourselves. the greatest moral perfection of man is to do his duty, and that from duty (that the law be not only the rule but also the spring of his actions). now at first sight this seems to be a strict obligation, and as if the principle of duty commanded not merely the legality of every action, but also the morality, i.e., the mental disposition, with the exactness and strictness of a law; but in fact the law commands even here only the maxim of the action, namely, that we should seek the ground of obligation, not in the sensible impulses (advantage or disadvantage), but wholly in the law; so that the action itself is not commanded. for it is not possible to man to see so far into the depth of his own heart that he could ever be thoroughly certain of the purity of his moral purpose and the sincerity of his mind even in one single action, although he has no doubt about the legality of it. nay, often the weakness which deters a man from the risk of a crime is regarded by him as virtue (which gives the notion of strength). and how many there are who may have led a long blameless life, who are only fortunate in having escaped so many temptations. how much of the element of pure morality in their mental disposition may have belonged to each deed remains hidden even from themselves. accordingly, this duty to estimate the worth of one's actions not merely by their legality, but also by their morality (mental disposition), is only of indeterminate obligation; the law does not command this internal action in the human mind itself, but only the maxim of the action, namely, that we should strive with all our power that for all dutiful actions the thought of duty should be of itself an adequate spring. (2) happiness of others as an end which is also a duty {introduction ^paragraph 80} (a) physical welfare. benevolent wishes may be unlimited, for they do not imply doing anything. but the case is more difficult with benevolent action, especially when this is to be done, not from friendly inclination (love) to others, but from duty, at the expense of the sacrifice and mortification of many of our appetites. that this beneficence is a duty results from this: that since our self-love cannot be separated from the need to be loved by others (to obtain help from them in case of necessity), we therefore make ourselves an end for others; and this maxim can never be obligatory except by having the specific character of a universal law, and consequently by means of a will that we should also make others our ends. hence the happiness of others is an end that is also a duty. i am only bound then to sacrifice to others a part of my welfare without hope of recompense: because it is my duty, and it is impossible to assign definite limits how far that may go. much depends on what would be the true want of each according to his own feelings, and it must be left to each to determine this for himself. for that one should sacrifice his own happiness, his true wants, in order to promote that of others, would be a self-contradictory maxim if made a universal law. this duty, therefore, is only indeterminate; it has a certain latitude within which one may do more or less without our being able to assign its limits definitely. the law holds only for the maxims, not for definite actions. (b) moral well-being of others (salus moralis) also belongs to the happiness of others, which it is our duty to promote, but only a negative duty. the pain that a man feels from remorse of conscience, although its origin is moral, is yet in its operation physical, like grief, fear, and every other diseased condition. to take care that he should not be deservedly smitten by this inward reproach is not indeed my duty but his business; nevertheless, it is my duty to do nothing which by the nature of man might seduce him to that for which his conscience may hereafter torment him, that is, it is my duty not to give him occasion of stumbling. but there are no definite limits within which this care for the moral satisfaction of others must be kept; therefore it involves only an indeterminate obligation. ix. what is a duty of virtue? {introduction ^paragraph 85} virtue is the strength of the man's maxim in his obedience to duty. all strength is known only by the obstacles that it can overcome; and in the case of virtue the obstacles are the natural inclinations which may come into conflict with the moral purpose; and as it is the man who himself puts these obstacles in the way of his maxims, hence virtue is not merely a self-constraint (for that might be an effort of one inclination to constrain another), but is also a constraint according to a principle of inward freedom, and therefore by the mere idea of duty, according to its formal law. all duties involve a notion of necessitation by the law, and ethical duties involve a necessitation for which only an internal legislation is possible; juridical duties, on the other hand, one for which external legislation also is possible. both, therefore, include the notion of constraint, either self-constraint or constraint by others. the moral power of the former is virtue, and the action springing from such a disposition (from reverence for the law) may be called a virtuous action (ethical), although the law expresses a juridical duty. for it is the doctrine of virtue that commands us to regard the rights of men as holy. but it does not follow that everything the doing of which is virtue, is, properly speaking, a duty of virtue. the former may concern merely the form of the maxims; the latter applies to the matter of them, namely, to an end which is also conceived as duty. now, as the ethical obligation to ends, of which there may be many, is only indeterminate, because it contains only a law for the maxim of actions, and the end is the matter (object) of elective will; hence there are many duties, differing according to the difference of lawful ends, which may be called duties of virtue (officia honestatis), just because they are subject only to free self-constraint, not to the constraint of other men, and determine the end which is also a duty. virtue, being a coincidence of the rational will, with every duty firmly settled in the character, is, like everything formal, only one and the same. but, as regards the end of actions, which is also duty, that is, as regards the matter which one ought to make an end, there may be several virtues; and as the obligation to its maxim is called a duty of virtue, it follows that there are also several duties of virtue. {introduction ^paragraph 90} the supreme principle of ethics (the doctrine of virtue) is: "act on a maxim, the ends of which are such as it might be a universal law for everyone to have." on this principle a man is an end to himself as well as others, and it is not enough that he is not permitted to use either himself or others merely as means (which would imply that be might be indifferent to them), but it is in itself a duty of every man to make mankind in general his end. the principle of ethics being a categorical imperative does not admit of proof, but it admits of a justification from principles of pure practical reason. whatever in relation to mankind, to oneself, and others, can be an end, that is an end for pure practical reason: for this is a faculty of assigning ends in general; and to be indifferent to them, that is, to take no interest in them, is a contradiction; since in that case it would not determine the maxims of actions (which always involve an end), and consequently would cease to be practical reasons. pure reason, however, cannot command any ends a priori, except so far as it declares the same to be also a duty, which duty is then called a duty of virtue. x. the supreme principle of jurisprudence was analytical; that of ethics is synthetical {introduction ^paragraph 95} that external constraint, so far as it withstands that which hinders the external freedom that agrees with general laws (as an obstacle of the obstacle thereto), can be consistent with ends generally, is clear on the principle of contradiction, and i need not go beyond the notion of freedom in order to see it, let the end which each may be what he will. accordingly, the supreme principle of jurisprudence is an analytical principle. on the contrary the principle of ethics goes beyond the notion of external freedom and, by general laws, connects further with it an end which it makes a duty. this principle, therefore, is synthetic. the possibility of it is contained in the deduction (sec. ix.). this enlargement of the notion of duty beyond that of external freedom and of its limitation by the merely formal condition of its constant harmony; this, i say, in which, instead of constraint from without, there is set up freedom within, the power of self-constraint, and that not by the help of other inclinations, but by pure practical reason (which scorns all such help), consists in this fact, which raises it above juridical duty; that by it ends are proposed from which jurisprudence altogether abstracts. in the case of the moral imperative, and the supposition of freedom which it necessarily involves, the law, the power (to fulfil it) and the rational will that determines the maxim, constitute all the elements that form the notion of juridical duty. but in the imperative, which commands the duty of virtue, there is added, besides the notion of self-constraint, that of an end; not one that we have, but that we ought to have, which, therefore, pure practical reason has in itself, whose highest, unconditional end (which, however, continues to be duty) consists in this: that virtue is its own end and, by deserving well of men, is also its own reward. herein it shines so brightly as an ideal to human perceptions, it seems to cast in the shade even holiness itself, which is never tempted to transgression. * this, however, is an illusion arising from the fact that as we have no measure for the degree of strength, except the greatness of the obstacles which might have been overcome (which in our case are the inclinations), we are led to mistake the subjective conditions of estimation of a magnitude for the objective conditions of the magnitude itself. but when compared with human ends, all of which have their obstacles to be overcome, it is true that the worth of virtue itself, which is its own end, far outweighs the worth of all the utility and all the empirical ends and advantages which it may have as consequences. * so that one might vary two well-known lines of haller thus: {introduction ^paragraph 100} with all his failings, man is still better than angels void of will. we may, indeed, say that man is obliged to virtue (as a moral strength). for although the power (facultas) to overcome all imposing sensible impulses by virtue of his freedom can and must be presupposed, yet this power regarded as strength (robur) is something that must be acquired by the moral spring (the idea of the law) being elevated by contemplation of the dignity of the pure law of reason in us, and at the same time also by exercise. {introduction ^paragraph 105} xi. according to the preceding principles, the scheme of duties of virtue may be thus exhibited the material element of the duty of virtue {introduction ^paragraph 110} 1 2 internal duty of virtue external virtue of duty my own end, the end of others, which is also my the promotion of {introduction ^paragraph 115} duty which is also my duty (my own (the happiness perfection) of others) {introduction ^paragraph 120} 3 4 the law which is the end which is also spring also spring {introduction ^paragraph 125} on which the on which the morality legality of every free determination of will rests {introduction ^paragraph 130} the formal element of the duty of virtue. xii. preliminary notions of the susceptibility of the mind for notions of duty generally {introduction ^paragraph 135} these are such moral qualities as, when a man does not possess them, he is not bound to acquire them. they are: the moral feeling, conscience, love of one's neighbour, and respect for ourselves (self-esteem). there is no obligation to have these, since they are subjective conditions of susceptibility for the notion of duty, not objective conditions of morality. they are all sensitive and antecedent, but natural capacities of mind (praedispositio) to be affected by notions of duty; capacities which it cannot be regarded as a duty to have, but which every man has, and by virtue of which he can be brought under obligation. the consciousness of them is not of empirical origin, but can only follow on that of a moral law, as an effect of the same on the mind. a. the moral feeling this is the susceptibility for pleasure or displeasure, merely from the consciousness of the agreement or disagreement of our action with the law of duty. now, every determination of the elective will proceeds from the idea of the possible action through the feeling of pleasure or displeasure in taking an interest in it or its effect to the deed; and here the sensitive state (the affection of the internal sense) is either a pathological or a moral feeling. the former is the feeling that precedes the idea of the law, the latter that which may follow it. {introduction ^paragraph 140} now it cannot be a duty to have a moral feeling, or to acquire it; for all consciousness of obligation supposes this feeling in order that one may become conscious of the necessitation that lies in the notion of duty; but every man (as a moral being) has it originally in himself; the obligation, then, can only extend to the cultivation of it and the strengthening of it even by admiration of its inscrutable origin; and this is effected by showing how it is just, by the mere conception of reason, that it is excited most strongly, in its own purity and apart from every pathological stimulus; and it is improper to call this feeling a moral sense; for the word sense generally means a theoretical power of perception directed to an object; whereas the moral feeling (like pleasure and displeasure in general) is something merely subjective, which supplies no knowledge. no man is wholly destitute of moral feeling, for if he were totally unsusceptible of this sensation he would be morally dead; and, to speak in the language of physicians, if the moral vital force could no longer produce any effect on this feeling, then his humanity would be dissolved (as it were by chemical laws) into mere animality and be irrevocably confounded with the mass of other physical beings. but we have no special sense for (moral) good and evil any more than for truth, although such expressions are often used; but we have a susceptibility of the free elective will for being moved by pure practical reason and its law; and it is this that we call the moral feeling. b. of conscience similarly, conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is not a duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it originally within him. to be bound to have a conscience would be as much as to say to be under a duty to recognize duties. for conscience is practical reason which, in every case of law, holds before a man his duty for acquittal or condemnation; consequently it does not refer to an object, but only to the subject (affecting the moral feeling by its own act); so that it is an inevitable fact, not an obligation and duty. when, therefore, it is said, "this man has no conscience," what is meant is that he pays no heed to its dictates. for if he really had none, he would not take credit to himself for anything done according to duty, nor reproach himself with violation of duty, and therefore he would be unable even to conceive the duty of having a conscience. {introduction ^paragraph 145} i pass by the manifold subdivisions of conscience, and only observe what follows from what has just been said, namely, that there is no such thing as an erring conscience. no doubt it is possible sometimes to err in the objective judgement whether something is a duty or not; but i cannot err in the subjective whether i have compared it with my practical (here judicially acting) reason for the purpose of that judgement: for if i erred i would not have exercised practical judgement at all, and in that case there is neither truth nor error. unconscientiousness is not want of conscience, but the propensity not to heed its judgement. but when a man is conscious of having acted according to his conscience, then, as far as regards guilt or innocence, nothing more can be required of him, only he is bound to enlighten his understanding as to what is duty or not; but when it comes or has come to action, then conscience speaks involuntarily and inevitably. to act conscientiously can, therefore, not be a duty, since otherwise it would be necessary to have a second conscience, in order to be conscious of the act of the first. the duty here is only to cultivate our conscience, to quicken our attention to the voice of the internal judge, and to use all means to secure obedience to it, and is thus our indirect duty. c. of love to men {introduction ^paragraph 150} love is a matter of feeling, not of will or volition, and i cannot love because i will to do so, still less because i ought (i cannot be necessitated to love); hence there is no such thing as a duty to love. benevolence, however (amor benevolentiae), as a mode of action, may be subject to a law of duty. disinterested benevolence is often called (though very improperly) love; even where the happiness of the other is not concerned, but the complete and free surrender of all one's own ends to the ends of another (even a superhuman) being, love is spoken of as being also our duty. but all duty is necessitation or constraint, although it may be self-constraint according to a law. but what is done from constraint is not done from love. it is a duty to do good to other men according to our power, whether we love them or not, and this duty loses nothing of its weight, although we must make the sad remark that our species, alas! is not such as to be found particularly worthy of love when we know it more closely. hatred of men, however, is always hateful: even though without any active hostility it consists only in complete aversion from mankind (the solitary misanthropy). for benevolence still remains a duty even towards the manhater, whom one cannot love, but to whom we can show kindness. to hate vice in men is neither duty nor against duty, but a mere feeling of horror of vice, the will having no influence on the feeling nor the feeling on the will. beneficence is a duty. he who often practises this, and sees his beneficent purpose succeed, comes at last really to love him whom he has benefited. when, therefore, it is said: "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," this does not mean, "thou shalt first of all love, and by means of this love (in the next place) do him good"; but: "do good to thy neighbour, and this beneficence will produce in thee the love of men (as a settled habit of inclination to beneficence)." the love of complacency (amor complacentiae,) would therefore alone be direct. this is a pleasure immediately connected with the idea of the existence of an object, and to have a duty to this, that is, to be necessitated to find pleasure in a thing, is a contradiction. {introduction ^paragraph 155} d. of respect respect (reverentia) is likewise something merely subjective; a feeling of a peculiar kind not a judgement about an object which it would be a duty to effect or to advance. for if considered as duty it could only be conceived as such by means of the respect which we have for it. to have a duty to this, therefore, would be as much as to say to be bound in duty to have a duty. when, therefore, it is said: "man has a duty of self-esteem," this is improperly stated, and we ought rather to say: "the law within him inevitably forces from him respect for his own being, and this feeling (which is of a peculiar kind) is a basis of certain duties, that is, of certain actions which may be consistent with his duty to himself." but we cannot say that he has a duty of respect for himself; for he must have respect for the law within himself, in order to be able to conceive duty at all. xiii. general principles of the metaphysics of morals in the {introduction ^paragraph 160} treatment of pure ethics first. a duty can have only a single ground of obligation; and if two or more proof of it are adduced, this is a certain mark that either no valid proof has yet been given, or that there are several distinct duties which have been regarded as one. for all moral proofs, being philosophical, can only be drawn by means of rational knowledge from concepts, not like mathematics, through the construction of concepts. the latter science admits a variety of proofs of one and the same theorem; because in intuition a priori there may be several properties of an object, all of which lead back to the very same principle. if, for instance, to prove the duty of veracity, an argument is drawn first from the harm that a lie causes to other men; another from the worthlessness of a liar and the violation of his own self-respect, what is proved in the former argument is a duty of benevolence, not of veracity, that is to say, not the duty which required to be proved, but a different one. now, if, in giving a variety of proof for one and the same theorem, we flatter ourselves that the multitude of reasons will compensate the lack of weight in each taken separately, this is a very unphilosophical resource, since it betrays trickery and dishonesty; for several insufficient proofs placed beside one another do not produce certainty, nor even probability. they should advance as reason and consequence in a series, up to the sufficient reason, and it is only in this way that they can have the force of proof. yet the former is the usual device of the rhetorician. secondly. the difference between virtue and vice cannot be sought in the degree in which certain maxims are followed, but only in the specific quality of the maxims (their relation to the law). in other words, the vaunted principle of aristotle, that virtue is the mean between two vices, is false. * for instance, suppose that good management is given as the mean between two vices, prodigality and avarice; then its origin as a virtue can neither be defined as the gradual diminution of the former vice (by saving), nor as the increase of the expenses of the miserly. these vices, in fact, cannot be viewed as if they, proceeding as it were in opposite directions, met together in good management; but each of them has its own maxim, which necessarily contradicts that of the other. {introduction ^paragraph 165} * the common classical formulae of ethicsmedio tutissimus ibis; omne mimium vertitur in vitium; est modus in rebus, etc., medium tenuere beati; virtus est medium vitiorum et utrinque reductum["you will go most safely in the middle" (virgil); "every excess develops into a vice"; "there is a mean in all things, etc." (horace); "happy they who steadily pursue a middle course"; "virtue is the mean between two vices and equally removed from either" (horace).]contain a poor sort of wisdom, which has no definite principles; for this mean between two extremes, who will assign it for me? avarice (as a vice) is not distinguished from frugality (as a virtue) by merely being the latter pushed too far; but has a quite different principle (maxim), namely placing the end of economy not in the enjoyment of one's means, but in the mere possession of them, renouncing enjoyment; just as the vice of prodigality is not to be sought in the excessive enjoyment of one's means, but in the bad maxim which makes the use of them, without regard to their maintenance, the sole end. for the same reason, no vice can be defined as an excess in the practice of certain actions beyond what is proper (e.g., prodigalitas est excessus in consumendis opibus); or, as a less exercise of them than is fitting (avaritia est defectus, etc.). for since in this way the degree is left quite undefined, and the question whether conduct accords with duty or not, turns wholly on this, such an account is of no use as a definition. thirdly. ethical virtue must not be estimated by the power we attribute to man of fulfilling the law; but, conversely, the moral power must be estimated by the law, which commands categorically; not, therefore, by the empirical knowledge that we have of men as they are, but by the rational knowledge how, according to the ideas of humanity, they ought to be. these three maxims of the scientific treatment of ethics are opposed to the older apophthegms: {introduction ^paragraph 170} 1. there is only one virtue and only one vice. 2. virtue is the observance of the mean path between two opposite vices. 3. virtue (like prudence) must be learned from experience. xiv. of virtue in general {introduction ^paragraph 175} virtue signifies a moral strength of will. but this does not exhaust the notion; for such strength might also belong to a holy (superhuman) being, in whom no opposing impulse counteracts the law of his rational will; who therefore willingly does everything in accordance with the law. virtue then is the moral strength of a man's will in his obedience to duty; and this is a moral necessitation by his own law giving reason, inasmuch as this constitutes itself a power executing the law. it is not itself a duty, nor is it a duty to possess it (otherwise we should be in duty bound to have a duty), but it commands, and accompanies its command with a moral constraint (one possible by laws of internal freedom). but since this should be irresistible, strength is requisite, and the degree of this strength can be estimated only by the magnitude of the hindrances which man creates for himself, by his inclinations. vices, the brood of unlawful dispositions, are the monsters that he has to combat; wherefore this moral strength as fortitude (fortitudo moralis) constitutes the greatest and only true martial glory of man; it is also called the true wisdom, namely, the practical, because it makes the ultimate end of the existence of man on earth its own end. its possession alone makes man free, healthy, rich, a king, etc., nor either chance or fate deprive him of this, since he possesses himself, and the virtuous cannot lose his virtue. all the encomiums bestowed on the ideal of humanity in its moral perfection can lose nothing of their practical reality by the examples of what men now are, have been, or will probably be hereafter; anthropology which proceeds from mere empirical knowledge cannot impair anthroponomy which is erected by the unconditionally legislating reason; and although virtue may now and then be called meritorious (in relation to men, not to the law), and be worthy of reward, yet in itself, as it is its own end, so also it must be regarded as its own reward. virtue considered in its complete perfection is, therefore, regarded not as if man possessed virtue, but as if virtue possessed the man, since in the former case it would appear as though he had still had the choice (for which he would then require another virtue, in order to select virtue from all other wares offered to him). to conceive a plurality of virtues (as we unavoidably must) is nothing else but to conceive various moral objects to which the (rational) will is led by the single principle of virtue; and it is the same with the opposite vices. the expression which personifies both is a contrivance for affecting the sensibility, pointing, however, to a moral sense. hence it follows that an aesthetic of morals is not a part, but a subjective exposition of the metaphysic of morals; in which the emotions that accompany the force of the moral law make the that force to be felt; for example: disgust, horror, etc., which gives a sensible moral aversion in order to gain the precedence from the merely sensible incitement. {introduction ^paragraph 180} xv. of the principle on which ethics is separated from jurisprudence this separation on which the subdivision of moral philosophy in general rests, is founded on this: that the notion of freedom, which is common to both, makes it necessary to divide duties into those of external and those of internal freedom; the latter of which alone are ethical. hence this internal freedom which is the condition of all ethical duty must be discussed as a preliminary (discursus praeliminaris), just as above the doctrine of conscience was discussed as the condition of all duty. {introduction ^paragraph 185} remarks of the doctrine of virtue on the principle of internal freedom. habit (habitus) is a facility of action and a subjective perfection of the elective will. but not every such facility is a free habit (habitus libertatis); for if it is custom (assuetudo), that is, a uniformity of action which, by frequent repetition, has become a necessity, then it is not a habit proceeding from freedom, and therefore not a moral habit. virtue therefore cannot be defined as a habit of free law-abiding actions, unless indeed we add "determining itself in its action by the idea of the law"; and then this habit is not a property of the elective will, but of the rational will, which is a faculty that in adopting a rule also declares it to be a universal law, and it is only such a habit that can be reckoned as virtue. two things are required for internal freedom: to be master of oneself in a given case (animus sui compos) and to have command over oneself (imperium in semetipsum), that is to subdue his emotions and to govern his passions. with these conditions, the character (indoles) is noble (erecta); in the opposite case, it is ignoble (indoles abjecta serva). {introduction ^paragraph 190} xvi. virtue requires, first of all, command over oneself emotions and passions are essentially distinct; the former belong to feeling in so far as this coming before reflection makes it more difficult or even impossible. hence emotion is called hasty (animus praeceps). and reason declares through the notion of virtue that a man should collect himself; but this weakness in the life of one's understanding, joined with the strength of a mental excitement, is only a lack of virtue (untugend), and as it were a weak and childish thing, which may very well consist with the best will, and has further this one good thing in it, that this storm soon subsides. a propensity to emotion (e.g., resentment) is therefore not so closely related to vice as passion is. passion, on the other hand, is the sensible appetite grown into a permanent inclination (e. g., hatred in contrast to resentment). the calmness with which one indulges it leaves room for reflection and allows the mind to frame principles thereon for itself; and thus when the inclination falls upon what contradicts the law, to brood on it, to allow it to root itself deeply, and thereby to take up evil (as of set purpose) into one's maxim; and this is then specifically evil, that is, it is a true vice. virtue, therefore, in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man. {introduction ^paragraph 195} xvii. virtue necessarily presupposes apathy (considered as strength) this word (apathy) has come into bad repute, just as if it meant want of feeling, and therefore subjective indifference with respect to the objects of the elective will; it is supposed to be a weakness. this misconception may be avoided by giving the name moral apathy to that want of emotion which is to be distinguished from indifference. in the former, the feelings arising from sensible impressions lose their influence on the moral feeling only because the respect for the law is more powerful than all of them together. it is only the apparent strength of a fever patient that makes even the lively sympathy with good rise to an emotion, or rather degenerate into it. such an emotion is called enthusiasm, and it is with reference to this that we are to explain the moderation which is usually recommended in virtuous practices: {introduction ^paragraph 200} insani sapiens nomen ferat, aequus uniqui ultra quam satis est virtutem si petat ipsam. * * horace. ["let the wise man bear the name of fool, and the just of unjust, if he pursue virtue herself beyond the proper bounds."] {introduction ^paragraph 205} for otherwise it is absurd to imagine that one could be too wise or too virtuous. the emotion always belongs to the sensibility, no matter by what sort of object it may be excited. the true strength of virtue is the mind at rest, with a firm, deliberate resolution to bring its law into practice. that is the state of health in the moral life; on the contrary, the emotion, even when it is excited by the idea of the good, is a momentary glitter which leaves exhaustion after it. we may apply the term fantastically virtuous to the man who will admit nothing to be indifferent in respect of morality (adiaphora), and who strews all his steps with duties, as with traps, and will not allow it to be indifferent whether a man eats fish or flesh, drink beer or wine, when both agree with him; a micrology which, if adopted into the doctrine of virtue, would make its rule a tyranny. remark {introduction ^paragraph 210} virtue is always in progress, and yet always begins from the beginning. the former follows from the fact that, objectively considered, it is an ideal and unattainable, and yet it is a duty constantly to approximate to it. the second is founded subjectively on the nature of man which is affected by inclinations, under the influence of which virtue, with its maxims adopted once for all, can never settle in a position of rest; but, if it is not rising, inevitably falls; because moral maxims cannot, like technical, be based on custom (for this belongs to the physical character of the determination of will); but even if the practice of them become a custom, the agent would thereby lose the freedom in the choice of his maxims, which freedom is the character of an action done from duty. on_conscience on conscience the consciousness of an internal tribunal in man (before which "his thoughts accuse or excuse one another") is conscience. every man has a conscience, and finds himself observed by an inward judge which threatens and keeps him in awe (reverence combined with fear); and this power which watches over the laws within him is not something which he himself (arbitrarily) makes, but it is incorporated in his being. it follows him like his shadow, when he thinks to escape. he may indeed stupefy himself with pleasures and distractions, but cannot avoid now and then coming to himself or awaking, and then he at once perceives its awful voice. in his utmost depravity, he may, indeed, pay no attention to it, but he cannot avoid hearing it. now this original intellectual and (as a conception of duty) moral capacity, called conscience, has this peculiarity in it, that although its business is a business of man with himself, yet he finds himself compelled by his reason to transact it as if at the command of another person. for the transaction here is the conduct of a trial (causa) before a tribunal. but that he who is accused by his conscience should be conceived as one and the same person with the judge is an absurd conception of a judicial court; for then the complainant would always lose his case. therefore, in all duties the conscience of the man must regard another than himself as the judge of his actions, if it is to avoid self-contradiction. now this other may be an actual or a merely ideal person which reason frames to itself. such an idealized person (the authorized judge of conscience) must be one who knows the heart; for the tribunal is set up in the inward part of man; at the same time he must also be all-obliging, that is, must be or be conceived as a person in respect of whom all duties are to be regarded as his commands; since conscience is the inward judge of all free actions. now, since such a moral being must at the same time possess all power (in heaven and earth), since otherwise he could not give his commands their proper effect (which the office of judge necessarily requires), and since such a moral being possessing power over all is called god, hence conscience must be conceived as the subjective principle of a responsibility for one's deeds before god; nay, this latter concept is contained (though it be only obscurely) in every moral self-consciousness. the end german philosophy and politics by john dewey professor of philosophy in columbia university new york henry holt and company 1915 copyright, 1915, by henry holt and company the quinn & boden co. press rahway, n. j. preface the will of john calvin mcnair established a foundation at the university of north carolina upon which public lectures are to be given from time to time to the members of the university. this book contains three lectures which were given in february of this year upon this foundation. it is a pleasure to acknowledge the many courtesies enjoyed during my brief stay at chapel hill, the seat of the university. j. d. columbia university, new york city, april, 1915. contents page i german philosophy: the two worlds 3 ii german moral and political philosophy 47 iii the germanic philosophy of history 91 index 133 german philosophy and politics i german philosophy: the two worlds the nature of the influence of general ideas upon practical affairs is a troubled question. mind dislikes to find itself a pilgrim in an alien world. a discovery that the belief in the influence of thought upon action is an illusion would leave men profoundly saddened with themselves and with the world. were it not that the doctrine forbids any discovery influencing affairs--since the discovery would be an idea--we should say that the discovery of the wholly _ex post facto_ and idle character of ideas would profoundly influence subsequent affairs. the strange thing is that when men had least control over nature and their own affairs, they were most sure of the efficacy of thought. the doctrine that nature does nothing in vain, that it is directed by purpose, was not engrafted by scholasticism upon science; it formulates an instinctive tendency. and if the doctrine be fallacious, its pathos has a noble quality. it testifies to the longing of human thought for a world of its own texture. yet just in the degree in which men, by means of inventions and political arrangements, have found ways of making their thoughts effective, they have come to question whether any thinking is efficacious. our notions in physical science tend to reduce mind to a bare spectator of a machine-like nature grinding its unrelenting way. the vogue of evolutionary ideas has led many to regard intelligence as a deposit from history, not as a force in its making. we look backward rather than forward; and when we look forward we seem to see but a further unrolling of a panorama long ago rolled up on a cosmic reel. even bergson, who, to a casual reader, appears to reveal vast unexplored vistas of genuinely novel possibilities, turns out, upon careful study, to regard _intellect_ (everything which in the past has gone by the name of observation and reflection) as but an evolutionary deposit whose importance is confined to the conservation of a life already achieved, and bids us trust to instinct, or something akin to instinct, for the future:--as if there were hope and consolation in bidding us trust to that which, in any case, we cannot intelligently direct or control. i do not see that the school of history which finds bergson mystic and romantic, which prides itself upon its hard-headed and scientific character, comes out at a different place. i refer to the doctrine of the economic interpretation of history in its extreme form--which, so its adherents tell us, is its only logical form. it is easy to follow them when they tell us that past historians have ignored the great part played by economic forces, and that descriptions and explanations have been correspondingly superficial. when one reflects that the great problems of the present day are those attending economic reorganization, one might even take the doctrine as a half-hearted confession that historians are really engaged in construing the past in terms of the problems and interests of an impending future, instead of reporting a past in order to discover some mathematical curve which future events are bound to describe. but no; our strictly scientific economic interpreters will have it that economic forces present an inevitable evolution, of which state and church, art and literature, science and philosophy are by-products. it is useless to suggest that while modern industry has given an immense stimulus to scientific inquiry, yet nevertheless the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century comes after the scientific revolution of the seventeenth. the dogma forbids any connection. but when we note that marx gave it away that his materialistic interpretation of history was but the hegelian idealistic dialectic turned upside down, we may grow wary. is it, after all, history we are dealing with or another philosophy of history? and when we discover that the great importance of the doctrine is urged upon us, when we find that we are told that the general recognition of its truth helps us out of our present troubles and indicates a path for future effort, we positively take heart. these writers do not seem to mean just what they say. like the rest of us, they are human, and infected with a belief that ideas, even highly abstract theories, are of efficacy in the conduct of human affairs influencing the history which is yet to be. * * * * * i have, however, no intention of entering upon this controversy, much less of trying to settle it. these remarks are but preliminary to a consideration of some of the practical affiliations of portions of the modern history of philosophical thought with practical social affairs. and if i set forth my own position in the controversy in question, the statement is frankly a personal one, intended to make known the prepossessions with which i approach the discussion of the political bearings of one phase of modern philosophy. i do not believe, then, that _pure_ ideas, or pure thought, ever exercised any influence upon human action. i believe that very much of what has been presented as philosophic reflection is in effect simply an idealization, for the sake of emotional satisfaction, of the brutely given state of affairs, and is not a genuine discovery of the practical influence of ideas. in other words, i believe it to be esthetic in type even when sadly lacking in esthetic form. and i believe it is easy to exaggerate the practical influence of even the more vital and genuine ideas of which i am about to speak. but i also believe that there are no such things as _pure_ ideas or _pure_ reason. every living thought represents a gesture made toward the world, an attitude taken to some practical situation in which we are implicated. most of these gestures are ephemeral; they reveal the state of him who makes them rather than effect a significant alteration of conditions. but at some times they are congenial to a situation in which men in masses are acting and suffering. they supply a model for the attitudes of others; they condense into a dramatic type of action. they then form what we call the "great" systems of thought. not all ideas perish with the momentary response. they are voiced and others hear; they are written and others read. education, formal and informal, embodies them not so much in other men's minds as in their permanent dispositions of action. they are in the blood, and afford sustenance to conduct; they are in the muscles and men strike or retire. even emotional and esthetic systems may breed a disposition toward the world and take overt effect. the reactions thus engendered are, indeed, superficial as compared with those in which more primitive instincts are embodied. the business of eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and being given in marriage, making war and peace, gets somehow carried on along with any and every system of ideas which the world has known. but how, and when and where and for what men do even these things is tremendously affected by the abstract ideas which get into circulation. * * * * * i take it that i may seem to be engaged in an emphatic urging of the obvious. however it may be with a few specialized schools of men, almost everybody takes it as a matter of course that ideas influence action and help determine the subsequent course of events. yet there is a purpose in this insistence. most persons draw the line at a certain kind of general ideas. they are especially prone to regard the ideas which constitute philosophic theories as practically innocuous--as more or less amiable speculations significant at the most for moments of leisure, in moments of relief from preoccupation with affairs. above all, men take the particular general ideas which happen to affect their own conduct of life as normal and inevitable. pray what other ideas would any sensible man have? they forget the extent to which these ideas originated as parts of a remote and technical theoretical system, which by multitudes of non-reflective channels has infiltrated into their habits of imagination and behavior. an expert intellectual anatomist, my friends, might dissect you and find platonic and aristotelian tissues, organs from st. augustine and st. thomas aquinas, locke and descartes, in the make-up of the ideas by which you are habitually swayed, and find, indeed, that they and other thinkers of whose names you have never heard constitute a larger part of your mental structure than does the calvin or kant, darwin or spencer, hegel or emerson, bergson or browning to whom you yield conscious allegiance. philosophers themselves are naturally chiefly responsible for the ordinary estimate of their own influence, or lack of influence. they have been taken mostly at their own word as to what they were doing, and what for the most part they have pretended to do is radically different from what they have actually done. they are quite negligible as seers and reporters of ultimate reality, or the essential natures of things. and it is in this aspect that they have mostly fancied seeing themselves. their actual office has been quite other. they have told about nature and life and society in terms of collective human desire and aspiration as these were determined by contemporary difficulties and struggles. i have spoken thus far as if the influence of general ideas upon action were likely to be beneficial. it goes against the grain to attribute evil to the workings of intelligence. but we might as well face the dilemma. what is called pure thought, thought freed from the empirical contingencies of life, would, even if it existed, be irrelevant to the guidance of action. for the latter always operates amid the circumstance of contingencies. and thinking which is colored by time and place must always be of a mixed quality. in part, it will detect and hold fast to more permanent tendencies and arrangements; in part, it will take the limitations of its own period as necessary and universal--even as intrinsically desirable. the traits which give thinking effectiveness for the good give it also potency for harm. a physical catastrophe, an earthquake or conflagration, acts only where it happens. while its effects endure, it passes away. but it is of the nature of ideas to be abstract: that is to say, severed from the circumstances of their origin, and through embodiment in language capable of operating in remote climes and alien situations. time heals physical ravages, but it may only accentuate the evils of an intellectual catastrophe--for by no lesser name can we call a systematic intellectual error. to one who is professionally preoccupied with philosophy there is much in its history which is profoundly depressing. he sees ideas which were not only natural but useful in their native time and place, figuring in foreign contexts so as to formulate defects as virtues and to give rational sanction to brute facts, and to oppose alleged eternal truths to progress. he sees movements which might have passed away with change of circumstance as casually as they arose, acquire persistence and dignity because thought has taken cognizance of them and given them intellectual names. the witness of history is that to think in general and abstract terms is dangerous; it elevates ideas beyond the situations in which they were born and charges them with we know not what menace for the future. and in the past the danger has been the greater because philosophers have so largely purported to be concerned not with contemporary problems of living, but with essential truth and reality viewed under the form of eternity. in bringing these general considerations to a close, i face an embarrassment. i must choose some particular period of intellectual history for more concrete illustration of the mutual relationship of philosophy and practical social affairs--which latter, for the sake of brevity, i term politics. one is tempted to choose plato. for in spite of the mystic and transcendental coloring of his thought, it was he who defined philosophy as the science of the state, or the most complete and organized whole known to man; it is no accident that his chief work is termed the "republic." in modern times, we are struck by the fact that english philosophy from bacon to john stuart mill has been cultivated by men of affairs rather than by professors, and with a direct outlook upon social interests. in france, the great period of philosophy, the period of _les philosophes_, was the time in which were forged the ideas which connect in particular with the french revolution and in general with the conceptions which spread so rapidly through the civilized world, of the indefinite perfectibility of humanity, the rights of man, and the promotion of a society as wide as humanity, based upon allegiance to reason. somewhat arbitrarily i have, however, selected some aspects of classic german thought for my illustrative material. partly, i suppose, because one is piqued by the apparent challenge which its highly technical, professorial and predominantly _a priori_ character offers to the proposition that there is close connection between abstract thought and the tendencies of collective life. more to the point, probably, is the fact that the heroic age of german thought lies almost within the last century, while the creative period of continental thought lies largely in the eighteenth century, and that of british thought still earlier. it was taine, the frenchman, who said that all the leading ideas of the present day were produced in germany between 1780 and 1830. above all, the germans, as we say, have philosophy in their blood. such phrases generally mean something not about hereditary qualities, but about the social conditions under which ideas propagate and circulate. now germany is the modern state which provides the greatest facilities for general ideas to take effect through social inculcation. its system of education is adapted to that end. higher schools and universities in germany are really, not just nominally, under the control of the state and part of the state life. in spite of freedom of academic instruction when once a teacher is installed in office, the political authorities have always taken a hand, at critical junctures, in determining the selection of teachers in subjects that had a direct bearing upon political policies. moreover, one of the chief functions of the universities is the preparation of future state officials. legislative activity is distinctly subordinate to that of administration conducted by a trained civil service, or, if you please, bureaucracy. membership in this bureaucracy is dependent upon university training. philosophy, both directly and indirectly, plays an unusually large rôle in the training. the faculty of law does not chiefly aim at the preparation of practicing lawyers. philosophies of jurisprudence are essential parts of the law teaching; and every one of the classic philosophers took a hand in writing a philosophy of law and of the state. moreover, in the theological faculties, which are also organic parts of state-controlled institutions, the theology and higher criticism of protestant germany have been developed, and developed also in close connection with philosophical systems--like those of kant, schleiermacher and hegel. in short, the educational and administrative agencies of germany provide ready-made channels through which philosophic ideas may flow on their way to practical affairs. political public opinion hardly exists in germany in the sense in which it obtains in france, great britain or this country. so far as it exists, the universities may be said to be its chief organs. they, rather than the newspapers, crystallize it and give it articulate expression. instead of expressing surprise at the characteristic utterances of university men with reference to the great war, we should then rather turn to the past history in which the ideas now uttered were generated. in an account of german intellectual history sufficiently extensive we should have to go back at least to luther. fortunately, for our purposes, what he actually did and taught is not so important as the more recent tradition concerning his peculiarly germanic status and office. all peoples are proud of all their great men. germany is proud of luther as its greatest national hero. but while most nations are proud of their great men, germany is proud of itself rather for producing luther. it finds him as a germanic product quite natural--nay, inevitable. a belief in the universal character of his genius thus naturally is converted into a belief of the essentially universal quality of the people who produced him. heine was not disposed by birth or temperament to overestimate the significance of luther. but here is what he said: "luther is not only the greatest but the most _german_ man in our history. . . . he possessed qualities that we seldom see associated--nay, that we usually find in the most hostile antagonism. he was at once a dreamy mystic and a practical man of action. . . . he was both a cold scholastic word-sifter and an inspired god-drunk prophet. . . . he was full of the awful reverence of god, full of self-sacrificing devotion to the holy spirit, he could lose himself entirely in pure spirituality. yet he was fully acquainted with the glories of this earth; he knew how estimable they are; it was his lips that uttered the famous maxim- "'who loves not woman, wine and song, remains a fool his whole life long.' he was a complete man, i might say an absolute man, in whom there was no discord between matter and spirit. to call him a spiritualist would be as erroneous as to call him a sensualist. . . . eternal praise to the man whom we have to thank for the deliverance of our most precious possessions." and again speaking of luther's work: "thus was established in germany spiritual freedom, or as it is called, freedom of thought. thought became a right and the decisions of reason legitimate." the specific correctness of the above is of slight importance as compared with the universality of the tradition which made these ideas peculiarly germanic, and luther, therefore, a genuine national hero and type. it is, however, with kant that i commence. in protestant germany his name is almost always associated with that of luther. that he brought to consciousness the true meaning of the lutheran reformation is a commonplace of the german historian. one can hardly convey a sense of the unique position he occupies in the german thought of the last two generations. it is not that every philosopher is a kantian, or that the professed kantians stick literally to his text. far from it. but kant must always be reckoned with. no position unlike his should be taken up till kant has been reverently disposed of, and the new position evaluated in his terms. to scoff at him is fair sacrilege. in a genuine sense, he marks the end of the older age. he _is_ the transition to distinctively modern thought. one shrinks at the attempt to compress even his leading ideas into an hour. fortunately for me, few who read my attempt will have sufficient acquaintance with the tomes of kantian interpretation and exposition to appreciate the full enormity of my offense. for i cannot avoid the effort to seize from out his highly technical writings a single idea and to label that his germinal idea. for only in this way can we get a clew to those general ideas with which germany characteristically prefers to connect the aspirations and convictions that animate its deeds. adventuring without further preface into this field, i find that kant's decisive contribution is the idea of a dual legislation of reason by which are marked off two distinct realms--that of science and that of morals. each of these two realms has its own final and authoritative constitution: on one hand, there is the world of sense, the world of phenomena in space and time in which science is at home; on the other hand, is the supersensible, the noumenal world, the world of moral duty and moral freedom. every cultivated man is familiar with the conflict of science and religion, brute fact and ideal purpose, what is and what ought to be, necessity and freedom. in the domain of science causal dependence is sovereign; while freedom is lord of moral action. it is the proud boast of those who are kantian in spirit that kant discovered laws deep in the very nature of things and of human experience whose recognition puts an end forever to all possibility of conflict. in principle, the discovery is as simple as its application is far-reaching. both science and moral obligation exist. analysis shows that each is based upon laws supplied by one and the same reason (of which, as he is fond of saying, reason is the legislator); but laws of such a nature that their respective jurisdictions can never compete. the material for the legislation of reason in the natural world is sense. in this sensible world of space and time, causal necessity reigns: such is the decree of reason itself. every attempt to find freedom, to locate ideals, to draw support for man's moral aspirations in nature, is predoomed to failure. the effort of reason to do these things is contrary to the very nature of reason itself: it is self-contradictory, suicidal. when one considers the extent in which religion has been bound up with belief in miracles, or departures from the order of nature; when one notes how support for morals has been sought in natural law; how morals have been tied up with man's natural tendencies to seek happiness and with consequences in the way of reward of virtue and punishment of vice; how history has been explained as a play of moral forces--in short, the extent to which both the grounds and the sanctions for morality have been sought within the time and space world, one realizes the scope of the revolution wrought by kant, provided his philosophy be true. add to this the fact that men in the past have not taken seriously the idea that every existence in space, every event in time, is connected by bonds of causal necessity with other existences and events, and consequently have had no motive for the systematic pursuit of science. how is the late appearance of science in human history to be accounted for? how are we to understand the comparatively slight influence which science still has upon the conduct of life? men, when they have not consciously looked upon nature as a scene of caprice, have failed to bring home to themselves that nature is a scene of the legislative activity of reason in the material of sense. this fact the kantian philosophy brings home to man once for all; it brings it home not as a pious wish, nor as a precarious hope confirmed empirically here and there by victories won by a galileo or a newton, but as an indubitable fact necessary to the existence of any cognitive experience at all. the reign of law in nature is the work of the same reason which proceeds empirically and haltingly to the discovery of law here and there. thus the acceptance of the kantian philosophy not only frees man at a single stroke from superstition, sentimentalism and moral and theological romanticism, but gives at the same stroke authorization and stimulation to the detailed efforts of man to wrest from nature her secrets of causal law. what sparse groups of men of natural science had been doing for the three preceding centuries, kant proclaimed to be the manifestation of the essential constitution of man as a knowing being. for those who accept the kantian philosophy, it is accordingly the _magna charta_ of scientific work: the adequate formulation of the constitution which directs and justifies their scientific inquiries. it is a truism to say that among the germans as nowhere else has developed a positive reverence for science. in what other land does one find in the organic law mention of science, and read in its constitution an express provision that "science and its teaching are free"? but this expresses only half of kant's work. reason is itself supersensible. giving law to the material of sense and so constituting nature, it is in itself above sense and nature, as a sovereign is above his subjects. the supersensible world is thus a more congenial field for its legislative activity than the physical world of space and time. but is any such field open to human experience? has not kant himself closed and locked the gates in his assertion that the entire operation of man's knowing powers is confined to the realm of sense in which causal necessity dominates? yes, as far as knowledge is concerned. no, as far as moral obligation is concerned. the fact of duty, the existence of a categorical command to act thus and so, no matter what the pressure of physical surroundings or the incitation of animal inclinations, is as much a fact as the existence of knowledge of the physical world. such a command cannot proceed from nature. what is cannot introduce man to what ought to be, and thus impose its own opposite upon him. nature only enmeshes men in its relentless machine-like movement. the very existence of a command in man to act for the sake of what ought to be--no matter what actually is--is thus of itself final proof of the operation of supersensible reason within human experience: not, indeed, within theoretical or cognitive experience, but within moral experience. the moral law, the law of obligation, thus proceeds from a source in man above reason. it is token of his membership as a moral being in a kingdom of absolute ends above nature. but it is also directed to something in man which is equally above nature: it appeals to and demands freedom. reason is incapable of anything so irrational, so self-contradictory, as imposing a law of action to which no faculty of action corresponds. the freedom of the moral will is the answer to the unqualified demand of duty. it is not open to man to accept or reject this truth as he may see fit. it is a principle of reason which is involved in every exercise of reason. in denying it in name, man none the less acknowledges it in fact. only men already sophisticated by vice who are seeking an excuse for their viciousness ever try to deny, even in words, the response which freedom makes to the voice of duty. since, however, freedom is an absolute stranger to the natural and sensible world, man's possession of moral freedom is the final sign and seal of his membership in a supersensible world. the existence of an ideal or spiritual realm with its own laws is thus certified to by the fact of man's own citizenship within it. but, once more, this citizenship and this certification are solely moral. scientific or intellectual warrant for it is impossible or self-contradictory, for science works by the law of causal necessity with respect to what is, ignorant of any law of freedom referring to what should be. with the doors to the supersensible world now open, it is but a short step to religion. of the negative traits of true religion we may be sure in advance. it will not be based upon intellectual grounds. proofs of the existence of god, of the creation of nature, of the existence of an immaterial soul from the standpoint of knowledge are all of them impossible. they transgress the limits of knowledge, since that is confined to the sensible world of time and space. neither will true religion be based upon historic facts such as those of jewish history or the life of jesus or the authority of a historic institution like a church. for all historic facts as such fall within the realm of time which is sensibly conditioned. from the points of view of natural theology and historic religions kant was greeted by his contemporaries as the "all-shattering." quite otherwise is it, however, as to moral proofs of religious ideas and ideals. in kant's own words: "i have found it necessary to deny knowledge of god, freedom and immortality in order to find a place for faith"--faith being a moral act. then he proceeds to reinterpret in terms of the sensuous natural principle and the ideal rational principle the main doctrines of lutheran protestantism. the doctrines of incarnation, original sin, atonement, justification by faith and sanctification, while baseless literally and historically, are symbols of the dual nature of man, as phenomenal and noumenal. and while kant scourges ecclesiastical religions so far as they have relied upon ceremonies and external authority, upon external rewards and punishments, yet he ascribes transitional value to them in that they have symbolized ultimate moral truths. although dogmas are but the external vesture of inner truths, yet it may be good for us "to continue to pay reverence to the outward vesture since that has served to bring to general acceptance a doctrine which really rests upon an authority within the soul of man, and which, therefore, needs no miracle to commend it." it is a precarious undertaking to single out some one thing in german philosophy as of typical importance in understanding german national life. yet i am committed to the venture. my conviction is that we have its root idea in the doctrine of kant concerning the two realms, one outer, physical and necessary, the other inner, ideal and free. to this we must add that, in spite of their separateness and independence, the primacy always lies with the inner. as compared with this, the philosophy of a nietzsche, to which so many resort at the present time for explanation of what seems to them otherwise inexplicable, is but a superficial and transitory wave of opinion. surely the chief mark of distinctively german civilization is its combination of self-conscious idealism with unsurpassed technical efficiency and organization in the varied fields of action. if this is not a realization in fact of what is found in kant, i am totally at loss for a name by which to characterize it. i do not mean that conscious adherence to the philosophy of kant has been the cause of the marvelous advances made in germany in the natural sciences and in the systematic application of the fruits of intelligence to industry, trade, commerce, military affairs, education, civic administration and industrial organization. such a claim would be absurd. but i do mean, primarily, that kant detected and formulated the direction in which the german genius was moving, so that his philosophy is of immense prophetic significance; and, secondarily, that his formulation has furnished a banner and a conscious creed which in solid and definite fashion has intensified and deepened the work actually undertaken. in bringing to an imaginative synthesis what might have remained an immense diversity of enterprises, kantianism has helped formulate a sense of a national mission and destiny. over and above this, his formulation and its influence aids us to understand why the german consciousness has never been swamped by its technical efficiency and devotion, but has remained self-consciously, not to say self-righteously, idealistic. such a work as germany has undertaken might well seem calculated to generate attachment to a positivistic or even materialistic philosophy and to a utilitarian ethics. but no; the teaching of kant had put mechanism forever in its subordinate place at the very time it inculcated devotion to mechanism in its place. above and beyond as an end, for the sake of which all technical achievements, all promotion of health, wealth and happiness, exist, lies the realm of inner freedom, of the ideal and the supersensible. the more the germans accomplish in the way of material conquest, the more they are conscious of fulfilling an ideal mission; every external conquest affords the greater warrant for dwelling in an inner region where mechanism does not intrude. thus it turns out that while the germans have been, to employ a catchword of recent thought, the most technically pragmatic of all peoples in their actual conduct of affairs, there is no people so hostile to the spirit of a pragmatic philosophy. the combination of devotion to mechanism and organization in outward affairs and of loyalty to freedom and consciousness in the inner realm has its obvious attractions. realized in the common temper of a people it might well seem invincible. ended is the paralysis of action arising from the split between science and useful achievements on one side and spiritual and ideal aspirations on the other. each feeds and reinforces the other. freedom of soul and subordination of action dwell in harmony. obedience, definite subjection and control, detailed organization is the lesson enforced by the rule of causal necessity in the outer world of space and time in which action takes place. unlimited freedom, the heightening of consciousness for its own sake, sheer reveling in noble ideals, the law of the inner world. what more can mortal man ask? it would not be difficult, i imagine, to fill the three hours devoted to these lectures with quotations from representative german authors to the effect that supreme regard for the inner meaning of things, reverence for inner truth in disregard of external consequences of advantage or disadvantage, is the distinguishing mark of the german spirit as against, say, the externality of the latin spirit or the utilitarianism of anglo-saxondom. i content myself with one quotation, a quotation which also indicates the same inclination to treat historic facts as symbolic of great truths which is found in kant's treatment of church dogmas. speaking of the germanic languages, an historian of german civilization says: "while all other indo-european languages allow a wide liberty in placing the accent and make external considerations, such as the quantity of the syllables and euphony, of deciding influence, the germanic tribes show a remarkable and intentional transition to an internal principle of accentuation. . . . of all related peoples the germanic alone puts the accent on the root syllable of the word, that is, on the part that gives it its meaning. there is hardly an ethnological fact extant which gives so much food for thought as this. what leads these people to give up a habit which must have been so old that it had become instinctive, and to evolve out of their own minds a principle which indicates a power of discrimination far in advance of anything we are used to attribute to the lower stages of civilization? circumstances of which we are not now aware must have compelled them to distinguish the inner essence of things from their external form, and must have taught them to appreciate the former as of higher, indeed as of sole, importance. it is this accentuation of the real substance of things, the ever-powerful desire to discover this real substance, and the ever-present impulse to give expression to this inner reality which has become the controlling trait of the germanic soul. hence the conviction gained by countless unfruitful efforts, that reason alone will never get at the true foundation of things; hence the thoroughness of german science; hence a great many of the qualities that explain germanic successes and failures; hence, perhaps, a certain stubbornness and obstinacy, the unwillingness to give up a conviction once formed; hence the tendency to mysticism; hence that continuous struggle which marks the history of german art,--the struggle to give to the contents powerful and adequate expression, and to satisfy at the same time the requirements of esthetic elegance and beauty, a struggle in which the victory is ever on the side of truth, though it be homely, over beauty of form whenever it appears deceitful; hence the part played by music as the only expression of those imponderable vibrations of the soul for which language seems to have no words; hence the faith of the german in his mission among the nations as a bringer of truth, as a recognizer of the real value of things as against the hollow shell of beautiful form, as the doer of right deeds for their own sake and not for any reward beyond the natural outcome of the deed itself." the division established between the outer realm, in which of course acts fall, and the inner realm of consciousness explains what is otherwise so paradoxical to a foreigner in german writings: the constant assertion that germany brought to the world the conscious recognition of the principle of freedom coupled with the assertion of the relative incompetency of the german folk _en masse_ for political self-direction. to one saturated by the english tradition which identifies freedom with power to act upon one's ideas, to make one's purposes effective in regulation of public affairs, the combination seems self-contradictory. to the german it is natural. readers who have been led by newspaper quotations to regard bernhardi as preaching simply a gospel of superior force will find in his writings a continual assertion that _the_ german spirit is the spirit of freedom, of complete intellectual self-determination; that the germans have "always been the standard bearers of free thought." we find him supporting his teachings not by appeal to nietzsche, but by the kantian distinction between the "empirical and rational ego." it is bernhardi who says: "two great movements were born from the german intellectual life, on which, henceforth, _all the intellectual and moral progress of mankind must rest_:--the reformation and the critical philosophy. the reformation that broke the intellectual yoke imposed by the church, which checked all free progress; and the critique of pure reason which put a stop to the caprice of philosophic speculation by defining for the human mind the limitations of its capacities for knowledge, and at the same time pointed out the way in which knowledge is really possible. on this substructure was developed the intellectual life of our time, whose deepest significance consists in the attempt to reconcile the result of free inquiry with the religious needs of the heart, and thus to lay a foundation for the harmonious organization of mankind. . . . the german nation not only laid the foundations of this great struggle for a harmonious development of humanity but took the lead in it. we are thus incurring an obligation for the future from which we cannot shrink. we must be prepared to be the leader in this campaign which is being fought for the highest stake that has been offered to human efforts. . . . to no nation except the german has it been given to enjoy in its inner self 'that which is given to mankind as a whole.' . . . it is this quality which especially fits us for leadership in the intellectual domain and _imposes upon us the obligation to maintain that position_."[35:a] [35:a] bernhardi, "germany and the next war," pp. 73-74. italics not in the original text. more significant than the words themselves are their occasion and the occupation of the one who utters them. outside of germany, cavalry generals who employ philosophy to bring home practical lessons are, i think, rare. outside of germany, it would be hard to find an audience where an appeal for military preparedness would be reinforced by allusions to the critique of pure reason. yet only by taking such statements seriously can one understand the temper in which opinion in germany meets a national crisis. when the philosopher eucken (who received a nobel prize for contributing to the idealistic literature of the world) justifies the part taken by germany in a world war because the germans alone do not represent a particularistic and nationalistic spirit, but embody the "universalism" of humanity itself, he utters a conviction bred in german thought by the ruling interpretation of german philosophic idealism. by the side of this _motif_ the glorification of war as a biologic necessity, forced by increase of population, is a secondary detail, giving a totally false impression when isolated from its context. the main thing is that germany, more than any other nation, in a sense alone of all nations, embodies the essential principle of humanity: freedom of spirit, combined with thorough and detailed work in the outer sphere where reigns causal law, where obedience, discipline and subordination are the necessities of successful organization. it is perhaps worth while to recall that kant lived, taught and died in königsberg; and that königsberg was the chief city of east prussia, an island still cut off in his early years from western prussia, a titular capital for the prussian kings where they went for their coronations. his lifework in philosophy coincides essentially with the political work of frederick the great, the king who combined a régime of freedom of thought and complete religious toleration with the most extraordinary display known in history of administrative and military efficiency. fortunately for our present purposes, kant, in one of his minor essays, has touched upon this combination and stated its philosophy in terms of his own thought. the essay in question is that entitled "what is the enlightenment?" his reply in substance is that it is the coming of age on the part of humanity: the transition from a state of minority or infancy wherein man does not dare to think freely to that period of majority or maturity in which mankind dares to use its own power of understanding. the growth of this power of free use of reason is the sole hope of progress in human affairs. external revolutions which are not the natural expression of an inner or intellectual revolution are of little significance. genuine growth is found in the slow growth of science and philosophy and in the gradual diffusion throughout the mass of the discoveries and conclusions of those who are superior in intelligence. true freedom is inner freedom, freedom of thought together with the liberty consequent upon it of teaching and publication. to check this rational freedom "is a sin against the very nature of man, the primary law of which consists in just the advance in rational enlightenment." in contrast with this realm of inner freedom stands that of civil and political action, the principle of which is obedience or subordination to constituted authority. kant illustrates the nature of the two by the position of a military subordinate who is given an order to execute which his reason tells him is unwise. his sole duty in the realm of practice is to obey--to do his duty. but as a member not of the state but of the kingdom of science, he has the right of free inquiry and publication. later he might write upon the campaign in which this event took place and point out, upon intellectual grounds, the mistake involved in the order. no wonder that kant proclaims that the age of the enlightenment is the age of frederick the great. yet we should do injustice to kant if we inferred that he expected this dualism of spheres of action, with its twofold moral law of freedom and obedience, to endure forever. by the exercise of freedom of thought, and by its publication and the education which should make its results permeate the whole state, the habits of a nation will finally become elevated to rationality, and the spread of reason will make it possible for the government to treat men, not as cogs in a machine, but in accord with the dignity of rational creatures. before leaving this theme, i must point out one aspect of the work of reason thus far passed over. nature, the sensible world of space and time, is, as a knowable object, constituted by the legislative work of reason, although constituted out of a non-rational sensible stuff. this determining work of reason forms not merely the idealism of the kantian philosophy but determines its emphasis upon the _a priori_. the functions of reason through which nature is rendered a knowable object cannot be derived from experience, for they are necessary to the existence of experience. the details of this _a priori_ apparatus lie far outside our present concern. suffice it to say that as compared with some of his successors, kant was an economical soul and got along with only two _a priori_ forms and twelve _a priori_ categories. the mental habitudes generated by attachment to _a priori_ categories cannot however be entirely neglected in even such a cursory discussion as the present. if one were to follow the suggestion involved in the lately quoted passage as to the significant symbolism of the place of the accent in german speech, one might discourse upon the deep meaning of the capitalization of nouns in the written form of the german language, together with the richness of the language in abstract nouns. one might fancy that the dignity of the common noun substantive, expressing as it does the universal or generic, has bred an intellectual deference. one may fancy a whole nation of readers reverently bowing their heads at each successively capitalized word. in such fashion one might arrive at a picture, not without its truth, of what it means to be devoted to _a priori_ rational principles. a number of times during the course of the world war i have heard someone remark that he would not so much mind what the germans did if it were not for the reasons assigned in its justification. but to rationalize such a tangled skein as human experience is a difficult task. if one is in possession of antecedent rational concepts which are legislative for experience, the task is much simplified. it only remains to subsume each empirical event under its proper category. if the outsider does not see the applicability of the concept to the event, it may be argued that his blindness shows his ineptness for truly universal thinking. he is probably a crass empiric who thinks in terms of material consequences instead of upon the basis of antecedent informing principles of reason. thus it has come about that no moral, social or political question is adequately discussed in germany until the matter in hand has been properly deduced from an exhaustive determination of its fundamental _begriff_ or _wesen_. or if the material is too obviously empirical to allow of such deduction, it must at least be placed under its appropriate rational form. what a convenience, what a resource, nay, what a weapon is the kantian distinction of _a priori_ rational form and _a posteriori_ empirical matter. let the latter be as brutely diversified, as chaotic as you please. there always exists a form of unity under which it may be brought. if the empirical facts are recalcitrant, so much the worse for them. it only shows how empirical they are. to put them under a rational form is but to subdue their irrational opposition to reason, or to invade their lukewarm neutrality. any violence done them is more than indemnified by the favor of bringing them under the sway of _a priori_ reason, the incarnation of the absolute on earth. yet there are certain disadvantages attached to _a priori_ categories. they have a certain rigidity, appalling to those who have not learned to identify stiffness with force. empirical matters are subject to revision. the strongest belief that claims the support of experience is subject to modification when experience testifies against it. but an _a priori_ conception is not open to adverse evidence. there is no court having jurisdiction. if, then, an unfortunate mortal should happen to be imposed upon so that he was led to regard a prejudice or predilection as an _a priori_ truth, contrary experience would have a tendency to make him the more obstinate in his belief. history proves what a dangerous thing it has been for men, when they try to impose their will upon other men, to think of themselves as special instruments and organs of deity. the danger is equally great when an _a priori_ reason is substituted for a divine providence. empirically grounded truths do not have a wide scope; they do not inspire such violent loyalty to themselves as ideas supposed to proceed directly from reason itself. but they are discussable; they have a humane and social quality, while truths of pure reason have a paradoxical way, in the end, of escaping from the arbitrament of reasoning. they evade the logic of experience, only to become, in the phrase of a recent writer, the spoil of a "logic of fanaticism." weapons forged in the smithy of the absolute become brutal and cruel when confronted by merely human resistance. the stiffly constrained character of an _a priori_ reason manifests itself in another way. a category of pure reason is suspiciously like a pigeonhole. an american writer, speaking before the present war, remarked with witty exaggeration that "germany is a monstrous set of pigeonholes, and every mother's son of a german is pigeoned in his respective hole--tagged, labeled and ticketed. germany is a huge human check-room, and the government carries the checks in its pocket." john locke's deepest objection to the older form of the _a priori_ philosophy, the doctrine of innate ideas, was the readiness with which such ideas become strongholds behind which authority shelters itself from questioning. and john morley pointed out long ago the undoubted historic fact that the whole modern liberal social and political movement has allied itself with philosophic empiricism. it is hard here, as everywhere, to disentangle cause and effect. but one can at least say with considerable assurance that a hierarchically ordered and subordered state will feel an affinity for a philosophy of fixed categories, while a flexible democratic society will, in its crude empiricism, exhibit loose ends. there is a story to the effect that the good townspeople of königsberg were accustomed to their watches by the time at which kant passed upon his walks--so uniform was he. yielding to the teutonic temptation to find an inner meaning in the outer event, one may wonder whether german thought has not since kant's time set its intellectual and spiritual clocks by the kantian standard: the separation of the inner and the outer, with its lesson of freedom and idealism in one realm, and of mechanism, efficiency and organization in the other. a german professor of philosophy has said that while the latins live in the present moment, the germans live in the infinite and ineffable. his accusation (though i am not sure he meant it as such) is not completely justified. but it does seem to be true that the germans, more readily than other peoples, can withdraw themselves from the exigencies and contingencies of life into a region of _innerlichkeit_ which at least _seems_ boundless; and which can rarely be successfully uttered save through music, and a frail and tender poetry, sometimes domestic, sometimes lyric, but always full of mysterious charm. but technical ideas, ideas about means and instruments, can readily be externalized because the outer world is in truth their abiding home. ii german moral and political philosophy it is difficult to select sentences from kant which are intelligible to those not trained in his vocabulary, unless the selection is accompanied by an almost word-by-word commentary. his writings have proved an admirable _terrain_ for the display of german _gründlichkeit_. but i venture upon the quotation of one sentence which may serve the purpose of at once recalling the main lesson of the previous lecture and furnishing a transition to the theme of the present hour. "even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that it is not possible to go from the first to the second (at least by means of the theoretical use of reason) any more than if they were two separate worlds of which the first could have no influence upon the second,--yet the second is _meant_ to have an influence upon the first. the concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws." . . . that is, the relation between the world of space and time where physical causality reigns and the moral world of freedom and duty is not a symmetrical one. the former cannot intrude into the latter. but it is the very nature of moral legislation that it is meant to influence the world of sense; its object is to realize the purposes of free rational action within the sense world. this fact fixes the chief features of kant's philosophy of morals and of the state. it is a claim of the admirers of kant that he first brought to recognition the true and infinite nature of the principle of personality. on one side, the individual is _homo phenomenon_--a part of the scheme of nature, governed by its laws as much as any stone or plant. but in virtue of his citizenship in the kingdom of supersensible laws and ends, he is elevated to true universality. he is no longer a mere occurrence. he is a person--one in whom the purpose of humanity is incarnate. in english and american writings the terms subjective and subjectivism usually carry with them a disparaging color. quite otherwise is it in german literature. this sets the age of subjectivism, whose commencement, roughly speaking, coincides with the influence of kantian thought, in sharp opposition to the age of individualism, as well as to a prior period of subordination to external authority. individualism means isolation; it means external relations of human beings with one another and with the world; it looks at things quantitatively, in terms of wholes and parts. subjectivism means recognition of the principle of free personality: the self as creative, occupied not with an external world which limits it from without, but, through its own self-consciousness, finding a world within itself; and having found the universal within itself, setting to work to recreate itself in what had been the external world, and by its own creative expansion in industry, art and politics to transform what had been mere limiting material into a work of its own. free as was kant from the sentimental, the mystic and the romantic phases of this subjectivism, we shall do well to bear it in mind in thinking of his ethical theory. personality means that man as a rational being does not receive the end which forms the law of his action from without, whether from nature, the state or from god, but from his own self. morality is autonomous; man, humanity, is an end in itself. obedience to the self-imposed law will transform the sensible world (within which falls all social ties so far as they spring from natural instinct desire) into a form appropriate to universal reason. thus we may paraphrase the sentence quoted from kant. the gospel of duty has an invigorating ring. it is easy to present it as the most noble and sublime of all moral doctrines. what is more worthy of humanity, what better marks the separation of man from brute, than the will to subordinate selfish desire and individual inclination to the commands of stern and lofty duty? and if the idea of command (which inevitably goes with the notion of duty) carries a sinister suggestion of legal authority, pains and penalties and of subservience to an external authority who issues the commands, kant seems to have provided a final corrective in insisting that duty is self-imposed. moral commands are imposed by the higher, supranatural self upon the lower empirical self, by the rational self upon the self of passions and inclinations. german philosophy is attached to antitheses and their reconciliation in a higher synthesis. the kantian principle of duty is a striking case of the reconciliation of the seemingly conflicting ideas of freedom and authority. unfortunately, however, the balance cannot be maintained in practice. kant's faithful logic compels him to insist that the concept of duty is empty and formal. it tells men that to do their duty is their supreme law of action, but is silent as to what men's duties specifically are. kant, moreover, insists, as he is in logic bound to do, that the motive which measures duty is wholly inner; it is purely a matter of inner consciousness. to admit that consequences can be taken into account in deciding what duty is in a particular case would be to make concessions to the empirical and sensible world which are fatal to the scheme. the combination of these two features of pure internality and pure formalism leads, in a world where men's _acts_ take place wholly in the external and empirical region, to serious consequences. the dangerous character of these consequences may perhaps be best gathered indirectly by means of a quotation. "while the french people in savage revolt against spiritual and secular despotism had broken their chains and proclaimed their _rights_, another quite different revolution was working in prussia--the revolution of _duty_. the assertion of the rights of the individual leads ultimately to individual irresponsibility and to a repudiation of the state. immanuel kant, the founder of the critical philosophy, taught, in opposition to this view, the gospel of moral duty, and scharnhorst grasped the idea of universal military service. by calling upon which individual to sacrifice property and life for the good of the community, he gave the clearest expression to the idea of the state, and created a sound basis on which the claims to individual rights might rest."[52:a] [52:a] bernhardi, "germany and the next war," pp. 63-64. the sudden jump, by means of only a comma, from the gospel of moral duty to universal military service is much more logical than the shock which it gives to an american reader would indicate. i do not mean, of course, that kant's teaching was the cause of prussia's adoption of universal military service and of the thoroughgoing subordination of individual happiness and liberty of action to that capitalized entity, the state. but i do mean that when the practical political situation called for universal military service in order to support and expand the existing state, the gospel of a duty devoid of content naturally lent itself to the consecration and idealization of such specific duties as the existing national order might prescribe. the sense of duty must get its subject-matter somewhere, and unless subjectivism was to revert to anarchic or romantic individualism (which is hardly in the spirit of obedience to authoritative law) its appropriate subject-matter lies in the commands of a superior. concretely what the state commands is the congenial outer filling of a purely inner sense of duty. that the despotism of frederick the great and of the hohenzollerns who remained true to his policy was at least that hitherto unknown thing, an enlightened despotism, made the identification easier. individuals have at all times, in epochs of stress, offered their supreme sacrifice to their country's good. in germany this sacrifice in times of peace as well as of war has been systematically reinforced by an inner mystic sense of a duty elevating men to the plane of the universal and eternal. in short, the sublime gospel of duty has its defects. outside of the theological and the kantian moral traditions, men have generally agreed that duties are relative to ends. not the obligation, but some purpose, some good, which the fulfillment of duty realizes, is the principle of morals. the business of reason is to see that the end, the good, for which one acts is a reasonable one--that is to say, as wide and as equitable in its working out as the situation permits. morals which are based upon consideration of good and evil consequences not only allow, but imperiously demand the exercise of a discriminating intelligence. a gospel of duty separated from empirical purposes and results tends to gag intelligence. it substitutes for the work of reason displayed in a wide and distributed survey of consequences in order to determine where duty lies an inner consciousness, empty of content, which clothes with the form of rationality the demands of existing social authorities. a consciousness which is not based upon and checked by consideration of actual results upon human welfare is none the less socially irresponsible because labeled reason. professor eucken represents a type of idealistic philosophy which is hardly acceptable to strict kantians. yet only where the fundamental kantian ideas were current would such ethical ideas as the following flourish: "when justice is considered as a mere means of securing man's welfare, and is treated accordingly--whether it be the welfare of individuals or of society as a whole makes no essential difference--it loses all its characteristic features. no longer can it compel us to see life from its own standpoint; no longer can it change the existing condition of things; no longer can it sway our hearts with the force of a primitive passion, and oppose to all consideration of consequences an irresistible spiritual compulsion. it degenerates rather into the complaisant servant of utility; it adopts herself to her demands, and in so doing suffers inward annihilation. it can maintain itself only when it comes as a unique revelation of the spiritual life within our human world, as a lofty presence transcending all considerations of expediency."[55:a] [55:a] eucken, "the meaning and value of life," translated by gibson, p. 104. such writing is capable of arousing emotional reverberations in the breasts of many persons. but they are emotions which, if given headway, smother intelligence, and undermine its responsibility for promoting the actual goods of life. if justice loses all its characteristic features when regarded as a means (the word "mere" inserted before "means" speaks volumes) of the welfare of society as a whole, then there is no objective and responsible criterion for justice at all. a justice which, irrespective of the determination of social well-being, proclaims itself as an irresistible spiritual impulsion possessed of the force of a primitive passion, is nothing but a primitive passion clothed with a spiritual title so that it is protected from having to render an account of itself. during an ordinary course of things, it passes for but an emotional indulgence; in a time of stress and strain, it exhibits itself as surrender of intelligence to passion. the passage (from bernhardi) quoted earlier puts the german principle of duty in opposition to the french principle of rights--a favorite contrast in german thought. men like jeremy bentham also found the revolutionary rights of man doctrinaire and conducing to tyranny rather than to freedom. these rights were _a priori_, like duty, being derived from the supposed nature or essence of man, instead of being adopted as empirical expedients to further progress and happiness. but the conception of duty is one-sided, expressing command on one side and obedience on the other, while rights are at least reciprocal. rights are social and sociable in accord with the spirit of french philosophy. put in a less abstract form than the revolutionary theory stated them, they are things to be discussed and measured. they admit of more and less, of compromise and adjustment. so also does the characteristic moral contribution of english thought--intelligent self-interest. this is hardly an ultimate idea. but at least it evokes a picture of merchants bargaining, while the categorical imperative calls up the drill sergeant. trafficking ethics, in which each gives up something which he wants to get something which he wants more, is not the noblest kind of morals, but at least it is socially responsible as far as it goes. "give so that it may be given to you in return" has at least some tendency to bring men together; it promotes agreement. it requires deliberation and discussion. this is just what the authoritative voice of a superior will not tolerate; it is the one unforgiveable sin. the morals of bargaining, exchange, the mutual satisfaction of wants may be outlived in some remote future, but up to the present they play an important part in life. to me there is something uncanny in the scorn which german ethics, in behalf of an unsullied moral idealism, pours upon a theory which takes cognizance of practical motives. in a highly esthetic people one might understand the display of contempt. but when an aggressive and commercial nation carries on commerce and war simply from the motive of obedience to duty, there is awakened an unpleasant suspicion of a suppressed "psychic complex." when nietzsche says, "man does not desire happiness; only the englishman does that," we laugh at the fair hit. but persons who profess no regard for happiness as a test of action have an unfortunate way of living up to their principle by making others _un_happy. i should entertain some suspicion of the complete sincerity of those who profess disregard for their own happiness, but i should be quite certain of their sincerity when it comes to a question of _my_ happiness. within the kantian philosophy of morals there is an idea which conducts necessarily to a philosophy of society and the state. leibniz was the great german source of the philosophy of the enlightenment. harmony was the dominant thought of this philosophy; the harmony of nature with itself and with intelligence; the harmony of nature with the moral ends of humanity. although kant was a true son of the enlightenment, his doctrine of the radically dual nature of the legislation of reason put an end to its complacent optimism. according to kant, morality is in no way a work of nature. it is the achievement of the self-conscious reason of man through conquest of nature. the ideal of a final harmony remains, but it is an ideal to be won through a battle with the natural forces of man. his breach with the enlightenment is nowhere as marked as in his denial that man is by nature good. on the contrary, man is by nature evil--that is, his philosophical rendering of the doctrine of original sin. not that the passions, appetites and senses are of themselves evil, but they tend to usurp the sovereignty of duty as the _motivating_ force of human action. hence morality is a ceaseless battle to transform all the natural desires of man into willing servants of the law and purpose of reason. even the kindly and sociable instincts of man, in which so many have sought the basis of both morality and organized society, fall under kant's condemnation. as natural desires, they aspire to an illegitimate control in man's motives. they are parts of human self-love: the unlawful tendency to make happiness the controlling purpose of action. the natural relations of man to man are those of an unsocial sociableness. on the one hand, men are forced together by natural ties. only in social relations can individuals develop their capacities. but no sooner do they come together than disintegrating tendencies set in. union with his fellows give a stimulus to vanity, avarice and gaining power over others--traits which cannot show in themselves in individuals when they are isolated. this mutual antagonism is, however, more of a force in evolving man from savagery to civilization than are the kindly and sociable instincts. "without these unlovely qualities which set man over against man in strife, individuals would have lived on in perfect harmony, contentment and mutual love, with all their distinctive abilities latent and undeveloped." in short, they would have remained in rousseau's paradise of a state of nature, and "perhaps rousseau was right when he preferred the savage state to the state of civilization provided we leave out of account the last stage to which our species is yet destined to rise." but since the condition of civilization is but an intermediary between the natural state and the truly or rational moral condition to which man is to rise, rousseau was wrong. "thanks then be to nature for the unsociableness, the spiteful competition of vanity, the insatiate desires for power and gain." these quotations, selected from kant's little essay on an "idea for a universal history," are precious for understanding two of the most characteristic traits of subsequent german thought, the distinctions made between society and the state and between civilization and culture. much of the trouble which has been experienced in respect to the recent use of _kultur_ might have been allayed by a knowledge that _kultur_ has little in common with the english word "culture" save a likeness in sound. _kultur_ is sharply antithetical to civilization in its meaning. civilization is a natural and largely unconscious or involuntary growth. it is, so to speak, a by-product of the needs engendered when people live close together. it is external, in short. culture, on the other, is deliberate and conscious. it is a fruit not of men's natural motives, but of natural motives which have been transformed by the inner spirit. kant made the distinction when he said that rousseau was not so far wrong in preferring savagery to civilization, since civilization meant simply social decencies and elegancies and outward proprieties, while morality, that is, the rule of the end of reason, is necessary to culture. and the real significance of the term "culture" becomes more obvious when he adds that it involves the slow toil of education of the inner life, and that the attainment of culture on the part of an individual depends upon long effort by the community to which he belongs. it is not primarily an individual trait or possession, but a conquest of the community won through devotion to "duty." in recent german literature, culture has been given even a more sharply technical distinction from civilization and one which emphasizes even more its collective and nationalistic character. civilization as external and uncontrolled by self-conscious purpose includes such things as language in its more spontaneous colloquial expression, trade, conventional manners or etiquette, and the police activities of government. _kultur_ comprises language used for purposes of higher literature; commerce pursued not as means of enriching individuals but as a condition of the development of national life; art, philosophy (especially in that untranslatable thing, the "welt-anschauung"); science, religion, and the activities of the state in the nurture and expansion of the other forms of national genius, that is, its activities in education and the army. the legislation of bismarck with reference to certain roman catholic orders is nicknamed _kultur-kampf_, for it was conceived as embodying a struggle between two radically different philosophies of life, the roman, or italian, and the true germanic, not simply as a measure of political expediency. thus it is that a trading and military post like kiao-chou is officially spoken of as a "monument of teutonic _kultur_." the war now raging is conceived of as an outer manifestation of a great spiritual struggle, in which what is really at stake is the supreme value of the germanic attitude in philosophy, science and social questions generally, the "specifically german habits of feeling and thinking." very similar motives are at work in the distinction between society and the state, which is almost a commonplace of german thought. in english and american writings the state is almost always used to denote society in its more organized aspects, or it may be identified with government as a special agency operating for the collective interests of men in association. but in german literature society is a technical term and means something empirical and, so to speak, external; while the state, if not avowedly something mystic and transcendental, is at least a moral entity, the creation of self-conscious reason operating in behalf of the spiritual and ideal interests of its members. its function is cultural, educative. even when it intervenes in material interests, as it does in regulating lawsuits, poor laws, protective tariffs, etc., etc., its action has ultimately an ethical significance: its purpose is the furthering of an ideal community. the same thing is to be said of wars when they are really national wars, and not merely dynastic or accidental. society is an expression of man's egoistic nature; his natural seeking for personal advantage and profit. its typical manifestation is in competitive economic struggle and in the struggle for honor and recognized social status. these have their proper place; but with respect even to them it is the duty of the state to intervene so that the struggle may contribute to ideal ends which alone are universal. hence the significance of the force or power of the state. unlike other forms of force, it has a sort of sacred import, for it represents force consecrated to the assertion and expansion of final goods which are spiritual, moral, rational. these absolute ends can be maintained only in struggle against man's individualistic ends. conquest through conflict is the law of morals everywhere. in kant we find only the beginnings of this political philosophy. he is still held back by the individualism of the eighteenth century. everything legal and political is conceived by him as external and hence outside the strictly moral realm of inner motivation. yet he is not content to leave the state and its law as a wholly unmoral matter. the _natural_ motives of man are, according to kant (evidently following hobbes), love of power, love of gain, love of glory. these motives are egoistic; they issue in strife--in the war of all against all. while such a state of affairs does not and cannot invade the inner realm of duty, the realm of the moral motive, it evidently presents a régime in which the conquest of the world of sense by the law of reason cannot be effected. man in his rational or universal capacity must, therefore, will an outward order of harmony in which it is at least possible for acts dictated by rational freedom to get a footing. such an outer order is the state. its province is not to promote moral freedom directly--only the moral will can do that. but its business is to hinder the hindrances to freedom: to establish a social condition of outward order in which truly moral acts may gradually evolve a kingdom of humanity. thus while the state does not have a directly moral scope of action (since the coercion of motive is a moral absurdity), it does have a moral basis and an ultimate moral function. it is the law of reason, "holy and inviolable," which impels man to the institution of the state, not natural sociability, much less considerations of expediency. and so necessary is the state to humanity's realization of its moral purpose that there can be no right of revolution. the overthrow and execution of the sovereign (kant evidently had the french revolution and louis xvi in mind) is "an immortal and inexpiable sin like the sin against the holy ghost spoken of by theologians, which can never be forgiven in this world or in the next." kant was enough of a child of the eighteenth century to be cosmopolitan, not nationalistic, in his feeling. since humanity as a whole, in its universality, alone truly corresponds to the universality of reason, he upheld the ideal of an ultimate republican federation of states; he was one of the first to proclaim the possibility of enduring peace among nations on the basis of such a federated union of mankind. the threatened domination of europe by napoleon following on the wars waged by republican france put an end, however, to cosmopolitanism. since germany was the greatest sufferer from these wars, and since it was obvious that the lack of national unity, the division of germany into a multitude of petty states, was the great source of her weakness; since it was equally obvious that prussia, the one strong and centralized power among the german states, was the only thing which saved them all from national extinction, subsequent political philosophy in germany rescued the idea of the state from the somewhat ambiguous moral position in which kant had left it. since a state which is an absolute moral necessity and whose actions are nevertheless lacking in inherent moral quality is an anomaly, the doctrine almost calls for a theory which shall make the state the supreme moral entity. fichte marks the beginning of the transformation; and, in his writings, it is easy to detect a marked difference of attitude toward the nationalistic state before and after 1806, when in the battle of jena germany went down to inglorious defeat. from the time of fichte, the german philosophy of the state blends with its philosophy of history, so that my reservation of the latter topic for the next section is somewhat arbitrary, and i shall not try rigidly to maintain the division of themes. i have already mentioned the fact that kant relaxes the separation of the moral realm of freedom from the sensuous realm of nature sufficiently to assert that the former is _meant_ to influence the latter and finally to subjugate it. by means of the little crack thus introduced into nature, fichte rewrites the kantian philosophy. the world of sense must be regarded from the very start as material which the free, rational, moral ego has created in order to have material for its own adequate realization of will. fichte had a longing for an absolute unity which did not afflict kant, to whom, save for the concession just referred to, a complete separation of the two operations of legislative reason sufficed. fichte was also an ardently _active_ soul, whose very temperament assured him of the subordination of theoretical knowledge to moral action. it would be as difficult to give, in short space, an adequate sketch of fichte's philosophy as of kant's. to him, however, reason was the expression of the will, not (as with kant) the will an application of reason to action. "_im anfang war die that_" is good fichteanism. while kant continued the usual significance of the term reason (with only such modifications as the rationalism of his century had made current), fichte began the transformation which consummated in later german idealism. if the world of nature and of human relations is an expression of reason, then reason must be the sort of thing, and have the sort of attributes by means of which the world may be construed, no matter how far away this conception of reason takes us from the usual meaning of the term. to fichte the formula which best described such aspects of the world and of life as he was interested in was effort at self-realization through struggle with difficulties and overcoming opposition. hence his formula for reason was a will which, having "posited" itself, then "posited" its antithesis in order, through further action subjugating this opposite, to conquer its own freedom. the doctrine of the primacy of the deed, and of the duty to achieve freedom through moral self-assertion against obstacles (which, after all, are there only to further this self-assertion) was one which could, with more or less plausibility, be derived from kant. more to our present point, it was a doctrine which could be preached with noble moral fervor in connection with the difficulties and needs of a divided and conquered germany. fichte saw himself as the continuator of the work of luther and kant. his final "science of knowledge" brought the german people alone of the peoples of the world into the possession of the idea and ideal of absolute freedom. hence the peculiar destiny of the german scholar and the german state. it was the duty and mission of german science and philosophy to contribute to the cause of the spiritual emancipation of humanity. kant had already taught that the acts of men were to become gradually permeated by a spirit of rationality till there should be an equation of inner freedom of mind and outer freedom of action. fichte's doctrine demanded an acceleration of the process. men who have attained to a consciousness of the absolute freedom and self-activity must necessarily desire to see around them similar free beings. the scholar who is truly a scholar not merely knows, but he knows the nature of knowledge--its place and function as a manifestation of the absolute. hence he is, in a peculiar sense, the direct manifestation of god in the world--the true priest. and his priestly function consists in bringing other men to recognize moral freedom in its creative operation. such is the dignity of education as conducted by those who have attained true philosophic insight. fichte made a specific application of this idea to his own country and time. the humiliating condition of contemporary germany was due to the prevalence of egoism, selfishness and particularism: to the fact that men had lowered themselves to the plane of sensuous life. the fall was the worse because the germans, more than any other people, were by nature and history conscious of the ideal and spiritual principle, the principle of freedom, lying at the very basis of all things. the key to the political regeneration of germany was to be found in a moral and spiritual regeneration effected by means of education. the key, amid political division, to political unity was to be sought in devotion to moral unity. in this spirit fichte preached his "addresses to the german nation." in this spirit he collaborated in the foundation of the university of berlin, and zealously promoted all the educational reforms introduced by stein and humboldt into prussian life. the conception of the state as an essential moral being charged with an indispensable moral function lay close to these ideas. education is _the_ means of the advancement of humanity toward realization of its divine perfection. education is the work of the state. the syllogism completes itself. but in order that the state may carry on its educational or moral mission it must not only possess organization and commensurate power, but it must also control the conditions which secure the possibility offered to the individuals composing it. to adopt aristotle's phrase, men must live before they can live nobly. the primary condition of a secure life is that everyone be able to live by his own labor. without this, moral self-determination is a mockery. the business of the state, outside of its educational mission, is concerned with property, and this business means insuring property to everyone as well as protecting him in what he already possesses. moreover, property is not mere physical possession. it has a profound moral significance, for it means the subjugation of physical things to will. it is a necessary part of the realization of moral personality: the conquest of the non-ego by the ego. since property does not mean mere appropriation, but is a right recognized and validated by society itself, property has a social basis and aim. it is an expression not of individual egotism but of the universal will. hence it is essential to the very idea of property and of the state that all the members of society have an equal opportunity for property. hence it is the duty of the state to secure to its every member the right to work and the reward of his work. the outcome, as expressed in his essay on "the closed industrial state," is state socialism, based on moral and idealistic grounds, not on economic considerations. in order that men may have a real opportunity to develop their moral personalities, their right to labor and to adequate living, in return for their labor must be assured. this cannot happen in a competitive society. industry must be completely regulated by the state if these indispensable rights to labor and resulting comfort and security of life as means to moral volition are to be achieved. but a state engaged in unrestricted foreign trade will leave its workingmen at the mercy of foreign conditions. it must therefore regulate or even eliminate foreign commerce so far as is necessary to secure its own citizens. the ultimate goal is a universal state as wide as humanity, and a state in which each individual will act freely, without state-secured rights and state-imposed obligations. but before this cosmopolitan and philosophically anarchic condition can be reached, we must pass through a period of the nationalistic closed state. thus at the end a wide gulf separates fichte from kant. the moral individualism of the latter has become an ethical socialism. only in and by means of a circle of egos or personalities does a human being attain the moral reason and freedom which kant bestowed upon him as his birthright. only through the educational activities of the state and its complete regulation of the industrial activities of its members does the potential moral freedom of individuals become an established reality. if i have devoted so much space to fichte it is not because of his direct influence upon affairs or even upon thought. he did not found a school. his system was at once too personal and too formal. nevertheless, he expressed ideas which, removed from their special context in his system, were taken up into the thought of cultivated germany. heine, speaking of the vogue of systems of thought, says with profound truth that "nations have an instinctive presentiment of what they require to fulfill their mission." and fichte's thought infiltrated through many crevices. rodbertus and lasalle, the socialists, were, for example, profoundly affected by him. when the latter was prosecuted in a criminal suit for his "programme of workingmen," his reply was that his programme was a distinctively philosophic utterance, and hence protected by the constitutional provision for freedom of science and its teaching. and this is his philosophy of the state: "the state is the unity and coöperation of individuals in a moral whole. . . . the ultimate and intrinsic end of the state is, therefore, to further the positive unfolding, the progressive development of human life. its function is to work out the true end of man; that is to say, the full degree of culture of which human nature is capable." and he quotes with approval the words: "the concept of the state must be broadened so as to make the state the contrivance whereby all human virtue is to be realized to the full." and if he differs from fichte, it is but in the assertion that since the laboring class is the one to whom the need most directly appeals, it is workingmen who must take the lead in the development of the true functions of the state. pantheism is a philosophic nickname which should be sparingly employed; so also should the term monism. to call fichte's system an ethical pantheism and monism is not to say much that is enlightening. but with free interpretation the designation may be highly significant in reference to the spiritual temper of the germany of the first part of the nineteenth century. for it gives a key to the presentiment of what germany needed to fulfill its mission. it is a commonplace of german historians that its unity and expansion to a great state powerful externally, prosperous internally, was wrought, unlike that of any other people, from within outward. in lange's words, "our national development started from the most ideal and approximated more and more to the real." hegel and heine agree that in germany the french revolution and the napoleonic career were paralleled by a philosophic revolution and an intellectual empire. you recall the bitter word that, when napoleon was finally conquered and europe partitioned, to germany was assigned the kingdom of the clouds. but this aërial and tenuous kingdom became a mighty power, working with and in the statesmen of prussia and the scholars of germany to found a kingdom on the solid earth. spiritual and ideal germany made common cause with realistic and practical prussia. as says von sybel, the historian of the "founding of the german empire": "germany had been ruined through its own disintegration and had dragged prussia with it into the abyss. it was well known that the wild fancies of the conqueror hovered about the utter annihilation of prussia; if this should take place, then east as well as west of the elbe, not only political independence, but every trace of a german spirit, the german language and customs, german art and learning--everything would be wiped out by the foreigners. but this fatal danger was perceived just at the time when everybody had been looking up to kant and schiller, had been admiring faust, the world-embracing masterpiece of goethe's, and had recognized that alexander von humboldt's cosmological studies and niebuhr's "roman history" had created a new era in european science and learning. in such intellectual attainments the germans felt that they were far superior to the vanquisher of the world and his great nation; and so the political interests of prussia and the salvation of the german nationality exactly coincided. schleiermacher's patriotic sermons, fichte's stirring addresses to the german people, humboldt's glorious founding of the berlin university, served to augment the resisting power of prussia, while scharnhorst's recruits and militia were devoted to the defense of german honor and german customs. everyone felt that german nationality was lost if prussia did not come to its rescue, and that, too, there was no safety possible for prussia unless all germany was free. "what a remarkable providence it was that brought together, as in the middle ages, on this ancient colonial ground, a throng of the most energetic men from all districts of germany. for neither stein nor his follower, hardenberg, nor the generals scharnhorst, bluecher and gneisenau, nor the authors, niebuhr, fichte and k. f. eichorn, nor many others who might be mentioned, were born in prussia; yet because their thoughts centered in germany, they had become loyal prussians. the name germany had been blotted from the political map of europe, but never had so many hearts thrilled at the thought of being german. "thus on the most eastern frontier of german life, in the midst of troubles which seemed hopeless, the idea of german unity, which had lain dormant for centuries, now sprang up in a new birth. at first this idea was held exclusively by the great men of the times and remained the invaluable possession of the cultivated classes; but once started it spread far and wide among the younger generation. . . . but it was easier to defeat the mighty napoleon than to bend the german sentiments of dualism and individualism to the spirit of national unity." what i have called the ethical pantheism and monistic idealism of fichte (a type of philosophy reigning almost unchallenged in germany till almost the middle of the century) was an effective weapon in fighting and winning this more difficult battle. in his volume on the "romantic school in germany," brandes quotes from the diary of hoffman a passage written in 1809. "seized by a strange fancy at the ball on the 6th, i imagine myself looking at my own ego through a kaleidoscope. all the forms moving around me are egos and annoy me by what they do and leave undone." it is a temptation to find in this passage a symbol both of german philosophy and of the temper of germany at the time. its outer defeats, its weakness in the world of action, had developed an exasperated introspection. this outer weakness, coinciding, as von sybel points out, with the bloom of germany in art, philosophy, history, philology and philosophy, made the ego of germany the noblest contemporary object of contemplation, yet one surrounded with other national egos who offended by what they did and what they did not do. patriotism, national feeling, national consciousness are common enough facts. but nowhere save in germany, in the earlier nineteenth century, have these sentiments and impulses been transformed by deliberate nurture into a mystic cult. this was the time when the idea of the _volks-seele_, the _volks-geist_, was born; and the idea lost no time in becoming a fact. not merely poetry was affected by it, but philology, history and jurisprudence. the so-called historic school is its offspring. the science of social psychology derives from it at one remove. the soul, however, needed a body, and (quite in accord with german idealism) it formed a body for itself--the german state as a unified empire. while the idealistic period came first, it is important to bear in mind the kind of idealism it was. at this point the pantheistic allusion becomes significant. the idealism in question was not an idealism of another world but of _this_ world, and especially of the state. the embodiment of the divine and absolute will and ideal is the existing world of nature and of men. especially is the human ego the authorized and creative agent of absolute purpose. the significance of german philosophy was precisely to make men aware of their nature and destiny as the direct and active representatives of absolute and creative purpose. if i again quote heine, it is because, with his contempt for technical philosophy, he had an intimate sense of its human meaning. of german pantheistic idealism, he wrote in 1833 while it was still in its prime: "god is identical with the world. . . . but he manifests himself most gloriously in man, who feels and thinks at the same time, who is capable of distinguishing his own individuality from objective nature, whose intellect already bears within itself the ideas that present themselves to him in the phenomenal world. in man deity reaches self-consciousness, and this self-consciousness god again reveals through man. but this revelation does not take place in and through individual man, but in and through collective humanity . . . which comprehends and represents in idea and in reality the whole god-universe. . . . it is an error to suppose that this religion leads men to indifference. on the contrary, the consciousness of his divinity will inspire man with enthusiasm for its manifestation, and from this moment the really noble achievements of true heroism glorify the earth." in one respect, heine was a false prophet. he thought that this philosophy would in the end accrue to the profit of the radical, the republican and revolutionary party in germany. the history of german liberalism is a complicated matter. suffice it in general to say that the honey the libertarians hived was appropriated in the end by the party of authority. in heine's assurance that these ideas would in due time issue in action he was profoundly right. his essay closes with burning words, from which i extract the following: "it seems to me that a methodical people, such as we, must begin with the reformation, must then occupy ourselves with systems of philosophy, and only after their completion pass to the political revolution. . . . then will appear kantians, as little tolerant of piety in the world of deeds as in the world of ideas, who will mercilessly upturn with sword and axe the soil of our european life to extirpate the last remnants of the past. then will come upon the scene armed fichteans, whose fanaticism of will is to be restrained neither by fear nor self-interest, for they live in the spirit. . . . most of all to be feared would be the philosophers of nature,[84:a] were they actively to mingle. . . . for if the hand of the kantian strikes with strong unerring blow; if the fichtean courageously defies every danger, since for him danger has in reality no existence;--the philosopher of nature will be terrible in that he has allied himself with the primitive powers of nature, in that he can conjure up the demoniac forces of old german pantheism; and having done so, aroused in him that ancient germanic eagerness which combats for the joy of the combat itself. . . . smile not at my counsel as at the counsel of a dreamer. . . . the thought precedes the deed as the lightning the thunder. . . . the hour will come. as on the steps of an amphitheater, the nations will group themselves around germany to witness the terrible combat." [84:a] he refers to the followers of schelling, who as matter of fact had little vogue. but his words may not unjustly be transferred to the naturalistic schools, which have since affected german thought. in my preoccupation with heine, i seem to have wandered somewhat from our immediate topic: the connection of the idealistic philosophy with the development and organization of the national state of germany. but the necessity of the organized state to care for the moral interests of mankind was an inherent part of fichte's thought. at first, _what_ state was a matter of indifference. in fact his sympathies were largely french and republican. before jena, he writes: "what is the nation for a truly civilized christian european? in a general way, europe itself. more particularly at any time the state which is at the head of civilization. . . . with this cosmopolitan sense, we can be tranquil before the vicissitudes and catastrophes of history." in 1807 he writes: "the distinction between prussia and the rest of germany is external, arbitrary and fortuitous. the distinction between germany and the rest of europe is founded in nature." the seeming gulf between the two ideas is easily bridged. the "addresses on the fundamental features of the present age" had taught that the end of humanity on earth is the establishment of a kingdom in which all relations of humanity are determined with freedom or according to reason--according to reason as conceived by the fichtean formula. in his "addresses to the german nation," in 1807-08, the unique mission of germany in the establishment of this kingdom is urged as a motive for securing national unity and the overthrow of the conqueror. the germans are the sole people who recognize the principles of spiritual freedom, of freedom won by action in accord with reason. faithfulness to this mission will "elevate the german name to that of the most glorious among all the peoples, making this nation the regenerator and restorer of the world." he personifies their ancestors speaking to them, and saying: "we in our time saved germany from the roman world empire." but "yours is the greater fortune. you may establish once for all the kingdom of the spirit and of reason, bringing to naught corporeal might as the ruling thing in the world." and this antithesis of the germanic and the roman principles has become a commonplace in the german imagination. moreover, for germany to win is no selfish gain. it is an advantage to all nations. "the great promise of a kingdom of right reason and truth on earth must not become a vain and empty phantom; the present iron age is but a transition to a better estate." hence the concluding words: "there is no middle road: if you sink, so sinks humanity entire with you, without hope of future restoration." the premises of the historic syllogism are plain. first, the german luther who saved for mankind the principle of spiritual freedom against latin externalism; then kant and fichte, who wrought out the principle into a final philosophy of science, morals and the state; as conclusion, the german nation organized in order to win the world to recognition of the principle, and thereby to establish the rule of freedom and science in humanity as a whole. the germans are patient; they have a long memory. ideas produced when germany was divided and broken were retained and cherished after it became a unified state of supreme military power, and one yielding to no other people in industrial and commercial prosperity. in the grosser sense of the words, germany has not held that might makes right. but it has been instructed by a long line of philosophers that it is the business of ideal right to gather might to itself in order that it may cease to be merely ideal. the state represents exactly this incarnation of ideal law and right in effective might. the military arm is part of this moral embodiment. let sentimentalists sing the praises of an ideal to which no actual force corresponds. prussian faith in the reality and enforcement among men of the ideal is of a more solid character. as past history is the record of the gradual realization in the germanic state of the divine idea, future history must uphold and expand what has been accomplished. diplomacy is the veiled display of law clothed with force in behalf of this realization, and war is its overt manifestation. that war demands self-sacrifice is but the more convincing proof of its profound morality. it is the final seal of devotion to the extension of the kingdom of the absolute on earth. for the philosophy stands or falls with the conception of an absolute. whether a philosophy of absolutes is theoretically sound or unsound is none of my present concern. but that philosophical absolutism may be practically as dangerous as matter of fact political absolutism history testifies. the situation puts in relief what finally is at issue between a theory which is pinned to a belief in an absolute beyond history and behind experience, and one which is frankly experimental. for any philosophy which is not consistently experimental will always traffic in absolutes no matter in how disguised a form. in german political philosophy, the traffic is without mask. iii the germanic philosophy of history the unity of the german people longed for and dreamed of after 1807 became an established fact through the war of 1870 with france. it is easy to assign symbolic significance to this fact. ever since the time of the french revolution--if not before--german thought has taken shape in conflict with ideas that were characteristically french and in sharp and conscious antithesis to them. rousseau's deification of nature was the occasion for the development of the conception of culture. his condemnation of science and art as socially corrupting and socially divisive worked across the rhine to produce the notion that science and art are the forces which moralize and unify humanity. the cosmopolitanism of the french enlightenment was transformed by german thinkers into a self-conscious assertion of nationalism. the abstract rights of man of the french revolution were set in antithesis to the principle of the rights of the citizen secured to him solely by the power of the politically organized nation. the deliberate breach of the revolutionary philosophy with the past, the attempt (foreshadowed in the philosophy of descartes) to make a _tabula rasa_ of the fortuitous assemblage of traditions and institutions which history offers, in order to substitute a social structure built upon reason, was envisaged as the _fons et origo_ of all evil. that history is itself incarnate reason; that history is infinitely more rational than the formal abstracting and generalizing reason of individuals; that individual mind becomes rational only through the absorption and assimilation of the universal reason embodied in historic institutions and historic development, became the articles of faith of the german intellectual creed. it is hardly an exaggeration to say that for almost a century the characteristic philosophy of germany has been a philosophy of history even when not such in apparent form. yet the meaning of this appeal to history is lost unless we bear in mind that the enlightenment after all transmitted to germany, from medieval thought, its foundation principle. the appeal was not from reason to experience, but from analytic thought (henceforth condemned to be merely "understanding"--"_verstand_") to an absolute and universal reason (_vernunft_) partially revealed in nature and more adequately manifested in human history as an organic process. recourse to history was required because not of any empirical lessons it has to teach, nor yet because history bequeathes to us stubborn institutions which must be reckoned with, but because history is the dynamic and evolving realization of immanent reason. the contrast of the german attitude with that of edmund burke is instructive. the latter had the same profound hostility to cutting loose from the past. but his objection was not that the past is an embodiment of transcendent reason, but that its institutions are an "inheritance" bequeathed to us from the "collected wisdom" of our forefathers. the continuity of political life centers not about an inner evolving idea, but about "our hearths, our sepulchers and our altars." he has the same suspicion of abstract rights of man. but his appeal is to experience and to practical consequences. since "circumstances give in reality to every principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect," there is no soundness in any principle when "it stands stripped of every relation in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction." according to the german view, the english protested because of interference with empirically established rights and privileges; the germans, because they perceived in the revolution a radical error as to the nature and work of reason. in point of fact, the germans never made that break with tradition, political or religious, of which the french revolution is an emphatic symbol. i have already referred to kant's disposition to regard church dogmas (of which, as dogmas, he disapproved) as vehicles of eternal spiritual truths--husks to preserve an inner grain. all of the great german idealists gave further expression to this disposition. to hegel, for example, the substance of the doctrines of protestant christianity is identical with the truths of absolute philosophy, except that in religion they are expressed in a form not adequate to their meaning, the form, namely, of imaginative thought in which most men live. the disposition to philosophize christianity is too widely shown in germany to be dismissed as a cowardly desire at accommodation with things established. it shows rather an intellectual piety among a people where freedom of thought and conscience had been achieved without a violent political upheaval. hegel finds that the characteristic weakness of romance thought was an inner split, an inability to reconcile the spiritual and absolute essence of reality with which religion deals with the detailed work of intelligence in science and politics. the germans, on the contrary, "were predestined to be the bearers of the christian principle and to carry out the idea as the absolutely rational end." they accomplished this, not by a flight away from the secular world, but by realizing that the christian principle is in itself that of the unity of the subjective and the objective, the spiritual and the worldly. the "spirit finds the goal of its struggle, its harmony, in that very sphere which it made the object of its resistance,--it finds that secular pursuits are a spiritual occupation";--a discovery, surely, which unites simplicity with comprehensiveness and one which does not lead to criticism of the secular pursuits carried on. whatever is to be said of this as philosophy, it expresses, in a way, the quality of german life and thought. more than other countries, germany has had the fortune to preserve as food for its imaginative life and as emotional sanction the great ideas of the past. it has carried over their reinforcement into the pursuit of science and into politics--into the very things which in other countries, notably in the latin countries, have been used as weapons of attack upon tradition. political development tells a somewhat similar tale. the painful transition from feudalism to the modern era was, for the most part, accomplished recently in germany, and accomplished under the guidance of established political authorities instead of by revolt against them. under their supervision, and mainly at their initiative, germany has passed in less than a century to the régime of modern capitalistic competitive enterprise, moderated by the state, out of the dominion of those local and guild restrictions which so long held economic activity in corporate bonds. the governing powers themselves secured to members of the state what seems, at least to germans, to be a satisfying degree of political freedom. along with this absence of internal disturbance and revolution, we must put the fact that every step in the development of germany as a unified political power has been effected by war with some of the neighbors by which it is hemmed in. there stands the unfolding sequence: 1815 (not to go back to frederick the great), 1864, 1866, 1870. and the significant thing about these wars is not that external territory was annexed as their consequence, but the rebound of external struggle upon the achieving of internal unity. no wonder the german imagination has been impressed with the idea of an organic evolution from within, which takes the form of a unity achieved through conflict and the conquest of an opposing principle. such scattering comments as these prove nothing. but they suggest why german thought has been peculiarly sensitive to the idea of historic continuity; why it has been prone to seek for an original implicit essence which has progressively unfolded itself in a single development. it would take much more than an hour to give even a superficial account of the growth of the historical sciences and historic methods of germany during the first half of the eighteenth century. it would involve an account of the creation of philology, and the philological methods which go by the name of higher criticism; of their extension to archeology; of the historic schools of jurisprudence and political economy, as well as of the ways in which such men as niebuhr, mommsen and ranke remade the methods of studying the past. i can only say here that germany developed such an effective historical technique that even mediocre men achieved respectable results; and, much more significantly, that when taine made the remark (quoted earlier) that we owe to the germany of the half century before 1830 all our distinctively modern ideas, his remarks apply above all to the disciplines concerned with the historical development of mankind. the bases of this philosophy are already before us. even in kant we find the idea of a single continuous development of humanity, as a progress from a reign of natural instinct to a final freedom won through adherence to the law of reason. fichte sketched the stages already traversed on this road and located the point at which mankind now stands. in his later writings, the significance of history as the realization of the absolute purpose is increasingly emphasized. history is the continuous life of a divine ego by which it realizes in fact what it is in idea or destiny. its phases are successive stages in the founding of the kingdom of god on earth. it and it only is the revelation of the absolute. along with this growing deification of history is the increased significance attached to nationalism in general and the german nation in particular. the state is the concrete individual interposed between generic humanity and particular beings. in his words, the national folk is the channel of divine life as it pours into particular finite human beings. he says: "while cosmopolitanism is the dominant will that the purpose of the existence of humanity be actually realized in humanity, patriotism is the will that this end be first realized in the particular nation to which we ourselves belong, and that this achievement _thence_ spread over the entire race." since the state is an organ of divinity, patriotism is religion. as the germans are the only truly religious people, they alone are truly capable of patriotism. other peoples are products of external causes; they have no self-formed self, but only an acquired self due to general convention. in germany there is a self which is self-wrought and self-owned. the very fact that germany for centuries has had no external unity proves that its selfhood is metaphysical, not a gift of circumstance. this conception of the german mission has been combined with a kind of anthropological metaphysics which has become the rage in germany. the germans alone of all existing european nations are a pure race. they alone have preserved unalloyed the original divine deposit. language is the expression of the national soul, and only the germans have kept their native speech in its purity. in like vein, hegel attributes the inner disharmony characteristic of romance peoples to the fact that they are of mixed germanic and latin blood. a purely artificial cult of race has so flourished in germany that many social movements--like anti-semitism--and some of germany's political ambitions cannot be understood apart from the mystic identification of race, culture and the state. in the light of actual science, this is so mythological that the remark of an american periodical that race means a number of people reading the same newspapers is sober scientific fact compared with it.[101:a] [101:a] chamberlain, for example, holds that jesus must have been of teutonic birth--a perfect logical conclusion from the received philosophy of the state and religion. quite aware that there is much slav blood in northern germany and romance blood in southern germany, he explains that while with other peoples crossing produces a mongrel race, the potency of the german blood is such that cross-breeding strengthens it. while at one time he explains the historic strength of the jew on the ground that he has kept his race pure, another place he allows his indignation at the jews to lead him to include them among the most mongrel of all peoples. to one thing he remains consistent: by the very essence of race, the semites represent a metaphysical principle inherently hostile to the grand germanic principle. it perhaps seems absurd to dignify the vagaries of this garrulous writer, but according to all report the volumes in which such expressions occur, "the foundations of the nineteenth century," has had august approval and much vogue. at the beginning of history fichte placed an "_urvolk_." his account of it seems an attempt to rationalize at one stroke the legends of the golden age, the biblical account of man before the fall and rousseau's primitive "state of nature." the _urvolk_ lived in a paradise of innocence, a paradise without knowledge, labor or art. the philosophy which demands such a folk is comparatively simple. except as a manifestation of absolute reason, humanity could not exist at all. yet in the first stage of the manifestation, reason could not have been appropriated by the self-conscious effort of man. it existed without consciousness of itself, for it was given, not, like all true self-consciousness, won by morally creative struggle. rational in substance, in form it was but feeling or instinct. in a sense, all subsequent history is but a return to this primitive condition. but "humanity must make the journey on its own feet; by its own strength it must bring itself back to that state in which it was once without its own coöperating labor. . . . if humanity does not recreate its own true being, it has no real life." while philosophy compels us to assume a normal people who, by "the mere fact of their existence, without science and art, found themselves in a state of perfectly developed reason," there is no ground for not admitting the existence at the same time of "timid and rude earth-born savages." thus the original state of humanity would have been one of the greatest possible inequality, being divided between the normal folk existing as a manifestation of reason and the wild and savage races of barbarism. in his later period of inflamed patriotism this innocuous speculation grew a sting. he had determined that the present age--the europe of the enlightenment and the french revolution--is the age of liberation from the external authority in which reason had presented itself in the second age. hence it is inherently negative: "an age of absolute indifference toward the truth, an age of entire and unrestrained licentiousness." but the further evolution of the divine idea demands a folk which has retained the primitive principle of reason, which may redeem, therefore, the corrupt and rebellious modes of humanity elsewhere existing. since the germans are this saving remnant, they are the _urvolk_, the normal nation, of the modern period. from this point on, idealization of past germanic history and appeal to the nation to realize its unique calling by victory over napoleon blend. the fichtean scaffolding tumbled, but these ideas persisted. i doubt if it is possible to exaggerate the extent to which german history has been systematically idealized for the last hundred years. technically speaking, the romantic movement may have passed away and an age of scientific history dawned. actually the detailed facts have been depicted by use of the palette of romanticism. space permits but one illustration which would be but a literary curiosity were it not fairly typical. tacitus called his account of the northern barbarians germania--an unfortunate title in view of later developments. the characteristics assigned by him to the german tribes are such as any anthropologist could duplicate from any warlike barbaric tribe. yet over and over again these traits (which tacitus idealized as cooper, say, idealized the north american indian traits) are made the basis of the philosophic history of the german people. the germans, for example, had that psychological experience now known as mana, manitou, tabu, etc. they identified their gods, in tacitus' phrase, with "that mystery which they perceive by experiencing sacred fear." this turns out to be the germinal deposit of spiritual-mindedness which later showed itself in luther and in the peculiar genius of the germans for religious experience. the following words are from no less an authority than pfleiderer: "cannot we recognize in this point that truly german characteristic of _innerlichkeit_ which scorns to fix for sensuous perception the divine something which makes itself felt in the depths of the sensitive soul, which scorns to drag down the sublime mystery of the unknowable to the vulgar distinctness of earthly things? the fact that the germans attached but little importance to religious ceremonies accords with this view." to others, this sense of mystery is a prophetic anticipation of the kantian thing-in-itself. a similar treatment has been accorded to the personal and voluntary bond by which individuals attached themselves to a chieftain. thus early was marked out the fidelity or loyalty, _treue_, which is uniquely germanic--although some warlike tribes among our indians carried the system still further. i can allow myself but one more example of the way in which the philosophic sophistication of history has worked. no historian can be unconscious of the extent to which european culture has been genuinely european--the extent to which it derives itself from a common heritage of the ancient world and the extent to which intermixtures and borrowings of culture have gone on ever since. as to germany, however, these obvious facts have to be accommodated to the doctrine of an original racial deposit steadily evolving from within. the method is simple. as respects germany, these cultural borrowings and crosses represent the intrinsic universality of its genius. through this universality, the german spirit finds itself at home everywhere. consequently, it consciously appropriates and assimilates what other peoples have produced by a kind of blind unconscious instinct. thus it was german thought which revealed the truth of hellenic culture, and rescued essential christianity from its romanized petrifaction. the principle of reason which french enlightenment laid hold of only in its negative and destructive aspect, the german spirit grasped in its positive and constructive form. shakespeare happened to be born in england, but only the germans have apprehended him in his spiritual universality so that he is now more his own than he is england's--and so on. but with respect to other peoples, similar borrowings reveal only their lack of inner and essential selfhood. while luther is universal because he is german, shakespeare is universal because he is not english. i have intimated that fichte's actual influence was limited. but his basic ideas of the state and of history were absorbed in the philosophy of hegel, and hegel for a considerable period absolutely dominated german thinking. to set forth the ground principles of his "absolute idealism" would be only to repeat what has already been said. its chief difference, aside from hegel's encyclopedic knowledge, his greater concrete historic interest and his more conservative temperament, is his bottomless scorn for an idea, an absolute, which merely ought to be and which is only going to be realized after a period of time. "the actual is the rational and the rational _is_ the actual"--and the actual means the actuating force and movement of things. it is customary to call him an idealist. in one sense of much abused terms, he is the greatest realist known to philosophy. he might be called a brutalist. in the inquiry bourdon carried on in germany a few years ago (published under the title of the "german enigma"), he records a conversation with a german who deplores the tendency of the germans to forsake the solid bone of things in behalf of a romantic shadow. as against this he appeals to the realistic sense of hegel, who, "in opposition to the idealism which had lifted germany on wings, arrayed and marshaled the maxims of an unflinching realism. he had formulæ for the justification of facts whatever they might be. that which _is_, he would say, is reason realized. and what did he teach? that the hour has sounded for the third act in the drama of humanity, and that the german opportunity is not far off. . . . i could show you throughout the nineteenth century the torrent of political and social ideas which had their source here." i have said that the essential points of the fichtean philosophy of history were taken up into the hegelian system. this assimilation involved, however, a rectification of an inconsistency between the earlier and the later moral theories of fichte. in his earlier ethical writings, emphasis fell upon conscious moral personality--upon the deliberate identification by the individual will of its career and destiny with the purpose of the absolute. in his later patriotic philosophy, he asserts that the organized nation is the channel by which a finite ego acquires moral personality, since the nation alone transmits to individuals the generic principle of god working in humanity. at the same time he appeals to the resolute will and consciously chosen self-sacrifice of individuals to overthrow the enemy and re-establish the prussian state. when hegel writes that victory has been obtained, the war of independence has been successfully waged. the necessity of emphasizing individual self-assertion had given way to the need of subordinating the individual to the established state in order to check the disintegrating tendencies of liberalism. haym has said that hegel's "philosophy of law" had for its task the exhibition as the perfect work of absolute reason up to date of the "practical and political condition existing in prussia in 1821." this was meant as a hostile attack. but hegel himself should have been the last to object. with his scorn for an ideal so impotent that its realization must depend upon the effort of private selves, an absolute so inconsequential that it must wait upon the accidents of future time for manifestation, he sticks in politics more than elsewhere to the conviction that the actual _is_ the rational. "the task of philosophy is to comprehend that which is, for that which is, is reason." alleged philosophies which try to tell what the state should be or even what a state ought in the future to come to be, are idle fantasies. such attempts come too late. human wisdom is like "the bird of minerva which takes its flight only at the close of day."[110:a] it comes, after the issue, to acknowledge what has happened. "the state is the rational in itself and for itself. its substantial unity is an absolute end in itself. to it belongs supreme right in respect to individuals whose first duty is--just to be members of the state." . . . the state "is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the state." it is a commonplace of idealistic theism that nature is a manifestation of god. but hegel says that nature is only an externalized, unconscious and so incomplete expression. the state has more, not less, objective reality than physical nature, for it is a realization of absolute spirit in the realm of consciousness. the doctrine presents an extreme form of the idea, not of the divine right of kings, but of the divine right of states. "the march of god in history is the cause of the existence of states; their foundation is the power of reason realizing itself as will. every state, whatever it be, participates in the divine essence. the state is not the work of human art; only reason could produce it." the state is god on earth. [110:a] marx said of the historic schools of politics, law and economics that to them, as jehovah to moses on mt. sinai, the divine showed but its posterior side. his depreciation of the individual as an individual appears in every theme of his philosophy of right and history. at first sight, his theory of great world heroes seems inconsistent with his disregard of individuals. while the morality of most men consists simply in assimilating into their own habits the customs already found in the institutions about them, great men initiate new historic epochs. they derive "their purposes and their calling not from the calm regular course of things sanctioned by the existing order, but from a concealed fount, from that inner spirit hidden beneath the surface, which, striking the outer world as a shell, bursts it to pieces." the heroes are thus the exception which proves the rule. they are world characters; while they seem to be seeking personal interests they are really acting as organs of a universal will, of god in his further march. in his identification with the absolute, the world-hero can have but one aim to which "he is devoted regardless of all else. such men may even treat other great and sacred interests inconsiderately. . . . but so mighty a form must trample down many an innocent flower--crush to pieces many an object in its path." we are not surprised to see that alexander, cæsar and napoleon are the characters he prefers to cite. one can only regret that he died before his contemplative piety could behold bismarck. a large part of the intellectual machinery by which hegel overcame the remnants of individualism found in prior philosophy came from the idea of organic development which had been active in german thought since the time of herder. in his chief work ("ideas for a philosophy of the history of humanity"), written in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, herder holds that history is a progressive education of humanity. this idea, had from lessing, is combined with the idea of leibniz that change is evolution, by means of an internal force, of powers originally implicit in existence, and with the idea of spinoza of an all-comprehensive substance. this idea of organic growth was then applied to language, literature and institutions. it soon obtained reinforcement from the rising science of biology. long before the days of darwin or spencer, the idea of evolution had been a commonplace of german thought with respect to everything concerning the history of humanity. the notion was set in sharp antithesis to the conception of "making" or manufacturing institutions and constitutions, which was treated as one of the fallacies of the french philosophy of the enlightenment. a combination of this notion of universal organic growth with the technique of prior idealism may fairly be said to have determined hegel's whole philosophy. while leibniz and herder had emphasized the notion of harmony as an essential factor of the working of organic forces, hegel took from fichte the notion of a unity or synthesis arrived at by "positing," and overcoming an opposite. struggle for existence (or realization) was thus an "organic" part of german thinking long before the teaching of darwin, who, in fact, is usually treated by german writers as giving a rather superficial empirical expression to an idea which they had already grasped in its universal speculative form. it is characteristic of the extent in which hegel thought in terms of struggle and overcoming that after stating why it was as yet impossible to include the americas in his philosophy of history, and after saying that in the future the burden of world history will reveal itself there, he surmises that it may take the form of a "contest" between north and south america. no philosopher has ever thought so consistently and so wholly in terms of strife and overcoming as hegel. when he says the "world history is the world judgment" he means judgment in the sense of assize, and judgment as victory of one and defeat of another--victory being the final proof that the world spirit has now passed from one nation to take up its residence in another. to be defeated in a way which causes the nation to take a secondary position among nations is a sign that divine judgment has been passed upon it. when a recent german writer argues that for germany to surrender any territory which it has conquered during the present war would be sacrilegious, since it would be to refuse to acknowledge the workings of god in human history, he speaks quite in the hegelian vein. although the phenomenon of nationalism was very recent when hegel wrote, indeed practically contemporary with his own day, he writes in nationalistic terms the entire history of humanity. the state is the individual of history: it is to history what a given man is to biography. history gives us the progressive realization or evolution of the absolute, moving from one national individual to another. it is law, the universal, which makes the state a state, for law is reason, not as mere subjective reflection, but in its manifestation as supreme over and in particulars. on this account, hegel's statement that the fundamental principle of history is the progressive realization of freedom does not mean what an uninstructed english reader would naturally take it to mean. freedom is always understood in terms of reason. its expression in history means that thought has progressively become conscious of itself; that is, has made itself its own object. freedom is the _consciousness_ of freedom. liberty of action has little to do with it. obviously it is only in the german idealistic system--particularly in the system of hegel himself--that this has fully taken place. meantime, when citizens of a state (especially of the state in which this philosophic insight has been achieved) take the laws of their state as their own ends and motives of action, they attain the best possible substitute for a reason which is its own object. they appropriate as their own personal reason the objective and absolute reason embodied perforce in law and custom. after this détour, we are led back to the fact that the germans possess the greatest freedom yet attained by humanity, for the prussian political organization most fully exemplifies law, or the universal, organizing under and within itself all particular arrangements of social and personal life. some other peoples--particularly the latin--have thought they could _make_ constitutions, or at least that the form of their constitution was a matter of choice. but this is merely setting up the private conceit of individuals against the work of absolute reason, and thus marks the disintegration of a state rather than its existence. other peoples have tried to found the government on the consent of the governed, unwitting of the fact that it is the government, the _specific_ realization of reason, which makes a state out of what is otherwise an anarchic mass of individuals. other peoples have made a parliament or representative body the essential thing in government; in philosophic reality this is only a consultative body, having as its main function communication between classes (which are indispensable to an "organic" state) and the real government. the chief function of parliament is to give the opinion of the social classes an opportunity to feel it is being considered and to enable the real government to take advantage of whatever wisdom may chance to be expressed. hegel seems quite prophetic when he says: "by virtue of this participation subjective liberty and conceit, with their general opinion, can show themselves palpably efficacious and enjoy the satisfaction of feeling themselves to count for something." finally, the state becomes wholly and completely an organized individual only in its external relations, its relations to other states. as his philosophy of history ignores the past in seizing upon the national state as the unit and focus of history, so it ignores all future possibility of a genuinely international federation to which isolated nationalism shall be subordinated. bernhardi writes wholly in the hegelian sense when he says that to expand the idea of the state into the idea of humanity is a utopian error, for it would exclude the essential principle of life, struggle. philosophical justification of war follows inevitably from a philosophy of history composed in nationalistic terms. history is the movement, the march of god on earth through time. only one nation at a time can be the latest and hence the fullest realization of god. the movement of god in history is thus particularly manifest in those changes by which unique place passes from one nation to another. war is the signally visible occurrence of such a flight of the divine spirit in its onward movement. the idea that friendly intercourse among all the peoples of the earth is a legitimate aim of human effort is in basic contradiction of such a philosophy. war is explicit realization of "dialectic," of the negation by which a higher synthesis of reason is assured. it effectively displays the "irony of the divine idea." it is to national life what the winds are to the sea, "preserving mankind from the corruption engendered by immobility." war is the most effective preacher of the vanity of all merely finite interests; it puts an end to that selfish egoism of the individual by which he would claim his life and his property as his own or as his family's. international law is not properly law; it expresses simply certain usages which are accepted so long as they do not come into conflict with the purpose of a state--a purpose which always gives the supreme law of national life. particularly against the absolute right of the "present bearer of the world spirit, the spirits of the other nations are absolutely without right. the latter, just like the nations whose epochs have passed, count no longer in universal history." since they are already passed over from the standpoint of the divine idea, war can do no more than exhibit the fact that their day has come and gone. world history is the world's judgment seat. for a period hegelian thought was almost supreme in germany. then its rule passed away almost as rapidly as it had been achieved. after various shiftings, the trend of philosophic thought was definitely "back to kant." kant's greater sobriety, the sharp distinction he drew between the realm of phenomena and science and the ideal noumenal world, commended him after the unbridled pretensions of hegelian absolutism. for more than a generation hegel was spoken of with almost universal contempt. nevertheless his ideas, loosed from the technical apparatus with which he surrounded them, persisted. upon the historical disciplines his influence was peculiarly deep and abiding. he fixed the ideas of fichte and fastened them together with the pin of evolution. since his day, histories of philosophy, or religion, or institutions have all been treated as developments through necessary stages of an inner implicit idea or purpose according to an indwelling law. and the idea of a peculiar mission and destiny of german history has lost nothing in the operation. expressions which a bewildered world has sought since the beginning of the war to explain through the influence of a darwinian struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, or through the influence of a nietzschean philosophy of power, have their roots in the classic idealistic philosophy culminating in hegel. kant still remains the philosopher of germany. the division of life between the world of sense and of mechanism and the world of the supersensible and purpose, the world of necessity and the world of freedom, is more congenial than a complete monism. the attempts of his successors to bridge the gap and set up a wholly unified philosophy failed, historically speaking. but, nevertheless, they contributed an indispensable ingredient to the contemporary german spirit; they helped people the kantian void of the supersensible with the substantial figures of the state and its historical evolution and mission. kant bequeathed to the world an intellect devoted to the congenial task of discovering causal law in external nature, and an inner intuition which, in spite of its sublimity, had nothing to look at except the bare form of an empty law of duty. kant was kept busy in proving the existence of this supernal but empty region. consequently he was not troubled by being obliged to engage in the unremunerative task of spending his time gazing into a blank void. his successors were not so fortunate. the existence of this ideal realm in which reason, purpose and freedom are one was axiomatic to them; they could no longer busy themselves with proving its existence. some of them, called the romanticists, filled it with visions, more or less poetic, which frankly drew their substance from an imagination inflamed by emotional aspiration in revolt at the limitations of outward action. others, called the idealistic philosophers, filled in the void, dark because of excess of light, with less ghostly forms of law and the unfolding in history of absolute value and purpose. the two worlds of kant were too far away from each other. the later idealistic world constructions crumbled; but their débris supplied material with which to fill in the middle regions between the kantian worlds of sense and of reason. this, i repeat, is their lasting contribution to present german culture. where kantianism has not received a filling in from the philosophy of history and the state, it has remained in germany, as elsewhere, a critique of the methodology of science; its importance has been professional rather than human. * * * * * in the first lecture we set out with the suggestion of an inquiry into the influence of general ideas upon practical affairs, upon those larger practical affairs called politics. we appear to have concluded with a conviction that (in the instance before us at least) politics has rather been the controlling factor in the formation of philosophic ideas and in deciding their vogue. yet we are well within limits when we say that ideas which were evoked in correspondence with concrete social conditions served to articulate and consolidate the latter. even if we went so far as to say that reigning philosophies simply reflect as in a mirror contemporary social struggles, we should have to add that seeing one's self in a mirror is a definite practical aid in carrying on one's undertaking to its completion. when what a people sees in its intellectual looking glass is its own organization and its own historic evolution as an organic instrument of the accomplishment of an absolute will and law, the articulating and consolidating efficacy of the reflection is immensely intensified. outside of germany, the career of the german idealistic philosophy has been mainly professional and literary. it has exercised considerable influence upon the teaching of philosophy in france, england and this country. beyond professorial circles, its influence has been considerable in theological directions. without doubt, it has modulated for many persons the transition from a supernatural to a spiritual religion; it has enabled them to give up historical and miraculous elements as indifferent accretions and to retain the moral substance and emotional values of christianity. but the germans are quite right in feeling that only in germany is this form of idealistic thinking both indigenous and widely applied. a crisis like the present forces upon thoughtful persons a consideration of the value for the general aims of civilization of a philosophy of the _a priori_, the absolute, and of their immanent evolution through the medium of an experience which as just experience is only a superficial and negligible vehicle of transcendent laws and ends. it forces a consideration of what type of general ideas is available for the articulation and guidance of our own life in case we find ourselves looking upon the present world scene as an _a priori_ and an absolutistic philosophy gone into bankruptcy. in europe, speaking generally, "americanism" is a synonym for crude empiricism and a materialistic utilitarianism. it is no part of my present task to try to show how largely this accusation is due to misunderstanding. it is simpler to inquire how far the charge points to the problem which american life, and therefore philosophy in america, must meet. it is difficult to see how any _a priori_ philosophy, or any systematic absolutism, is to get a footing among us, at least beyond narrow and professorial circles. psychologists talk about learning by the method of trial and error or success. our social organization commits us to this philosophy of life. our working principle is to try: to find out by trying, and to measure the worth of the ideas and theories tried by the success with which they meet the test of application in practice. concrete consequences rather than _a priori_ rules supply our guiding principles. hegel found it "superficial and absurd to regard as objects of choice" social constitutions; to him "they were necessary structures in the path of development." to us they are the cumulative result of a multitude of daily and ever-renewed choices. that such an experimental philosophy of life means a dangerous experiment goes without saying. it permits, sooner or later it may require, every alleged sacrosanct principle to submit to ordeal by fire--to trial by service rendered. from the standpoint of _a priorism_, it is hopelessly anarchic; it is doomed, _a priori_, to failure. from its own standpoint, it is itself a theory to be tested by experience. now experiments are of all kinds, varying from those generated by blind impulse and appetite to those guided by intelligently formed ideas. they are as diverse as the attempt of a savage to get rain by sprinkling water and scattering thistledown, and that control of electricity in the laboratory from which issue wireless telegraphy and rapid traction. is it not likely that in this distinction we have the key to the failure or success of the experimental method generalized into a philosophy of life, that is to say, of social matters--the only application which procures complete generalization? an experimental philosophy differs from empirical philosophy as empiricism has been previously formulated. historical empiricisms have been stated in terms of precedents; their generalizations have been summaries of what has previously happened. the truth and falsity of these generalizations depended then upon the accuracy with which they catalogued, under appropriate heads, a multiplicity of past occurrences. they were perforce lacking in directive power except so far as the future might be a routine repetition of the past. in an experimental philosophy of life, the question of the past, of precedents, of origins, is quite subordinate to prevision, to guidance and control amid future possibilities. consequences rather than antecedents measure the worth of theories. any scheme or project may have a fair hearing provided it promise amelioration in the future; and no theory or standard is so sacred that it may be accepted simply on the basis of past performance. but this difference between a radically experimental philosophy and an empiristic philosophy only emphasizes the demand for careful and comprehensive reflection with respect to the ideas which are to be tested in practice. if an _a priori_ philosophy has worked at all in germany it is because it has been based on an _a priori_ social constitution--that is to say, on a state whose organization is such as to determine in advance the main activities of classes of individuals, and to utilize their particular activities by linking them up with one another in definite ways. it is a commonplace to say that germany is a monument to what can be done by means of conscious method and organization. an experimental philosophy of life in order to succeed must not set less store upon methodic and organized intelligence, but more. we must learn from germany what methodic and organized work means. but instead of confining intelligence to the technical means of realizing ends which are predetermined by the state (or by something called the historic evolution of the idea), intelligence must, with us, devote itself as well to construction of the ends to be acted upon. the method of trial and error or success is likely, if not directed by a trained and informed imagination, to score an undue proportion of failures. there is no possibility of disguising the fact that an experimental philosophy of life means a hit-and-miss philosophy in the end. but it means missing rather than hitting, if the aiming is done in a happy-go-lucky way instead of by bringing to bear all the resources of inquiry upon locating the target, constructing propulsive machinery and figuring out the curve of trajectory. that this work is, after all, but hypothetical and tentative till it issue from thought into action does not mean that it might as well be random guesswork; it means that we can do still better next time if we are sufficiently attentive to the causes of success and failure this time. america is too new to afford a foundation for an _a priori_ philosophy; we have not the requisite background of law, institutions and achieved social organization. america is too new to render congenial to our imagination an evolutionary philosophy of the german type. for our history is too obviously future. our country is too big and too unformed, however, to enable us to trust to an empirical philosophy of muddling along, patching up here and there some old piece of machinery which has broken down by reason of its antiquity. we must have system, constructive method, springing from a widely inventive imagination, a method checked up at each turn by results achieved. we have said long enough that america means opportunity; we must now begin to ask: opportunity for what, and how shall the opportunity be achieved? i can but think that the present european situation forces home upon us the need for constructive planning. i can but think that while it gives no reason for supposing that creative power attaches _ex officio_ to general ideas, it does encourage us to believe that a philosophy which should articulate and consolidate the ideas to which our social practice commits us would clarify and guide our future endeavor. time permits of but one illustration. the present situation presents the spectacle of the breakdown of the whole philosophy of nationalism, political, racial and cultural. it is by the accident of position rather than any virtue of our own that we are not sharers in the present demonstration of failure. we have borrowed the older philosophy of isolated national sovereignty and have lived upon it in a more or less half-hearted way. in our internal constitution we are actually interracial and international. it remains to see whether we have the courage to face this fact and the wisdom to think out the plan of action which it indicates. arbitration treaties, international judicial councils, schemes of international disarmament, peace funds and peace movements, are all well in their way. but the situation calls for more radical thinking than that which terminates in such proposals. we have to recognize that furtherance of the depth and width of human intercourse is the measure of civilization; and we have to apply this fact without as well as within our national life. we must make the accident of our internal composition into an idea, an idea upon which we may conduct our foreign as well as our domestic policy. an international judicial tribunal will break in the end upon the principle of national sovereignty. we have no right to cast stones at any warring nation till we have asked ourselves whether we are willing to forego this principle and to submit affairs which limited imagination and sense have led us to consider strictly national to an international legislature. in and of itself, the idea of peace is a negative idea; it is a police idea. there _are_ things more important than keeping one's body whole and one's property intact. disturbing the peace is bad, not because peace is disturbed, but because the fruitful processes of coöperation in the great experiment of living together are disturbed. it is futile to work for the negative end of peace unless we are committed to the positive ideal which it cloaks: promoting the efficacy of human intercourse irrespective of class, racial, geographical and national limits. any philosophy which should penetrate and particulate our present social practice would find at work the forces which unify human intercourse. an intelligent and courageous philosophy of practice would devise means by which the operation of these forces would be extended and assured in the future. an american philosophy of history must perforce be a philosophy for its future, a future in which freedom and fullness of human companionship is the aim, and intelligent coöperative experimentation the method. the end index absolutism, 89, 112, 115, 124 america, philosophy in, 123-132 "americanism," 124 anti-semitism, 100-101. _a priori_, 39-44, 126, 129 authority, 52-54 bentham, 56 bergson, 4 bernhardi, 34-35, 52, 118 bourdon, 107-108 burke, 93-94 chamberlain, 101 n. cosmopolitanism, 67, 75, 85, 99 culture, 91 descartes, 92 despotism enlightened, 53 dialectic, 70, 118 duty, 24, 50-57 education, 14, 72, 73 empiricism, 41, 43, 126-129 enlightenment, the, 37-39, 59, 92, 103 eucken, 36, 55 evolution, 112 fichte, 68-80, 85-87 formalism, 51 freedom, 18, 25, 30, 33-35, 47, 51, 71, 115. french revolution, 57, 94, 103 french thought, 52, 91-94, 95, 100 germania, 104 germany, 14-16, 28, 29-31, 32-33, 36, 71, 78-81, 84-85, 88, 91-93, 94-98, 106-107 haym, 107 hegel, 94-95, 107-120, 125 heine, 17, 18, 76, 83, 84-85 herder, 112 history, 5-6, 59-67, 98-102, 107-119, 121 hoffman, 81 idealism, 28, 39, 70, 82, 107, 123, 130 ideas and action, 3-15, 123-132 individualism, 49, 72 intelligence, 54-56, 126-128 jena, 68 kant, 19-40, 47-58, 59-67, 119-121 kultur, 62-64 lange, 78 lasalle, 77 law, 20-25, 116 leibniz, 59, 112 luther, 16, 27, 71, 87 marx, 6, 110 n. militarism, 52 napoleon, 67, 78-79 nationalism, 67, 81, 86, 87, 115 nietzsche, 28, 34, 58 pantheism, 77, 82 parliaments, 117 personality, 48 pfleiderer, 105 philosophy, 7-18, 123-132 property, 74 psychology, social, 82 race, 100-101 religion, 20-21, 26-27, 95 rights, 52, 57 romanticism, 81, 104, 122 rousseau, 61, 91 schelling, 82 n. scholar, 72 science, 21-23, 28 socialism, 74-75 social motives, 60-61 society, 64-65 state, 64-65, 66-67, 73-77, 110-118 subjectivism, 49, 81 supersensible, 23-25 v. sybel, 78-80 tacitus, 104 taine, 14 universalism of germany, 36, 106-107 _urvolk_, 101-102 utilitarianism, 57-58 _volks-seele_, 82 war, 35-36, 89, 97, 118-120 world-heroes, 112 dewey and tufts's ethics by john dewey, professor in columbia university, and james h. tufts, professor in the university of chicago. (_american science series._) 618 pp. 8vo. $2.00. g. h. palmer, _professor in harvard university_: it is a scholarly and stimulating production, the best, i think, for college use that has yet appeared. indeed, from no other book would a general reader obtain in so brief a compass so wide a view of the moral work of to-day, set forth in so positive, lucid and interesting a fashion. twenty years ago the book could not have been written, for into it have gone the spoils of all the ethical battles of our time. while i often find myself in dissent from its opinions, i see that whoever wishes to comprehend the deeper social tendencies of recent years will do well to study this book, and that he will carry away from his reading as much enjoyment as instruction. professor norman wilde of the _university of minnesota_ in _journal of philosophy, psychology and scientific methods_: if this is not the ideal text-book in ethics for which we have been waiting so many years, it is, at least, a very good substitute for it. certainly no more valuable fruit of the recent ethical revival has been produced than this, nor one which will itself produce more future good, for it is bound to be but the first of a new type of texts. it marks the end of the abstract, speculative treatises and the beginning of the positive studies of established human values. the moral life is presented as a reality about which there can be no more question than about the reality of the physical life, and, indeed, as that in which the latter finds its completion and explanation. theories and systems are strictly subordinated to the facts and are not presented until the facts are clearly given. no student can rise from the study of this book feeling that he has been engaged with questions of purely academic interest. on the contrary, he can not but realize that it is the origin and solution of the problems of his own life with which he is here concerned. reality is the dominant note of the book. the outlook: in several respects this work, among the many of its kind appearing in recent years, is eminently valuable, especially for the ample treatment given to ethics in the world of action in civil society, admidst the relations of political, economic, and family life. to trace the growth of morality, and to discover its laws and principles, with a view to their application to present social conditions and problems for progressive moral development, is the proper aim of ethical science as here unfolded. . . . the many ethical questions raised by present economic conditions are treated with admirable fulness and perspicacity. henry holt and company new york bergson's creative evolution _translated from the french by dr. arthur mitchell_ $3.00 net, by mail $3.17 "bergson's resources in the way of erudition are remarkable, and in the way of expression they are simply phenomenal. . . . if anything can make hard things easy to follow it is a style like bergson's. it is a miracle and he a real magician. open bergson and new horizons open on every page you read. it tells of reality itself instead of reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. nothing in bergson is shopworn or at second-hand."--_william james._ "a distinctive and trenchant piece of dialectic. . . . than its entrance upon the field as a well-armed and militant philosophy there have been not many more memorable occurences in the history of ideas."--_nation._ "to bring out in an adequate manner the effect which bergson's philsophy has on those who are attracted by it let us try to imagine what it would have been like to have lived when kant produced his 'critique of pure reason.'"--_hibbert journal._ "_creative evolution_ is destined, i believe, to mark an epoch in the history of modern thought. the work has its root in modern physical science, but it blooms and bears fruit in the spirit to a degree quite unprecedented. . . . bergson is a new star in the intellectual firmament of our day. he is a philosopher upon whom the spirits of both literature and science have descended. in his great work he touches the materialism of science to finer issues. probably no other writer of our time has possessed in the same measure the three gifts, the literary, the scientific, and the philosophical. bergson is a kind of chastened and spiritualized herbert spencer."--_john burroughs in the atlantic monthly._ henry holt and company publishers new york by walter lippmann drift and mastery _2nd printing, $1.50 net_ theodore roosevelt _in the outlook_: "no man who wishes seriously to study our present social, industrial and political life can afford not to read it through and through and to ponder and digest it." william marion reedy _in the st. louis mirror_: "when 'a preface to politics' was published, i ventured the opinion that it was the best book on politics since walter bagehot's 'physics and politics.' now he has followed it with 'drift and mastery,' an even more brilliant performance." a preface to politics _3rd printing, $1.50 net_ _the boston transcript_: "'a preface to politics' is its own complete and sufficient justification. in many respects it is the ablest brief book of its kind published during the last ten years. it has the supreme virtue of clearness aided by a style that is incisive and compelling." the stakes of diplomacy _4th printing, cloth, $1.35 net; paper, 60 cts. net_ j. b. kerfoot _in life_: "it is a real joy to find it of the same order as 'a preface to politics.' it deals with human nature involved in international human relations impersonally, yet brings significances personally home to us. a book that widens horizons and quickens consciousness." henry holt and company publishers new york transcriber's notes ellipses match the original. a row of asterisks represents a thought break. words in italics in the original are surrounded with _underscores_. the following corrections have been made to the text: page 53: duty must get[original has gets] its subject-matter somewhere page 110: wisdom is like "[quotation mark missing in the original]the bird of minerva page 134: _volks-seele_[original has _volk-seele_], 82 typographical errors in the book reviews have been retained as printed. 1785 fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals by immanuel kant translated by thomas kingsmill abbott preface ancient greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic. this division is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing; and the only improvement that can be made in it is to add the principle on which it is based, so that we may both satisfy ourselves of its completeness, and also be able to determine correctly the necessary subdivisions. all rational knowledge is either material or formal: the former considers some object, the latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. formal philosophy is called logic. material philosophy, however, which has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold; for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. the science of the former is physics, that of the latter, ethics; they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively. logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not. we may call all philosophy empirical, so far as it is based on grounds of experience: on the other hand, that which delivers its doctrines from a priori principles alone we may call pure philosophy. when the latter is merely formal it is logic; if it is restricted to definite objects of the understanding it is metaphysic. in this way there arises the idea of a twofold metaphysica metaphysic of nature and a metaphysic of morals. physics will thus have an empirical and also a rational part. it is the same with ethics; but here the empirical part might have the special name of practical anthropology, the name morality being appropriated to the rational part. all trades, arts, and handiworks have gained by division of labour, namely, when, instead of one man doing everything, each confines himself to a certain kind of work distinct from others in the treatment it requires, so as to be able to perform it with greater facility and in the greatest perfection. where the different kinds of work are not distinguished and divided, where everyone is a jack-of-all-trades, there manufactures remain still in the greatest barbarism. it might deserve to be considered whether pure philosophy in all its parts does not require a man specially devoted to it, and whether it would not be better for the whole business of science if those who, to please the tastes of the public, are wont to blend the rational and empirical elements together, mixed in all sorts of proportions unknown to themselves, and who call themselves independent thinkers, giving the name of minute philosophers to those who apply themselves to the rational part onlyif these, i say, were warned not to carry on two employments together which differ widely in the treatment they demand, for each of which perhaps a special talent is required, and the combination of which in one person only produces bunglers. but i only ask here whether the nature of science does not require that we should always carefully separate the empirical from the rational part, and prefix to physics proper (or empirical physics) a metaphysic of nature, and to practical anthropology a metaphysic of morals, which must be carefully cleared of everything empirical, so that we may know how much can be accomplished by pure reason in both cases, and from what sources it draws this its a priori teaching, and that whether the latter inquiry is conducted by all moralists (whose name is legion), or only by some who feel a calling thereto. as my concern here is with moral philosophy, i limit the question suggested to this: whether it is not of the utmost necessity to construct a pure thing which is only empirical and which belongs to anthropology? for that such a philosophy must be possible is evident from the common idea of duty and of the moral laws. everyone must admit that if a law is to have moral force, i.e., to be the basis of an obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the precept, "thou shalt not lie," is not valid for men alone, as if other rational beings had no need to observe it; and so with all the other moral laws properly so called; that, therefore, the basis of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man, or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in the conception of pure reason; and although any other precept which is founded on principles of mere experience may be in certain respects universal, yet in as far as it rests even in the least degree on an empirical basis, perhaps only as to a motive, such a precept, while it may be a practical rule, can never be called a moral law. thus not only are moral laws with their principles essentially distinguished from every other kind of practical knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part. when applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws a priori to him as a rational being. no doubt these laws require a judgement sharpened by experience, in order on the one hand to distinguish in what cases they are applicable, and on the other to procure for them access to the will of the man and effectual influence on conduct; since man is acted on by so many inclinations that, though capable of the idea of a practical pure reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in concreto in his life. a metaphysic of morals is therefore indispensably necessary, not merely for speculative reasons, in order to investigate the sources of the practical principles which are to be found a priori in our reason, but also because morals themselves are liable to all sorts of corruption, as long as we are without that clue and supreme canon by which to estimate them correctly. for in order that an action should be morally good, it is not enough that it conform to the moral law, but it must also be done for the sake of the law, otherwise that conformity is only very contingent and uncertain; since a principle which is not moral, although it may now and then produce actions conformable to the law, will also often produce actions which contradict it. now it is only in a pure philosophy that we can look for the moral law in its purity and genuineness (and, in a practical matter, this is of the utmost consequence): we must, therefore, begin with pure philosophy (metaphysic), and without it there cannot be any moral philosophy at all. that which mingles these pure principles with the empirical does not deserve the name of philosophy (for what distinguishes philosophy from common rational knowledge is that it treats in separate sciences what the latter only comprehends confusedly); much less does it deserve that of moral philosophy, since by this confusion it even spoils the purity of morals themselves, and counteracts its own end. let it not be thought, however, that what is here demanded is already extant in the propaedeutic prefixed by the celebrated wolf to his moral philosophy, namely, his so-called general practical philosophy, and that, therefore, we have not to strike into an entirely new field. just because it was to be a general practical philosophy, it has not taken into consideration a will of any particular kindsay one which should be determined solely from a priori principles without any empirical motives, and which we might call a pure will, but volition in general, with all the actions and conditions which belong to it in this general signification. by this it is distinguished from a metaphysic of morals, just as general logic, which treats of the acts and canons of thought in general, is distinguished from transcendental philosophy, which treats of the particular acts and canons of pure thought, i.e., that whose cognitions are altogether a priori. for the metaphysic of morals has to examine the idea and the principles of a possible pure will, and not the acts and conditions of human volition generally, which for the most part are drawn from psychology. it is true that moral laws and duty are spoken of in the general moral philosophy (contrary indeed to all fitness). but this is no objection, for in this respect also the authors of that science remain true to their idea of it; they do not distinguish the motives which are prescribed as such by reason alone altogether a priori, and which are properly moral, from the empirical motives which the understanding raises to general conceptions merely by comparison of experiences; but, without noticing the difference of their sources, and looking on them all as homogeneous, they consider only their greater or less amount. it is in this way they frame their notion of obligation, which, though anything but moral, is all that can be attained in a philosophy which passes no judgement at all on the origin of all possible practical concepts, whether they are a priori, or only a posteriori. intending to publish hereafter a metaphysic of morals, i issue in the first instance these fundamental principles. indeed there is properly no other foundation for it than the critical examination of a pure practical reason; just as that of metaphysics is the critical examination of the pure speculative reason, already published. but in the first place the former is not so absolutely necessary as the latter, because in moral concerns human reason can easily be brought to a high degree of correctness and completeness, even in the commonest understanding, while on the contrary in its theoretic but pure use it is wholly dialectical; and in the second place if the critique of a pure practical reason is to be complete, it must be possible at the same time to show its identity with the speculative reason in a common principle, for it can ultimately be only one and the same reason which has to be distinguished merely in its application. i could not, however, bring it to such completeness here, without introducing considerations of a wholly different kind, which would be perplexing to the reader. on this account i have adopted the title of fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals instead of that of a critical examination of the pure practical reason. but in the third place, since a metaphysic of morals, in spite of the discouraging title, is yet capable of being presented in popular form, and one adapted to the common understanding, i find it useful to separate from it this preliminary treatise on its fundamental principles, in order that i may not hereafter have need to introduce these necessarily subtle discussions into a book of a more simple character. the present treatise is, however, nothing more than the investigation and establishment of the supreme principle of morality, and this alone constitutes a study complete in itself and one which ought to be kept apart from every other moral investigation. no doubt my conclusions on this weighty question, which has hitherto been very unsatisfactorily examined, would receive much light from the application of the same principle to the whole system, and would be greatly confirmed by the adequacy which it exhibits throughout; but i must forego this advantage, which indeed would be after all more gratifying than useful, since the easy applicability of a principle and its apparent adequacy give no very certain proof of its soundness, but rather inspire a certain partiality, which prevents us from examining and estimating it strictly in itself and without regard to consequences. i have adopted in this work the method which i think most suitable, proceeding analytically from common knowledge to the determination of its ultimate principle, and again descending synthetically from the examination of this principle and its sources to the common knowledge in which we find it employed. the division will, therefore, be as follows: 1 first section. transition from the common rational knowledge of morality to the philosophical. 2 second section. transition from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysic of morals. 3 third section. final step from the metaphysic of morals to the critique of the pure practical reason. sec_1 first section transition from the common rational knowledge of morality to the philosophical nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will. intelligence, wit, judgement, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good. it is the same with the gifts of fortune. power, riches, honour, even health, and the general well-being and contentment with one's condition which is called happiness, inspire pride, and often presumption, if there is not a good will to correct the influence of these on the mind, and with this also to rectify the whole principle of acting and adapt it to its end. the sight of a being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator. thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness. there are even some qualities which are of service to this good will itself and may facilitate its action, yet which have no intrinsic unconditional value, but always presuppose a good will, and this qualifies the esteem that we justly have for them and does not permit us to regard them as absolutely good. moderation in the affections and passions, self-control, and calm deliberation are not only good in many respects, but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth of the person; but they are far from deserving to be called good without qualification, although they have been so unconditionally praised by the ancients. for without the principles of a good will, they may become extremely bad, and the coolness of a villain not only makes him far more dangerous, but also directly makes him more abominable in our eyes than he would have been without it. a good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favour of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations. even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning of all means in our power), then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself. its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add nor take away anything from this value. it would be, as it were, only the setting to enable us to handle it the more conveniently in common commerce, or to attract to it the attention of those who are not yet connoisseurs, but not to recommend it to true connoisseurs, or to determine its value. there is, however, something so strange in this idea of the absolute value of the mere will, in which no account is taken of its utility, that notwithstanding the thorough assent of even common reason to the idea, yet a suspicion must arise that it may perhaps really be the product of mere high-flown fancy, and that we may have misunderstood the purpose of nature in assigning reason as the governor of our will. therefore we will examine this idea from this point of view. in the physical constitution of an organized being, that is, a being adapted suitably to the purposes of life, we assume it as a fundamental principle that no organ for any purpose will be found but what is also the fittest and best adapted for that purpose. now in a being which has reason and a will, if the proper object of nature were its conservation, its welfare, in a word, its happiness, then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the creature to carry out this purpose. for all the actions which the creature has to perform with a view to this purpose, and the whole rule of its conduct, would be far more surely prescribed to it by instinct, and that end would have been attained thereby much more certainly than it ever can be by reason. should reason have been communicated to this favoured creature over and above, it must only have served it to contemplate the happy constitution of its nature, to admire it, to congratulate itself thereon, and to feel thankful for it to the beneficent cause, but not that it should subject its desires to that weak and delusive guidance and meddle bunglingly with the purpose of nature. in a word, nature would have taken care that reason should not break forth into practical exercise, nor have the presumption, with its weak insight, to think out for itself the plan of happiness, and of the means of attaining it. nature would not only have taken on herself the choice of the ends, but also of the means, and with wise foresight would have entrusted both to instinct. and, in fact, we find that the more a cultivated reason applies itself with deliberate purpose to the enjoyment of life and happiness, so much the more does the man fail of true satisfaction. and from this circumstance there arises in many, if they are candid enough to confess it, a certain degree of misology, that is, hatred of reason, especially in the case of those who are most experienced in the use of it, because after calculating all the advantages they derive, i do not say from the invention of all the arts of common luxury, but even from the sciences (which seem to them to be after all only a luxury of the understanding), they find that they have, in fact, only brought more trouble on their shoulders, rather than gained in happiness; and they end by envying, rather than despising, the more common stamp of men who keep closer to the guidance of mere instinct and do not allow their reason much influence on their conduct. and this we must admit, that the judgement of those who would very much lower the lofty eulogies of the advantages which reason gives us in regard to the happiness and satisfaction of life, or who would even reduce them below zero, is by no means morose or ungrateful to the goodness with which the world is governed, but that there lies at the root of these judgements the idea that our existence has a different and far nobler end, for which, and not for happiness, reason is properly intended, and which must, therefore, be regarded as the supreme condition to which the private ends of man must, for the most part, be postponed. for as reason is not competent to guide the will with certainty in regard to its objects and the satisfaction of all our wants (which it to some extent even multiplies), this being an end to which an implanted instinct would have led with much greater certainty; and since, nevertheless, reason is imparted to us as a practical faculty, i.e., as one which is to have influence on the will, therefore, admitting that nature generally in the distribution of her capacities has adapted the means to the end, its true destination must be to produce a will, not merely good as a means to something else, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary. this will then, though not indeed the sole and complete good, must be the supreme good and the condition of every other, even of the desire of happiness. under these circumstances, there is nothing inconsistent with the wisdom of nature in the fact that the cultivation of the reason, which is requisite for the first and unconditional purpose, does in many ways interfere, at least in this life, with the attainment of the second, which is always conditional, namely, happiness. nay, it may even reduce it to nothing, without nature thereby failing of her purpose. for reason recognizes the establishment of a good will as its highest practical destination, and in attaining this purpose is capable only of a satisfaction of its own proper kind, namely that from the attainment of an end, which end again is determined by reason only, notwithstanding that this may involve many a disappointment to the ends of inclination. we have then to develop the notion of a will which deserves to be highly esteemed for itself and is good without a view to anything further, a notion which exists already in the sound natural understanding, requiring rather to be cleared up than to be taught, and which in estimating the value of our actions always takes the first place and constitutes the condition of all the rest. in order to do this, we will take the notion of duty, which includes that of a good will, although implying certain subjective restrictions and hindrances. these, however, far from concealing it, or rendering it unrecognizable, rather bring it out by contrast and make it shine forth so much the brighter. i omit here all actions which are already recognized as inconsistent with duty, although they may be useful for this or that purpose, for with these the question whether they are done from duty cannot arise at all, since they even conflict with it. i also set aside those actions which really conform to duty, but to which men have no direct inclination, performing them because they are impelled thereto by some other inclination. for in this case we can readily distinguish whether the action which agrees with duty is done from duty, or from a selfish view. it is much harder to make this distinction when the action accords with duty and the subject has besides a direct inclination to it. for example, it is always a matter of duty that a dealer should not over charge an inexperienced purchaser; and wherever there is much commerce the prudent tradesman does not overcharge, but keeps a fixed price for everyone, so that a child buys of him as well as any other. men are thus honestly served; but this is not enough to make us believe that the tradesman has so acted from duty and from principles of honesty: his own advantage required it; it is out of the question in this case to suppose that he might besides have a direct inclination in favour of the buyers, so that, as it were, from love he should give no advantage to one over another. accordingly the action was done neither from duty nor from direct inclination, but merely with a selfish view. on the other hand, it is a duty to maintain one's life; and, in addition, everyone has also a direct inclination to do so. but on this account the often anxious care which most men take for it has no intrinsic worth, and their maxim has no moral import. they preserve their life as duty requires, no doubt, but not because duty requires. on the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the relish for life; if the unfortunate one, strong in mind, indignant at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving itnot from inclination or fear, but from dutythen his maxim has a moral worth. to be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. but i maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations, e.g., the inclination to honour, which, if it is happily directed to that which is in fact of public utility and accordant with duty and consequently honourable, deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem. for the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination. put the case that the mind of that philanthropist were clouded by sorrow of his own, extinguishing all sympathy with the lot of others, and that, while he still has the power to benefit others in distress, he is not touched by their trouble because he is absorbed with his own; and now suppose that he tears himself out of this dead insensibility, and performs the action without any inclination to it, but simply from duty, then first has his action its genuine moral worth. further still; if nature has put little sympathy in the heart of this or that man; if he, supposed to be an upright man, is by temperament cold and indifferent to the sufferings of others, perhaps because in respect of his own he is provided with the special gift of patience and fortitude and supposes, or even requires, that others should have the sameand such a man would certainly not be the meanest product of naturebut if nature had not specially framed him for a philanthropist, would he not still find in himself a source from whence to give himself a far higher worth than that of a good-natured temperament could be? unquestionably. it is just in this that the moral worth of the character is brought out which is incomparably the highest of all, namely, that he is beneficent, not from inclination, but from duty. to secure one's own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly; for discontent with one's condition, under a pressure of many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to transgression of duty. but here again, without looking to duty, all men have already the strongest and most intimate inclination to happiness, because it is just in this idea that all inclinations are combined in one total. but the precept of happiness is often of such a sort that it greatly interferes with some inclinations, and yet a man cannot form any definite and certain conception of the sum of satisfaction of all of them which is called happiness. it is not then to be wondered at that a single inclination, definite both as to what it promises and as to the time within which it can be gratified, is often able to overcome such a fluctuating idea, and that a gouty patient, for instance, can choose to enjoy what he likes, and to suffer what he may, since, according to his calculation, on this occasion at least, he has not sacrificed the enjoyment of the present moment to a possibly mistaken expectation of a happiness which is supposed to be found in health. but even in this case, if the general desire for happiness did not influence his will, and supposing that in his particular case health was not a necessary element in this calculation, there yet remains in this, as in all other cases, this law, namely, that he should promote his happiness not from inclination but from duty, and by this would his conduct first acquire true moral worth. it is in this manner, undoubtedly, that we are to understand those passages of scripture also in which we are commanded to love our neighbour, even our enemy. for love, as an affection, cannot be commanded, but beneficence for duty's sake may; even though we are not impelled to it by any inclinationnay, are even repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. this is practical love and not pathologicala love which is seated in the will, and not in the propensions of sensein principles of action and not of tender sympathy; and it is this love alone which can be commanded. the second proposition is: that an action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire. it is clear from what precedes that the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will, cannot give to actions any unconditional or moral worth. in what, then, can their worth lie, if it is not to consist in the will and in reference to its expected effect? it cannot lie anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard to the ends which can be attained by the action. for the will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori spring, which is material, as between two roads, and as it must be determined by something, it follows that it must be determined by the formal principle of volition when an action is done from duty, in which case every material principle has been withdrawn from it. the third proposition, which is a consequence of the two preceding, i would express thus: duty is the necessity of acting from respect for the law. i may have inclination for an object as the effect of my proposed action, but i cannot have respect for it, just for this reason, that it is an effect and not an energy of will. similarly i cannot have respect for inclination, whether my own or another's; i can at most, if my own, approve it; if another's, sometimes even love it; i.e., look on it as favourable to my own interest. it is only what is connected with my will as a principle, by no means as an effectwhat does not subserve my inclination, but overpowers it, or at least in case of choice excludes it from its calculationin other words, simply the law of itself, which can be an object of respect, and hence a command. now an action done from duty must wholly exclude the influence of inclination and with it every object of the will, so that nothing remains which can determine the will except objectively the law, and subjectively pure respect for this practical law, and consequently the maxim * that i should follow this law even to the thwarting of all my inclinations. * a maxim is the subjective principle of volition. the objective principle (i.e., that which would also serve subjectively as a practical principle to all rational beings if reason had full power over the faculty of desire) is the practical law. thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect. for all these effectsagreeableness of one's condition and even the promotion of the happiness of otherscould have been also brought about by other causes, so that for this there would have been no need of the will of a rational being; whereas it is in this alone that the supreme and unconditional good can be found. the pre-eminent good which we call moral can therefore consist in nothing else than the conception of law in itself, which certainly is only possible in a rational being, in so far as this conception, and not the expected effect, determines the will. this is a good which is already present in the person who acts accordingly, and we have not to wait for it to appear first in the result. * * it might be here objected to me that i take refuge behind the word respect in an obscure feeling, instead of giving a distinct solution of the question by a concept of the reason. but although respect is a feeling, it is not a feeling received through influence, but is self-wrought by a rational concept, and, therefore, is specifically distinct from all feelings of the former kind, which may be referred either to inclination or fear, what i recognise immediately as a law for me, i recognise with respect. this merely signifies the consciousness that my will is subordinate to a law, without the intervention of other influences on my sense. the immediate determination of the will by the law, and the consciousness of this, is called respect, so that this is regarded as an effect of the law on the subject, and not as the cause of it. respect is properly the conception of a worth which thwarts my self-love. accordingly it is something which is considered neither as an object of inclination nor of fear, although it has something analogous to both. the object of respect is the law only, and that the law which we impose on ourselves and yet recognise as necessary in itself. as a law, we are subjected too it without consulting self-love; as imposed by us on ourselves, it is a result of our will. in the former aspect it has an analogy to fear, in the latter to inclination. respect for a person is properly only respect for the law (of honesty, etc.) of which he gives us an example. since we also look on the improvement of our talents as a duty, we consider that we see in a person of talents, as it were, the example of a law (viz., to become like him in this by exercise), and this constitutes our respect. all so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law. but what sort of law can that be, the conception of which must determine the will, even without paying any regard to the effect expected from it, in order that this will may be called good absolutely and without qualification? as i have deprived the will of every impulse which could arise to it from obedience to any law, there remains nothing but the universal conformity of its actions to law in general, which alone is to serve the will as a principle, i.e., i am never to act otherwise than so that i could also will that my maxim should become a universal law. here, now, it is the simple conformity to law in general, without assuming any particular law applicable to certain actions, that serves the will as its principle and must so serve it, if duty is not to be a vain delusion and a chimerical notion. the common reason of men in its practical judgements perfectly coincides with this and always has in view the principle here suggested. let the question be, for example: may i when in distress make a promise with the intention not to keep it? i readily distinguish here between the two significations which the question may have: whether it is prudent, or whether it is right, to make a false promise? the former may undoubtedly often be the case. i see clearly indeed that it is not enough to extricate myself from a present difficulty by means of this subterfuge, but it must be well considered whether there may not hereafter spring from this lie much greater inconvenience than that from which i now free myself, and as, with all my supposed cunning, the consequences cannot be so easily foreseen but that credit once lost may be much more injurious to me than any mischief which i seek to avoid at present, it should be considered whether it would not be more prudent to act herein according to a universal maxim and to make it a habit to promise nothing except with the intention of keeping it. but it is soon clear to me that such a maxim will still only be based on the fear of consequences. now it is a wholly different thing to be truthful from duty and to be so from apprehension of injurious consequences. in the first case, the very notion of the action already implies a law for me; in the second case, i must first look about elsewhere to see what results may be combined with it which would affect myself. for to deviate from the principle of duty is beyond all doubt wicked; but to be unfaithful to my maxim of prudence may often be very advantageous to me, although to abide by it is certainly safer. the shortest way, however, and an unerring one, to discover the answer to this question whether a lying promise is consistent with duty, is to ask myself, "should i be content that my maxim (to extricate myself from difficulty by a false promise) should hold good as a universal law, for myself as well as for others?" and should i be able to say to myself, "every one may make a deceitful promise when he finds himself in a difficulty from which he cannot otherwise extricate himself?" then i presently become aware that while i can will the lie, i can by no means will that lying should be a universal law. for with such a law there would be no promises at all, since it would be in vain to allege my intention in regard to my future actions to those who would not believe this allegation, or if they over hastily did so would pay me back in my own coin. hence my maxim, as soon as it should be made a universal law, would necessarily destroy itself. i do not, therefore, need any far-reaching penetration to discern what i have to do in order that my will may be morally good. inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for all its contingencies, i only ask myself: canst thou also will that thy maxim should be a universal law? if not, then it must be rejected, and that not because of a disadvantage accruing from it to myself or even to others, but because it cannot enter as a principle into a possible universal legislation, and reason extorts from me immediate respect for such legislation. i do not indeed as yet discern on what this respect is based (this the philosopher may inquire), but at least i understand this, that it is an estimation of the worth which far outweighs all worth of what is recommended by inclination, and that the necessity of acting from pure respect for the practical law is what constitutes duty, to which every other motive must give place, because it is the condition of a will being good in itself, and the worth of such a will is above everything. thus, then, without quitting the moral knowledge of common human reason, we have arrived at its principle. and although, no doubt, common men do not conceive it in such an abstract and universal form, yet they always have it really before their eyes and use it as the standard of their decision. here it would be easy to show how, with this compass in hand, men are well able to distinguish, in every case that occurs, what is good, what bad, conformably to duty or inconsistent with it, if, without in the least teaching them anything new, we only, like socrates, direct their attention to the principle they themselves employ; and that, therefore, we do not need science and philosophy to know what we should do to be honest and good, yea, even wise and virtuous. indeed we might well have conjectured beforehand that the knowledge of what every man is bound to do, and therefore also to know, would be within the reach of every man, even the commonest. here we cannot forbear admiration when we see how great an advantage the practical judgement has over the theoretical in the common understanding of men. in the latter, if common reason ventures to depart from the laws of experience and from the perceptions of the senses, it falls into mere inconceivabilities and self-contradictions, at least into a chaos of uncertainty, obscurity, and instability. but in the practical sphere it is just when the common understanding excludes all sensible springs from practical laws that its power of judgement begins to show itself to advantage. it then becomes even subtle, whether it be that it chicanes with its own conscience or with other claims respecting what is to be called right, or whether it desires for its own instruction to determine honestly the worth of actions; and, in the latter case, it may even have as good a hope of hitting the mark as any philosopher whatever can promise himself. nay, it is almost more sure of doing so, because the philosopher cannot have any other principle, while he may easily perplex his judgement by a multitude of considerations foreign to the matter, and so turn aside from the right way. would it not therefore be wiser in moral concerns to acquiesce in the judgement of common reason, or at most only to call in philosophy for the purpose of rendering the system of morals more complete and intelligible, and its rules more convenient for use (especially for disputation), but not so as to draw off the common understanding from its happy simplicity, or to bring it by means of philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction? innocence is indeed a glorious thing; only, on the other hand, it is very sad that it cannot well maintain itself and is easily seduced. on this account even wisdomwhich otherwise consists more in conduct than in knowledgeyet has need of science, not in order to learn from it, but to secure for its precepts admission and permanence. against all the commands of duty which reason represents to man as so deserving of respect, he feels in himself a powerful counterpoise in his wants and inclinations, the entire satisfaction of which he sums up under the name of happiness. now reason issues its commands unyieldingly, without promising anything to the inclinations, and, as it were, with disregard and contempt for these claims, which are so impetuous, and at the same time so plausible, and which will not allow themselves to be suppressed by any command. hence there arises a natural dialectic, i.e., a disposition, to argue against these strict laws of duty and to question their validity, or at least their purity and strictness; and, if possible, to make them more accordant with our wishes and inclinations, that is to say, to corrupt them at their very source, and entirely to destroy their wortha thing which even common practical reason cannot ultimately call good. thus is the common reason of man compelled to go out of its sphere, and to take a step into the field of a practical philosophy, not to satisfy any speculative want (which never occurs to it as long as it is content to be mere sound reason), but even on practical grounds, in order to attain in it information and clear instruction respecting the source of its principle, and the correct determination of it in opposition to the maxims which are based on wants and inclinations, so that it may escape from the perplexity of opposite claims and not run the risk of losing all genuine moral principles through the equivocation into which it easily falls. thus, when practical reason cultivates itself, there insensibly arises in it a dialetic which forces it to seek aid in philosophy, just as happens to it in its theoretic use; and in this case, therefore, as well as in the other, it will find rest nowhere but in a thorough critical examination of our reason. sec_2 second section transition from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysic of morals if we have hitherto drawn our notion of duty from the common use of our practical reason, it is by no means to be inferred that we have treated it as an empirical notion. on the contrary, if we attend to the experience of men's conduct, we meet frequent and, as we ourselves allow, just complaints that one cannot find a single certain example of the disposition to act from pure duty. although many things are done in conformity with what duty prescribes, it is nevertheless always doubtful whether they are done strictly from duty, so as to have a moral worth. hence there have at all times been philosophers who have altogether denied that this disposition actually exists at all in human actions, and have ascribed everything to a more or less refined self-love. not that they have on that account questioned the soundness of the conception of morality; on the contrary, they spoke with sincere regret of the frailty and corruption of human nature, which, though noble enough to take its rule an idea so worthy of respect, is yet weak to follow it and employs reason which ought to give it the law only for the purpose of providing for the interest of the inclinations, whether singly or at the best in the greatest possible harmony with one another. in fact, it is absolutely impossible to make out by experience with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of an action, however right in itself, rested simply on moral grounds and on the conception of duty. sometimes it happens that with the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will. we like them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action; since, when the question is of moral worth, it is not with the actions which we see that we are concerned, but with those inward principles of them which we do not see. moreover, we cannot better serve the wishes of those who ridicule all morality as a mere chimera of human imagination over stepping itself from vanity, than by conceding to them that notions of duty must be drawn only from experience (as from indolence, people are ready to think is also the case with all other notions); for or is to prepare for them a certain triumph. i am willing to admit out of love of humanity that even most of our actions are correct, but if we look closer at them we everywhere come upon the dear self which is always prominent, and it is this they have in view and not the strict command of duty which would often require self-denial. without being an enemy of virtue, a cool observer, one that does not mistake the wish for good, however lively, for its reality, may sometimes doubt whether true virtue is actually found anywhere in the world, and this especially as years increase and the judgement is partly made wiser by experience and partly, also, more acute in observation. this being so, nothing can secure us from falling away altogether from our ideas of duty, or maintain in the soul a well-grounded respect for its law, but the clear conviction that although there should never have been actions which really sprang from such pure sources, yet whether this or that takes place is not at all the question; but that reason of itself, independent on all experience, ordains what ought to take place, that accordingly actions of which perhaps the world has hitherto never given an example, the feasibility even of which might be very much doubted by one who founds everything on experience, are nevertheless inflexibly commanded by reason; that, e.g., even though there might never yet have been a sincere friend, yet not a whit the less is pure sincerity in friendship required of every man, because, prior to all experience, this duty is involved as duty in the idea of a reason determining the will by a priori principles. when we add further that, unless we deny that the notion of morality has any truth or reference to any possible object, we must admit that its law must be valid, not merely for men but for all rational creatures generally, not merely under certain contingent conditions or with exceptions but with absolute necessity, then it is clear that no experience could enable us to infer even the possibility of such apodeictic laws. for with what right could we bring into unbounded respect as a universal precept for every rational nature that which perhaps holds only under the contingent conditions of humanity? or how could laws of the determination of our will be regarded as laws of the determination of the will of rational beings generally, and for us only as such, if they were merely empirical and did not take their origin wholly a priori from pure but practical reason? nor could anything be more fatal to morality than that we should wish to derive it from examples. for every example of it that is set before me must be first itself tested by principles of morality, whether it is worthy to serve as an original example, i.e., as a pattern; but by no means can it authoritatively furnish the conception of morality. even the holy one of the gospels must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognise him as such; and so he says of himself, "why call ye me (whom you see) good; none is good (the model of good) but god only (whom ye do not see)?" but whence have we the conception of god as the supreme good? simply from the idea of moral perfection, which reason frames a priori and connects inseparably with the notion of a free will. imitation finds no place at all in morality, and examples serve only for encouragement, i.e., they put beyond doubt the feasibility of what the law commands, they make visible that which the practical rule expresses more generally, but they can never authorize us to set aside the true original which lies in reason and to guide ourselves by examples. if then there is no genuine supreme principle of morality but what must rest simply on pure reason, independent of all experience, i think it is not necessary even to put the question whether it is good to exhibit these concepts in their generality (in abstracto) as they are established a priori along with the principles belonging to them, if our knowledge is to be distinguished from the vulgar and to be called philosophical. in our times indeed this might perhaps be necessary; for if we collected votes whether pure rational knowledge separated from everything empirical, that is to say, metaphysic of morals, or whether popular practical philosophy is to be preferred, it is easy to guess which side would preponderate. this descending to popular notions is certainly very commendable, if the ascent to the principles of pure reason has first taken place and been satisfactorily accomplished. this implies that we first found ethics on metaphysics, and then, when it is firmly established, procure a hearing for it by giving it a popular character. but it is quite absurd to try to be popular in the first inquiry, on which the soundness of the principles depends. it is not only that this proceeding can never lay claim to the very rare merit of a true philosophical popularity, since there is no art in being intelligible if one renounces all thoroughness of insight; but also it produces a disgusting medley of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles. shallow pates enjoy this because it can be used for every-day chat, but the sagacious find in it only confusion, and being unsatisfied and unable to help themselves, they turn away their eyes, while philosophers, who see quite well through this delusion, are little listened to when they call men off for a time from this pretended popularity, in order that they might be rightfully popular after they have attained a definite insight. we need only look at the attempts of moralists in that favourite fashion, and we shall find at one time the special constitution of human nature (including, however, the idea of a rational nature generally), at one time perfection, at another happiness, here moral sense, there fear of god. a little of this, and a little of that, in marvellous mixture, without its occurring to them to ask whether the principles of morality are to be sought in the knowledge of human nature at all (which we can have only from experience); or, if this is not so, if these principles are to be found altogether a priori, free from everything empirical, in pure rational concepts only and nowhere else, not even in the smallest degree; then rather to adopt the method of making this a separate inquiry, as pure practical philosophy, or (if one may use a name so decried) as metaphysic of morals, * to bring it by itself to completeness, and to require the public, which wishes for popular treatment, to await the issue of this undertaking. * just as pure mathematics are distinguished from applied, pure logic from applied, so if we choose we may also distinguish pure philosophy of morals (metaphysic) from applied (viz., applied to human nature). by this designation we are also at once reminded that moral principles are not based on properties of human nature, but must subsist a priori of themselves, while from such principles practical rules must be capable of being deduced for every rational nature, and accordingly for that of man. such a metaphysic of morals, completely isolated, not mixed with any anthropology, theology, physics, or hyperphysics, and still less with occult qualities (which we might call hypophysical), is not only an indispensable substratum of all sound theoretical knowledge of duties, but is at the same time a desideratum of the highest importance to the actual fulfilment of their precepts. for the pure conception of duty, unmixed with any foreign addition of empirical attractions, and, in a word, the conception of the moral law, exercises on the human heart, by way of reason alone (which first becomes aware with this that it can of itself be practical), an influence so much more powerful than all other springs * which may be derived from the field of experience, that, in the consciousness of its worth, it despises the latter, and can by degrees become their master; whereas a mixed ethics, compounded partly of motives drawn from feelings and inclinations, and partly also of conceptions of reason, must make the mind waver between motives which cannot be brought under any principle, which lead to good only by mere accident and very often also to evil. * i have a letter from the late excellent sulzer, in which he asks me what can be the reason that moral instruction, although containing much that is convincing for the reason, yet accomplishes so little? my answer was postponed in order that i might make it complete. but it is simply this: that the teachers themselves have not got their own notions clear, and when they endeavour to make up for this by raking up motives of moral goodness from every quarter, trying to make their physic right strong, they spoil it. for the commonest understanding shows that if we imagine, on the one hand, an act of honesty done with steadfast mind, apart from every view to advantage of any kind in this world or another, and even under the greatest temptations of necessity or allurement, and, on the other hand, a similar act which was affected, in however low a degree, by a foreign motive, the former leaves far behind and eclipses the second; it elevates the soul and inspires the wish to be able to act in like manner oneself. even moderately young children feel this impression, ana one should never represent duties to them in any other light. from what has been said, it is clear that all moral conceptions have their seat and origin completely a priori in the reason, and that, moreover, in the commonest reason just as truly as in that which is in the highest degree speculative; that they cannot be obtained by abstraction from any empirical, and therefore merely contingent, knowledge; that it is just this purity of their origin that makes them worthy to serve as our supreme practical principle, and that just in proportion as we add anything empirical, we detract from their genuine influence and from the absolute value of actions; that it is not only of the greatest necessity, in a purely speculative point of view, but is also of the greatest practical importance, to derive these notions and laws from pure reason, to present them pure and unmixed, and even to determine the compass of this practical or pure rational knowledge, i.e., to determine the whole faculty of pure practical reason; and, in doing so, we must not make its principles dependent on the particular nature of human reason, though in speculative philosophy this may be permitted, or may even at times be necessary; but since moral laws ought to hold good for every rational creature, we must derive them from the general concept of a rational being. in this way, although for its application to man morality has need of anthropology, yet, in the first instance, we must treat it independently as pure philosophy, i.e., as metaphysic, complete in itself (a thing which in such distinct branches of science is easily done); knowing well that unless we are in possession of this, it would not only be vain to determine the moral element of duty in right actions for purposes of speculative criticism, but it would be impossible to base morals on their genuine principles, even for common practical purposes, especially of moral instruction, so as to produce pure moral dispositions, and to engraft them on men's minds to the promotion of the greatest possible good in the world. but in order that in this study we may not merely advance by the natural steps from the common moral judgement (in this case very worthy of respect) to the philosophical, as has been already done, but also from a popular philosophy, which goes no further than it can reach by groping with the help of examples, to metaphysic (which does allow itself to be checked by anything empirical and, as it must measure the whole extent of this kind of rational knowledge, goes as far as ideal conceptions, where even examples fail us), we must follow and clearly describe the practical faculty of reason, from the general rules of its determination to the point where the notion of duty springs from it. everything in nature works according to laws. rational beings alone have the faculty of acting according to the conception of laws, that is according to principles, i.e., have a will. since the deduction of actions from principles requires reason, the will is nothing but practical reason. if reason infallibly determines the will, then the actions of such a being which are recognised as objectively necessary are subjectively necessary also, i.e., the will is a faculty to choose that only which reason independent of inclination recognises as practically necessary, i.e., as good. but if reason of itself does not sufficiently determine the will, if the latter is subject also to subjective conditions (particular impulses) which do not always coincide with the objective conditions; in a word, if the will does not in itself completely accord with reason (which is actually the case with men), then the actions which objectively are recognised as necessary are subjectively contingent, and the determination of such a will according to objective laws is obligation, that is to say, the relation of the objective laws to a will that is not thoroughly good is conceived as the determination of the will of a rational being by principles of reason, but which the will from its nature does not of necessity follow. the conception of an objective principle, in so far as it is obligatory for a will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative. all imperatives are expressed by the word ought [or shall], and thereby indicate the relation of an objective law of reason to a will, which from its subjective constitution is not necessarily determined by it (an obligation). they say that something would be good to do or to forbear, but they say it to a will which does not always do a thing because it is conceived to be good to do it. that is practically good, however, which determines the will by means of the conceptions of reason, and consequently not from subjective causes, but objectively, that is on principles which are valid for every rational being as such. it is distinguished from the pleasant, as that which influences the will only by means of sensation from merely subjective causes, valid only for the sense of this or that one, and not as a principle of reason, which holds for every one. * * the dependence of the desires on sensations is called inclination, and this accordingly always indicates a want. the dependence of a contingently determinable will on principles of reason is called an interest. this therefore, is found only in the case of a dependent will which does not always of itself conform to reason; in the divine will we cannot conceive any interest. but the human will can also take an interest in a thing without therefore acting from interest. the former signifies the practical interest in the action, the latter the pathological in the object of the action. the former indicates only dependence of the will on principles of reason in themselves; the second, dependence on principles of reason for the sake of inclination, reason supplying only the practical rules how the requirement of the inclination may be satisfied. in the first case the action interests me; in the second the object of the action (because it is pleasant to me). we have seen in the first section that in an action done from duty we must look not to the interest in the object, but only to that in the action itself, and in its rational principle (viz., the law). a perfectly good will would therefore be equally subject to objective laws (viz., laws of good), but could not be conceived as obliged thereby to act lawfully, because of itself from its subjective constitution it can only be determined by the conception of good. therefore no imperatives hold for the divine will, or in general for a holy will; ought is here out of place, because the volition is already of itself necessarily in unison with the law. therefore imperatives are only formulae to express the relation of objective laws of all volition to the subjective imperfection of the will of this or that rational being, e.g., the human will. now all imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. the former represent the practical necessity of a possible action as means to something else that is willed (or at least which one might possibly will). the categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e., as objectively necessary. since every practical law represents a possible action as good and, on this account, for a subject who is practically determinable by reason, necessary, all imperatives are formulae determining an action which is necessary according to the principle of a will good in some respects. if now the action is good only as a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is conceived as good in itself and consequently as being necessarily the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it is categorical. thus the imperative declares what action possible by me would be good and presents the practical rule in relation to a will which does not forthwith perform an action simply because it is good, whether because the subject does not always know that it is good, or because, even if it know this, yet its maxims might be opposed to the objective principles of practical reason. accordingly the hypothetical imperative only says that the action is good for some purpose, possible or actual. in the first case it is a problematical, in the second an assertorial practical principle. the categorical imperative which declares an action to be objectively necessary in itself without reference to any purpose, i.e., without any other end, is valid as an apodeictic (practical) principle. whatever is possible only by the power of some rational being may also be conceived as a possible purpose of some will; and therefore the principles of action as regards the means necessary to attain some possible purpose are in fact infinitely numerous. all sciences have a practical part, consisting of problems expressing that some end is possible for us and of imperatives directing how it may be attained. these may, therefore, be called in general imperatives of skill. here there is no question whether the end is rational and good, but only what one must do in order to attain it. the precepts for the physician to make his patient thoroughly healthy, and for a poisoner to ensure certain death, are of equal value in this respect, that each serves to effect its purpose perfectly. since in early youth it cannot be known what ends are likely to occur to us in the course of life, parents seek to have their children taught a great many things, and provide for their skill in the use of means for all sorts of arbitrary ends, of none of which can they determine whether it may not perhaps hereafter be an object to their pupil, but which it is at all events possible that he might aim at; and this anxiety is so great that they commonly neglect to form and correct their judgement on the value of the things which may be chosen as ends. there is one end, however, which may be assumed to be actually such to all rational beings (so far as imperatives apply to them, viz., as dependent beings), and, therefore, one purpose which they not merely may have, but which we may with certainty assume that they all actually have by a natural necessity, and this is happiness. the hypothetical imperative which expresses the practical necessity of an action as means to the advancement of happiness is assertorial. we are not to present it as necessary for an uncertain and merely possible purpose, but for a purpose which we may presuppose with certainty and a priori in every man, because it belongs to his being. now skill in the choice of means to his own greatest well-being may be called prudence, * in the narrowest sense. and thus the imperative which refers to the choice of means to one's own happiness, i.e., the precept of prudence, is still always hypothetical; the action is not commanded absolutely, but only as means to another purpose. * the word prudence is taken in two senses: in the one it may bear the name of knowledge of the world, in the other that of private prudence. the former is a man's ability to influence others so as to use them for his own purposes. the latter is the sagacity to combine all these purposes for his own lasting benefit. this latter is properly that to which the value even of the former is reduced, and when a man is prudent in the former sense, but not in the latter, we might better say of him that he is clever and cunning, but, on the whole, imprudent. finally, there is an imperative which commands a certain conduct immediately, without having as its condition any other purpose to be attained by it. this imperative is categorical. it concerns not the matter of the action, or its intended result, but its form and the principle of which it is itself a result; and what is essentially good in it consists in the mental disposition, let the consequence be what it may. this imperative may be called that of morality. there is a marked distinction also between the volitions on these three sorts of principles in the dissimilarity of the obligation of the will. in order to mark this difference more clearly, i think they would be most suitably named in their order if we said they are either rules of skill, or counsels of prudence, or commands (laws) of morality. for it is law only that involves the conception of an unconditional and objective necessity, which is consequently universally valid; and commands are laws which must be obeyed, that is, must be followed, even in opposition to inclination. counsels, indeed, involve necessity, but one which can only hold under a contingent subjective condition, viz., they depend on whether this or that man reckons this or that as part of his happiness; the categorical imperative, on the contrary, is not limited by any condition, and as being absolutely, although practically, necessary, may be quite properly called a command. we might also call the first kind of imperatives technical (belonging to art), the second pragmatic * (to welfare), the third moral (belonging to free conduct generally, that is, to morals). * it seems to me that the proper signification of the word pragmatic may be most accurately defined in this way. for sanctions are called pragmatic which flow properly not from the law of the states as necessary enactments, but from precaution for the general welfare. a history is composed pragmatically when it teaches prudence, i.e., instructs the world how it can provide for its interests better, or at least as well as, the men of former time. now arises the question, how are all these imperatives possible? this question does not seek to know how we can conceive the accomplishment of the action which the imperative ordains, but merely how we can conceive the obligation of the will which the imperative expresses. no special explanation is needed to show how an imperative of skill is possible. whoever wills the end, wills also (so far as reason decides his conduct) the means in his power which are indispensably necessary thereto. this proposition is, as regards the volition, analytical; for, in willing an object as my effect, there is already thought the causality of myself as an acting cause, that is to say, the use of the means; and the imperative educes from the conception of volition of an end the conception of actions necessary to this end. synthetical propositions must no doubt be employed in defining the means to a proposed end; but they do not concern the principle, the act of the will, but the object and its realization. e.g., that in order to bisect a line on an unerring principle i must draw from its extremities two intersecting arcs; this no doubt is taught by mathematics only in synthetical propositions; but if i know that it is only by this process that the intended operation can be performed, then to say that, if i fully will the operation, i also will the action required for it, is an analytical proposition; for it is one and the same thing to conceive something as an effect which i can produce in a certain way, and to conceive myself as acting in this way. if it were only equally easy to give a definite conception of happiness, the imperatives of prudence would correspond exactly with those of skill, and would likewise be analytical. for in this case as in that, it could be said: "whoever wills the end, wills also (according to the dictate of reason necessarily) the indispensable means thereto which are in his power." but, unfortunately, the notion of happiness is so indefinite that although every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say definitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and wills. the reason of this is that all the elements which belong to the notion of happiness are altogether empirical, i.e., they must be borrowed from experience, and nevertheless the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a maximum of welfare in my present and all future circumstances. now it is impossible that the most clear-sighted and at the same time most powerful being (supposed finite) should frame to himself a definite conception of what he really wills in this. does he will riches, how much anxiety, envy, and snares might he not thereby draw upon his shoulders? does he will knowledge and discernment, perhaps it might prove to be only an eye so much the sharper to show him so much the more fearfully the evils that are now concealed from him, and that cannot be avoided, or to impose more wants on his desires, which already give him concern enough. would he have long life? who guarantees to him that it would not be a long misery? would he at least have health? how often has uneasiness of the body restrained from excesses into which perfect health would have allowed one to fall? and so on. in short, he is unable, on any principle, to determine with certainty what would make him truly happy; because to do so he would need to be omniscient. we cannot therefore act on any definite principles to secure happiness, but only on empirical counsels, e.g. of regimen, frugality, courtesy, reserve, etc., which experience teaches do, on the average, most promote well-being. hence it follows that the imperatives of prudence do not, strictly speaking, command at all, that is, they cannot present actions objectively as practically necessary; that they are rather to be regarded as counsels (consilia) than precepts precepts of reason, that the problem to determine certainly and universally what action would promote the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble, and consequently no imperative respecting it is possible which should, in the strict sense, command to do what makes happy; because happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless. this imperative of prudence would however be an analytical proposition if we assume that the means to happiness could be certainly assigned; for it is distinguished from the imperative of skill only by this, that in the latter the end is merely possible, in the former it is given; as however both only ordain the means to that which we suppose to be willed as an end, it follows that the imperative which ordains the willing of the means to him who wills the end is in both cases analytical. thus there is no difficulty in regard to the possibility of an imperative of this kind either. on the other hand, the question how the imperative of morality is possible, is undoubtedly one, the only one, demanding a solution, as this is not at all hypothetical, and the objective necessity which it presents cannot rest on any hypothesis, as is the case with the hypothetical imperatives. only here we must never leave out of consideration that we cannot make out by any example, in other words empirically, whether there is such an imperative at all, but it is rather to be feared that all those which seem to be categorical may yet be at bottom hypothetical. for instance, when the precept is: "thou shalt not promise deceitfully"; and it is assumed that the necessity of this is not a mere counsel to avoid some other evil, so that it should mean: "thou shalt not make a lying promise, lest if it become known thou shouldst destroy thy credit," but that an action of this kind must be regarded as evil in itself, so that the imperative of the prohibition is categorical; then we cannot show with certainty in any example that the will was determined merely by the law, without any other spring of action, although it may appear to be so. for it is always possible that fear of disgrace, perhaps also obscure dread of other dangers, may have a secret influence on the will. who can prove by experience the non-existence of a cause when all that experience tells us is that we do not perceive it? but in such a case the so-called moral imperative, which as such appears to be categorical and unconditional, would in reality be only a pragmatic precept, drawing our attention to our own interests and merely teaching us to take these into consideration. we shall therefore have to investigate a priori the possibility of a categorical imperative, as we have not in this case the advantage of its reality being given in experience, so that [the elucidation of] its possibility should be requisite only for its explanation, not for its establishment. in the meantime it may be discerned beforehand that the categorical imperative alone has the purport of a practical law; all the rest may indeed be called principles of the will but not laws, since whatever is only necessary for the attainment of some arbitrary purpose may be considered as in itself contingent, and we can at any time be free from the precept if we give up the purpose; on the contrary, the unconditional command leaves the will no liberty to choose the opposite; consequently it alone carries with it that necessity which we require in a law. secondly, in the case of this categorical imperative or law of morality, the difficulty (of discerning its possibility) is a very profound one. it is an a priori synthetical practical proposition; * and as there is so much difficulty in discerning the possibility of speculative propositions of this kind, it may readily be supposed that the difficulty will be no less with the practical. * i connect the act with the will without presupposing any condition resulting from any inclination, but a priori, and therefore necessarily (though only objectively, i.e., assuming the idea of a reason possessing full power over all subjective motives). this is accordingly a practical proposition which does not deduce the willing of an action by mere analysis from another already presupposed (for we have not such a perfect will), but connects it immediately with the conception of the will of a rational being, as something not contained in it. in this problem we will first inquire whether the mere conception of a categorical imperative may not perhaps supply us also with the formula of it, containing the proposition which alone can be a categorical imperative; for even if we know the tenor of such an absolute command, yet how it is possible will require further special and laborious study, which we postpone to the last section. when i conceive a hypothetical imperative, in general i do not know beforehand what it will contain until i am given the condition. but when i conceive a categorical imperative, i know at once what it contains. for as the imperative contains besides the law only the necessity that the maxims * shall conform to this law, while the law contains no conditions restricting it, there remains nothing but the general statement that the maxim of the action should conform to a universal law, and it is this conformity alone that the imperative properly represents as necessary. * a maxim is a subjective principle of action, and must be distinguished from the objective principle, namely, practical law. the former contains the practical rule set by reason according to the conditions of the subject (often its ignorance or its inclinations), so that it is the principle on which the subject acts; but the law is the objective principle valid for every rational being, and is the principle on which it ought to act that is an imperative. there is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law. now if all imperatives of duty can be deduced from this one imperative as from their principle, then, although it should remain undecided what is called duty is not merely a vain notion, yet at least we shall be able to show what we understand by it and what this notion means. since the universality of the law according to which effects are produced constitutes what is properly called nature in the most general sense (as to form), that is the existence of things so far as it is determined by general laws, the imperative of duty may be expressed thus: act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature. we will now enumerate a few duties, adopting the usual division of them into duties to ourselves and ourselves and to others, and into perfect and imperfect duties. * * it must be noted here that i reserve the division of duties for a future metaphysic of morals; so that i give it here only as an arbitrary one (in order to arrange my examples). for the rest, i understand by a perfect duty one that admits no exception in favour of inclination and then i have not merely external but also internal perfect duties. this is contrary to the use of the word adopted in the schools; but i do not intend to justify there, as it is all one for my purpose whether it is admitted or not. 1. a man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. his maxim is: "from self-love i adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction." it is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself and, therefore, could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature and, consequently, would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty. 2. another finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. he knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him unless he promises stoutly to repay it in a definite time. he desires to make this promise, but he has still so much conscience as to ask himself: "is it not unlawful and inconsistent with duty to get out of a difficulty in this way?" suppose however that he resolves to do so: then the maxim of his action would be expressed thus: "when i think myself in want of money, i will borrow money and promise to repay it, although i know that i never can do so." now this principle of self-love or of one's own advantage may perhaps be consistent with my whole future welfare; but the question now is, "is it right?" i change then the suggestion of self-love into a universal law, and state the question thus: "how would it be if my maxim were a universal law?" then i see at once that it could never hold as a universal law of nature, but would necessarily contradict itself. for supposing it to be a universal law that everyone when he thinks himself in a difficulty should be able to promise whatever he pleases, with the purpose of not keeping his promise, the promise itself would become impossible, as well as the end that one might have in view in it, since no one would consider that anything was promised to him, but would ridicule all such statements as vain pretences. 3. a third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. but he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. he asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. he sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law although men (like the south sea islanders) should let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their speciesin a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. for, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes. 4. a fourth, who is in prosperity, while he sees that others have to contend with great wretchedness and that he could help them, thinks: "what concern is it of mine? let everyone be as happy as heaven pleases, or as he can make himself; i will take nothing from him nor even envy him, only i do not wish to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in distress!" now no doubt if such a mode of thinking were a universal law, the human race might very well subsist and doubtless even better than in a state in which everyone talks of sympathy and good-will, or even takes care occasionally to put it into practice, but, on the other side, also cheats when he can, betrays the rights of men, or otherwise violates them. but although it is possible that a universal law of nature might exist in accordance with that maxim, it is impossible to will that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of nature. for a will which resolved this would contradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur in which one would have need of the love and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung from his own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he desires. these are a few of the many actual duties, or at least what we regard as such, which obviously fall into two classes on the one principle that we have laid down. we must be able to will that a maxim of our action should be a universal law. this is the canon of the moral appreciation of the action generally. some actions are of such a character that their maxim cannot without contradiction be even conceived as a universal law of nature, far from it being possible that we should will that it should be so. in others this intrinsic impossibility is not found, but still it is impossible to will that their maxim should be raised to the universality of a law of nature, since such a will would contradict itself it is easily seen that the former violate strict or rigorous (inflexible) duty; the latter only laxer (meritorious) duty. thus it has been completely shown how all duties depend as regards the nature of the obligation (not the object of the action) on the same principle. if now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that our maxim should be a universal law, for that is impossible for us; on the contrary, we will that the opposite should remain a universal law, only we assume the liberty of making an exception in our own favour or (just for this time only) in favour of our inclination. consequently if we considered all cases from one and the same point of view, namely, that of reason, we should find a contradiction in our own will, namely, that a certain principle should be objectively necessary as a universal law, and yet subjectively should not be universal, but admit of exceptions. as however we at one moment regard our action from the point of view of a will wholly conformed to reason, and then again look at the same action from the point of view of a will affected by inclination, there is not really any contradiction, but an antagonism of inclination to the precept of reason, whereby the universality of the principle is changed into a mere generality, so that the practical principle of reason shall meet the maxim half way. now, although this cannot be justified in our own impartial judgement, yet it proves that we do really recognise the validity of the categorical imperative and (with all respect for it) only allow ourselves a few exceptions, which we think unimportant and forced from us. we have thus established at least this much, that if duty is a conception which is to have any import and real legislative authority for our actions, it can only be expressed in categorical and not at all in hypothetical imperatives. we have also, which is of great importance, exhibited clearly and definitely for every practical application the content of the categorical imperative, which must contain the principle of all duty if there is such a thing at all. we have not yet, however, advanced so far as to prove a priori that there actually is such an imperative, that there is a practical law which commands absolutely of itself and without any other impulse, and that the following of this law is duty. with the view of attaining to this, it is of extreme importance to remember that we must not allow ourselves to think of deducing the reality of this principle from the particular attributes of human nature. for duty is to be a practical, unconditional necessity of action; it must therefore hold for all rational beings (to whom an imperative can apply at all), and for this reason only be also a law for all human wills. on the contrary, whatever is deduced from the particular natural characteristics of humanity, from certain feelings and propensions, nay, even, if possible, from any particular tendency proper to human reason, and which need not necessarily hold for the will of every rational being; this may indeed supply us with a maxim, but not with a law; with a subjective principle on which we may have a propension and inclination to act, but not with an objective principle on which we should be enjoined to act, even though all our propensions, inclinations, and natural dispositions were opposed to it. in fact, the sublimity and intrinsic dignity of the command in duty are so much the more evident, the less the subjective impulses favour it and the more they oppose it, without being able in the slightest degree to weaken the obligation of the law or to diminish its validity. here then we see philosophy brought to a critical position, since it has to be firmly fixed, notwithstanding that it has nothing to support it in heaven or earth. here it must show its purity as absolute director of its own laws, not the herald of those which are whispered to it by an implanted sense or who knows what tutelary nature. although these may be better than nothing, yet they can never afford principles dictated by reason, which must have their source wholly a priori and thence their commanding authority, expecting everything from the supremacy of the law and the due respect for it, nothing from inclination, or else condemning the man to self-contempt and inward abhorrence. thus every empirical element is not only quite incapable of being an aid to the principle of morality, but is even highly prejudicial to the purity of morals, for the proper and inestimable worth of an absolutely good will consists just in this, that the principle of action is free from all influence of contingent grounds, which alone experience can furnish. we cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lax and even mean habit of thought which seeks for its principle amongst empirical motives and laws; for human reason in its weariness is glad to rest on this pillow, and in a dream of sweet illusions (in which, instead of juno, it embraces a cloud) it substitutes for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of various derivation, which looks like anything one chooses to see in it, only not like virtue to one who has once beheld her in her true form. * * to behold virtue in her proper form is nothing else but to contemplate morality stripped of all admixture of sensible things and of every spurious ornament of reward or self-love. how much she then eclipses everything else that appears charming to the affections, every one may readily perceive with the least exertion of his reason, if it be not wholly spoiled for abstraction. the question then is this: "is it a necessary law for all rational beings that they should always judge of their actions by maxims of which they can themselves will that they should serve as universal laws?" if it is so, then it must be connected (altogether a priori) with the very conception of the will of a rational being generally. but in order to discover this connexion we must, however reluctantly, take a step into metaphysic, although into a domain of it which is distinct from speculative philosophy, namely, the metaphysic of morals. in a practical philosophy, where it is not the reasons of what happens that we have to ascertain, but the laws of what ought to happen, even although it never does, i.e., objective practical laws, there it is not necessary to inquire into the reasons why anything pleases or displeases, how the pleasure of mere sensation differs from taste, and whether the latter is distinct from a general satisfaction of reason; on what the feeling of pleasure or pain rests, and how from it desires and inclinations arise, and from these again maxims by the co-operation of reason: for all this belongs to an empirical psychology, which would constitute the second part of physics, if we regard physics as the philosophy of nature, so far as it is based on empirical laws. but here we are concerned with objective practical laws and, consequently, with the relation of the will to itself so far as it is determined by reason alone, in which case whatever has reference to anything empirical is necessarily excluded; since if reason of itself alone determines the conduct (and it is the possibility of this that we are now investigating), it must necessarily do so a priori. the will is conceived as a faculty of determining oneself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. and such a faculty can be found only in rational beings. now that which serves the will as the objective ground of its self-determination is the end, and, if this is assigned by reason alone, it must hold for all rational beings. on the other hand, that which merely contains the ground of possibility of the action of which the effect is the end, this is called the means. the subjective ground of the desire is the spring, the objective ground of the volition is the motive; hence the distinction between subjective ends which rest on springs, and objective ends which depend on motives valid for every rational being. practical principles are formal when they abstract from all subjective ends; they are material when they assume these, and therefore particular springs of action. the ends which a rational being proposes to himself at pleasure as effects of his actions (material ends) are all only relative, for it is only their relation to the particular desires of the subject that gives them their worth, which therefore cannot furnish principles universal and necessary for all rational beings and for every volition, that is to say practical laws. hence all these relative ends can give rise only to hypothetical imperatives. supposing, however, that there were something whose existence has in itself an absolute worth, something which, being an end in itself, could be a source of definite laws; then in this and this alone would lie the source of a possible categorical imperative, i.e., a practical law. now i say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will, but in all his actions, whether they concern himself or other rational beings, must be always regarded at the same time as an end. all objects of the inclinations have only a conditional worth, for if the inclinations and the wants founded on them did not exist, then their object would be without value. but the inclinations, themselves being sources of want, are so far from having an absolute worth for which they should be desired that on the contrary it must be the universal wish of every rational being to be wholly free from them. thus the worth of any object which is to be acquired by our action is always conditional. beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature's, have nevertheless, if they are irrational beings, only a relative value as means, and are therefore called things; rational beings, on the contrary, are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action (and is an object of respect). these, therefore, are not merely subjective ends whose existence has a worth for us as an effect of our action, but objective ends, that is, things whose existence is an end in itself; an end moreover for which no other can be substituted, which they should subserve merely as means, for otherwise nothing whatever would possess absolute worth; but if all worth were conditioned and therefore contingent, then there would be no supreme practical principle of reason whatever. if then there is a supreme practical principle or, in respect of the human will, a categorical imperative, it must be one which, being drawn from the conception of that which is necessarily an end for everyone because it is an end in itself, constitutes an objective principle of will, and can therefore serve as a universal practical law. the foundation of this principle is: rational nature exists as an end in itself. man necessarily conceives his own existence as being so; so far then this is a subjective principle of human actions. but every other rational being regards its existence similarly, just on the same rational principle that holds for me: * so that it is at the same time an objective principle, from which as a supreme practical law all laws of the will must be capable of being deduced. accordingly the practical imperative will be as follows: so act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only. we will now inquire whether this can be practically carried out. * this proposition is here stated as a postulate. the ground of it will be found in the concluding section. to abide by the previous examples: firstly, under the head of necessary duty to oneself: he who contemplates suicide should ask himself whether his action can be consistent with the idea of humanity as an end in itself. if he destroys himself in order to escape from painful circumstances, he uses a person merely as a mean to maintain a tolerable condition up to the end of life. but a man is not a thing, that is to say, something which can be used merely as means, but must in all his actions be always considered as an end in himself. i cannot, therefore, dispose in any way of a man in my own person so as to mutilate him, to damage or kill him. (it belongs to ethics proper to define this principle more precisely, so as to avoid all misunderstanding, e. g., as to the amputation of the limbs in order to preserve myself, as to exposing my life to danger with a view to preserve it, etc. this question is therefore omitted here.) secondly, as regards necessary duties, or those of strict obligation, towards others: he who is thinking of making a lying promise to others will see at once that he would be using another man merely as a mean, without the latter containing at the same time the end in himself. for he whom i propose by such a promise to use for my own purposes cannot possibly assent to my mode of acting towards him and, therefore, cannot himself contain the end of this action. this violation of the principle of humanity in other men is more obvious if we take in examples of attacks on the freedom and property of others. for then it is clear that he who transgresses the rights of men intends to use the person of others merely as a means, without considering that as rational beings they ought always to be esteemed also as ends, that is, as beings who must be capable of containing in themselves the end of the very same action. * * let it not be thought that the common "quod tibi non vis fieri, etc." could serve here as the rule or principle. for it is only a deduction from the former, though with several limitations; it cannot be a universal law, for it does not contain the principle of duties to oneself, nor of the duties of benevolence to others (for many a one would gladly consent that others should not benefit him, provided only that he might be excused from showing benevolence to them), nor finally that of duties of strict obligation to one another, for on this principle the criminal might argue against the judge who punishes him, and so on. thirdly, as regards contingent (meritorious) duties to oneself: it is not enough that the action does not violate humanity in our own person as an end in itself, it must also harmonize with it. now there are in humanity capacities of greater perfection, which belong to the end that nature has in view in regard to humanity in ourselves as the subject: to neglect these might perhaps be consistent with the maintenance of humanity as an end in itself, but not with the advancement of this end. fourthly, as regards meritorious duties towards others: the natural end which all men have is their own happiness. now humanity might indeed subsist, although no one should contribute anything to the happiness of others, provided he did not intentionally withdraw anything from it; but after all this would only harmonize negatively not positively with humanity as an end in itself, if every one does not also endeavour, as far as in him lies, to forward the ends of others. for the ends of any subject which is an end in himself ought as far as possible to be my ends also, if that conception is to have its full effect with me. this principle, that humanity and generally every rational nature is an end in itself (which is the supreme limiting condition of every man's freedom of action), is not borrowed from experience, firstly, because it is universal, applying as it does to all rational beings whatever, and experience is not capable of determining anything about them; secondly, because it does not present humanity as an end to men (subjectively), that is as an object which men do of themselves actually adopt as an end; but as an objective end, which must as a law constitute the supreme limiting condition of all our subjective ends, let them be what we will; it must therefore spring from pure reason. in fact the objective principle of all practical legislation lies (according to the first principle) in the rule and its form of universality which makes it capable of being a law (say, e. g., a law of nature); but the subjective principle is in the end; now by the second principle the subject of all ends is each rational being, inasmuch as it is an end in itself. hence follows the third practical principle of the will, which is the ultimate condition of its harmony with universal practical reason, viz.: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislative will. on this principle all maxims are rejected which are inconsistent with the will being itself universal legislator. thus the will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that it must be regarded as itself giving the law and, on this ground only, subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author). in the previous imperatives, namely, that based on the conception of the conformity of actions to general laws, as in a physical system of nature, and that based on the universal prerogative of rational beings as ends in themselvesthese imperatives, just because they were conceived as categorical, excluded from any share in their authority all admixture of any interest as a spring of action; they were, however, only assumed to be categorical, because such an assumption was necessary to explain the conception of duty. but we could not prove independently that there are practical propositions which command categorically, nor can it be proved in this section; one thing, however, could be done, namely, to indicate in the imperative itself, by some determinate expression, that in the case of volition from duty all interest is renounced, which is the specific criterion of categorical as distinguished from hypothetical imperatives. this is done in the present (third) formula of the principle, namely, in the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will. for although a will which is subject to laws may be attached to this law by means of an interest, yet a will which is itself a supreme lawgiver so far as it is such cannot possibly depend on any interest, since a will so dependent would itself still need another law restricting the interest of its self-love by the condition that it should be valid as universal law. thus the principle that every human will is a will which in all its maxims gives universal laws, * provided it be otherwise justified, would be very well adapted to be the categorical imperative, in this respect, namely, that just because of the idea of universal legislation it is not based on interest, and therefore it alone among all possible imperatives can be unconditional. or still better, converting the proposition, if there is a categorical imperative (i.e., a law for the will of every rational being), it can only command that everything be done from maxims of one's will regarded as a will which could at the same time will that it should itself give universal laws, for in that case only the practical principle and the imperative which it obeys are unconditional, since they cannot be based on any interest. * i may be excused from adducing examples to elucidate this principle, as those which have already been used to elucidate the categorical imperative and its formula would all serve for the like purpose here. looking back now on all previous attempts to discover the principle of morality, we need not wonder why they all failed. it was seen that man was bound to laws by duty, but it was not observed that the laws to which he is subject are only those of his own giving, though at the same time they are universal, and that he is only bound to act in conformity with his own will; a will, however, which is designed by nature to give universal laws. for when one has conceived man only as subject to a law (no matter what), then this law required some interest, either by way of attraction or constraint, since it did not originate as a law from his own will, but this will was according to a law obliged by something else to act in a certain manner. now by this necessary consequence all the labour spent in finding a supreme principle of duty was irrevocably lost. for men never elicited duty, but only a necessity of acting from a certain interest. whether this interest was private or otherwise, in any case the imperative must be conditional and could not by any means be capable of being a moral command. i will therefore call this the principle of autonomy of the will, in contrast with every other which i accordingly reckon as heteronomy. the conception of the will of every rational being as one which must consider itself as giving in all the maxims of its will universal laws, so as to judge itself and its actions from this point of viewthis conception leads to another which depends on it and is very fruitful, namely that of a kingdom of ends. by a kingdom i understand the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws. now since it is by laws that ends are determined as regards their universal validity, hence, if we abstract from the personal differences of rational beings and likewise from all the content of their private ends, we shall be able to conceive all ends combined in a systematic whole (including both rational beings as ends in themselves, and also the special ends which each may propose to himself), that is to say, we can conceive a kingdom of ends, which on the preceding principles is possible. for all rational beings come under the law that each of them must treat itself and all others never merely as means, but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves. hence results a systematic union of rational being by common objective laws, i.e., a kingdom which may be called a kingdom of ends, since what these laws have in view is just the relation of these beings to one another as ends and means. it is certainly only an ideal. a rational being belongs as a member to the kingdom of ends when, although giving universal laws in it, he is also himself subject to these laws. he belongs to it as sovereign when, while giving laws, he is not subject to the will of any other. a rational being must always regard himself as giving laws either as member or as sovereign in a kingdom of ends which is rendered possible by the freedom of will. he cannot, however, maintain the latter position merely by the maxims of his will, but only in case he is a completely independent being without wants and with unrestricted power adequate to his will. morality consists then in the reference of all action to the legislation which alone can render a kingdom of ends possible. this legislation must be capable of existing in every rational being and of emanating from his will, so that the principle of this will is never to act on any maxim which could not without contradiction be also a universal law and, accordingly, always so to act that the will could at the same time regard itself as giving in its maxims universal laws. if now the maxims of rational beings are not by their own nature coincident with this objective principle, then the necessity of acting on it is called practical necessitation, i.e., duty. duty does not apply to the sovereign in the kingdom of ends, but it does to every member of it and to all in the same degree. the practical necessity of acting on this principle, i.e., duty, does not rest at all on feelings, impulses, or inclinations, but solely on the relation of rational beings to one another, a relation in which the will of a rational being must always be regarded as legislative, since otherwise it could not be conceived as an end in itself. reason then refers every maxim of the will, regarding it as legislating universally, to every other will and also to every action towards oneself; and this not on account of any other practical motive or any future advantage, but from the idea of the dignity of a rational being, obeying no law but that which he himself also gives. in the kingdom of ends everything has either value or dignity. whatever has a value can be replaced by something else which is equivalent; whatever, on the other hand, is above all value, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. whatever has reference to the general inclinations and wants of mankind has a market value; whatever, without presupposing a want, corresponds to a certain taste, that is to a satisfaction in the mere purposeless play of our faculties, has a fancy value; but that which constitutes the condition under which alone anything can be an end in itself, this has not merely a relative worth, i.e., value, but an intrinsic worth, that is, dignity. now morality is the condition under which alone a rational being can be an end in himself, since by this alone is it possible that he should be a legislating member in the kingdom of ends. thus morality, and humanity as capable of it, is that which alone has dignity. skill and diligence in labour have a market value; wit, lively imagination, and humour, have fancy value; on the other hand, fidelity to promises, benevolence from principle (not from instinct), have an intrinsic worth. neither nature nor art contains anything which in default of these it could put in their place, for their worth consists not in the effects which spring from them, not in the use and advantage which they secure, but in the disposition of mind, that is, the maxims of the will which are ready to manifest themselves in such actions, even though they should not have the desired effect. these actions also need no recommendation from any subjective taste or sentiment, that they may be looked on with immediate favour and satisfaction: they need no immediate propension or feeling for them; they exhibit the will that performs them as an object of an immediate respect, and nothing but reason is required to impose them on the will; not to flatter it into them, which, in the case of duties, would be a contradiction. this estimation therefore shows that the worth of such a disposition is dignity, and places it infinitely above all value, with which it cannot for a moment be brought into comparison or competition without as it were violating its sanctity. what then is it which justifies virtue or the morally good disposition, in making such lofty claims? it is nothing less than the privilege it secures to the rational being of participating in the giving of universal laws, by which it qualifies him to be a member of a possible kingdom of ends, a privilege to which he was already destined by his own nature as being an end in himself and, on that account, legislating in the kingdom of ends; free as regards all laws of physical nature, and obeying those only which he himself gives, and by which his maxims can belong to a system of universal law, to which at the same time he submits himself. for nothing has any worth except what the law assigns it. now the legislation itself which assigns the worth of everything must for that very reason possess dignity, that is an unconditional incomparable worth; and the word respect alone supplies a becoming expression for the esteem which a rational being must have for it. autonomy then is the basis of the dignity of human and of every rational nature. the three modes of presenting the principle of morality that have been adduced are at bottom only so many formulae of the very same law, and each of itself involves the other two. there is, however, a difference in them, but it is rather subjectively than objectively practical, intended namely to bring an idea of the reason nearer to intuition (by means of a certain analogy) and thereby nearer to feeling. all maxims, in fact, have: 1. a form, consisting in universality; and in this view the formula of the moral imperative is expressed thus, that the maxims must be so chosen as if they were to serve as universal laws of nature. 2. a matter, namely, an end, and here the formula says that the rational being, as it is an end by its own nature and therefore an end in itself, must in every maxim serve as the condition limiting all merely relative and arbitrary ends. 3. a complete characterization of all maxims by means of that formula, namely, that all maxims ought by their own legislation to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as with a kingdom of nature. * there is a progress here in the order of the categories of unity of the form of the will (its universality), plurality of the matter (the objects, i.e., the ends), and totality of the system of these. in forming our moral judgement of actions, it is better to proceed always on the strict method and start from the general formula of the categorical imperative: act according to a maxim which can at the same time make itself a universal law. if, however, we wish to gain an entrance for the moral law, it is very useful to bring one and the same action under the three specified conceptions, and thereby as far as possible to bring it nearer to intuition. * teleology considers nature as a kingdom of ends; ethics regards a possible kingdom of ends as a kingdom nature. in the first case, the kingdom of ends is a theoretical idea, adopted to explain what actually is. in the latter it is a practical idea, adopted to bring about that which is not yet, but which can be realized by our conduct, namely, if it conforms to this idea. we can now end where we started at the beginning, namely, with the conception of a will unconditionally good. that will is absolutely good which cannot be evilin other words, whose maxim, if made a universal law, could never contradict itself. this principle, then, is its supreme law: "act always on such a maxim as thou canst at the same time will to be a universal law"; this is the sole condition under which a will can never contradict itself; and such an imperative is categorical. since the validity of the will as a universal law for possible actions is analogous to the universal connexion of the existence of things by general laws, which is the formal notion of nature in general, the categorical imperative can also be expressed thus: act on maxims which can at the same time have for their object themselves as universal laws of nature. such then is the formula of an absolutely good will. rational nature is distinguished from the rest of nature by this, that it sets before itself an end. this end would be the matter of every good will. but since in the idea of a will that is absolutely good without being limited by any condition (of attaining this or that end) we must abstract wholly from every end to be effected (since this would make every will only relatively good), it follows that in this case the end must be conceived, not as an end to be effected, but as an independently existing end. consequently it is conceived only negatively, i.e., as that which we must never act against and which, therefore, must never be regarded merely as means, but must in every volition be esteemed as an end likewise. now this end can be nothing but the subject of all possible ends, since this is also the subject of a possible absolutely good will; for such a will cannot without contradiction be postponed to any other object. the principle: "so act in regard to every rational being (thyself and others), that he may always have place in thy maxim as an end in himself," is accordingly essentially identical with this other: "act upon a maxim which, at the same time, involves its own universal validity for every rational being." for that in using means for every end i should limit my maxim by the condition of its holding good as a law for every subject, this comes to the same thing as that the fundamental principle of all maxims of action must be that the subject of all ends, i.e., the rational being himself, be never employed merely as means, but as the supreme condition restricting the use of all means, that is in every case as an end likewise. it follows incontestably that, to whatever laws any rational being may be subject, he being an end in himself must be able to regard himself as also legislating universally in respect of these same laws, since it is just this fitness of his maxims for universal legislation that distinguishes him as an end in himself; also it follows that this implies his dignity (prerogative) above all mere physical beings, that he must always take his maxims from the point of view which regards himself and, likewise, every other rational being as law-giving beings (on which account they are called persons). in this way a world of rational beings (mundus intelligibilis) is possible as a kingdom of ends, and this by virtue of the legislation proper to all persons as members. therefore every rational being must so act as if he were by his maxims in every case a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends. the formal principle of these maxims is: "so act as if thy maxim were to serve likewise as the universal law (of all rational beings)." a kingdom of ends is thus only possible on the analogy of a kingdom of nature, the former however only by maxims, that is self-imposed rules, the latter only by the laws of efficient causes acting under necessitation from without. nevertheless, although the system of nature is looked upon as a machine, yet so far as it has reference to rational beings as its ends, it is given on this account the name of a kingdom of nature. now such a kingdom of ends would be actually realized by means of maxims conforming to the canon which the categorical imperative prescribes to all rational beings, if they were universally followed. but although a rational being, even if he punctually follows this maxim himself, cannot reckon upon all others being therefore true to the same, nor expect that the kingdom of nature and its orderly arrangements shall be in harmony with him as a fitting member, so as to form a kingdom of ends to which he himself contributes, that is to say, that it shall favour his expectation of happiness, still that law: "act according to the maxims of a member of a merely possible kingdom of ends legislating in it universally," remains in its full force, inasmuch as it commands categorically. and it is just in this that the paradox lies; that the mere dignity of man as a rational creature, without any other end or advantage to be attained thereby, in other words, respect for a mere idea, should yet serve as an inflexible precept of the will, and that it is precisely in this independence of the maxim on all such springs of action that its sublimity consists; and it is this that makes every rational subject worthy to be a legislative member in the kingdom of ends: for otherwise he would have to be conceived only as subject to the physical law of his wants. and although we should suppose the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of ends to be united under one sovereign, so that the latter kingdom thereby ceased to be a mere idea and acquired true reality, then it would no doubt gain the accession of a strong spring, but by no means any increase of its intrinsic worth. for this sole absolute lawgiver must, notwithstanding this, be always conceived as estimating the worth of rational beings only by their disinterested behaviour, as prescribed to themselves from that idea [the dignity of man] alone. the essence of things is not altered by their external relations, and that which, abstracting from these, alone constitutes the absolute worth of man, is also that by which he must be judged, whoever the judge may be, and even by the supreme being. morality, then, is the relation of actions to the relation of actions will, that is, to the autonomy of potential universal legislation by its maxims. an action that is consistent with the autonomy of the will is permitted; one that does not agree therewith is forbidden. a will whose maxims necessarily coincide with the laws of autonomy is a holy will, good absolutely. the dependence of a will not absolutely good on the principle of autonomy (moral necessitation) is obligation. this, then, cannot be applied to a holy being. the objective necessity of actions from obligation is called duty. from what has just been said, it is easy to see how it happens that, although the conception of duty implies subjection to the law, we yet ascribe a certain dignity and sublimity to the person who fulfils all his duties. there is not, indeed, any sublimity in him, so far as he is subject to the moral law; but inasmuch as in regard to that very law he is likewise a legislator, and on that account alone subject to it, he has sublimity. we have also shown above that neither fear nor inclination, but simply respect for the law, is the spring which can give actions a moral worth. our own will, so far as we suppose it to act only under the condition that its maxims are potentially universal laws, this ideal will which is possible to us is the proper object of respect; and the dignity of humanity consists just in this capacity of being universally legislative, though with the condition that it is itself subject to this same legislation. the autonomy of the will as the supreme principle of morality autonomy of the will is that property of it by which it is a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition). the principle of autonomy then is: "always so to choose that the same volition shall comprehend the maxims of our choice as a universal law." we cannot prove that this practical rule is an imperative, i.e., that the will of every rational being is necessarily bound to it as a condition, by a mere analysis of the conceptions which occur in it, since it is a synthetical proposition; we must advance beyond the cognition of the objects to a critical examination of the subject, that is, of the pure practical reason, for this synthetic proposition which commands apodeictically must be capable of being cognized wholly a priori. this matter, however, does not belong to the present section. but that the principle of autonomy in question is the sole principle of morals can be readily shown by mere analysis of the conceptions of morality. for by this analysis we find that its principle must be a categorical imperative and that what this commands is neither more nor less than this very autonomy. heteronomy of the will as the source of all spurious principles of morality if the will seeks the law which is to determine it anywhere else than in the fitness of its maxims to be universal laws of its own dictation, consequently if it goes out of itself and seeks this law in the character of any of its objects, there always results heteronomy. the will in that case does not give itself the law, but it is given by the object through its relation to the will. this relation, whether it rests on inclination or on conceptions of reason, only admits of hypothetical imperatives: "i ought to do something because i wish for something else." on the contrary, the moral, and therefore categorical, imperative says: "i ought to do so and so, even though i should not wish for anything else." e.g., the former says: "i ought not to lie, if i would retain my reputation"; the latter says: "i ought not to lie, although it should not bring me the least discredit." the latter therefore must so far abstract from all objects that they shall have no influence on the will, in order that practical reason (will) may not be restricted to administering an interest not belonging to it, but may simply show its own commanding authority as the supreme legislation. thus, e.g., i ought to endeavour to promote the happiness of others, not as if its realization involved any concern of mine (whether by immediate inclination or by any satisfaction indirectly gained through reason), but simply because a maxim which excludes it cannot be comprehended as a universal law in one and the same volition. classification of all principles of morality which can be founded on the conception of heteronomy here as elsewhere human reason in its pure use, so long as it was not critically examined, has first tried all possible wrong ways before it succeeded in finding the one true way. all principles which can be taken from this point of view are either empirical or rational. the former, drawn from the principle of happiness, are built on physical or moral feelings; the latter, drawn from the principle of perfection, are built either on the rational conception of perfection as a possible effect, or on that of an independent perfection (the will of god) as the determining cause of our will. empirical principles are wholly incapable of serving as a foundation for moral laws. for the universality with which these should hold for all rational beings without distinction, the unconditional practical necessity which is thereby imposed on them, is lost when their foundation is taken from the particular constitution of human nature, or the accidental circumstances in which it is placed. the principle of private happiness, however, is the most objectionable, not merely because it is false, and experience contradicts the supposition that prosperity is always proportioned to good conduct, nor yet merely because it contributes nothing to the establishment of moralitysince it is quite a different thing to make a prosperous man and a good man, or to make one prudent and sharp-sighted for his own interests and to make him virtuousbut because the springs it provides for morality are such as rather undermine it and destroy its sublimity, since they put the motives to virtue and to vice in the same class and only teach us to make a better calculation, the specific difference between virtue and vice being entirely extinguished. on the other hand, as to moral feeling, this supposed special sense, * the appeal to it is indeed superficial when those who cannot think believe that feeling will help them out, even in what concerns general laws: and besides, feelings, which naturally differ infinitely in degree, cannot furnish a uniform standard of good and evil, nor has anyone a right to form judgements for others by his own feelings: nevertheless this moral feeling is nearer to morality and its dignity in this respect, that it pays virtue the honour of ascribing to her immediately the satisfaction and esteem we have for her and does not, as it were, tell her to her face that we are not attached to her by her beauty but by profit. * i class the principle of moral feeling under that of happiness, because every empirical interest promises to contribute to our well-being by the agreeableness that a thing affords, whether it be immediately and without a view to profit, or whether profit be regarded. we must likewise, with hutcheson, class the principle of sympathy with the happiness of others under his assumed moral sense. amongst the rational principles of morality, the ontological conception of perfection, notwithstanding its defects, is better than the theological conception which derives morality from a divine absolutely perfect will. the former is, no doubt, empty and indefinite and consequently useless for finding in the boundless field of possible reality the greatest amount suitable for us; moreover, in attempting to distinguish specifically the reality of which we are now speaking from every other, it inevitably tends to turn in a circle and cannot avoid tacitly presupposing the morality which it is to explain; it is nevertheless preferable to the theological view, first, because we have no intuition of the divine perfection and can only deduce it from our own conceptions, the most important of which is that of morality, and our explanation would thus be involved in a gross circle; and, in the next place, if we avoid this, the only notion of the divine will remaining to us is a conception made up of the attributes of desire of glory and dominion, combined with the awful conceptions of might and vengeance, and any system of morals erected on this foundation would be directly opposed to morality. however, if i had to choose between the notion of the moral sense and that of perfection in general (two systems which at least do not weaken morality, although they are totally incapable of serving as its foundation), then i should decide for the latter, because it at least withdraws the decision of the question from the sensibility and brings it to the court of pure reason; and although even here it decides nothing, it at all events preserves the indefinite idea (of a will good in itself free from corruption, until it shall be more precisely defined. for the rest i think i may be excused here from a detailed refutation of all these doctrines; that would only be superfluous labour, since it is so easy, and is probably so well seen even by those whose office requires them to decide for one of these theories (because their hearers would not tolerate suspension of judgement). but what interests us more here is to know that the prime foundation of morality laid down by all these principles is nothing but heteronomy of the will, and for this reason they must necessarily miss their aim. in every case where an object of the will has to be supposed, in order that the rule may be prescribed which is to determine the will, there the rule is simply heteronomy; the imperative is conditional, namely, if or because one wishes for this object, one should act so and so: hence it can never command morally, that is, categorically. whether the object determines the will by means of inclination, as in the principle of private happiness, or by means of reason directed to objects of our possible volition generally, as in the principle of perfection, in either case the will never determines itself immediately by the conception of the action, but only by the influence which the foreseen effect of the action has on the will; i ought to do something, on this account, because i wish for something else; and here there must be yet another law assumed in me as its subject, by which i necessarily will this other thing, and this law again requires an imperative to restrict this maxim. for the influence which the conception of an object within the reach of our faculties can exercise on the will of the subject, in consequence of its natural properties, depends on the nature of the subject, either the sensibility (inclination and taste), or the understanding and reason, the employment of which is by the peculiar constitution of their nature attended with satisfaction. it follows that the law would be, properly speaking, given by nature, and, as such, it must be known and proved by experience and would consequently be contingent and therefore incapable of being an apodeictic practical rule, such as the moral rule must be. not only so, but it is inevitably only heteronomy; the will does not give itself the law, but is given by a foreign impulse by means of a particular natural constitution of the subject adapted to receive it. an absolutely good will, then, the principle of which must be a categorical imperative, will be indeterminate as regards all objects and will contain merely the form of volition generally, and that as autonomy, that is to say, the capability of the maxims of every good will to make themselves a universal law, is itself the only law which the will of every rational being imposes on itself, without needing to assume any spring or interest as a foundation. how such a synthetical practical a priori proposition is possible, and why it is necessary, is a problem whose solution does not lie within the bounds of the metaphysic of morals; and we have not here affirmed its truth, much less professed to have a proof of it in our power. we simply showed by the development of the universally received notion of morality that an autonomy of the will is inevitably connected with it, or rather is its foundation. whoever then holds morality to be anything real, and not a chimerical idea without any truth, must likewise admit the principle of it that is here assigned. this section then, like the first, was merely analytical. now to prove that morality is no creation of the brain, which it cannot be if the categorical imperative and with it the autonomy of the will is true, and as an a priori principle absolutely necessary, this supposes the possibility of a synthetic use of pure practical reason, which however we cannot venture on without first giving a critical examination of this faculty of reason. in the concluding section we shall give the principal outlines of this critical examination as far as is sufficient for our purpose. sec_3 third section transition from the metaphysic of morals to the critique of pure practical reason the concept of freedom is the key that explains the autonomy of the will the will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings in so far as they are rational, and freedom would be this property of such causality that it can be efficient, independently of foreign causes determining it; just as physical necessity is the property that the causality of all irrational beings has of being determined to activity by the influence of foreign causes. the preceding definition of freedom is negative and therefore unfruitful for the discovery of its essence, but it leads to a positive conception which is so much the more full and fruitful. since the conception of causality involves that of laws, according to which, by something that we call cause, something else, namely the effect, must be produced; hence, although freedom is not a property of the will depending on physical laws, yet it is not for that reason lawless; on the contrary it must be a causality acting according to immutable laws, but of a peculiar kind; otherwise a free will would be an absurdity. physical necessity is a heteronomy of the efficient causes, for every effect is possible only according to this law, that something else determines the efficient cause to exert its causality. what else then can freedom of the will be but autonomy, that is, the property of the will to be a law to itself? but the proposition: "the will is in every action a law to itself," only expresses the principle: "to act on no other maxim than that which can also have as an object itself as a universal law." now this is precisely the formula of the categorical imperative and is the principle of morality, so that a free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same. on the hypothesis, then, of freedom of the will, morality together with its principle follows from it by mere analysis of the conception. however, the latter is a synthetic proposition; viz., an absolutely good will is that whose maxim can always include itself regarded as a universal law; for this property of its maxim can never be discovered by analysing the conception of an absolutely good will. now such synthetic propositions are only possible in this way: that the two cognitions are connected together by their union with a third in which they are both to be found. the positive concept of freedom furnishes this third cognition, which cannot, as with physical causes, be the nature of the sensible world (in the concept of which we find conjoined the concept of something in relation as cause to something else as effect). we cannot now at once show what this third is to which freedom points us and of which we have an idea a priori, nor can we make intelligible how the concept of freedom is shown to be legitimate from principles of pure practical reason and with it the possibility of a categorical imperative; but some further preparation is required. freedom must be presupposed as a property of the will of all rational beings it is not enough to predicate freedom of our own will, from whatever reason, if we have not sufficient grounds for predicating the same of all rational beings. for as morality serves as a law for us only because we are rational beings, it must also hold for all rational beings; and as it must be deduced simply from the property of freedom, it must be shown that freedom also is a property of all rational beings. it is not enough, then, to prove it from certain supposed experiences of human nature (which indeed is quite impossible, and it can only be shown a priori), but we must show that it belongs to the activity of all rational beings endowed with a will. now i say every being that cannot act except under the idea of freedom is just for that reason in a practical point of view really free, that is to say, all laws which are inseparably connected with freedom have the same force for him as if his will had been shown to be free in itself by a proof theoretically conclusive. * now i affirm that we must attribute to every rational being which has a will that it has also the idea of freedom and acts entirely under this idea. for in such a being we conceive a reason that is practical, that is, has causality in reference to its objects. now we cannot possibly conceive a reason consciously receiving a bias from any other quarter with respect to its judgements, for then the subject would ascribe the determination of its judgement not to its own reason, but to an impulse. it must regard itself as the author of its principles independent of foreign influences. consequently as practical reason or as the will of a rational being it must regard itself as free, that is to say, the will of such a being cannot be a will of its own except under the idea of freedom. this idea must therefore in a practical point of view be ascribed to every rational being. * i adopt this method of assuming freedom merely as an idea which rational beings suppose in their actions, in order to avoid the necessity of proving it in its theoretical aspect also. the former is sufficient for my purpose; for even though the speculative proof should not be made out, yet a being that cannot act except with the idea of freedom is bound by the same laws that would oblige a being who was actually free. thus we can escape here from the onus which presses on the theory. of the interest attaching to the ideas of morality we have finally reduced the definite conception of morality to the idea of freedom. this latter, however, we could not prove to be actually a property of ourselves or of human nature; only we saw that it must be presupposed if we would conceive a being as rational and conscious of its causality in respect of its actions, i.e., as endowed with a will; and so we find that on just the same grounds we must ascribe to every being endowed with reason and will this attribute of determining itself to action under the idea of its freedom. now it resulted also from the presupposition of these ideas that we became aware of a law that the subjective principles of action, i.e., maxims, must always be so assumed that they can also hold as objective, that is, universal principles, and so serve as universal laws of our own dictation. but why then should i subject myself to this principle and that simply as a rational being, thus also subjecting to it all other being endowed with reason? i will allow that no interest urges me to this, for that would not give a categorical imperative, but i must take an interest in it and discern how this comes to pass; for this properly an "i ought" is properly an "i would," valid for every rational being, provided only that reason determined his actions without any hindrance. but for beings that are in addition affected as we are by springs of a different kind, namely, sensibility, and in whose case that is not always done which reason alone would do, for these that necessity is expressed only as an "ought," and the subjective necessity is different from the objective. it seems then as if the moral law, that is, the principle of autonomy of the will, were properly speaking only presupposed in the idea of freedom, and as if we could not prove its reality and objective necessity independently. in that case we should still have gained something considerable by at least determining the true principle more exactly than had previously been done; but as regards its validity and the practical necessity of subjecting oneself to it, we should not have advanced a step. for if we were asked why the universal validity of our maxim as a law must be the condition restricting our actions, and on what we ground the worth which we assign to this manner of actinga worth so great that there cannot be any higher interest; and if we were asked further how it happens that it is by this alone a man believes he feels his own personal worth, in comparison with which that of an agreeable or disagreeable condition is to be regarded as nothing, to these questions we could give no satisfactory answer. we find indeed sometimes that we can take an interest in a personal quality which does not involve any interest of external condition, provided this quality makes us capable of participating in the condition in case reason were to effect the allotment; that is to say, the mere being worthy of happiness can interest of itself even without the motive of participating in this happiness. this judgement, however, is in fact only the effect of the importance of the moral law which we before presupposed (when by the idea of freedom we detach ourselves from every empirical interest); but that we ought to detach ourselves from these interests, i.e., to consider ourselves as free in action and yet as subject to certain laws, so as to find a worth simply in our own person which can compensate us for the loss of everything that gives worth to our condition; this we are not yet able to discern in this way, nor do we see how it is possible so to actin other words, whence the moral law derives its obligation. it must be freely admitted that there is a sort of circle here from which it seems impossible to escape. in the order of efficient causes we assume ourselves free, in order that in the order of ends we may conceive ourselves as subject to moral laws: and we afterwards conceive ourselves as subject to these laws, because we have attributed to ourselves freedom of will: for freedom and self-legislation of will are both autonomy and, therefore, are reciprocal conceptions, and for this very reason one must not be used to explain the other or give the reason of it, but at most only logical purposes to reduce apparently different notions of the same object to one single concept (as we reduce different fractions of the same value to the lowest terms). one resource remains to us, namely, to inquire whether we do not occupy different points of view when by means of freedom we think ourselves as causes efficient a priori, and when we form our conception of ourselves from our actions as effects which we see before our eyes. it is a remark which needs no subtle reflection to make, but which we may assume that even the commonest understanding can make, although it be after its fashion by an obscure discernment of judgement which it calls feeling, that all the "ideas" that come to us involuntarily (as those of the senses) do not enable us to know objects otherwise than as they affect us; so that what they may be in themselves remains unknown to us, and consequently that as regards "ideas" of this kind even with the closest attention and clearness that the understanding can apply to them, we can by them only attain to the knowledge of appearances, never to that of things in themselves. as soon as this distinction has once been made (perhaps merely in consequence of the difference observed between the ideas given us from without, and in which we are passive, and those that we produce simply from ourselves, and in which we show our own activity), then it follows of itself that we must admit and assume behind the appearance something else that is not an appearance, namely, the things in themselves; although we must admit that as they can never be known to us except as they affect us, we can come no nearer to them, nor can we ever know what they are in themselves. this must furnish a distinction, however crude, between a world of sense and the world of understanding, of which the former may be different according to the difference of the sensuous impressions in various observers, while the second which is its basis always remains the same, even as to himself, a man cannot pretend to know what he is in himself from the knowledge he has by internal sensation. for as he does not as it were create himself, and does not come by the conception of himself a priori but empirically, it naturally follows that he can obtain his knowledge even of himself only by the inner sense and, consequently, only through the appearances of his nature and the way in which his consciousness is affected. at the same time beyond these characteristics of his own subject, made up of mere appearances, he must necessarily suppose something else as their basis, namely, his ego, whatever its characteristics in itself may be. thus in respect to mere perception and receptivity of sensations he must reckon himself as belonging to the world of sense; but in respect of whatever there may be of pure activity in him (that which reaches consciousness immediately and not through affecting the senses), he must reckon himself as belonging to the intellectual world, of which, however, he has no further knowledge. to such a conclusion the reflecting man must come with respect to all the things which can be presented to him: it is probably to be met with even in persons of the commonest understanding, who, as is well known, are very much inclined to suppose behind the objects of the senses something else invisible and acting of itself. they spoil it, however, by presently sensualizing this invisible again; that is to say, wanting to make it an object of intuition, so that they do not become a whit the wiser. now man really finds in himself a faculty by which he distinguishes himself from everything else, even from himself as affected by objects, and that is reason. this being pure spontaneity is even elevated above the understanding. for although the latter is a spontaneity and does not, like sense, merely contain intuitions that arise when we are affected by things (and are therefore passive), yet it cannot produce from its activity any other conceptions than those which merely serve to bring the intuitions of sense under rules and, thereby, to unite them in one consciousness, and without this use of the sensibility it could not think at all; whereas, on the contrary, reason shows so pure a spontaneity in the case of what i call ideas [ideal conceptions] that it thereby far transcends everything that the sensibility can give it, and exhibits its most important function in distinguishing the world of sense from that of understanding, and thereby prescribing the limits of the understanding itself. for this reason a rational being must regard himself qua intelligence (not from the side of his lower faculties) as belonging not to the world of sense, but to that of understanding; hence he has two points of view from which he can regard himself, and recognise laws of the exercise of his faculties, and consequently of all his actions: first, so far as he belongs to the world of sense, he finds himself subject to laws of nature (heteronomy); secondly, as belonging to the intelligible world, under laws which being independent of nature have their foundation not in experience but in reason alone. as a rational being, and consequently belonging to the intelligible world, man can never conceive the causality of his own will otherwise than on condition of the idea of freedom, for independence of the determinate causes of the sensible world (an independence which reason must always ascribe to itself) is freedom. now the idea of freedom is inseparably connected with the conception of autonomy, and this again with the universal principle of morality which is ideally the foundation of all actions of rational beings, just as the law of nature is of all phenomena. now the suspicion is removed which we raised above, that there was a latent circle involved in our reasoning from freedom to autonomy, and from this to the moral law, viz.: that we laid down the idea of freedom because of the moral law only that we might afterwards in turn infer the latter from freedom, and that consequently we could assign no reason at all for this law, but could only [present] it as a petitio principii which well disposed minds would gladly concede to us, but which we could never put forward as a provable proposition. for now we see that, when we conceive ourselves as free, we transfer ourselves into the world of understanding as members of it and recognise the autonomy of the will with its consequence, morality; whereas, if we conceive ourselves as under obligation, we consider ourselves as belonging to the world of sense and at the same time to the world of understanding. how is a categorical imperative possible? every rational being reckons himself qua intelligence as belonging to the world of understanding, and it is simply as an efficient cause belonging to that world that he calls his causality a will. on the other side he is also conscious of himself as a part of the world of sense in which his actions, which are mere appearances [phenomena] of that causality, are displayed; we cannot, however, discern how they are possible from this causality which we do not know; but instead of that, these actions as belonging to the sensible world must be viewed as determined by other phenomena, namely, desires and inclinations. if therefore i were only a member of the world of understanding, then all my actions would perfectly conform to the principle of autonomy of the pure will; if i were only a part of the world of sense, they would necessarily be assumed to conform wholly to the natural law of desires and inclinations, in other words, to the heteronomy of nature. (the former would rest on morality as the supreme principle, the latter on happiness.) since, however, the world of understanding contains the foundation of the world of sense, and consequently of its laws also, and accordingly gives the law to my will (which belongs wholly to the world of understanding) directly, and must be conceived as doing so, it follows that, although on the one side i must regard myself as a being belonging to the world of sense, yet on the other side i must recognize myself as subject as an intelligence to the law of the world of understanding, i.e., to reason, which contains this law in the idea of freedom, and therefore as subject to the autonomy of the will: consequently i must regard the laws of the world of understanding as imperatives for me and the actions which conform to them as duties. and thus what makes categorical imperatives possible is this, that the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world, in consequence of which, if i were nothing else, all my actions would always conform to the autonomy of the will; but as i at the same time intuite myself as a member of the world of sense, they ought so to conform, and this categorical "ought" implies a synthetic a priori proposition, inasmuch as besides my will as affected by sensible desires there is added further the idea of the same will but as belonging to the world of the understanding, pure and practical of itself, which contains the supreme condition according to reason of the former will; precisely as to the intuitions of sense there are added concepts of the understanding which of themselves signify nothing but regular form in general and in this way synthetic a priori propositions become possible, on which all knowledge of physical nature rests. the practical use of common human reason confirms this reasoning. there is no one, not even the most consummate villain, provided only that he is otherwise accustomed to the use of reason, who, when we set before him examples of honesty of purpose, of steadfastness in following good maxims, of sympathy and general benevolence (even combined with great sacrifices of advantages and comfort), does not wish that he might also possess these qualities. only on account of his inclinations and impulses he cannot attain this in himself, but at the same time he wishes to be free from such inclinations which are burdensome to himself. he proves by this that he transfers himself in thought with a will free from the impulses of the sensibility into an order of things wholly different from that of his desires in the field of the sensibility; since he cannot expect to obtain by that wish any gratification of his desires, nor any position which would satisfy any of his actual or supposable inclinations (for this would destroy the pre-eminence of the very idea which wrests that wish from him): he can only expect a greater intrinsic worth of his own person. this better person, however, he imagines himself to be when be transfers himself to the point of view of a member of the world of the understanding, to which he is involuntarily forced by the idea of freedom, i.e., of independence on determining causes of the world of sense; and from this point of view he is conscious of a good will, which by his own confession constitutes the law for the bad will that he possesses as a member of the world of sensea law whose authority he recognizes while transgressing it. what he morally "ought" is then what he necessarily "would," as a member of the world of the understanding, and is conceived by him as an "ought" only inasmuch as he likewise considers himself as a member of the world of sense. of the extreme limits of all practical philosophy. all men attribute to themselves freedom of will. hence come all judgements upon actions as being such as ought to have been done, although they have not been done. however, this freedom is not a conception of experience, nor can it be so, since it still remains, even though experience shows the contrary of what on supposition of freedom are conceived as its necessary consequences. on the other side it is equally necessary that everything that takes place should be fixedly determined according to laws of nature. this necessity of nature is likewise not an empirical conception, just for this reason, that it involves the motion of necessity and consequently of a priori cognition. but this conception of a system of nature is confirmed by experience; and it must even be inevitably presupposed if experience itself is to be possible, that is, a connected knowledge of the objects of sense resting on general laws. therefore freedom is only an idea of reason, and its objective reality in itself is doubtful; while nature is a concept of the understanding which proves, and must necessarily prove, its reality in examples of experience. there arises from this a dialectic of reason, since the freedom attributed to the will appears to contradict the necessity of nature, and placed between these two ways reason for speculative purposes finds the road of physical necessity much more beaten and more appropriate than that of freedom; yet for practical purposes the narrow footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make use of reason in our conduct; hence it is just as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reason of men to argue away freedom. philosophy must then assume that no real contradiction will be found between freedom and physical necessity of the same human actions, for it cannot give up the conception of nature any more than that of freedom. nevertheless, even though we should never be able to comprehend how freedom is possible, we must at least remove this apparent contradiction in a convincing manner. for if the thought of freedom contradicts either itself or nature, which is equally necessary, it must in competition with physical necessity be entirely given up. it would, however, be impossible to escape this contradiction if the thinking subject, which seems to itself free, conceived itself in the same sense or in the very same relation when it calls itself free as when in respect of the same action it assumes itself to be subject to the law of nature. hence it is an indispensable problem of speculative philosophy to show that its illusion respecting the contradiction rests on this, that we think of man in a different sense and relation when we call him free and when we regard him as subject to the laws of nature as being part and parcel of nature. it must therefore show that not only can both these very well co-exist, but that both must be thought as necessarily united in the same subject, since otherwise no reason could be given why we should burden reason with an idea which, though it may possibly without contradiction be reconciled with another that is sufficiently established, yet entangles us in a perplexity which sorely embarrasses reason in its theoretic employment. this duty, however, belongs only to speculative philosophy. the philosopher then has no option whether he will remove the apparent contradiction or leave it untouched; for in the latter case the theory respecting this would be bonum vacans, into the possession of which the fatalist would have a right to enter and chase all morality out of its supposed domain as occupying it without title. we cannot however as yet say that we are touching the bounds of practical philosophy. for the settlement of that controversy does not belong to it; it only demands from speculative reason that it should put an end to the discord in which it entangles itself in theoretical questions, so that practical reason may have rest and security from external attacks which might make the ground debatable on which it desires to build. the claims to freedom of will made even by common reason are founded on the consciousness and the admitted supposition that reason is independent of merely subjectively determined causes which together constitute what belongs to sensation only and which consequently come under the general designation of sensibility. man considering himself in this way as an intelligence places himself thereby in a different order of things and in a relation to determining grounds of a wholly different kind when on the one hand he thinks of himself as an intelligence endowed with a will, and consequently with causality, and when on the other he perceives himself as a phenomenon in the world of sense (as he really is also), and affirms that his causality is subject to external determination according to laws of nature. now he soon becomes aware that both can hold good, nay, must hold good at the same time. for there is not the smallest contradiction in saying that a thing in appearance (belonging to the world of sense) is subject to certain laws, of which the very same as a thing or being in itself is independent, and that he must conceive and think of himself in this twofold way, rests as to the first on the consciousness of himself as an object affected through the senses, and as to the second on the consciousness of himself as an intelligence, i.e., as independent on sensible impressions in the employment of his reason (in other words as belonging to the world of understanding). hence it comes to pass that man claims the possession of a will which takes no account of anything that comes under the head of desires and inclinations and, on the contrary, conceives actions as possible to him, nay, even as necessary which can only be done by disregarding all desires and sensible inclinations. the causality of such actions lies in him as an intelligence and in the laws of effects and actions [which depend] on the principles of an intelligible world, of which indeed he knows nothing more than that in it pure reason alone independent of sensibility gives the law; moreover since it is only in that world, as an intelligence, that he is his proper self (being as man only the appearance of himself), those laws apply to him directly and categorically, so that the incitements of inclinations and appetites (in other words the whole nature of the world of sense) cannot impair the laws of his volition as an intelligence. nay, he does not even hold himself responsible for the former or ascribe them to his proper self, i.e., his will: he only ascribes to his will any indulgence which he might yield them if he allowed them to influence his maxims to the prejudice of the rational laws of the will. when practical reason thinks itself into a world of understanding, it does not thereby transcend its own limits, as it would if it tried to enter it by intuition or sensation. the former is only a negative thought in respect of the world of sense, which does not give any laws to reason in determining the will and is positive only in this single point that this freedom as a negative characteristic is at the same time conjoined with a (positive) faculty and even with a causality of reason, which we designate a will, namely a faculty of so acting that the principle of the actions shall conform to the essential character of a rational motive, i.e., the condition that the maxim have universal validity as a law. but were it to borrow an object of will, that is, a motive, from the world of understanding, then it would overstep its bounds and pretend to be acquainted with something of which it knows nothing. the conception of a world of the understanding is then only a point of view which reason finds itself compelled to take outside the appearances in order to conceive itself as practical, which would not be possible if the influences of the sensibility had a determining power on man, but which is necessary unless he is to be denied the consciousness of himself as an intelligence and, consequently, as a rational cause, energizing by reason, that is, operating freely. this thought certainly involves the idea of an order and a system of laws different from that of the mechanism of nature which belongs to the sensible world; and it makes the conception of an intelligible world necessary (that is to say, the whole system of rational beings as things in themselves). but it does not in the least authorize us to think of it further than as to its formal condition only, that is, the universality of the maxims of the will as laws, and consequently the autonomy of the latter, which alone is consistent with its freedom; whereas, on the contrary, all laws that refer to a definite object give heteronomy, which only belongs to laws of nature and can only apply to the sensible world. but reason would overstep all its bounds if it undertook to explain how pure reason can be practical, which would be exactly the same problem as to explain how freedom is possible. for we can explain nothing but that which we can reduce to laws, the object of which can be given in some possible experience. but freedom is a mere idea, the objective reality of which can in no wise be shown according to laws of nature, and consequently not in any possible experience; and for this reason it can never be comprehended or understood, because we cannot support it by any sort of example or analogy. it holds good only as a necessary hypothesis of reason in a being that believes itself conscious of a will, that is, of a faculty distinct from mere desire (namely, a faculty of determining itself to action as an intelligence, in other words, by laws of reason independently on natural instincts). now where determination according to laws of nature ceases, there all explanation ceases also, and nothing remains but defence, i.e., the removal of the objections of those who pretend to have seen deeper into the nature of things, and thereupon boldly declare freedom impossible. we can only point out to them that the supposed contradiction that they have discovered in it arises only from this, that in order to be able to apply the law of nature to human actions, they must necessarily consider man as an appearance: then when we demand of them that they should also think of him qua intelligence as a thing in itself, they still persist in considering him in this respect also as an appearance. in this view it would no doubt be a contradiction to suppose the causality of the same subject (that is, his will) to be withdrawn from all the natural laws of the sensible world. but this contradiction disappears, if they would only bethink themselves and admit, as is reasonable, that behind the appearances there must also lie at their root (although hidden) the things in themselves, and that we cannot expect the laws of these to be the same as those that govern their appearances. the subjective impossibility of explaining the freedom of the will is identical with the impossibility of discovering and explaining an interest * which man can take in the moral law. nevertheless he does actually take an interest in it, the basis of which in us we call the moral feeling, which some have falsely assigned as the standard of our moral judgement, whereas it must rather be viewed as the subjective effect that the law exercises on the will, the objective principle of which is furnished by reason alone. * interest is that by which reason becomes practical, i.e., a cause determining the will. hence we say of rational beings only that they take an interest in a thing; irrational beings only feel sensual appetites. reason takes a direct interest in action then only when the universal validity of its maxims is alone sufficient to determine the will. such an interest alone is pure. but if it can determine the will only by means of another object of desire or on the suggestion of a particular feeling of the subject, then reason takes only an indirect interest in the action, and, as reason by itself without experience cannot discover either objects of the will or a special feeling actuating it, this latter interest would only be empirical and not a pure rational interest. the logical interest of reason (namely, to extend its insight) is never direct, but presupposes purposes for which reason is employed. in order indeed that a rational being who is also affected through the senses should will what reason alone directs such beings that they ought to will, it is no doubt requisite that reason should have a power to infuse a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction in the fulfilment of duty, that is to say, that it should have a causality by which it determines the sensibility according to its own principles. but it is quite impossible to discern, i.e., to make it intelligible a priori, how a mere thought, which itself contains nothing sensible, can itself produce a sensation of pleasure or pain; for this is a particular kind of causality of which as of every other causality we can determine nothing whatever a priori; we must only consult experience about it. but as this cannot supply us with any relation of cause and effect except between two objects of experience, whereas in this case, although indeed the effect produced lies within experience, yet the cause is supposed to be pure reason acting through mere ideas which offer no object to experience, it follows that for us men it is quite impossible to explain how and why the universality of the maxim as a law, that is, morality, interests. this only is certain, that it is not because it interests us that it has validity for us (for that would be heteronomy and dependence of practical reason on sensibility, namely, on a feeling as its principle, in which case it could never give moral laws), but that it interests us because it is valid for us as men, inasmuch as it had its source in our will as intelligences, in other words, in our proper self, and what belongs to mere appearance is necessarily subordinated by reason to the nature of the thing in itself. the question then, "how a categorical imperative is possible," can be answered to this extent, that we can assign the only hypothesis on which it is possible, namely, the idea of freedom; and we can also discern the necessity of this hypothesis, and this is sufficient for the practical exercise of reason, that is, for the conviction of the validity of this imperative, and hence of the moral law; but how this hypothesis itself is possible can never be discerned by any human reason. on the hypothesis, however, that the will of an intelligence is free, its autonomy, as the essential formal condition of its determination, is a necessary consequence. moreover, this freedom of will is not merely quite possible as a hypothesis (not involving any contradiction to the principle of physical necessity in the connexion of the phenomena of the sensible world) as speculative philosophy can show: but further, a rational being who is conscious of causality through reason, that is to say, of a will (distinct from desires), must of necessity make it practically, that is, in idea, the condition of all his voluntary actions. but to explain how pure reason can be of itself practical without the aid of any spring of action that could be derived from any other source, i.e., how the mere principle of the universal validity of all its maxims as laws (which would certainly be the form of a pure practical reason) can of itself supply a spring, without any matter (object) of the will in which one could antecedently take any interest; and how it can produce an interest which would be called purely moral; or in other words, how pure reason can be practicalto explain this is beyond the power of human reason, and all the labour and pains of seeking an explanation of it are lost. it is just the same as if i sought to find out how freedom itself is possible as the causality of a will. for then i quit the ground of philosophical explanation, and i have no other to go upon. i might indeed revel in the world of intelligences which still remains to me, but although i have an idea of it which is well founded, yet i have not the least knowledge of it, nor an i ever attain to such knowledge with all the efforts of my natural faculty of reason. it signifies only a something that remains over when i have eliminated everything belonging to the world of sense from the actuating principles of my will, serving merely to keep in bounds the principle of motives taken from the field of sensibility; fixing its limits and showing that it does not contain all in all within itself, but that there is more beyond it; but this something more i know no further. of pure reason which frames this ideal, there remains after the abstraction of all matter, i.e., knowledge of objects, nothing but the form, namely, the practical law of the universality of the maxims, and in conformity with this conception of reason in reference to a pure world of understanding as a possible efficient cause, that is a cause determining the will. there must here be a total absence of springs; unless this idea of an intelligible world is itself the spring, or that in which reason primarily takes an interest; but to make this intelligible is precisely the problem that we cannot solve. here now is the extreme limit of all moral inquiry, and it is of great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that reason may not on the one hand, to the prejudice of morals, seek about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it) empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible world, and so lose itself amidst chimeras. for the rest, the idea of a pure world of understanding as a system of all intelligences, and to which we ourselves as rational beings belong (although we are likewise on the other side members of the sensible world), this remains always a useful and legitimate idea for the purposes of rational belief, although all knowledge stops at its threshold, useful, namely, to produce in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings), to which we can belong as members then only when we carefully conduct ourselves according to the maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature. concluding remark the speculative employment of reason with respect to nature leads to the absolute necessity of some supreme cause of the world: the practical employment of reason with a view to freedom leads also to absolute necessity, but only of the laws of the actions of a rational being as such. now it is an essential principle of reason, however employed, to push its knowledge to a consciousness of its necessity (without which it would not be rational knowledge). it is, however, an equally essential restriction of the same reason that it can neither discern the necessity of what is or what happens, nor of what ought to happen, unless a condition is supposed on which it is or happens or ought to happen. in this way, however, by the constant inquiry for the condition, the satisfaction of reason is only further and further postponed. hence it unceasingly seeks the unconditionally necessary and finds itself forced to assume it, although without any means of making it comprehensible to itself, happy enough if only it can discover a conception which agrees with this assumption. it is therefore no fault in our deduction of the supreme principle of morality, but an objection that should be made to human reason in general, that it cannot enable us to conceive the absolute necessity of an unconditional practical law (such as the categorical imperative must be). it cannot be blamed for refusing to explain this necessity by a condition, that is to say, by means of some interest assumed as a basis, since the law would then cease to be a supreme law of reason. and thus while we do not comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason. the end images generously made available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/egotismingerman00santuoft transcriber's note: page numbers enclosed in square brackets (example: [pg 5]) have been included to facilitate the use of the index. egotism in german philosophy by g. santayana late professor of philosophy in harvard university london and toronto j. m. dent & sons limited new york: charles scribner's sons 1916 [pg 5] preface this book is one of the many that the present war has brought forth, but it is the fruit of a long gestation. during more than twenty years, while i taught philosophy at harvard college, i had continual occasion to read and discuss german metaphysics. from the beginning it wore in my eyes a rather questionable shape. under its obscure and fluctuating tenets i felt something sinister at work, something at once hollow and aggressive. it seemed a forced method of speculation, producing more confusion than it found, and calculated chiefly to enable practical materialists to call themselves idealists and rationalists to remain theologians. at the same time the fear that its secret might be eluding me, seeing that by blood and tradition i was perhaps handicapped in the matter, spurred me to great and prolonged efforts to understand what confronted me so bewilderingly. i wished to be as clear and just about it as i could--more clear and just, indeed, than it ever was about itself. for the rest, german philosophy was never my chief interest, and i write frankly as an outsider, with no professorial pretensions; merely using my common [pg 6] reason in the presence of claims put forth by others to a logical authority and a spiritual supremacy which they are far from possessing. a reader indoctrinated in the german schools is, therefore, free not to read further. my object is neither to repeat his familiar arguments in their usual form, nor to refute them; my object is to describe them intelligibly and to judge them from the point of view of the layman, and in his interests. for those who wish to study german philosophy, the original authors are at hand: all i would give here is the aroma of german philosophy that has reached my nostrils. if the reader has smelt something of the kind, so much the better: we shall then understand each other. the function of history or of criticism is not passively to reproduce its subject-matter. one real world, with one stout corpus of german philosophy, is enough. reflection and description are things superadded, things which ought to be more winged and more selective than what they play upon. they are echoes of reality in the sphere of art, sketches which may achieve all the truth appropriate to them without belying their creative limitations: for their essence is to be intellectual symbols, at once indicative and original. egotism--subjectivity in thought and wilfulness in morals--which is the soul of german philosophy, [pg 7] is by no means a gratuitous thing. it is a genuine expression of the pathetic situation in which any animal finds itself upon earth, and any intelligence in the universe. it is an inevitable and initial circumstance in life. but like every material accident, it is a thing to abstract from and to discount as far as possible. the perversity of the germans, the childishness and sophistry of their position, lies only in glorifying what is an inevitable impediment, and in marking time on an earthly station from which the spirit of man--at least in spirit--is called to fly. this glorified and dogged egotism, which a thousand personal and technical evidences had long revealed to me in german philosophy, might now, i should think, be evident to the whole world. not that the german philosophers are responsible for the war, or for that recrudescence of corporate fanaticism which prepared it from afar. they merely shared and justified prophetically that spirit of uncompromising self-assertion and metaphysical conceit which the german nation is now reducing to action. it is a terrible thing to have a false religion, all the more terrible the deeper its sources are in the human soul. like many a false religion before it, this which now inspires the germans has made a double assault upon mankind, one with the secular arm, and another by solemn asseverations and sophistries. this assault, [pg 8] though its incidental methods may be dubious, has been bold and honest enough in principle. it has been like those which all conquerors and all founders of militant religions have made at intervals against liberty or reason. and the issue will doubtless be the same. liberty may be maimed, but not killed; reason may be bent, but not broken. the dark aggression is to be repelled, if possible, by force of arms; but failing that, it will be nullified in time by the indomitable moral resistance which maturer races, richer in wisdom, can exert successfully against the rude will of the conqueror. [pg 9] contents i. the general character of german philosophy ii. the protestant heritage iii. transcendentalism iv. hints of egotism in goethe v. seeds of egotism in kant vi. transcendentalism perfected vii. fichte on the mission of germany viii. the egotism of ideas ix. egotism and selfishness x. the breach with christianity xi. nietzsche and schopenhauer xii. the ethics of nietzsche xiii. the superman xiv. heathenism xv. german genius xvi. egotism in practice index egotism in german philosophy [pg 11] chapter i the general character of german philosophy what i propose in these pages to call german philosophy is not identical with philosophy in germany. the religion of the germans is foreign to them; and the philosophy associated with religion before the reformation, and in catholic circles since, is a system native to the late roman empire. their irreligion is foreign too; the sceptical and the scientific schools that have been conspicuous in other countries have taken root in germany as well. thus, if we counted the catholics and the old-fashioned protestants on the one hand, and the materialists (who call themselves monists) on the other, we should very likely discover that the majority of intelligent germans held views which german philosophy proper must entirely despise, and that this philosophy seemed as strange to them as to other people. for an original and profound philosophy has arisen in germany, as distinct in genius and method from [pg 12] greek and catholic philosophy as this is from the indian systems. the great characteristic of german philosophy is that it is deliberately subjective and limits itself to the articulation of self-consciousness. the whole world appears there, but at a certain remove; it is viewed and accepted merely as an idea framed in consciousness, according to principles fetched from the most personal and subjective parts of the mind, such as duty, will, or the grammar of thought. the direction in which german philosophy is profound is the direction of inwardness. whatever we may think of its competence in other matters, it probes the self--as unaided introspection may--with extraordinary intentness and sincerity. in inventing the transcendental method, the study of subjective projections and perspectives, it has added a new dimension to human speculation. the foreign religion and the foreign irreligion of germany are both incompatible with german philosophy. this philosophy cannot accept any dogmas, for its fundamental conviction is that there are no existing things except imagined ones: god as much as matter is exhausted by the thought of him, and entirely resident in this thought. the notion that knowledge can _discover_ anything, or that anything previously existing can be revealed, is discarded altogether: for there is nothing to discover, and even [pg 13] if there was, the mind could not reach it; it could only reach the idea it might call up from its own depths. this idea might be perhaps justified and necessary by virtue of its subjective roots in the will or in duty, but never justified by its supposed external object, an object with which nobody could ever compare it. german philosophy is no more able to believe in god than in matter, though it must talk continually of both. at the same time this subjectivism is not irreligious. it is mystical, faithful, enthusiastic: it has all the qualities that gave early protestantism its religious force. it is rebellious to external authority, conscious of inward light and of absolute duties. it is full of faith, if by faith we understand not definite beliefs held on inadequate evidence, but a deep trust in instinct and destiny. rather than religious, however, this philosophy is romantic. it accepts passionately the aims suggested to it by sentiment or impulse. it despises prudence and flouts the understanding. in _faust_ and in _pier gynt_ we have a poetic echo of its fundamental inspiration, freed from theological accommodations or academic cant. it is the adventure of a wild, sensitive, boyish mind, that now plays the fairy prince and now the shabby and vicious egoist; a rebel and an enthusiast, yet often a sensualist to [pg 14] boot by way of experiment; a man eager for experience but blind to its lessons, vague about nature, and blundering about duty, but confident that he can in some way play the magician and bring the world round to serve his will and spiritual necessities. happiness and despair are alike impossible with such a temperament. its empiricism is perennial. it cannot lose faith in the vital impulse it expresses; all its fancy, ingenuity, and daring philosophy are embroideries which it makes upon a dark experience. it cannot take outer facts very seriously; they are but symbols of its own unfathomable impulses. so pensive animals might reason. the just and humble side of german philosophy--if we can lend it virtues to which it is deeply indifferent--is that it accepts the total relativity of the human mind and luxuriates in it, much as we might expect spiders or porpoises to luxuriate in their special sensibility, making no vain effort to peep through the bars of their psychological prison. this sort of agnosticism in a minor key is conspicuous in the _critique of pure reason_. in a major key it reappears in nietzsche, when he proclaims a preference for illusion over truth. more mystically expressed it pervades the intervening thinkers. the more profound they are the more content and even delighted they are to consider nothing but their own [pg 15] creations. their theory of knowledge proclaims that knowledge is impossible. you know only your so-called knowledge, which itself knows nothing; and you are limited to the autobiography of your illusions. the germans express this limitation of their philosophy by calling it idealism. in several senses it fully deserves this name. it is idealistic psychologically in that it regards mental life as groundless and all-inclusive, and denies that a material world exists, except as an idea necessarily bred in the mind. it is idealistic, too, in that it puts behind experience a background of concepts, and not of matter; a ghostly framework of laws, categories, moral or logical principles to be the stiffening and skeleton of sensible experience, and to lend it some substance and meaning. it is idealistic in morals also, in that it approves of pursuing the direct objects of will, without looking over one's shoulder or reckoning the consequences. these direct objects are ideals, whereas happiness, or any satisfaction based on renunciation and compromise, seems to these spirited philosophers the aim of a degraded, calculating mind. the word idealism, used in this sense, should not mislead us; it indicates sympathy with life and its passions, particularly the learned and political ones; it does not indicate any distaste for material goods or material agencies. the german moral imagination is in its first or dogmatic [pg 16] stage, not in the second or critical one. it is in love with life rather than with wisdom. there is accordingly one sense of the term idealism--the original one--in which this philosophy knows nothing of it, the platonic and poetic sense in which the ideal is something _better_ than the fact. the platonic idealist is the man by nature so wedded to perfection that he sees in everything not the reality but the faultless ideal which the reality misses and suggests. hegel, indeed, drew an outline portrait of things, according to what he thought their ideal essence; but it was uglier and more dreary than the things themselves. platonic idealism requires a gift of impassioned contemplation, an incandescent fancy that leaps from the things of sense to the goals of beauty and desire. it spurns the earth and believes in heaven, a form of religion most odious to the germans. they think this sort of idealism not only visionary but somewhat impious; for their own religion takes the form of piety and affection towards everything homely, imperfect, unstable, and progressive. they yearn to pursue the unattainable and encounter the unforeseen. this romantic craving hangs together with their taste for the picturesque and emphatic in the plastic arts, and for the up-welling evanescent emotions of music. yet their idealism is a religion of the actual. it rejects nothing [pg 17] in the daily experience of life, and looks to nothing essentially different beyond. it looks only for more of the same thing, believing in perpetual growth, which is an ambiguous notion. under the fashionable name of progress what these idealists sincerely cherish is the vital joy of transition; and usually the joy of this transition lies much more in shedding their present state than in attaining a better one. for they suffer and wrestle continually, and by a curious and deeply animal instinct, they hug and sanctify this endless struggle all the more when it rends and bewilders them, bravely declaring it to be absolute, infinite, and divine. such in brief is german philosophy, at least, such it might be said to be if any clear account of it did not necessarily falsify it; but one of its chief characteristics, without which it would melt away, is ambiguity. you cannot maintain that the natural world is the product of the human mind without changing the meaning of the word mind and of the word human. you cannot deny that there is a substance without turning into a substance whatever you substitute for it. you cannot identify yourself with god without at once asserting and denying the existence of god and of yourself. when you speak of such a thing as the consciousness of society you must never decide whether you mean the consciousness [pg 18] individuals have of society or a fabled consciousness which society is to have of itself: the first meaning would spoil your eloquence, and the second would betray your mythology. what is involved in all these equivocations is not merely a change of vocabulary, that shifting use of language which time brings with it. no, the persistence of the old meanings alone gives point to the assertions that change them and identify them with their opposites. everywhere, therefore, in these speculations, you must remain in suspense as to what precisely you are talking about. a vague, muffled, dubious thought must carry you along as on a current. your scepticism must not derange your common sense; your conduct must not express your radical opinions; a certain afflatus must bear you nobly onward through a perpetual incoherence. you must always be thinking not of what you are thinking of but of yourself or of "something higher" otherwise you cannot live this philosophy or understand it from within. the mere existence of this system, as of any other, proves that a provocation to frame it is sometimes found in experience or language or the puzzles of reflection. not that there need be any solidity in it on that account. german philosophy is a sort of religion, and like other religions it may be capable [pg 19] of assimilating a great amount of wisdom, while its first foundation is folly. this first folly itself will not lack plausible grounds; there is provocation enough in a single visit to a madhouse for the assertion that the mind can know nothing but the ideas it creates; nevertheless the assertion is false, and such facile scepticism loses sight of the essence of knowledge. the most disparate minds, since they do not regard themselves, may easily regard the same object. only the maniac stares at his own ideas; he confuses himself in his perceptions; he projects them into the wrong places, and takes surrounding objects to be different from what they are. but perceptions originally have external objects; they express a bodily reaction, or some inward preparation for such a reaction. they are reports. the porpoise and the spider are not shut up in their self-consciousness; however foreign to us may be the language of their senses, they know the sea and air that we know, and have to meet the same changes and accidents there which we meet--and they even have to meet us, sometimes, to their sorrow. their knowledge does not end in acquaintance with that sensuous language of theirs, whatever it may be, but flies with the import of that language and salutes the forces which confront them in action, and which also confront us. in focussing these forces through the lenses and veils [pg 20] of sense knowledge arises; and to arrest our attention on those veils and lenses and say they are all we know, belies the facts of the case and is hardly honest. if we could really do that, we should be retracting the first act of intelligence and becoming artificial idiots. yet this sophistication is the first principle of german philosophy (borrowed, indeed, from non-germans), and is the thesis supposed to be proved in kant's _critique of pure reason_. [pg 21] chapter ii the protestant heritage the german people, according to fichte and hegel, are called by the plan of providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe. a little consideration of this belief will perhaps lead us more surely to the heart of german philosophy than would the usual laborious approach to it through what is called the theory of knowledge. this theory of knowledge is a tangle of equivocations; but even if it were correct it would be something technical, and the technical side of a great philosophy, interesting as it may be in itself, hardly ever determines its essential views. these essential views are derived rather from instincts or traditions which the technique of the system is designed to defend; or, at least, they decide how that technique shall be applied and interpreted. the moment we hear fichte and hegel mentioning a providential plan of the world, we gather that in their view the history of things is not infinite and endlessly various, but has a closed plot like a drama in which one nation (the very one to which these [pg 22] philosophers belong) has the central place and the chief rã´le: and we perceive at once that theirs is a revealed philosophy. it is the heir of judaism. it could never have been formed by free observation of life and nature, like the philosophy of greece or of the renaissance. it is protestant theology rationalised. the element of religious faith, in the protestant sense of the word faith, is essential to it. about the witness of tradition, even about the witness of the senses, it may be as sceptical as it likes. it may reduce nature and god to figments of the mind; but throughout its criticism of all matters of fact it will remain deeply persuaded that the questioning and striving spirit within is indefeasible and divine. it will never reduce all things, including the mind, to loose and intractable appearances, as might a free idealism. it will employ its scepticism to turn all things into ideas, in order to chain them the more tightly to the moral interests of the thinker. these moral interests, human and pathetic as they may seem to the outsider, it will exalt immeasurably, pronouncing them to be groundless and immutable; and it will never tolerate the suspicion that all things might not minister to them. from the same tenet of fichte and hegel we may also learn that in the plan of the world, as this revealed philosophy conceives it, the principal figures [pg 23] are not individuals, like the creator, the redeemer, and one's own soul, but nations and institutions. it is of the essence of protestantism and of german philosophy that religion should gradually drop its supernatural personages and comforting private hopes and be absorbed in the duty of living manfully and conscientiously the conventional life of this world. not the whole life of the world, however, since gay religions and many other gay things are excluded, or admitted only as childish toys. positive religion, in fact, disappears, as well as the frivolous sort of worldliness, and there remains only a consecrated worldliness that is deliberate and imposed as a duty. just as in pantheism god is naturalised into a cosmic force, so in german philosophy the biblical piety of the earlier protestants is secularised into social and patriotic zeal. german philosophy has inherited from protestantism its earnestness and pious intention; also a tendency to retain, for whatever changed views it may put forward, the names of former beliefs. god, freedom, and immortality, for instance, may eventually be transformed into their opposites, since the oracle of faith is internal; but their names may be kept, together with a feeling that what will now bear those names is much more satisfying than what they originally stood for. if it should seem that [pg 24] god came nearest to us, and dwelt within us, in the form of vital energy, if freedom should turn out really to mean personality, if immortality, in the end, should prove identical with the endlessness of human progress, and if these new thoughts should satisfy and encourage us as the evanescent ideas of god, freedom, and immortality satisfied and encouraged our fathers, why should we not use these consecrated names for our new conceptions, and thus indicate the continuity of religion amid the flux of science? this expedient is not always hypocritical. it was quite candid in men like spinoza and emerson, whose attachment to positive religion had insensibly given, way to a half-mystical, half-intellectual satisfaction with the natural world, as their eloquent imagination conceived it. but whether candid or disingenuous, this habit has the advantage of oiling the wheels of progress with a sacred unction. in facilitating change it blurs the consciousness of change, and leads people to associate with their new opinions sentiments which are logically incompatible with them. the attachment of many tender-minded people to german philosophy is due to this circumstance, for german philosophy is not tender. the beauty and the torment of protestantism is that it opens the door so wide to what lies beyond it. this progressive quality it has fully transmitted [pg 25] to all the systems of german philosophy. not that each of them, like the earlier protestant sects, does not think itself true and final; but in spite of itself it suggests some next thing. we must expect, therefore, that the more conservative elements in each system should provoke protests in the next generation; and it is hard to say whether such inconstancy is a weakness, or is simply loyalty to the principle of progress. kant was a puritan; he revered the rule of right as something immutable and holy, perhaps never obeyed in the world. fichte was somewhat freer in his calvinism; the rule of right was the moving power in all life and nature, though it might have been betrayed by a doomed and self-seeking generation. hegel was a very free and superior lutheran; he saw that the divine will was necessarily and continuously realised in this world, though we might not recognise the fact in our petty moral judgments. schopenhauer, speaking again for this human judgment, revolted against that cruel optimism, and was an indignant atheist; and finally, in nietzsche, this atheism became exultant; he thought it the part of a man to abet the movement of things, however calamitous, in order to appropriate its wild force and be for a moment the very crest of its wave. protestantism was not a reformation by accident, [pg 26] because it happened to find the church corrupt; it is a reformation essentially, in that every individual must reinterpret the bible and the practices of the church in his own spirit. if he accepted them without renewing them in the light of his personal religious experience, he would never have what protestantism thinks living religion. german philosophy has inherited this characteristic; it is not a cumulative science that can be transmitted ready made. it is essentially a reform, a revision of traditional knowledge, which each neophyte must make for himself, under pain of rendering only lip-service to transcendental truth, and remaining at heart unregenerate. his chief business is to be converted; he must refute for himself the natural views with which he and all other men have begun life. and still these views--like the temptations of satan--inevitably form themselves afresh in each generation, and even in the philosopher, between one spell of introspective thought and another, so that he always has to recapitulate his saving arguments from the beginning. each new idealist in each of his books, often in every lecture and every chapter, must run back to refute again the same homely opponents--materialism, naturalism, dualism, or whatever he may call them. dead as each day he declares these foes to be, he has to fight them again in his own soul on the morrow. [pg 27] hence his continual preoccupation lest he fall away, or lest the world should forget him. to preserve his freedom and his idealism he must daily conquer them anew. this philosophy is secondary, critical, sophistical; it has a perennial quarrel with inevitable opinions. protestantism, in spite of its personal status, wished to revert to primitive christianity. in this desire it was guided partly by a conventional faith in the scriptures, and partly by a deep sympathy with experimental religion. german religion and philosophy are homesick: they wish to be quite primitive once more. and they actually remain primitive in spirit, spontaneous and tentative, even in the midst of the most cumbrous erudition, as a composition of dã¼rer's, where flesh, fish, and fowl crowd every corner, still remains primitive, puzzled, and oppressed. such a naã¯ve but overloaded mind is lost in admiration of its own depth and richness; yet, in fact, it is rather helpless and immature; it has not learned to select what suffices, or to be satisfied with what is best. faith for the germans must be a primitive and groundless assurance, not knowledge credibly transmitted by others whose experience may have been greater than our own. even philosophy is not conceived as a reasonable adjustment to what may have [pg 28] been discovered to be the constitution of the world; it is in the first instance a criticism, to dissolve that reputed knowledge, and then, when primitive innocence is happily restored, it is a wager or demand made beyond all evidence, and in contempt of all evidence, in obedience to an innate impulse. of course, it is usual, as a concession to the weaker brethren, to assume that experience, in the end, will seem to satisfy these demands, and that we shall win our bets and our wars; but the point of principle, borrowed by german philosophy from protestantism, is that the authority of faith is intrinsic and absolute, while any external corroboration of it is problematical and not essential to the rightness of the assumptions that faith makes. in this we have a fundamental characteristic of the school. carried (as it seldom is) to its logical conclusion, it leads to the ultra-romantic and ultra-idealistic doctrine that the very notion of truth or fact is a fiction of, the will, invented to satisfy our desire for some fixed point of reference in thought. in this doctrine we may see the culmination of the protestant rebellion against mediation in religion, against external authority, and against dogma. the protestant precept to search the scriptures, and the sense that every man must settle the highest questions for himself, have contributed to the zeal [pg 29] with which science and scholarship have been pursued in germany. in no other country has so large, so industrious, and (amid its rude polemics) so co-operative a set of professors devoted itself to all sorts of learning. but as the original motive was to save one's soul, an apologetic and scholastic manner has often survived: the issue is prejudged and egotism has appeared even in science. for favourable as protestantism is to investigation and learning, it is almost incompatible with clearness of thought and fundamental freedom of attitude. if the controlling purpose is not political or religious, it is at least "philosophical," that is to say, arbitrary. we must remember that the greater part of the "facts" on which theories are based are reported or inferred facts_--all_ in the historical sciences, since the documents and sources must first be pronounced genuine or spurious by the philosophical critic. here presumptions and private methods of inference determine what shall be admitted for a fact, to say nothing of the interpretation to be given to it. hence a piece of biblical or homeric criticism, a history of rome or of germany often becomes a little system of egotistical philosophy, posited and defended with all the parental zeal and all the increasing conviction with which a prophet defends his supernatural inspirations. [pg 30] the distinction between mary and martha is not a german distinction: in germany the rapt idealist is busy about many things, so that his action is apt to be heady and his contemplation perturbed. only the principle is expected to be spiritual, the illustrations must all be material and mundane. there is no paradox in german idealism turning to material science, commerce, and war for a fresh field of operation. no degeneracy is implied in such an extension of its vocation, especially when the other ideals of the state--pure learning, art, social organisation--are pursued at the same time with an equal ardour. the test of a genuine german idealist is that he should forget and sink his private happiness in whatever service the state may set him to do. in view of this political fidelity the changing opinions of men are all indifferent to true religion. it is not a question of _correctness_ in opinion or conduct, since for the idealist there can be no external standard of truth, existence, or excellence on which such correctness could depend. ideas are so much real experience and have no further subject-matter. thought is simply more or less rich, elaborate, or vehement, like a musical composition, and more or less consistent with itself. it is all a question of depth and fulness of experience, obtained by hacking one's way through this visionary and bewitched [pg 31] existence, the secret purpose of which is to serve the self in its development. in this philosophy imagination that is sustained is called knowledge, illusion that is coherent is called truth, and will that is systematic is called virtue. evidently the only sanction or vindication that such a belief will look for is the determination to reassert it. religion is here its own heaven, and faith the only proof of its own truth. what is harmonised in the end is not the experience through which people have actually passed but only the echoes of that experience chiming in the mystic ear. memory too can play the egotist. subjectivism can rule even within the subject and can make him substitute his idea of himself, in his most self-satisfied moment, for the poor desultory self that he has actually been. the german philosophers have carried on protestantism beyond itself. they have separated the two ingredients mingled in traditional religions. one of these ingredients--the vital faith or self-trust of the animal will--they have retained. the other--the lessons of experience--they have rejected. to which element the name of religion should still be given, if it is given to either, is a matter of indifference. the important thing is that, call it religion or irreligion, we should know what we are clinging to. [pg 32] chapter iii transcendentalism fichte called locke the worst of philosophers, but it was ungrateful of him, seeing that his own philosophy was founded on one of locke's errors. it was locke who first thought of looking into his own breast to find there the genuine properties of gold and of an apple; and it is clear that nothing but lack of consecutiveness and courage kept him from finding the whole universe in the same generous receptacle. this method of looking for reality in one's own breast, when practised with due consecutiveness and courage by the germans, became the transcendental method; but it must be admitted that the german breast was no longer that anatomical region which locke had intended to probe, but a purely metaphysical point of departure, a migratory ego that could be here, there, and everywhere at once, being present at any point from which thought or volition might be taken to radiate. it was no longer so easy to entrap as the soul of locke, which he asserted travelled with him in his coach from london to oxford. but the practice of [pg 33] looking for all things within one's own breast, in the subtler sense of searching for them in one's memory and experience, begat in time the whole romantic and subjective school of philosophy. leibniz, the first of german philosophers, although an enemy of locke's sensualism and of his slackness in logic, was even more explicit in assigning a mental seat to all sensible objects. the soul, he said, had no windows and, he might have added, no doors; no light could come to it from without; and it could not exert any transitive force or make any difference beyond its own insulated chamber. it was a _camera obscura_, with a universe painted on its impenetrable walls. the changes which went on in it were like those in a dream, due to the charge of pent-up energies and fecundities within it; for the creator had wound it up at the creation like a clock, destined to go for ever, striking infinite hours, with ever richer chimes. here, in miniature, with a clearness and beauty never afterwards equalled, we have the nature and movement of the transcendental self set forth before us: a closed circle of experience, admitting of no relations with anything beyond, but infinite in its own potential developments, and guided by an inner force, according to an innate unconscious plan. all duties, all principles of interpretation, all data, all [pg 34] visioned objects, operated within this single life, diversifying its field of view, and testifying to its secret endowment. nevertheless, the later idealists, ungrateful to locke for their first principle, were ungrateful also to leibniz for their ultimate conception, anticipated by him in all its completeness. there were reasons, of course, for this ingratitude. leibniz, like the transcendentalists, had supposed that the objects of sense, as experience reveals them, were begotten out of the latent nature of the soul; but he had also conceived that there were many souls, as many as atoms in the physical world, and that the images arising in each were signs of the presence and actual condition of its companions. thus perception, while yielding directly only an idea, as in a dream, was indirectly symbolic of an outer reality, like a dream significant and capable of interpretation. and being an undaunted rationalist, leibniz assumed that the sooth-sayer capable of reading this dream was reason, and that whatever reason conceived to be right and necessary actually must be true in the great outer world. it was at this point that kant deviated into his radical subjectification of knowledge. his mind had been more open than that of leibniz to the influences of english psychology, it had stewed longer in its [pg 35] own juice, and he could not help asking how, if the senses could reveal only ideas of sense, reason was ever able to reveal anything but ideas of reason. those inferences about the vast world outside, which leibniz had allowed his spirits to make in their solitary confinement, were reduced by the more scrupulous kant to scribblings upon their prison walls. these scribblings he officially termed the ideas of pure--that is, of unsupported--reason; but in his private capacity he gently continued to agree with leibniz and to believe them true. there was no anomaly, according to kant, in this situation. an idea might by chance be the image of a reality, but we could never know that it was. for the proof would have to be supplied by a further idea, and would terminate in that. the hypothesis and the corroboration would alike be mental, since experience was of ideas and could envisage nothing but the vicissitudes of the mind. if you had asked leibniz what determined the order in which perceptions came into any mind, he would doubtless have answered that the creator did so, or (translating that symbol into its analytic equivalent in his system) that what did so was the innate destiny or predisposition of that mind to develop in harmony with the best possible universe. here is a very remarkable unconscious principle of [pg 36] evolution seated in the spirit and presiding over all its experience. this is precisely what is meant by a transcendental principle. this principle, unconscious as it is, sometimes betrays its mighty workings to consciousness. besides the incidental multitude of ideas which it breeds, it makes itself felt in subterranean strains and rumblings, in the sense of movement and of longing. this darker but deeper manifestation of the transcendental clock-work leibniz called appetition, and under the name of will it has played a great part in later german systems. to call it will is, of course, to speak improperly and mythologically, for actual willing requires an idea of what is willed. when we say a man doesn't know what he wants, we mean that he can will nothing, for lack of a clear idea of his interests and situation, although he doubtless wants or lacks many specific things, the absence of which is rendering him unhappy and restless. these instinctive appetitions for objects of which the mind is ignorant may, by a figure of speech, be called unconscious will; a phrase which would be a contradiction in terms if this word will (which i write with a capital letter) were not used metaphorically. from this metaphor, when its boldness seems to be dulled by use, we may pass insensibly to giving the name of will to that whole transcendental potency [pg 37] of the soul which, like the mainspring of a watch, lay coiled up tightly within it from the beginning of time. a man's transcendental will can then be called the source of everything that ever happens to him--his birth, his character, his whole life, and his death--all that he most detests and most emphatically does not will, like his nightmares, being an expression of the original pregnancy of his spirit, and its transcendental principle of development. there is but one thing to add touching a point often left by these philosophers in the most hopeless obscurity. in leibniz the number of spirits was infinite: in the later systems they are reduced to one. this difference seems greater than it is, for when such terms as spirit or will are used metaphorically, standing for unconscious laws of continuity or development, and when the will or spirit present in me now may be said to have presided over the destinies of my soul infinite ages before i was born, there seems to be no good reason why the same spirit or will should not preside over all the inhabitants of the universe at all times, be they gods or humming-birds. such a spirit or will resembles the notion of providence, or the law of evolution, or the pre-established harmony of leibniz far more than it resembles a mind. those philosophers, intent on proving that the spirit can be only one, might [pg 38] have proceeded, therefore, by urging that a spirit was at best a formal and abstract law, covering such disparate facts, that all flesh and fowl, all demons and angels, might just as well be animated by a single spirit. as it takes all sorts of things to make a world, it might take all sorts of things to express a spirit. this cool and consciously verbal way of making all one, however, is not the way of the germans. no doubt in practice the unity of the spirit or will in their systems amounts to nothing more, yet their intention and illusion is rather that whenever two things can be called manifestations of one spirit in the loosest and most metaphorical sense of this word they are thereby proved to be data in one spirit in the most intimate and psychological sense of the same. so that what really happens to transcendentalists is not that they unite all the transcendental units of leibniz into one even looser transcendental unit, but that they limit the universe to what in leibniz was one of an infinite number of parallel careers. nay, they limit even that one career to the experience present at one point, that of the most intense and comprehensive self-consciousness. the unity they desire and believe in is accordingly an actual and intense unity. all its elements are to be viewed at once, bound and merged together by [pg 39] the simultaneous intuition of all their relations, and this in a single, unchanging, eternal moment of thought, or rather of unutterable feeling. the union is, therefore, real, psychic, mystical, and so close that everything that was to be united there, by a curious irony, remains outside. what can lead serious thinkers, we may ask, into such pitfalls and shams? in this case, a powerful and not unworthy motive. all transcendentalism takes the point of view of what it calls knowledge; whenever it mentions anything--matter, god, oneself--it means not that thing but the idea of it. by knowledge it understands the image or belief, the fact of cognition. whatever is thought of exists, or can exist, in this philosophy, only for thought; yet this thought is called not illusion but knowledge, because knowledge is what the thought feels that it is. evidently on this principle none of leibniz's spirits could know any other, nor could any phase of the same spirit know any other phase. the unbridgeable chasm of want of experience would cut off knowledge from everything but its "content," the ideas it has of its objects. those fabled external objects would be brought back into my ideas, and identified with them; my ideas in turn would be drawn in and identified with the fact that i entertain them and this fact itself would condense into the [pg 40] more intimate and present fact that intensely, vaguely, deeply i feel that i am, or am tending to be, something or other. my will or spirit, the rumble of my unconscious appetitions, thus absorbs my ideas, my ideas absorb their objects, and these objects absorb the world, past, present, and future. earth and heaven, god and my fellowmen are mere expressions of my will, and if they were anything more, i could not now be alive to their presence. my will is absolute. with that conclusion transcendentalism is complete. is such transcendentalism impossibly sceptical? is it absurdly arrogant? is it wonderfully true? in so complex a world as this, there is room for a great number of cross-vistas: when all has been surveyed from one point of view and in one set of terms, nothing excludes the same reality from being surveyed from a different centre and expressed in a different notation. to represent a man, sculpture is apparently exhaustive; yet it does not exclude painting, or the utterly disparate description of the man in words; surveys in which there need be no contradiction in the deliverance, though there is the widest diversity and even incommensurability in the methods. each sort of net drawn through the same sea catches a different sort of fish; and the fishermen may quarrel about what the sea contained, if each regards his draught as exhaustive. yet the sea [pg 41] contained all their catches, and also the residue, perhaps infinite, that escaped them all. now one net which every intelligent being casts over things is that of his own apprehension, experience, and interests. he may not reflect often on his personal principle of selection and arrangement; he may be so interested in the movements he sees through his glass as never to notice the curious circular frame, perhaps prismatic, which his glass imposes on the landscape. yet among all the properties of things, the adventitious properties imputed to them in apprehension are worth noting too; indeed, it chastens and transforms our whole life if we have once noted them and taken them to heart. not that this circumstance implies for a moment what the dizziness of idealists has inferred, that things exist only as perceived or when we perceive them. what follows is rather that, besides the things and in the most interesting contrast to their movement, there is the movement of our minds in observing them. if, for instance, i happen not to know the name of my great-grandfather, and am vexed at my ignorance, i may search the parish records and discover it, together with many circumstances of his life. this does not prove that my interest in genealogy created my great-grandfather, as a consistent egotist would assert; but it does show how my interest was a [pg 42] nucleus for my discoveries and for the terms, such as great-grandfather, in which i express them--for it was no intrinsic property of that worthy man that he was to become my great-grandfather after his death, or that i was to discover him. this vortex which things, as apprehension catches them, seem to form round each whirling spectator, is the fascinating theme of lyric poetry, of psychological novels, and of german philosophy. dominated as this philosophy is by the transcendental method, it regards views, and the history and logic of views, as more primitive and important than the objects which these views have in common. the genial professor paulsen of berlin (whose pupil i once had the advantage of being) had a phrase that continually recurred in his lectures: _man kann sagen_, as much as to say, things will yield the following picture, if one cares to draw it. and he once wrote an article in honour of kant very pertinently entitled: _was uns kant sein kann_; because no veritable disciple of kant accepts what kant taught as he taught it, but each rises from the study of the master having irresistibly formed one or more systems of his own. to take what views we will of things, if things will barely suffer us to take them, and then to declare that the things are mere terms in the views we take of them--that is transcendentalism. [pg 43] chapter iv hints of egotism in goethe all transcendentalists are preoccupied with the self, but not all are egotists. some regard as a sad disability this limitation of their knowledge to what they have created; they are humble, and almost ashamed to be human, and to possess a mind that must cut them off hopelessly from all reality. on the other hand there are many instinctive egotists who are not transcendentalists, either because their attention has not been called to this system, or because they discredit all speculation, or because they see clearly that the senses and the intellect, far from cutting us off from the real things that surround us, have the function of adjusting our action to them and informing our mind about them. such an instinctive egotist does not allege that he creates the world by willing and thinking it, yet he is more interested in his own sensations, fancies, and preferences than in the other things in the world. the attention he bestows on things seems to him to bathe in light their truly interesting side. what he chiefly considers is his own experience--what he [pg 44] cared for first, what second, what he thinks to-day, what he will probably think to-morrow, what friends he has had, and how they have lost their charm, what religions he has believed in, and in general what contributions the universe has made to him and he to the universe. his interest in personality need not be confined to his own; he may have a dramatic imagination, and may assign their appropriate personality to all other people; every situation he hears of or invents may prompt him to conceive the thrilling passions and pungent thoughts of some _alter ego_, in whom latent sides of his own nature may be richly expressed. and impersonal things, too, may fascinate him, when he feels that they stir his genius fruitfully; and he will be the more ready to scatter his favours broadcast in that what concerns him is not any particular truth or person (things which might prove jealous and exclusive), but rather the exercise of his own powers of universal sympathy. something of this sort seems to appear in goethe; and although his contact with philosophical egotism was but slight, and some of his wise maxims are incompatible with it, yet his romanticism, his feeling for development in everything, his private life, the nebulous character of his religion, and some of his most important works, like _faust_ and _wilhelm meister_, are all so full of the spirit of german [pg 45] philosophy, that it would be a pity not to draw some illustration for our subject from so pleasant a source. there are hints of egotism in goethe, but in goethe there are hints of everything, and it would be easy to gather an imposing mass of evidence to the effect that he was not like the transcendentalists, but far superior to them. for one thing he was many-sided, not encyclopã¦dic; he went out to greet the variety of things, he did not pack it together. he did not even arrange the phases of his experience (as he did those of faust) in an order supposed to be a progress, although, as the commentators on _faust_ inform us, not a progress in mere goodness. hegel might have _understood_ all these moral attitudes, and described them in a way not meant to appear satirical; but he would have criticised and demolished them, and declared them obsolete--all but the one at which he happened to stop. goethe _loved_ them all; he hated to outgrow them, and if involuntarily he did so, at least he still honoured the feelings that he had lost. he kept his old age genial and green by that perennial love. in order to hold his head above water and be at peace in his own heart, he did not need to be a christian, a pagan, or an epicurean; yet he lent himself unreservedly, in imagination, to christianity, paganism, and sensuality--three things [pg 46] your transcendental egotist can never stomach: each in its way would impugn his self-sufficiency. nevertheless the sympathies of goethe were only romantic or ã¦sthetic; they were based on finding in others an interesting variation from himself, an exotic possibility, rather than an identity with himself in thought or in fate. christianity was an atmosphere necessary to certain figures, that of gretchen, for instance, who would have been frankly vulgar without it; paganism was a learned masque, in which one could be at once distinguished and emancipated; and sensuality was a sentimental and scientific licence in which the free mind might indulge in due season. the sympathy goethe felt with things was that of a lordly observer, a traveller, a connoisseur, a philanderer; it was egotistical sympathy. nothing, for instance, was more romantic in goethe than his classicism. his _iphigenie_ and his _helena_ and his whole view of antiquity were full of the pathos of distance. that pompous sweetness, that intense moderation, that moral somnambulism were too intentional; and goethe felt it himself. in _faust_, after helen has evaporated, he makes the hero revisit his native mountains and revert to the thought of gretchen. it is a wise home-coming, because that craze for classicism which helen symbolised alienated the mind from real life and led [pg 47] only to hopeless imitations and lackadaisical poses. gretchen's garden, even the _walpurgisnacht_, was in truth more classical. this is only another way of saying that in the attempt to be greek the truly classical was missed even by goethe, since the truly classical is not foreign to anybody. it is precisely that part of tradition and art which does not alienate us from our own life or from nature, but reveals them in all their depth and nakedness, freed from the fashions and hypocrisies of time and place. the effort to reproduce the peculiarities of antiquity is a proof that we are not its natural heirs, that we do not continue antiquity instinctively. people can mimic only what they have not absorbed. they reconstruct and turn into an archã¦ological masquerade only what strikes them as outlandish. the genuine inheritors of a religion or an art never dream of reviving it; its antique accidents do not interest them, and its eternal substance they possess by nature. the germans are not in this position in regard to the ancients. whether sympathetic like goethe, or disparaging like burckhardt, or both at once, like hegel, they have seen in antiquity its local colour, its mannerisms, its documents, and above all its contrasts with the present. it was not so while the traditions of antiquity were still living and [pg 48] authoritative. but the moderns, and especially the germans, have not a humble mind. they do not go to school with the greeks unfeignedly, as if greek wisdom might possibly be true wisdom, a pure expression of experience and reason, valid essentially for us. they prefer to take that wisdom for a phase of sentiment, of course outgrown, but still enabling them to reconstruct learnedly the image of a fascinating past. this is what they call giving vitality to classical studies, turning them into _kulturgeschichte_. this is a vitality lent by the living to the dead, not one drawn by the young and immature from a perennial fountain. in truth classical studies were vital only so long as they were still authoritative morally and set the standard for letters and life. they became otiose and pedantic when they began to serve merely to recover a dead past in its trivial detail, and to make us grow sentimental over its remoteness, its beauty, and its ruins. how much freer and surer was goethe's hand when it touched the cord of romanticism! how perfectly he knew the heart of the romantic egotist! the romantic egotist sets no particular limits to the range of his interests and sympathies; his programme, indeed, is to absorb the whole world. he is no wounded and disappointed creature, like byron, that takes to sulking and naughtiness because things [pg 49] taste bitter in his mouth. he finds good and evil equally digestible. the personal egotism of byron or of musset after all was humble; it knew how weak it was in the universe. but absolute egotism in goethe, as in emerson, summoned all nature to minister to the self: all nature, if not actually compelled to this service by a human creative fiat, could at least be won over to it by the engaging heroism of her favourite child. in his warm pantheistic way goethe felt the swarming universal life about him; he had no thought of dragooning it all, as sectarians and nationalists would, into vindicating some particular creed or nation. yet that fertile and impartial universe left each life free and in uncensored competition with every other life. each creature might feed blamelessly on all the others and become, if it could, the focus and epitome of the world. the development of self was the only duty, if only the self was developed widely and securely enough, with insight, calmness, and godlike irresponsibility. goethe exhibited this principle in practice more plainly, perhaps, than in theory. his family, his friends, his feelings were so many stepping-stones in his moral career; he expanded as he left them behind. his love-affairs were means to the fuller realisation of himself. not that his love-affairs were sensual or his infidelities callous; far from it. they [pg 50] often stirred him deeply and unsealed the springs of poetry in his heart; that was precisely their function. every tender passion opened before him a primrose path into which his inexorable genius led him to wander. if in passing he must tread down some flower, that was a great sorrow to him; but perhaps that very sorrow and his inevitable remorse were the most needful and precious elements in the experience. every pathetic sweetheart in turn was a sort of belgium to him; he violated her neutrality with a sigh; his heart bled for her innocent sufferings, and he never said afterwards in self-defence, like the german chancellor, that she was no better than she should be. but he must press on. his beckoning destiny, the claims of his spiritual growth, compelled him to sacrifice her and to sacrifice his own lacerated feelings on the altar of duty to his infinite self. indeed, so truly supreme was this vocation that universal nature too, he thought, was bound to do herself some violence in his behalf and to grant him an immortal life, that so noble a process of self-expansion might go on for ever. goethe's perfect insight into the ways of romantic egotism appears also in _faust_, and not least in the latter parts of it, which are curiously prophetic. if the hero of that poem has a somewhat incoherent character, soft, wayward, emotional, yet at the same [pg 51] time stubborn and indomitable, that circumstance only renders him the fitter vehicle for absolute will, a metaphysical entity whose business is to be vigorous and endlessly energetic while remaining perfectly plastic. faust was at first a scholar, fervid and grubbing, but so confused and impatient that he gave up science for magic. notwithstanding the shams of professional people which offended him, a private and candid science was possible, which might have brought him intellectual satisfaction; and the fact would not have escaped him if he had been a simple lover of truth. but absolute will cannot be restricted to any single interest, much less to the pursuit of a frigid truth in which it cannot believe; for the will would not be absolute if it recognised any truth which it had to discover; it can recognise and love only the truth that it makes. its method of procedure, we are told, consists in first throwing out certain assumptions, such perhaps as that everything must have a cause or that life and progress must be everlasting; and the truth is then whatever conforms to these assumptions. but since evidently these assumptions might be utterly false, it is clear that what interests absolute will is not truth at all, but only orthodoxy. a delightful illustration of this is given by faust when, emulating luther for a moment, he undertakes to translate the [pg 52] first verse of saint john--that being the gospel that impresses him most favourably. the point is not prosaically to discover what the evangelist meant, but rather what he must and shall have meant. _the word_ will never do; _the sense_ would be somewhat better; but _in the beginning was force_ would have even more to recommend it. suddenly, however, what absolute will demands flashes upon him, and he writes down contentedly: _in the beginning was the deed_: auf einmal seh' ich rat und schreibe getrost: im anfang war die that! yet even in this exciting form, the life of thought cannot hold him long. he aches to escape from it; not that his knowledge of the sciences, as well as his magic, will not accompany him through life; he will not lose his acquired art nor his habit of reflection, and in this sense his career is really a progress, in that his experience accumulates; but the living interest is always something new. he turns to miscellaneous adventures, not excluding love; from that he passes to imperial politics, a sad mess, thence to sentimental classicism, rather an unreality, and finally to war, to public works, to trade, to piracy, to colonisation, and to clearing his acquired estates of tiresome old natives, who insist on ringing church bells and are impervious to the new _kultur_. these public [pg 53] enterprises he finds more satisfying, perhaps only because he dies in the midst of them. are these hints of romantic egotism in goethe mere echoes of his youth and of the ambient philosophy, echoes which he would have rejected if confronted with them in an abstract and doctrinal form, as he rejected the system of fichte? would he not have judged schopenhauer more kindly? above all, what would he have thought of nietzsche, his own wild disciple? no doubt he would have wished to buttress and qualify in a thousand ways that faith in absolute will which they emphasised so exclusively, schopenhauer in metaphysics and nietzsche in morals. but the same faith was a deep element in his own genius, as in that of his country, and he would hardly have disowned it. [pg 54] chapter v seeds of egotism in kant kant is remarkable among sincere philosophers for the pathetic separation which existed between his personal beliefs and his official discoveries. his personal beliefs were mild and half orthodox and hardly differed from those of leibniz; but officially he was entangled in the subjective criticism of knowledge, and found that the process of knowing was so complicated and so exquisitely contrived to make knowledge impossible, that while the facts of the universe were there, and we might have, like leibniz, a shrewd and exact notion of what they were, officially we had no right to call them facts or to allege that we knew them. as there was much in kant's personal belief which this critical method of his could not sanction, so there were implications and consequences latent in his critical method which he never absorbed, being an old man when he adopted it. one of these latent implications was egotism. the fact that each spirit was confined to its own perceptions condemned it to an initial subjectivity and agnosticism. what things might exist besides his ideas he could never know. that such things [pg 55] existed was not doubted; kant never accepted that amazing principle of dogmatic egotism that nothing is able to exist unless i am able to know it. on the contrary he assumed that human perceptions, with the moral postulates which he added to them, were symbols of a real world of forces or spirits existing beyond. this assumption reduced our initial idiotism to a constitutional taint of our animal minds, not unlike original sin, and excluded that romantic pride and self-sufficiency in which a full-fledged transcendentalism always abounds. to this contrite attitude of kant's agnosticism his personal character and ethics corresponded. a wizened little old bachelor, a sedentary provincial scribe, scrupulous and punctual, a courteous moralist who would have us treat humanity in the person of another as an end and never merely as a means, a pacifist and humanitarian who so revered the moral sense according to shaftesbury and adam smith that, after having abolished earth and heaven, he was entirely comforted by the sublime truth that nevertheless it remained wrong to tell a lie--such a figure has nothing in it of the officious egotist or the superman. yet his very love of exactitude and his scruples about knowledge, misled by the psychological fallacy that nothing can be an object of knowledge except some idea in the mind, led him [pg 56] in the end to subjectivism; while his rigid conscience, left standing in that unnatural void, led him to attribute absoluteness to what he called the categorical imperative. but this void outside and this absolute oracle within are germs of egotism, and germs of the most virulent species. the categorical imperative, or unmistakable voice of conscience, was originally something external enough--too external, indeed, to impose by itself a moral obligation. the thunders of sinai and the voice from the whirlwind in job fetched their authority from the suggestion of power; there spoke an overwhelming physical force of which we were the creatures and the playthings, a voice which far from interpreting our sense of justice, or our deepest hopes, threatened to crush and to flout them. if some of its commandments were moral, others were ritual or even barbarous; the only moral sanction common to them all came from our natural prudence and love of life; our wisdom imposed on us the fear of the lord. the prophets and the gospel did much to identify this external divine authority with the human conscience; an identification which required a very elaborate theory of sin and punishment and of existence in other worlds, since the actual procedure of nature and history can never be squared with any ideal of right. [pg 57] in kant, who in this matter followed calvin, the independence between the movement of nature, both within and without the soul, and the ideal of right was exaggerated into an opposition. the categorical imperative was always authoritative, but perhaps never obeyed. the divine law was far from being like the absolute will in fichte, hegel, and schopenhauer, a name for a universal metaphysical force, or even for the flux of material substance. on the contrary the sublimity of the categorical imperative lay precisely in the fact that, while matter and life moved on in their own unregenerate way, a principle which they _ought_ to follow, overarched and condemned them, and constrained them to condemn themselves. human nature was totally depraved and incapable of the least merit, nor had it any power of itself to become righteous. its amiable spontaneous virtues, having but a natural motive, were splendid vices. moral worth began only when the will, transformed at the touch of unmerited grace, surrendered every impulse in overwhelming reverence for the divine law. this calvinistic doctrine might seem to rebuke all actual inclinations, and far from making the will morally absolute, as egotism would, to raise over against it an alien authority, what _ought_ to be willed. such was, of course, kant's ostensible intention; but [pg 58] sublime as such a situation was declared to be, he felt rather dissatisfied in its presence. a categorical imperative crying in the wilderness, a duty which nobody need listen to, or suffer for disregarding, seemed rather a forlorn authority. to save the face of absolute right another world seemed to be required, as in orthodox christianity, in which it might be duly vindicated and obeyed. kant's scepticism, by which all knowledge of reality was denied us, played conveniently into the hands of this pious requirement. if the whole natural world, which we can learn something about by experience, is merely an idea in our minds, nothing prevents any sort of real but unknown world from lying about us unawares. what could be more plausible and opportune than that the categorical imperative which the human mind, the builder of this visible world, had rejected, should in that other real world be the head stone of the corner? this happy thought, had it stood alone, might have seemed a little fantastic; but it was only a laboured means of re-establishing the theology of leibniz, in which kant privately believed, behind the transcendental idealism which he had put forward professorially. the dogmatic system from which he started seemed to him, as it stood, largely indefensible and a little oppressive. to purify it he [pg 59] adopted a fallacious principle of criticism, namely, that our ideas are all we can know, a principle which, if carried out, would undermine that whole system, and every other. he, therefore, hastened to adopt a corrective principle of reconstruction, no less fallacious, namely, that conscience bids us assume certain things to be realities which reason and experience know nothing of. this brought him round to a qualified and ambiguous form of his original dogmas, to the effect that although there was no reason to think that god, heaven, and free-will exist, we ought to act as if they existed, and might call that wilful action of ours faith in their existence. thus in the philosophy of kant there was a stimulating ambiguity in the issue. he taught rather less than he secretly believed, and his disciples, seizing the principle of his scepticism, but lacking his conservative instincts, believed rather less than he taught them. doubtless in his private capacity kant hoped, if he did not believe, that god, free-will, and another life subsisted in fact, as every believer had hitherto supposed; it was only the method of proving their reality that had been illegitimate. for no matter how strong the usual arguments might seem (and they did not seem very strong) they could convey no transcendent assurance; on the contrary, the more proofs you draw for anything from reason and [pg 60] experience, the better you prove that that thing is a mere idea in your mind. it was almost prudent, so to speak, that god, freedom, and immortality, if they had claims to reality, should remain without witness in the sphere of "knowledge," as inadvertently or ironically it was still called; but to circumvent this compulsory lack of evidence god had at least implanted in us a veridical conscience, which if it took itself seriously (as it ought to do, being a conscience) would constrain us to postulate what, though we could never "know" it, happened to be the truth. such was the way in which the good kant thought to play hide-and-seek with reality. the momentum of his transcendental method, however, led to a very different and quite egotistical conclusion. an adept in transcendentalism can hardly suppose that god, free-will, and heaven, even if he postulates them, need exist at all. existence, for him, is an altogether inferior category. even a specific moral law, thundering unalterable maxims, must seem to him a childish notion. what the ego postulates is nothing fixed and already existing, but only such ideal terms as, for the moment, express its attitude. if it is striving to remember, it posits a past; if it is planning, it posits a future; if it is consciously eloquent, it posits an audience. these things do not and cannot exist otherwise than in [pg 61] their capacity of things posited by the ego. all, therefore, that the categorical imperative can mean for the complete transcendentalist is that he should live as if all things were real which are imaginatively requisite for him, if he is to live hard: this intensity of life in him being itself the only reality. at that stage of development at which kant found himself, god, freedom, and immortality may have been necessary postulates of practical reason. but to suppose that these imagined objects, therefore, existed apart from the excellent philosopher whose conscience had not yet transcended them, would be not to have profited by his teaching. it would be merely to repeat it. a later and more advanced transcendentalist, instead of god, freedom, and immortality, might just as dutifully posit matter, empire, and the beauty of a warrior's death. his conscience might no longer be an echo of christianity, but the trumpet-blast of a new heathenism. it is for the ego who posits to judge what it should posit. the postulates of practical reason, by which kant hoped to elude the subjectivity which he attributed to knowledge, are no less subjective than knowledge, and far more private and variable. the senses and the intellect, if they deceive us, seem to deceive us all in much the same way, and the dream they [pg 62] plunge us into in common seems to unite us; but what obscurity, diversity, hostility in the ideals of our hearts! the postulates that were intended to save the kantian philosophy from egotism are the most egotistical part of it. in the categorical imperative we see something native and inward to the private soul, in some of its moods, quietly claiming to rule the invisible world, to set god on his throne and open eternity to the human spirit. the most subjective of feelings, the feeling of what ought to be, legislates for the universe. egotism could hardly go further. but this is not all. the categorical imperative, not satisfied with proclaiming itself secretly omnipotent, proclaims itself openly ruthless. kant expressly repudiated as unworthy of a virtuous will any consideration of happiness, or of consequences, either to oneself or to others. he was personally as mild and kindly as the vicar of wakefield (whose goodness he denied to be moral because it was natural), but his moral doctrine was in principle a perfect frame for fanaticism. give back, as time was bound to give back, a little flesh to this skeleton of duty, make it the voice not of a remote mosaic decalogue, but of a rich temperament and a young life, and you will have sanctified beforehand every stubborn passion and every romantic crime. in the guise of an infallible [pg 63] conscience, before which nothing has a right to stand, egotism is launched upon its irresponsible career. the categorical imperative, as kant personally conceived it, was that of the conscience of the eighteenth century, which had become humanitarian without ceasing to be christian, the conscience of the puritans passing into that of rousseau. but the categorical principle in morals, like the ego in logic, can easily migrate. if to-day you are right in obeying your private conscience against all considerations of prudence or kindness (though you are prudent and kind by nature, so that this loyalty to a ruthless duty is a sacrifice for you), to-morrow you may be right in obeying the categorical imperative of your soul in another phase, and to carry out no matter what irresponsible enterprise, though your heart may bleed at the victims you are making. the principle of fanaticism is present in either case; and kant provides, in his transcendental agnosticism, a means of cutting off all protests from experience or common sense, or a more enlightened self-interest. these protests, he thinks, are not only ignoble, but they come from a deluded mind, since the world they regard is a creature of the imagination, whereas the categorical imperative, revealed to the inner man, is a principle prior to all worlds and, therefore, not to be corrected by any suasion which this particular [pg 64] world, now imagined by us, might try to exercise on our free minds. thus it is from kant, directly or indirectly, that the german egotists draw the conviction which is their most tragic error. their self-assertion and ambition are ancient follies of the human race; but they think these vulgar passions the creative spirit of the universe. kant, or that soul within kant which was still somewhat cramped in its expression, was the prophet and even the founder of the new german religion. [pg 65] chapter vi transcendentalism perfected fichte purified the system of kant of all its inconsistent and humane elements; he set forth the subjective system of knowledge and action in its frankest and most radical form. the ego, in order to live a full and free life, posited or feigned a world of circumstances, in the midst of which it might disport itself; but this imagined theatre was made to suit the play, and though it might seem to oppress the will with all sorts of hindrances, and even to snuff it out altogether, it was really only a mirage which that will, being wiser than it knew, had raised in order to enjoy the experience of exerting itself manfully. it would seem obvious from this that the will could never be defeated, and that in spite of its name it was identical with destiny or the laws of nature: and those transcendentalists who lean to naturalism, or pass into it unawares, like schelling or emerson, actually understand the absolute will in this way. but not so fichte, nor what i take to be the keener and more heroic romantic school, whose last prophet was nietzsche. the germans, in [pg 66] the midst of their fantastic metaphysics, sometimes surprise us by their return to immediate experience: after all, it was in wrestling with the lord that their philosophy was begotten. as a matter of fact, the will is often defeated--especially if we are stubborn in defining our will; and this tragic fact by no means refutes the fichtean philosophy, which knows how to deal with it heroically. it conceives that what is inviolable is only what ought to be, the unconscious plan or idea of perfect living which is hidden in the depths of all life: a will not animated in some measure by this idea cannot exist, or at least cannot be noticed or respected by this philosophy. but when, where, how often and how far this divine idea shall be carried out is left unexplained. actual will may be feeble or wicked in any degree; and in consequence the world that ought to be evoked in its maximum conceivable richness, may dwindle and fade to nothing. the will may accordingly be defeated; not, indeed, by imagined external things, but by its own apathy and tergiversation. in this case, according to the logic of this system (which is as beautifully thought out as that of plotinus), the dissolving world will appear to be overwhelmingly formidable and real. in expiring because we have no longer the warmth to keep it alive, it will seem to be killing us; for the passivity of the ego, says fichte, is posited as activity [pg 67] in the non-ego. that way of speaking is scholastic; but the thought, if we take the egotistical point of view, is deep and true. so any actual will may perish by defect and die out; but actual will may also perish by sublimation. the true object of absolute will is not things or pleasures or length of life, but willing itself; and the more intense and disinterested this willing is, the better it manifests absolute will. the heroic act of dashing oneself against overwhelming obstacles may, therefore, be the highest fulfilment of the divine idea. the will dares to perish in order to have dared everything. in its material ruin it remains ideally victorious. if we consider the matter under the form of eternity, we shall see that this heroic and suicidal will has accomplished what it willed; it has not only lived perilously but perished nobly. it is hardly necessary to point out how completely this theory justifies any desperate enterprise to which one happens to be wedded. it justifies, for instance, any wilful handling of history and science. the will by right lays down the principles on which things must and shall be arranged. if things slip somehow from the traces, so much the grander your "scientific deed" in striving to rein them in. after all, you first summoned them into being only that you might drive them. if they seem to run wild and upset you, [pg 68] like the steeds of hippolytus, you will, at least, not have missed the glory, while you lived and drove, of assuming the attitude of a master. call spirits from the vasty deep: if they do not come, what of it? that will only prove the absolute self-sufficiency of your duty to call them. what tightens this speculative bond between fichte and the nietzschean school is that he himself applied his theory of absolute will to national life. this ego, which was identical with mind in general, he identified also with the german people. if the germans suffered their national will to be domesticated in the napoleonic empire, the creative spirit of the universe would be extinguished, and god himself, who existed only when incarnate in mankind, would disappear. it was evidently one's duty to prevent this if possible; and fichte poured out all the vehemence of his nature into the struggle for freedom. the mere struggle, the mere protest in the soul, according to his system, would secure the end desired: self-assertion, not material success, was the goal. a happy equilibrium once established in human life would have been only a temptation, a sort of napoleonic or mephistophelian quietus falling on the will to strive. i am not sure how far fichte, in his romantic and puritan tension of soul, would have' relished the [pg 69] present organisation of germany. he was a man of the people, a radical and an agitator as much as a prophet of nationalism, and the shining armour in which german freedom is now encased might have seemed to him too ponderous. he might have discerned in victory the beginning of corruption. nevertheless we should remember that a perfected idealism has a tendency to change into its opposite and become a materialism for all practical purposes. absolute will is not a natural being, not anybody's will or thought; it is a disembodied and unrealised genius which first comes into operation when it begins to surround itself with objects and points of resistance, so as to become aware of its own stress and vocation. what these objects or felt resistances may be is not prejudged; or rather it is prejudged that they shall be most opposite to spirit, and that spirit shall experience its own passivity--one mode of its fated and requisite experience--in the form of an influence which it imputes to dead and material things. the whole business of spirit may, therefore, well be with matter. science might be mechanical, art might be cumbrous and material, all the instruments of life might be brutal, life itself might be hard, bitter, and obsessed, and yet the whole might remain a direct manifestation of pure spirit, absolute freedom, and creative duty. this speculative possibility [pg 70] is worth noting: it helps us to understand modern germany. it is no paradox that idealists should be so much at home among material things. these material things, according to them, are the offspring of their spirit. why should they not sink fondly into the manipulation of philological details or chemical elements, or over-ingenious commerce and intrigue? why should they not dote on blood and iron? why should these fruits of the spirit be uncongenial to it? a theoretical materialist, who looks on the natural world as on a soil that he has risen from and feeds on, may perhaps feel a certain piety towards those obscure abysses of nature that have given him birth; but his delight will be rather in the clear things of the imagination, in the humanities, by which the rude forces of nature are at once expressed and eluded. not so the transcendentalist. regarding his mind as the source of everything, he is moved to solemn silence and piety only before himself: on the other hand, what bewitches him, what he loves to fondle, is his progeny, the material environment, the facts, the laws, the blood, and the iron in which he conceives (quite truly, perhaps) that his spirit perfectly and freely expresses itself. to despise the world and withdraw into the realm of mind, as into a subtler and more congenial sphere, is quite contrary to his idealism. such a retreat might bring him [pg 71] peace, and he wants war. his idealism teaches him that strife and contradiction, as heraclitus said, are the parents of all things; and if he stopped striving, if he grew sick of ambition and material goods, he thinks he would be forsaking life, for he hates as he would death what another kind of idealists have called salvation. we are told that god, when he had made the world, found it very good, and the transcendentalist, when he assumes the creator's place, follows his example. the hatred and fear of matter is perhaps not a sign of a pure spirit. even contemplatively, a divine mind may perfectly well fall in love with matter, as the moon-goddess did with endymion. such matter might be imagined only, as if diana had merely dreamt of her swain; and the fond image might not be less dear on that account. the romantic poet finds his own spirit greeting him in rocks, clouds, and waves; the musician pours out his soul in movement and tumult; why should not the transcendental general, or engineer, or commercial traveller find his purest ideal in trade, crafts, and wars? grim work, above all, is what absolute will demands. it needs the stimulus of resistance to become more intensely conscious of self, which is said to be its ultimate object in imagining a world at all. acquisition interests it more than possession, because the sense [pg 72] of effort and power is then more acute. the more material the arts that engage it, and the more complicated and worldly its field of action, the more intense will be its exertion, and the greater its joy. this is no idealism for a recluse or a moping poet; it does not feel itself to be something incidental and fugitive in the world, like a bird's note, that it should fear to be drowned in the crash of material instruments or to be forced to a hideous tension and shrillness: shrillness and tension are its native element. it is convinced that it has composed all the movements there are or can be in existence, and it feels all the more masterful, the more numerous and thunderous is the orchestra it leads. it is entirely at home in a mechanical environment, which it can prove transcendentally to be perfectly ideal. its most congenial work is to hack its way through to the execution of its world-plan. its most adequate and soul-satisfying expression is a universal battle. [pg 73] chapter vii fichte on the mission of germany when the ancient jews enlarged their conception of jehovah so as to recognise in him the only living god to whom all nature and history were subject, they did not cease to regard the universal power as at the same time their special national deity. here was a latent contradiction. it was ingeniously removed by saying that jehovah, while not essentially a tribal deity, had chosen israel for his people by a free act of grace with no previous merit on their part; so that the pride of the jews was not without humility. no humility, however, is mingled with the claim which the germans now make to a similar pre-eminence. "modern critics," says max stirner, "inveigh against religion because it sets up god, the divine, or the moral law over against man, regarding them as external things, whereas the critics transform all these objects into ideas in the human mind. nevertheless the essential mistake of religion, to assign a mission to man at all, is not avoided by these critics, who continue to insist that man shall be divine, or ideally human, or what not; morality, [pg 74] freedom, humanity, etc., are his essence." now a divinity which is subjective or immanent evidently cannot choose any nation, save by dwelling and manifesting itself more particularly in them. they can be highly favoured only in that they are intrinsically superior, and on that account may be figuratively called vessels of election. therefore, if the spirit which is in a nation is not one spirit among many in the world (as the primitive hebrews supposed and as a naturalistic philosophy would maintain), but is the one holy and universal spirit, and if at the same time this spirit dwells in that nation pre-eminently, or even exclusively, humility on the part of this nation would evidently be out of place. accordingly, the germans cannot help bearing witness to the divine virtues and prerogatives which they find in themselves, some of which are set forth by fichte as follows: the present age stands precisely in the middle of earthly time, between the era in which men were still self-seeking, earthly, and impulsive, and the coming era in which they will live for the sake of pure ideals. the germans prefigure this better age, and are leading the rest of the world into it. they have created the modern world by uniting the political heritage of classical europe with the true religion that lingered in asia, and they have raised [pg 75] the two to a higher unity in their _kultur_. from them is drawn the best blood of most other nations and the spiritual force that has fashioned them all. the germans have never forsaken their native land nor suffered seriously from immigration. their language is primitive, and they have never exchanged it for a foreign one. hence german alone is truly a mother-tongue. its intellectual terms retain a vital and vivid connection with sensible experience. true poetry and philosophy, therefore, exist only in german. captious persons who judge by mere crude feeling may fancy that german is not very melodious; but these matters cannot be rightly judged without reference to first principles, which in this case would prove that the sweetest language is that which exhausts all possible sounds and combines them in all available ways. whether german or some other language comes nearest to this _a priori_ ideal of euphony must be left for empirical observation to decide. the german nature, being pure, deep, earnest, and bold, has instinctively seized upon the true essence of christianity and discarded with abhorrence all the lies and corruption that obscured it. this essence is the imperative need of turning from the natural to the ideal life. the german knows that his own soul is safe; but this is not enough for him [pg 76] in his unselfishness. his zeal is kindled easily for warmth and light everywhere; and this zeal of his is patient and efficacious, taking hold on real life and transforming it. as he presses on he finds more than he sought, for he has plunged into the quick stream of life which forges ahead of itself and carries him forward with it. the dead heart of other nations may dream of gods in the clouds, or of some perfect type of human life already exemplified in the past and only to be approached or repeated in the future. the spirit of the german is no coinage of earth; it is the living source of all the suns, and rushes to create absolutely new things for ever. the german mind is the self-consciousness of god. i do not see that the strain of war or the intoxication of victory could add much to these boasts, uttered by fichte when, for the moment, he had abandoned all hope of military self-assertion on the part of his country, and relied on education and philosophy alone to preserve and propagate german righteousness. even in detail, what he says often seems strangely like what official germany is now saying. even the hysterical hatred of england is not absent. in england fichte did not see the champion of protestantism, morality, and political liberty, nor the constant foe of napoleon, but only a universal commercial vampire. his contempt for [pg 77] the latin races, too, was boundless. in the matter of race, indeed, he entertained a curious idea that there must have been, from all eternity until the beginning of history, a primitive normal people, a tribe of adams and eves; because according to a principle which he adopted from calvinistic theology, if all men had been originally slaves to nature none could ever have become free. this normal people were, of course, the ancestors of the germans. earth-born savage tribes must have existed also for the normal people to subdue, since but for some such conquest the primitive equilibrium would never have been broken, eden and the jungle would never have been merged together, and history, which is a record of novelties, would never have begun. the theory of evolution has rendered the reasons for such a view obsolete; but the idea that the bulk of mankind are mongrels formed by the union of blonde godlike creatures with some sort of anthropoid blacks, recurred later in gobineau and has had a certain vogue in germany. fichte, following calvin and kant, made a very sharp distinction between the life of nature and that of duty. the ideal must be pursued without the least thought of advantage. trades, he says, must be practised spontaneously, without any other reward than longer vigils. the young must never hear it [pg 78] mentioned that any one could ever be incited or guided in life by the thought of his own preservation or well-being. knowledge is no report of existing things or laws which have happened to be discovered. knowledge is the very life of god, and self-generated. it is "an intellectual activity for its own sake, according to rules for their own sake." in plain english, it is pure imagination. but the method to be imposed on this madness is fixed innately, both for thought and for morals. only frivolity can interfere with a unanimous idealism. we must not suppose that this prescription of austere and abstract aims implies any aversion on fichte's part to material progress, compulsory _kultur_, or military conquest. german idealism, as we have seen, is not platonic or ascetic, that it should leave the world behind. on the contrary, its mission is to consecrate the world and show that every part of it is an organ of the spirit. this is a form of piety akin to the hebraic. even the strictest calvinists, who taught that the world was totally depraved, were able, in every sense of the phrase, to make a very good thing of it. they reclaimed, they appropriated, they almost enjoyed it. so fichte gives us prophetic glimpses of an idealistic germany conquering the world. the state does not aim at self-preservation, still less is it concerned to come to the aid of those [pg 79] members of the human family that lag behind the movement of the day. the dominion of unorganised physical force must be abolished by a force obedient to reason and spirit. true life consists in refashioning human relations after a model innate in the mind. the glorious destiny of germany is to bring forth and establish the world anew. natural freedom is a disgraceful thing, a mere medley of sensual and intellectual impulses without any principle of order. it is for the germans to decide whether a providential progress exists by becoming themselves the providence that shall bring progress about, or whether on the contrary every higher thought is folly. if they should fail, history would never blame them, for in that case there would be no more history. the sole animating principle of history is the tendency towards a universal christian european monarchy. this tendency is deeper than the plans of men and stronger than their intentions. "that a state, even when on the very point of making war, should solemnly assert its love of peace and its aversion to conquest, is nothing; for in the first place it must needs make this asseveration and so hide its real intention if it would succeed in its design; and the well-known principle _threaten war that thou mayst have peace_ may also be inverted in this way: _promise peace that thou mayst begin war with advantage_; and [pg 80] in the second place the state may be wholly in earnest in its peaceful assurances, so far as its self-knowledge has gone; but let the favourable opportunity for aggrandisement present itself, and the previous good resolution is forgotten." if the people are disinclined to obey the idea, the government must constrain them to do so. all the powers of all the citizens must be absorbed in the state. personal liberty could be turned to no good use when such individuality and variety of training as are good for the state have been provided for by its regulations. nor must any idleness be tolerated. an ideal education must make men over so that they shall be incapable of willing anything but what that education wills them to will. the state may then rely upon its subjects, "for whoever has a well-grounded will, wills what he wills for all eternity." as to foreign relations, the state, in obedience to its ideal mission, must conquer the surrounding barbarians and raise them to a state of culture. it is this process almost exclusively that has introduced progress into history. "what impels the macedonian hero ... to seek foreign lands? what chains victory to his footsteps and scatters before him in terror the countless hordes of his enemies? is this mere fortune? no; it is an idea.... the civilised must rule and the uncivilised must obey, if right is to be the law [pg 81] of the world.... tell me not of the thousands who fell round his path; speak not of his own early death. after the realisation of his idea, what was there greater for him to do than to die?" this enthusiasm for alexander (which hegel shared) is not merely retrospective. "at last in one nation of the world the highest, purest morality, such as was never seen before among men, will arise and will be made secure for all future time, and thence will be extended over all other peoples. there will ensue a transformation of the human race from earthly and sensual creatures into pure and noble spirits." "do you know anything higher than death?... who has a right to stand in the way of an enterprise begun in the face of this peril?" it may seem curious that an uncompromising puritan like fichte, a prophet sprung from the people, a theoretical republican who quarrelled with his students for forming clubs and fighting duels, a fierce idealist full of contempt for worldlings, should have so perfectly supplied the junkers and bankers with their philosophy. but the phenomenon is not new. plato, divine and urbane as he was, supplied the dull spartans with theirs. men of idealistic faith are confident that the foundations of things must be divine, and when, upon investigating these foundations, they come upon sinister principles--blind [pg 82] impulse, chance, murderous competition--they fanatically erect these very principles into sacred maxims. all strength, they are antecedently convinced, must come from god; therefore if deception, wilfulness, tyranny, and big battalions are the means to power, they must be the chosen instruments of god on earth. in some such way the catholic church, too, for fear of impiety, is seen blessing many a form of deceit and oppression. thus the most ardent speculation may come to sanction the most brutal practice. the primitive passions so sanctioned, because they seem to be safe and potent, are probably too narrowly organised to sustain themselves long; and meantime they miss and trample down the best things that mankind possesses. nevertheless they are a force like any other, a force not only vehement but contagious, and capable of many victories though of no stable success. such passions, and the philosophies that glorify them, are sincere, absorbing, and if frankly expressed irrefutable. the transcendental theory of a world merely imagined by the ego, and the will that deems itself absolute are certainly desperate delusions; but not more desperate or deluded than many another system that millions have been brought to accept. the thing bears all the marks of a new religion. the fact that the established religions of germany are still forms [pg 83] of christianity may obscure the explicit and heathen character of the new faith: it passes for a somewhat faded speculation, or for the creed of a few extremists, when in reality it dominates the judgment and conduct of the nation. no religious tyranny could be more complete. it has its prophets in the great philosophers and historians of the last century; its high priests and pharisees in the government and the professors; its faithful flock in the disciplined mass of the nation; its heretics in the socialists; its dupes in the catholics and the liberals, to both of whom the national creed, if they understood it, would be an abomination; it has its martyrs now by the million, and its victims among unbelievers are even more numerous, for its victims, in some degree, are all men. [pg 84] chapter viii the egotism of ideas when we are discussing egotism need we speak of hegel? the tone of this philosopher, especially in his later writings, was full of contempt for everything subjective: the point of view of the individual, his opinions and wishes, were treated as of no account unless they had been brought into line with the providential march of events and ideas in the great world. this realism, pronounced and even acrid as it was, was still idealistic in the sense that the substance of the world was conceived not to be material but conceptual--a law or logic which animated phenomena and was the secret of their movement. the world was like a riddle or confused oracle; and the solution to the puzzle lay in the romantic instability or self-contradiction inherent in every finite form of being, which compelled it to pass into something different. the direction of this movement we might understand sympathetically in virtue of a sort of vital dialectic or dramatic necessity in our own reflection. hegel was a solemn sophist: he made discourse the key to reality. [pg 85] this technical realism in hegel was reinforced by his historical imagination, which continually produces an impression of detachment, objectivity, and impersonal intelligence; he often seems to be lost in the events of his story and to be plucking the very heart out of the world. again, he adored the state, by which in his view the individual should be entirely subjugated, not for the benefit of other individuals (that would be a sort of vicarious selfishness no less barren than private profit), but in the rapt service of common impersonal ends. the family was a first natural group in which the individual should be happy to lose himself, the trade-guild was another, and the state was the highest and most comprehensive of all; there was nothing worthy or real in a man except his functions in society. nevertheless this denial of egotism is apparent only. it is a play within the play. on the smaller stage the individual--save for his lapses and stammerings--is nothing but the instrument and vehicle of divine decrees; in fact he is a puppet, and the only reality of him is the space he fills in the total spectacle. but that little stage is framed in by another, often overlooked, but ever present; and on this larger and nearer stage the ego struts alone. it is i that pull the strings, enjoy the drama, supply its plot and moral, and possess the freedom and actuality which [pg 86] my puppets lack. on the little stage the soul of a man is only one of god's ideas, and his whole worth lies in helping out the pantomime; on the big stage, god is simply my idea of god and the purpose of the play is to express my mind. the spectacle in which every individual dances automatically to the divine tune is only my dream. the philosophy of hegel is accordingly subjective and all its realism is but a pose and a tone wilfully assumed. that this is the truth of the matter might be inferred, apart from many continual hints and implications, from the fact that the system is transcendental and founded on kant. objectivity can, therefore, be only a show, a matter of make-believe, something imputed to things and persons by the mind, whose poetic energies it manifests. everything must be set down as a creation of mind, simply because it is an object of thought or knowledge. this underlying subjectivism also explains the singular satisfaction of hegel, whose glance was comprehensive enough, with so strangely limited a world as he describes to us. he described what he knew best or had heard of most, and felt he had described the universe. this illusion was inevitable, because his principle was that the universe was created by description and resided in it. the mission of hegel, as he himself conceived it, was not to [pg 87] discover the real world or any part of it: in theory he retracted all belief in a real world and set in its place his conception or knowledge of it--therefore quite adequate to its object. if china was the oldest country he had heard of, the world began with china, and if prussia was the youngest and he (as he had to be) its latest philosopher, the world ended with prussia and with himself. this seems a monstrous egotism, but it is not arbitrary; in one sense it was the least pretentious of attitudes, since it was limited to the description of a current view, not of a separate or prior object. the value of a philosophy could lie only in the fullness and fidelity with which it might focus the conceptions of the age in which it arose. hegel hoped to do this for his own times; he did not covet truth to anything further. the same attitude explains the servility of his moral philosophy, which is simply an apology for the established order of things and for the prejudices of his time and country. his deepest conviction was that no system of ethics could be more, and if it tried to be more would be less, because it would be merely personal. when, for instance, he condemned harshly the roman _patria potestas_ it was because it offended the individualism of the protestant and modern conscience; and if in the next breath he condemned even more harshly the sentimentalists [pg 88] who made tender feeling and good intentions the test of virtue, it was because these individual consciences absolved themselves from conformity to the established church and state. to inquire whether in itself or in respect to human economy generally, the morality of buddha, or socrates, or rousseau was the best would have seemed to him absurd: the question could only be what approaches or contributions each of these made to the morality approved by the lutheran community and by the prussian ministry of education and public worship. the truth, then as now, was whatever every good german believed. this pious wish of hegel's to interpret the orthodoxy of his generation was successful, and the modest hopes of his philosophy were fulfilled. never perhaps was a system so true to its date and so false to its subject. the egotism of hegel appears also in his treatment of mathematical and physical questions. the infinite he called the false infinite, so as to avoid the dilemmas which it placed him in, such as why the evolution of the idea began six thousand years ago, or less; what more could happen now that in his self-consciousness that evolution was complete; why it should have gone on in this planet only, or if it had gone on elsewhere also, why the idea evolving there might not have been a different idea. but all such questions [pg 89] are excluded when one understands that this philosophy is only a point of view: the world it describes is a vista not separable from the egotistical perspectives that frame it in. the extent of the world need not be discussed, because that extent is an appearance only; in reality the world has no extent, because it is only my present idea. the infinite thus lost its application; but the word was too idealistic to be discarded. accordingly the title of true infinite was bestowed on the eventual illusion of completeness, on an alleged system of relations out of relation to anything beyond. that nothing existent, unless it was the bad infinite, could be absolute in this manner did not ruffle hegel, for the existent did not really concern him but only "knowledge," that is, a circle of present and objectless ideas. knowledge, however limited in fact, always has the completeness in question for the egotist, whose objects are not credited with existing beyond himself. egotism could hardly receive a more radical expression than this: to declare the ego infinite because it can never find anything that is beyond its range. the favourite tenet of hegel that everything involves its opposite is also a piece of egotism; for it is equivalent to making things conform to words, not words to things; and the ego, particularly in [pg 90] philosophers, is a nebula of words. in defining things, if you insist on defining them, you are constrained to define them by their relation to other things, or even exclusion of them. if, therefore, things are formed by your definitions of them, these relations and exclusions will be the essence of things. the notion of such intrinsic relativity in things is a sophism even in logic, since elementary terms can never be defined yet may be perfectly well understood and arrested in intuition; but what here concerns us is rather the egotistical motive behind that sophism: namely, that the most verbal and subjective accidents to which the names of things are subject in human discourse should be deputed to be the groundwork of the things and their inmost being. egotistical, too, was hegel's tireless hatred of what he called the abstract understanding. in his criticisms of this faculty and the opinions it forms there is much keenness and some justice. people often reason in the abstract, floating on words as on bladders: in their knowingness they miss the complexity and volume of real things. but the errors or abuses into which verbal intelligence may fall would never produce that implacable zeal with which hegel persecutes it. what obsesses him is the fear that, in spite of its frivolity, the understanding may some day understand: that it may correct its inadequacies, [pg 91] trace the real movement of things, and seeing their mechanism lose that _effet d'ensemble_, that dramatic illusion, which he calls reason. imagine a landscape-painter condemned to have a naturalist always at his elbow: soon it would not be merely the errors of the naturalist that would irritate him, but the naturalist himself. the artist intent on panoramic effects does not wish to be forced to look through a microscope; in changing his focus he loses his subjective object: not reality but appearance is the reality for him. hegel, since it was his mission to substitute so-called knowledge for being, had to go further; he had to convince himself, not only that the structure of nature discovered by the understanding was irrelevant to his own conceptual mythology, but that such a structure did not exist. he was not willing to confess (as the landscape-painter might) that he _was_ an egotist; that it was the subjective that interested him, and that in so great a world the subjective too has its place. no! he must pretend that his egotism was not egotism, but identity with the absolute, and that those who dared to maintain that the world wagged in its own way, apart from the viewing mind, were devils, because they suggested that the viewing mind was not god. it is this latent but colossal egotism that makes [pg 92] plausible the strange use which hegel sometimes makes of the word substance. his substance is but his grammar of discourse; for he was not looking for substance, in which he could not consistently believe, but only for the ultimate synthetic impression which he might gather from appearances. for the theatre-goer, the function of scenery and actors is that they should please and impress him: but what, in the end, impresses and pleases him? the cumulative burden and force of the play; the enhanced life which it has stimulated in himself. this, for that ruthless egotist, the aesthete, is the _substance_ of all things theatrical. of course, in fact, nothing could be falser, for the author and actors are real people, with lives far outrunning their function in the theatre and truly grounding it. even the stage machinery has its natural history, and the artisans who made it have theirs, both full of mute inglorious tragedies. these real substances behind his entertainment the spectator, in his ã¦sthetic egotism, laughs at as irrelevant; for him, as for hamlet, the play's the thing. what is most his own, his imaginative reaction on the spectacle, the terms in which he finds it easiest and most exciting to describe it, he calls the substance of it: a term which betrays the profound impudence of the deliberate egotist; the deepest reality he will recognise is merely specious, [pg 93] existing only for the mind that imagines it. what is supposed to rescue the system of hegel from subjectivism is the most subjective of things--a dialectic which obeys the impulses of a theoretical _parti pris_, and glorifies a fixed idea. when we have understood all this, those traits of hegel's which at first sight seem least egotistical--his historical insight and his enthusiasm for organised society--take on a new colour. that historical insight is not really sympathetic; it is imperious, external, contemptuous, feigned. if you are a modern reading the greeks, especially if you read them in the romantic spirit of goethe's classicism, and know of them just what hegel knew, you will think his description wonderfully penetrating, masterly, and complete: but would ã�schylus or plato have thought it so? they would have laughed, or rather they would not have understood that such a description referred to them at all. it is the legend of the greeks, not the life of the greeks, that is analysed by him. so his account of mediã¦val religion represents the protestant legend, not the catholic experience. what we know little or nothing about seems to us in hegel admirably characterised: what we know intimately seems to us painted with the eye of a pedantic, remote, and insolent foreigner. it is but an idea of his own that he is foisting upon us, calling it our soul. [pg 94] he is creating a world in his head which might be admirable, if god had made it. every one is subject to such illusions of perspective and to the pathos of distance, now favourable, now unfavourable to what he studies; but hegel, thinking he had the key to the divine design, fancied himself deeply sympathetic because he saw in everything some fragment of himself. but no part of the world was that; every part had its own inalienable superiority, which to transcend was to lose for ever. to the omniscient egotist every heart is closed. the past will never give away its secret except to some self-forgetful and humble lover who by nature has a kindred destiny. the egotist who thinks to grasp it, so as to serve it up at his philosophic banquet, or exhibit it in his museum of antiquities, grasps only himself; and in that sense, to his confusion, his egotism turns out true. the egotism that appears in this lordly way of treating the past is egotism of the imagination, the same that was expressed in the romantic love of nature, which was really a very subtle, very studious, very obstinate love of self, intent on finding some reference and deference to oneself in everything. but there is also an egotism of passion, which in hegel appears in his worship of the state. "the passions" is the old and fit name for what the germans call [pg 95] ideals. the passions are not selfish in the sense in which the german moralists denounce selfishness; they are not contrived by him who harbours them for his ulterior profit. they are ideal, dangerous, often fatal. even carnal passions are not selfish, if by the self we understand the whole man: they are an obsession to which he sacrifices himself. but the transcendental philosophy with its migratory ego can turn any single passion, or any complex of passions, into a reputed centre of will, into a moral personage. as the passion usurps more and more of the man's nature it becomes a fierce egotist in his place; it becomes fanaticism or even madness. this substitution of a passion for a man, when nobody thought the ego migratory, seemed a disease. what folly, we said to the human soul, to sacrifice your natural life to this partial, transitory, visionary passion! but the german idealist recognises no natural life, no natural individual. his ego can migrate into any political body or any synthetic idea. therefore, his passions, far from seeming follies to him, seem divine inspirations, calls to sacrifice, fidelities to the ideal. i am far from wishing to say that a german idealist is commonly just to all the passions and raises them in turn to be his highest and absolute will. his passions are generally few and mental. accidents of [pg 96] training or limitations of temperament keep him respectable; but he is never safe. dazzle him with a sophism, such, for instance, as that "the more evil the more good," or hypnotise him with a superstition, such as that "organisation is an end in itself," and nothing more is needed to turn him into a romantic criminal. even the absolute requires an enemy to whet its edge upon, and the state, which according to hegel is morally absolute, requires rival states in order that its separate individuality may not seem to vanish, and with it the occasion for blessed and wholesome wars. hegel rejects the notion that nations have any duties to one another because, as he asserts, there is no moral authority or tribunal higher than the state, to which its government could be subject. this assertion is evidently false, since in the first place there is god or, if the phrase be preferred, there is the highest good of mankind, hedging in very narrowly the path that states should follow between opposite vices; and in the second place there is the individual, whose natural allegiance to his family, friends, and religion, to truth and to art, is deeper and holier than his allegiance to the state, which for the soul of man is an historical and geographical accident. no doubt at the present stage of civilisation there is more to be gained than lost by [pg 97] co-operating loyally with the governments under which we happen to live, not because any state is divine, but because as yet no less cumbrous machinery is available for carrying on the economy of life with some approach to decency and security. for hegel, however, the life of the state was the moral substance, and the souls of men but the accidents; and as to the judgment of god he asserted that it was none other than the course of history. this is a characteristic saying, in which he seems to proclaim the moral government of the world, when in truth he is sanctifying a brutal law of success and succession. the best government, of course, succumbs in time like the worst, and sooner; the dark ages followed upon the roman empire and lasted twice as long. but hegel's god was simply the world, or a formula supposed to describe the world. he despised every ideal not destined to be realised on earth, he respected legality more than justice, and extant institutions more than moral ideals; and he wished to flatter a government in whose policy war and even crime were recognised weapons. this reign of official passion is not, let me repeat, egotism in the natural man who is subject to it; it is the sacrifice of the natural man and of all men to an abstract obsession, called an ideal. the vice of absoluteness and egotism is transferred [pg 98] to that visionary agent. the man may be docile and gentle enough, but the demon he listens to is ruthless and deaf. it forbids him to ask, "at what price do i pursue this ideal? how much harm must i do to attain this good?" no; this imperative is categorical. the die is cast, the war against human nature and happiness is declared, and an idol that feeds on blood, the absolute state, is set up in the heart and over the city. [pg 99] chapter ix egotism and selfishness in a review of egotism in german philosophy it would hardly be excusable to ignore the one notable writer who has openly adopted egotism in name as well as in fact. the work of max stirner on the single separate person and what he may call his own hardly belongs to german philosophy as i have been using the words: it lacks the transcendental point of departure, as well as all breadth of view, metaphysical subtlety, or generous afflatus; it is a bold, frank, and rather tiresome protest against the folly of moral idealism, against the sacrifice of the individual to any ghostly powers such as god, duty, the state, humanity, or society; all of which this redoubtable critic called "spooks" and regarded as fixed ideas and pathological obsessions. this crudity was relieved by a strong mother-wit and a dogged honesty; and it is not impossible that this poor schoolmaster, in his solitary meditations, may have embodied prophetically a rebellion against polite and religious follies which is brewing in the working classes--classes which to-morrow perhaps will absorb all mankind and give for the first time a plebeian tone to philosophy. [pg 100] max stirner called the migratory ego back to its nest. he exorcised that "spook" which had been ascending and descending the ladder of abstractions, lodged now in a single passion, now in a political body, now in a logical term, now in the outspread universe. the only true ego, he insisted, was the bodily person, the natural individual who is born and dies. no other organ or seat existed for the mind, or for any of its functions. personal interests were the only honest interests a man could have, and if he was brow-beaten or indoctrinated into sacrificing them, that moral coercion was a scandal and a wrong. the indomitable individual should shake off those chains, which were only cobwebs, and come into his own. egotism thus becomes individualism, and threatens to become selfishness. the logic of these positions does not seem to have been clear to max stirner. that the individual must _possess_ all his wishes and aspirations, even the most self-denying and suicidal, is obvious; he is the seat of those very obsessions and superstitions which max stirner deplored. the same thing is true of knowledge: a man can know only what _he_ knows and what his faculties make him capable of knowing. this fact is the excuse for transcendentalism, and the element of truth in it. but the fact that volition and knowledge must have their [pg 101] seat in some person prejudges nothing about the scope of their objects. the fallacy of egotism begins with the inference that, therefore, a person can know only his ideas and can live only for his own benefit. on the contrary, what makes knowledge knowledge is that our sensibility may report something which is not merely our feeling; and our moral being arises when our interests likewise begin to range over the world. to deny that a man is capable of generosity because his generosity must be his own, is insufferable quibbling. even our vanities and follies are disinterested in their way; their egotism is not a calculated selfishness. when a man orders his tomb according to his taste, it is not in the hope of enjoying his residence in it. max stirner, while deprecating all subordination of the individual to society, expected people, even after they were emancipated, to form voluntary unions for specific purposes, such as playing games. did he think that such companionship and co-operation would go without gregarious feelings and ideal interests? would not a player wish his side to win? would he not impose a rather painful strain upon himself at times for the sake of that "spook," victory? all the sacrifices that society or religion imposes on a man, when they are legitimate, are based on the same principle. [pg 102] the protest of max stirner against sham ideals and aims forced upon us by social pressure should not then have extended to ideals congenial to the natural man and founded on his instincts. since the seat of our enthusiasms must be personal, their appeal should be so too, if they are to inspire us efficaciously; but every art and science shows that they may be utterly impersonal in their object. it was not in proposing ideal aims that the german philosophers were wrong: that was the noble and heroic side of their doctrine, as well as a point in which their psychology was correct. their error lay in defining these aims arbitrarily and imposing them absolutely, trying to thrust into us ideals like endless strife and absolute will, which perhaps our souls abhor. but if our souls abhor those things, it is because they love something else; and this other thing they love for its own sake, so that the very refusal to sacrifice to those idols is a proof of faith in a true god. the conclusion of max stirner, that because those idols are false, and the worship of them is cruel and superstitious, therefore we must worship nothing and merely enjoy in a piggish way what we may call our own, is a conclusion that misreads human nature. it overlooks the fact that man lives by the imagination, that the imagination--when not chaotic and futile--is exercised in the arts of life, that the objects [pg 103] of these arts are impersonal, and that to achieve these objects brings us a natural happiness. the germans are by nature a good stolid people, and it is curious that their moralists, of every school, are so fantastic and bad. the trouble lies perhaps in this, that they are all precipitate. they have not taken the trouble to decipher human nature, which is an _endowment_, something many-sided, unconscious, with a margin of variation, and have started instead with the will, which is only an _attitude_, something casual, conscious, and narrowly absolute. nor have they learned to respect sufficiently the external conditions under which human nature operates and to which it must conform--god, the material world, the nature and will of other men. their morality consequently terminates in ideals, casual, conscious, and absolute expressions of the passions, or else expires in a mysticism which renounces all moral judgment. a reasonable morality terminates instead in the arts, by which human ideals and passions are compounded with experience and adapted to the materials they must work in. the immaturity of the german moralists appears in their conception that the good is life, which is what an irrational animal might say: whereas for a rational being the good is only the good part of life, that healthy, stable, wise, kind, and beautiful sort of life which he calls happiness. [pg 104] chapter x the breach with christianity german philosophy has a religious spirit, but its alliance with christianity has always been equivocal and external. even in the speculations of leibniz, concerned as he was about orthodoxy, there was a spirit of independence and absolutism which was rationalistic, not to say heathen. the principle of sufficient reason, for instance, demands that god and nature shall explain their existence and behaviour to us, as timid parents explain their behaviour to their censorious children. by rendering everything necessary, even the acts of god, it takes the place of god and makes him superfluous. such frigid optimism as this principle involves, besides being fatalistic, is deeply discouraging to that hope of deliverance which is the soul of christianity: for if this is the best world possible, how poor must be that realm of possible worlds where everything is tainted, and there is no heaven! the theory, too, that each soul contains the seeds of its whole experience and suffices for its own infinite development, destroys the meaning of creation, revelation, miracles, sin, grace, and [pg 105] charity. thus without intending it, even the obsequious but incredibly intelligent leibniz undermined all the doctrines of christianity in the act of thinking them afresh, and insinuated into them a sort of magic heathen individualism. kant, fichte, and hegel were less punctilious in their theology, but they still intended to be or to seem christians. they felt that what made the sanctity of traditional religion and its moral force could be recovered in a purer form in their systems. this feeling of theirs was not unwarranted; at least, many religious minds, after the first shock of losing their realistic faith, have seen in transcendentalism a means, and perhaps the only safe means, of still maintaining a sort of christianity which shall not claim any longer to be a miraculous or exceptional revelation, but only a fair enough poetic symbol for the principles found in all moral life. that he who loses his life shall save it, for instance, is a maxim much prized and much glossed by hegelians. they lend it a meaning of their own, which might, indeed, be said to be the opposite of what the gospel meant; for there the believer is urged to discard the very world with which hegel asks him to identify himself. the idea is that if you surrender your private interests to those of your profession, science, or country, you become thereby a good and important person, and [pg 106] unintentionally a happy one. you will then feel that the world shares your thoughts and renders them perpetual, while you, being absorbed in ideal pursuits, forget your private miseries and mortality. in this sort of moral psychology there is evidently some truth; but the "law of experience" which it points to is but a loose and ambiguous law, which disguises more facts than it expresses. honest minds will rebel against the suggestion that when you outgrow a desire you have fulfilled it; and they will detect the furtive irony in bidding you live hard in order not to feel the vanity of living. to drown sorrow in work, and to forget private failures in public interests, is certainly possible, but it is only drugging yourself with hurry and routine, which may not be more advantageous to others than it really is to yourself. impersonal or "ideal" aims are not necessarily less delusive or "higher" than personal ones; in fact there is far more likelihood that they are conventional humbug. this pathological hygiene of idealism, which always stops at some uncriticised impulse, thinks it secures health when perhaps it has only increased the dose of illusion. nevertheless transcendentalism has this important element in common with christianity and with the other hebraic religions, that it regards human interests as the core of the universe and god as the [pg 107] god of man, who disposes all things for man's benefit. in its eyes the sphere of providence and moral life is bounded by the history of a part of europe and asia for a few thousand years. so long as transcendentalism is taken to imply some such philosophy of history it can compound its differences with liberal christianity, since they are at one in the cardinal point of their faith, which is the apotheosis of the human spirit. yet this human egotism, which comforts so many minds, offends others, in their way no less religious. of course, those who believe in the infinity of the universe, be they mystics or naturalists, smile at such pettiness and fatuity. but even among transcendentalists, some are repelled; for the dominion which they attribute to their ego is a dominion over appearances only; they do not pretend that the grammar of the human intellect can lay down the law for the world at large. at the same time, in their own house they wish to keep their freedom. that prescribed evolution and that reversible optimism of the absolute transcendentalists are repulsive to them; they resent that such a precise and distasteful career should be imposed on their transcendental individuality, and should swallow it up. it is these rebels that have carried romanticism and german philosophy into its last phase. they have broken at [pg 108] last with christianity and at the same time with the theological and cosmic transcendentalism that was its treacherous ally, and hoped to be its heir. the transcendentalism of schopenhauer, sweeping as it was in its way, retained the modest and agnostic character it had had in kant: he proclaimed that the world was his idea, but meant only (what is undeniable) that his _idea_ of the world was his idea. the egotistical doctrine that the whole universe is but the image of it created by the mind disappeared altogether in his system. the so-called will which he still placed behind everything was no longer his own will evolving experience out of nothing; it was a fanciful name for whatever force or substance might lie behind experience, animating all its objects, determining their inherent life, and constituting them facts collateral with himself. if his metaphysics remained idealistic, it was on account of his romantic habit of assimilating the life of nature to that of man, as hasty introspection reveals it; so that the universe is described in moral and poetical terms rather than in the terms of science. the consequences of this change were important. the will became infinite in what hegel called the evil sense, that is, in the true one. it was no longer possible to speak of a plan of creation, nor of a dramatic progress in history, with its beginning in [pg 109] eden and its end in berlin. life was seen to radiate, as it really does, from an elementary form into all sorts of disparate and incomparable growths, capable of endless diversity. no limit, no forced co-operation, no stereotyped method was imputed to life. the pocket universe of hegel opened out to the stars, so hateful to that philosopher. man lost his importance and at the same time the insufferable burden of his false pretensions. in schopenhauer frankness returned, and with frankness clearness. yet he could not quite reconcile man to his actual place in nature. a deep prejudice still intervened. both christianity and romanticism had accustomed people to disregard the intrinsic value of things. things ought to be useful for salvation, or symbols of other greater but unknown things: it was not to be expected that they should be simply good in themselves. this life was to be justified, if justified at all, only as servile work or tedious business may be justified, not as health or artistic expression justify themselves. unless some external and ulterior end could be achieved by living, it was thought that life would be vanity. remove now the expectation of a millennium or of a paradise in the sky, and it may seem that all serious value has disappeared from our earthly existence. yet this feeling is only a temporary after-image of a particular education. [pg 110] the romantic poets, through pride, restlessness, and longing for vague impossible things, came to the same conclusion that the church had reached through censoriousness and hope. to be always dissatisfied seemed to that faust-like age a mark of loftiness. to be dissatisfied is, indeed, a healthy and promising thing, when what troubles us can be set right; but the romantic mind despises such incidental improvements which far from freeing the wild egotistical soul would rather fatten and harness it. it is beneath the romantic pessimist to remember that people, in all ages, sometimes achieve what they have set their hearts on, and that if human will and conduct were better disciplined, this contentment would be more frequent and more massive. on the contrary, he asserts that willing is always and everywhere abortive. how can he persuade himself of something so evidently false? by that mystical misinterpretation of human nature which is perhaps the core of romanticism. he imagines that what is desired is not: this or that--food, children, victory, knowledge, or some other specific goal of a human instinct--but an abstract and perpetual happiness behind all these alternating interests. of course an abstract and perpetual happiness is impossible, not merely because events are sure to disturb any equilibrium we may think we have established in our lives, but for the [pg 111] far more fundamental reason that we have no abstract and perpetual instinct to satisfy. the desire for self-preservation or power or union with god is no more perpetual or comprehensive than any other: it is commonly when we are in straits that we become aware of such objects, and to achieve them, or imagine we achieve them, will give us only a momentary satisfaction, like any other success. a highest good to be obtained apart from each and every specific interest is more than unattainable; it is unthinkable. the romanticist, chasing wilfully that _ignis fatuus_, naturally finds his life arduous and disappointing. but he might have learned from plato or any sound moralist, if his genius could allow him to learn anything, that the highest good of man is the sum and harmony of those specific goods upon which his nature is directed. but because the romantic will was unteachable, all will was declared to be foolish. schopenhauer was led into his pessimism also by the spirit of opposition; his righteous wrath was aroused by the sardonic and inhuman optimism of hegel, the arguments for which were so cogent, so calvinistic, and so irrelevant that they would have lost none of their force if they had been proposed in hell. the best possible world and the worst possible world are, indeed, identical for that philosophy. schopenhauer needed to change nothing in the [pg 112] description of life, as the other idealists conceived it, in order to prove that life was a tragedy; for they were as romantic as himself and as far from feeling the intrinsic value of happiness, and the possibility of real progress. real progress has little to do with perpetual evolution. it occurs only in certain places and times, when nature or art comes to the assistance of some definite interest already embodied, as the interest in security and mutual confidence, knowledge, or the fine arts is already embodied in mankind. schopenhauer was not insensible to these achievements; he felt by instinct the infinity and luxuriance of the moral world. it was in part this secret sympathy with nature that alienated him from christianity and from transcendental metaphysics. but because natural goods cannot be desired or possessed for ever, he thought their value was cancelled, even for those who desired and possessed them. the leaven of romanticism was still at work, forbidding him to recognise a natural order, with which a vital harmony might be established. the ground of life, the will in all things, was something lurid and tempestuous, itself a psychological chaos. the alternative to theism in the mind of schopenhauer was not naturalism but anarchy. this romantic travesty of life and this conception of metaphysical anarchy were inherited by nietzsche [pg 113] and regarded by him as the last word of philosophy. but he made the breach with christianity still wider. the grief of schopenhauer in the presence of such a world, his desperate and exotic remedy--the denial of the will--and his love of contemplation were all evidences of a mind still half christian: his pessimism itself was so much homage to the faith he had lost. such backward glances were not for the impetuous nietzsche, who felt he was a prophet of the future, and really was one. romantic anarchy delighted him; and he crowned it with a rakish optimism, as with the red cap of liberty. he was in hearty sympathy with absolute will; he praised it even for being vain and maleficent, if it was only proud enough to praise itself. [pg 114] chapter xi nietzsche and schopenhauer it is hardly fair to a writer like nietzsche, so poetical, fragmentary, and immature, to judge him as a philosopher; yet he wished to be so judged, and planned a system which was to be an emendation of that of schopenhauer. the will to live would become the will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection would become optimism founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the place of pity and asceticism (schopenhauer's two principles of morals) nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong. these points of difference from schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy of nietzsche. i will consider them in order, leaving the last for the next chapter. the change from "the will to live" to "the will to be powerful" is only a change of metaphors: both are used merely to indicate the general movement of nature. the choice of a psychological symbol for this purpose is indifferent scientifically, since the [pg 115] facts in any case remain the same and our knowledge of them is not enlarged; yet it is an interesting indication of the mind of the poet using it, because whatever a man knows and loves best, that he takes his metaphors from. nietzsche had his reasons for liking to call the universal principle a lust for power. he believed he was the herald of two hundred years of war, he was in love with the vague image of a military aristocracy, and he was not without a certain biological acumen. an acorn in the ground does not strive to persevere in the state it happens to be in, but expands, absorbs surrounding elements, and transforms them into its own substance, which itself changes its form. here then is a will to grow, not simply a will to live or to preserve oneself; in fact, as nietzsche eloquently said, here is a will to perish. it is true that when the oak is full grown it seems to pass to the defensive and no longer manifests the will either to perish or to grow. even while the will to grow is operating, its scope is not indefinite. it would be grotesque to imagine that the acorn, like the ego of german philosophy, tended to annex the whole earth and the whole sky and to make a single oak of the universe. if we take a broad view, perhaps the ancient myth that nature tends to re-embody certain fixed types, though inaccurate, gives a better picture of the facts than [pg 116] the modern myth that she is striving to change in one predetermined direction. nevertheless, the fact that nietzsche's attention was fascinated by the will to grow and to dominate shows that he was in sympathy with young things, that his heart was big with the future, and that his age believed in progress. the change from pessimism to optimism, verbally so complete, did not imply any divergence between nietzsche and schopenhauer in their description of the facts; it was all a matter of a little more spirit in the younger thinker and a little more conscience in the elder. romantic poets and their heroes are well known to oscillate between passionate despair and passionate enterprise. schopenhauer affected passionate despair, nietzsche recommended passionate enterprise, each being wedded exclusively to one of those moods which faust or byron could feel alternately and reduce to act with all the dashing tumult of anarchy. the value which the world has in the eyes of its inhabitants is necessarily mixed, so that a sweeping optimism or pessimism can be only a theoretic pose, false to the natural sentiment even of those who assume it. both are impressionistic judgments passed on the world at large, not perhaps without some impertinence. yet it is these poses or attitudes, or, if you like, these impertinences, that give importance to [pg 117] transcendental philosophers; it is their representative and contagious side; their views of things would concern us little, if it was the things themselves that we wished to understand, but our whole study is a study in romanticism. the temper of the age ignored that man is a teachable animal living in a natural world. all that was a vulgar convention; in truth a disembodied will was directed on any and every ideal at random, and when any of these fantastic objects seemed to be attained nothing was really accomplished, nothing was accumulated or learned. the wish for some other will-o'-the-wisp immediately succeeded, always equally passionate and equally foolish. it is amazing that such a picture of human experience should have met with anything but general derision; but when people read books they compare them with other books, and when they turn to things they forget books altogether. hence the most palpable falsehoods are held by general consent at certain moments, because they follow logically from what the books of the previous generation had maintained. this absurdity of schopenhauer's is a plausible variation of idealism; to see how absurd it is you must remember the facts of life, the existence of any degree of civilisation or progress. in these the travail of human nature appears; for human nature is not [pg 118] merely a name for a certain set of passions known to literature; in that sense schopenhauer fully acknowledged it, and even thought it immutable; it is rather the constitution of an animal capable of training and development. what is more patent than that a man may learn something by experience and may be trained? but if he can be trained he is capable of adaptation and, therefore, of happiness, and the preposterous assertion that all desires are equally arbitrary and equally fruitless is blown to the winds. the belief in a romantic chaos lends itself to pessimism, but it also lends itself to absolute self-assertion. kant had boasted that he had removed knowledge in order to make room for faith; in other words, he had returned to chaos in order to find freedom. the great egotists, who detested the pressure of a world they had not posited or created, followed gladly in that path; but schopenhauer was not an egotist. like goethe he was probably more selfish personally than those other philosophers whom their very egotism had made zealous and single-minded; but in imagination and feeling he was, like goethe, genial and humane: the freedom and exuberance of nature impressed him more than his own. had he been an egotist, as fichte, hegel, and nietzsche were, he might have been an optimist like them. he was rather a happy man, hugely enjoying [pg 119] a great many things, among them food and music; and he taught that music was a direct transcript of the tormented will to live. how simple it would have been for him, if he had been an egotist, to enjoy the spectacle of that tormented will as much as the music which was its faithful image! but no; such ã¦sthetic cruelty, which was nietzsche's delight, would have revolted schopenhauer. he thought tragedy beautiful because it detached us from a troubled world and did not think a troubled world good, as those unspeakable optimists did, because it made such a fine tragedy. it is pleasant to find that among all these philosophers one at least was a gentleman. if will is the sole substance or force in the universe, it must be present in everything that exists, yet schopenhauer affirmed that it was absent in ã¦sthetic contemplation; and he looked to an ultimate denial of the will, which if it was to be an act and not merely a void would evidently be impossible on his principles. the will might well say to those who attempted to deny it: "they reckon ill who leave me out; when me they fly, i am the wings." in perceiving and correcting this contradiction, nietzsche certainly improved the technique of the system. yet that contradiction was not substantial; it was verbal merely, and due to the fond use of the term [pg 120] will for what might more properly be called matter, energy, or movement. will taken in the metaphorical sense can never be in abeyance, so long as anything is going on; but will taken in its proper sense is in abeyance often; and this is what schopenhauer saw and meant to say. actual and conscious will is a passing phenomenon; it is so little necessary to life that it always disappears when life is at its height. all pure pleasures, including those of seeing and thinking, are without it: they are ingenuous, and terminate in their present object. a philosopher should have learned from aristotle, if not from his own experience, that at the acme of life we live in the eternal, and that then, as schopenhauer said, we no longer pry but gaze, and are freed from willing. this is not to say that nietzsche was not very happy and witty in his description of the passions that dominate artists and philosophers, and in urging that the life of the spirit was an impassioned thing. to prove it, he might have quoted schopenhauer himself, in those moving passages where he describes the ecstasy of thought and the spell of beauty. it is not the dead or the bloodless that have such feelings. of course, if the operations of the brain, and the whole instinctive life of the soul, were interrupted neither these feelings nor any others would arise. this was at bottom schopenhauer's conviction. his [pg 121] great intuition, the corner-stone of his philosophy, was precisely the priority of automatism and instinct over the intellect. his only error came from having given to these underlying processes the name of will, when properly the will is one expression of them only, as the intellect is. nietzsche, who adopted the same metaphor, was led by it into the very confusion which he criticised in schopenhauer. nietzsche had no great technical competence: he saw the inconsistency only when he disliked the result; when the result fell in with his first impressions he repeated the inconsistency. he often condemned other moralists for being enemies to life: he reproached the greater part of mankind for loving inglorious ease and resenting the sufferings inseparable from the will to be mighty and to perish. but this churlish attitude of the vulgar would be quite impossible if the heroic will to be powerful were the essence of everybody and even of material things. if i am nothing but the will to grow, how can i ever will to shrink? but this inconsistency in nietzsche, like that in schopenhauer, was an honourable one that came of forgetting a false generalisation in the presence of a clear fact. that the will to be powerful is everywhere was a false generalisation; but it was a clear fact that some people are pious christians or epicurean [pg 122] philosophers, who do not care at all about conquering the world. they want to be let alone, and perhaps have a shrewd suspicion that no one lives under such dire compulsions as he who undertakes to tyrannise over others. this slave-morality of theirs might be called will, though it is rather instinct and habit; but it is certainly not a will to be powerful: it is the opposite of that passion. thus nietzsche, by an honest self-contradiction, pointed to people who denied the will to be powerful, in order to abuse them, just as schopenhauer had pointed to people who denied or suspended the will to live, in order to praise them. [pg 123] chapter xii the ethics of nietzsche nietzsche occasionally spoke disparagingly of morality, as if the word and the thing had got a little on his nerves; and some of his best-known phrases might give the impression that he wished to drop the distinction between good and evil and transcend ethics altogether. such a thought would not have been absurd in itself or even unphilosophical. many serious thinkers, spinoza for instance, have believed that everything that happens is equally necessary and equally expressive of the will of god, be it favourable or unfavourable to our special interests and, therefore, called by us good or bad. a too reverent immersion in nature and history convinces them that to think any part of reality better or worse than the rest is impertinent or even impious. it is true that in the end these philosophers usually stultify themselves and declare enthusiastically that whatever is is right. this rapturous feeling can overcome anybody in certain moods, as it sometimes overcame nietzsche; but in yielding to it, besides contradicting all other moral judgments, these mystics break their difficult resolution never to judge at all. [pg 124] nietzsche, however, was entirely free from this divine impediment in morals. the courage to cling to what his soul loved--and this courage is the essence of morality--was conspicuous in him. he was a poet, a critic, a lover of form and of distinctions. few persons have ever given such fierce importance to their personal taste. what he disliked to think of, say democracy, he condemned with the fulminations of a god; what he liked to think of, power, he seriously commanded man and nature to pursue for their single object. what nietzsche disparaged, then, under the name of morality was not all morality, for he had an enthusiastic master-morality of his own to impose. he was thinking only of the christian virtues and especially of a certain protestant and kantian moralism with which perhaps he had been surfeited. this moralism conceived that duty was something absolute and not a method of securing whatever goods of all sorts are attainable by action. the latter is the common and the sound opinion, maintained, for instance, by aristotle; but nietzsche, who was not humble enough to learn very much by study, thought he was propounding a revolutionary doctrine when he put goods and evils beyond and above right and wrong: for this is all that his _jenseits von gut und bã¶se_ amounts to. whatever seemed to him [pg 125] admirable, beautiful, eligible, whatever was good in the sense opposed not to _bã¶se_ but to _schlecht_, nietzsche loved with jealous affection. hence his ire against christianity, which he thought renounced too much. hence his hatred of moralism, which in raising duty to the irresponsible throne of the absolute had superstitiously sacrificed half the goods of life. nietzsche, then, far from transcending ethics, re-established it on its true foundations, which is not to say that the sketchy edifice which he planned to raise on these foundations was in a beautiful style of architecture or could stand at all. the first principle of his ethics was that the good is power. but this word power seems to have had a great range of meanings in his mind. sometimes it suggests animal strength and size, as in the big blonde beast; sometimes vitality, sometimes fortitude, sometimes contempt for the will of others, sometimes (and this is perhaps the meaning he chiefly intended) dominion over natural forces and over the people, that is to say, wealth and military power. it is characteristic of this whole school that it confuses the laws which are supposed to preside over the movement of things with the good results which they may involve; so nietzsche confuses his biological insight, that all life is the assertion of some sort of power--the power to breathe, for instance--with the [pg 126] admiration he felt for a masterful egotism. but even if we identify life or any kind of existence with the exertion of strength, the kinds of strength exerted will be heterogeneous and not always compatible. the strength of lucifer does not insure victory in war; it points rather to failure in a world peopled by millions of timid, pious, and democratic persons. hence we find nietzsche asking himself plaintively, "why are the feeble victorious?" the fact rankled in his bosom that in the ancient world martial aristocracies had succumbed before christianity, and in the modern world before democracy. by strength, then, he could not mean the power to survive, by being as flexible as circumstances may require. he did not refer to the strength of majorities, nor to the strength of vermin. at the same time he did not refer to moral strength, for of moral strength he had no idea. the arts give power, but only in channels prescribed by their own principles, not by the will of untrained men. to be trained is to be tamed and harnessed, an accession of power detestable to nietzsche. his zarathustra had the power of dancing, also of charming serpents and eagles: no wonder that he missed the power, bestowed by goodness, of charming and guiding men; and a terpsichorean autocrat would be hard to imagine. a man intent on algebra [pg 127] or on painting is not striving to rule anybody; his dominion over painting or algebra is chiefly a matter of concentration and self-forgetfulness. so dominion over the passions changes them from attempts to appropriate anything into sentiments of the mind, colouring a world which is no longer coveted. to attain such autumnal wisdom is, if you like, itself a power of feeling and a kind of strength; but it is not helpful in conquering the earth. nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. his talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid. he did not crave in the least either wealth or empire. what he loved was solitude, nature, music, books. but his imagination, like his judgment, was captious; it could not dwell on reality, but reacted furiously against it. accordingly, when he speaks of the will to be powerful, power is merely an eloquent word on his lips. it symbolises the escape from mediocrity. what power would be when attained and exercised remains entirely beyond his horizon. what meets us everywhere is the sense of impotence and a passionate rebellion against it. the phrases in which nietzsche condensed and felt his thought were brilliant, but they were seldom just. we may perhaps see the principle of his ethics [pg 128] better if we forget for a moment the will to be powerful and consider this: that he knew no sort of good except the beautiful, and no sort of beauty except romantic stress. he was a belated prophet of romanticism. he wrote its epitaph, in which he praised it more extravagantly than anybody, when it was alive, had had the courage to do. consider, for example, what he said about truth. since men were governed solely by the will to be powerful, the truth for its own sake must be moonshine to them. they would wish to cultivate such ideas, whether true or false, as might be useful to their ambition. nietzsche (more candid in this than some other pragmatists) confessed that truth itself did not interest him; it was ugly; the bracing atmosphere of falsehood, passion, and subjective perspectives was the better thing. sometimes, indeed, a more wistful mood overtook him, and he wondered whether the human mind would be able to endure the light of truth. that was the great question of the future. we may agree that a mind without poetry, fiction, and subjective colouring would not be human, nor a mind at all; and that neither truth nor the knowledge of truth would have any intrinsic value if nobody cared about it for its own sake. but some men do care; and in ignoring this fact nietzsche expresses the false and pitiful notion that we can be [pg 129] interested in nothing except in ourselves and our own future. i am solitary, says the romantic egotist, and sufficient unto myself. the world is my idea, new every day: what can i have to do with truth? this impulse to turn one's back on truth, whether in contempt or in despair, has a long history. lessing had said that he preferred the pursuit of truth to the truth itself; but if we take this seriously (as possibly it was not meant) the pursuit of truth at once changes its character. it can no longer be the pursuit of truth, truth not being wanted, but only the pursuit of some fresh idea. whether one of these ideas or another comes nearer to the truth would be unimportant and undiscoverable. any idea will do, so long as it is pregnant with another that may presently take its place; and as presumably error will precipitate new ideas more readily than truth, we might almost find it implied in lessing's maxim that, as nietzsche maintained, what is really good is neither truth nor the pursuit of truth (for you might find it, and what would you do then?), but rather a perpetual flux of errors. this view is also implied in the very prevalent habit of regarding opinions as justified not by their object but by their date. the intellectual ignominy of believing what we believe simply because of the time and place of our birth, escapes many evolutionists. [pg 130] far from trying to overcome this natural prejudice of position, they raise it into a point of pride. they declare all opinions ever held in the past to be superseded, and are apparently content that their own should be superseded to-morrow, but meantime they cover you with obloquy if you are so backward or so forward as not to agree with them to-day. they accept as inevitable the total dominion of the point of view. each new date, even in the life of an individual thinker, is expected by them to mark a new phase of doctrine. indeed, truth is an object which transcendental philosophy cannot envisage: the absolute ego must be satisfied with consistency. how should the truth, actual, natural, or divine, be an expression of the living will that attempts, or in their case despairs, to discover it? yet that everything, even the truth, is an expression of the living will, is the corner-stone of this philosophy. consider further the spirit in which nietzsche condemned christianity and the christian virtues. many people have denounced christianity on the ground that it was false or tyrannical, while perhaps admitting that it was comforting or had a good moral influence. nietzsche denounced it--and in unmeasured terms--on the ground that (while, of course, as true as any other vital lie) it was mean, depressing, slavish, and plebeian. how beastly was [pg 131] the precept of love! actually to love all these grotesque bipeds was degrading. a lover of the beautiful must wish almost all his neighbours out of the way. compassion, too, was a lamentable way of assimilating oneself to evil. that contagious misery spoiled one's joy, freedom, and courage. disease should not be nursed but cauterised; the world must be made clean. now there is a sort of love of mankind, a jealous love of what man might be, in this much decried maxim of unmercifulness. nietzsche rebelled at the thought of endless wretchedness, pervasive mediocrity, crying children, domestic drudges, and pompous fools for ever. _die erde war zu lange schon ein irrenhaus!_ his heart was tender enough, but his imagination was impatient. when he praised cruelty, it was on the ground that art was cruel, that it made beauty out of suffering. suffering, therefore, was good, and so was crime, which made life keener. only crime, he said, raises a man high enough for the lightning to strike him. in the hope of sparing some obscure person a few groans or tears, would you deprive the romantic hero of so sublime a death? christians, too, might say they had their heroes, their saints; but what sort of eminence was that? it was produced by stifling half the passions. a [pg 132] sister of charity could not be an arminius; devotion to such remedial offices spoilt the glory of life. holiness was immoral; it was a half-suicide. _all_ experience, the ideal of faust, was what a spirited man must desire. all experience would involve, i suppose, passing through all the sensations of a murderer, a maniac, and a toad; even through those of a saint or a sister of charity. but the romantic mind despises results; it is satisfied with poses. consider, too, the romantic demand for a violent chiaroscuro, a demand which blossoms into a whole system of ethics. good and evil, we are told, enhance one another, like light and shade in a picture; without evil there can be no good, so to diminish the one is to undermine the other, and the greatest and most heroic man is he who not only does most good but also most harm. in his love of mischief, in his tenderness for the adventurer who boldly inflicts injury and suffering on others and on himself, in order to cut a more thrilling and stupendous figure in his own eyes, nietzsche gave this pernicious doctrine its frankest expression; but unfortunately it was not wholly his own. in its essence it belongs to hegel, and under various sophistical disguises it has been adopted by all his academic followers in england and america. the arguments used to defend it are old sophisms borrowed from the stoics, who [pg 133] had turned the physical doctrine of heraclitus, that everything is a mixture of contraries, into an argument for resignation to inevitable evils and detachment from tainted goods. the stoics, who were neither romantic nor worldly, used these sophisms in an attempt to extirpate the passions, not to justify them. they were sufficiently refuted by the excellent plutarch where he observes that according to this logic it was requisite and necessary that thersites should be bald in order that achilles might have leonine hair. the absurdity is, indeed, ludicrous, if we are thinking of real things and of the goods and evils of experience; but egotists never think of that; what they always think of is the picture of those realities in their imagination. for the observer, effects of contrast do alter the values of the elements considered; and, indeed, the elements themselves, if one is very unsympathetic, may not have at all in contemplation the quality they have in experience: whence ã¦sthetic cruelty. the respect which hegel and nietzsche have for those sophisms becomes intelligible when we remember what imperturbable egotists they were. this egotism in morals is partly mystical. there is a luxurious joy in healing the smart of evil in one's mind, without needing to remove or diminish the evil in the world. the smart may be healed by [pg 134] nursing the conviction that evil after all is good, no matter how much of it there is or how much of it we do. in part, however, this egotism is romantic; it does not ask to be persuaded that evil, in the end, is good. it feels that evil is good in the present; it is so intense a thing to feel and so exciting a thing to do. here we have what nietzsche wished to bring about, a reversal of all values. to do evil is the true virtue, and to be good is the most hopeless vice. milk is for babes; your strong man should be soaked in blood and in alcohol. we should live perilously; and as material life is the power to digest poisons, so true excellence is the power to commit all manner of crimes, and to survive. that there is no god is proved by nietzsche pragmatically, on the ground that belief in the existence of god would have made him uncomfortable. not at all for the reason that might first occur to us: to imagine himself a lost soul has always been a point of pride with the romantic genius. the reason was that if there had been any gods he would have found it intolerable not to be a god himself. poor nietzsche! the laurels of the almighty would not let him sleep. it is hard to know if we should be more deceived in taking these sallies seriously or in not taking them so. on the one hand it all seems the swagger [pg 135] of an immature, half-playful mind, like a child that tells you he will cut your head off. the dreamy impulse, in its inception, is sincere enough, but there is no vestige of any understanding of what it proposes, of its conditions, or of its results. on the other hand these explosions are symptomatic; there stirs behind them unmistakably an elemental force. that an attitude is foolish, incoherent, disastrous, proves nothing against the depth of the instinct that inspires it. who could be more intensely unintelligent than luther or rousseau? yet the world followed them, not to turn back. the molecular forces of society, so to speak, had already undermined the systems which these men denounced. if the systems have survived it is only because the reformers, in their intellectual helplessness, could supply nothing to take their place. so nietzsche, in his genial imbecility, betrays the shifting of great subterranean forces. what he said may be nothing, but the fact that he said it is all-important. out of such wild intuitions, because the heart of the child was in them, the man of the future may have to build his philosophy. we should forgive nietzsche his boyish blasphemies. he hated with clearness, if he did not know what to love. [pg 136] chapter xiii the superman in his views on matters of fact nietzsche, as becomes the naã¯ve egotist, was quite irresponsible. if he said the course of history repeated itself in cycles, it was because the idea pleased him; it seemed a symbol of self-approval on the world's part. if he hailed the advent of a race of men superior to ourselves and of stronger fibre, it was because human life as it is, and especially his own life, repelled him. he was sensitive and, therefore, censorious. he gazed about him, he gazed at himself, he remembered the disappointing frailties and pomposity of the great man, wagner, whom he had once idolised. his optimism for the moment yielded to his sincerity. he would sooner abolish than condone such a world, and he fled to some solitary hillside by the sea, saying to himself that man was a creature to be superseded. dissatisfaction with the actual is what usually leads people to frame ideals at all, or at least to hold them fast; but such a negative motive leaves the ideal vague and without consistency. if we could suddenly have our will, we should very likely find the result trivial or horrible. so the superman of [pg 137] nietzsche might prove, if by magic he could be realised. to frame solid ideals, which would, in fact, be better than actual things, is not granted to the merely irritable poet; it is granted only to the master-workman, to the modeller of some given substance to some given use--things which define his aspiration, and separate what is relevant and glorious in his dreams from that large part of them which is merely ignorant and peevish. it was not for nietzsche to be an artist in morals and to institute anything coherent, even in idea. the superman of nietzsche is rendered the more chimerical by the fact that he must contradict not only the common man of the present but also the superior men, the half-superhuman men, of the past. to transcend humanity is no new ambition; that has always been the effort of indian and christian religious discipline and of stoic philosophy. but this spiritual superiority, like that of artists and poets, has come of abstraction; a superiority to life, in that these minds were engrossed in the picture or lesson of life rather than in living; and if they powerfully affected the world, as they sometimes did, it was by bringing down into it something supermundane, the arresting touch of an ulterior wisdom. nietzsche, on the contrary, even more than most modern philosophers, loved mere life with the pathetic intensity of [pg 138] the wounded beast; his superman must not rise above our common condition by his purely spiritual resources, or by laying up his treasure in any sort of heaven. he must be not a superior man but a kind of physiological superman, a griffin in soul, if not in body, who instead of labouring hands and religious faith should have eagle's wings and the claws of a lion. his powers should be superior to ours by resembling those of fiercer and wilder animals. the things that make a man tame--nietzsche was a retired professor living in a boarding-house--must be changed into their opposites. but man has been tamed by agriculture, material arts, children, experience; therefore these things are to be far from the superman. if he must resemble somebody, it will be rather the _condottieri_ of the renaissance or the princes and courtiers of the seventeenth century; cã¦sar borgia is the supreme instance. he must have a splendid presence and address, gallantry, contempt for convention, loyalty to no country, no woman, and no idea, but always a buoyant and lordly assertion of instinct and of self. in the helter-skelter of his irritable genius, nietzsche jumbled together the ferocity of solitary beasts, the indifference and _hauteur_ of patricians, and the antics of revellers, and out of that mixture he hoped to evoke the rulers of the coming age. [pg 139] how could so fantastic an ideal impose on a keen satirist like nietzsche and a sincere lover of excellence? because true human excellence seemed to him hostile to life, and he felt--this was his strong and sane side, his lien on the future--that life must be accepted as it is or may become, and false beliefs, hollow demands, and hypocritical, forced virtues must be abandoned. this new wisdom was that which goethe, too, had felt and practised; and of all masters of life goethe was the one whom nietzsche could best understand. but a master of life, without being in the least hostile to life, since he fulfils it, nevertheless uses life for ends which transcend it. even goethe, omnivorous and bland as he was, transcended life in depicting and judging and blessing it. the saints and the true philosophers have naturally emphasised more this renunciation of egotism: they have seen all things in the light of eternity--that is, as they are in truth--and have consequently felt a reasonable contempt for mere living and mere dying; and in that precisely lies moral greatness. here nietzsche could not follow; rationality chilled him; he craved vehemence. how life can be fulfilled and made beautiful by reason was never better shown than by the greeks, both by precept and example. nietzsche in his youth was a professor of greek literature: one would have [pg 140] expected his superman to be a sort of greek hero. something of the dorian harshness in beauty, something of the pindaric high-born and silent victor may have been fused into nietzsche's ideal; certainly bacchic freedom and ardour were to enter in. but on the whole it is remarkable how little he learned from the greeks, no modesty or reverence, no joy in order and in loveliness, no sense for friendship, none for the sanctity of places and institutions. he repeated the paradoxes of some of their sophists, without remembering how their wise men had refuted them. for example, he gave a new name and a new prominence to the distinction between what he called the dionysiac and the apollonian elements in greek genius. he saw how false was that whitewashed notion of the greek mind which young ladies derived from sketching a plaster cast of the apollo belvidere.[1] he saw that a demonic force, as the generation of goethe called it, underlay everything; what he did not see was that this demonic force was under control, which is the secret of the [pg 141] whole matter. the point had been thoroughly elucidated by plato, in the contrast he drew between inspiration and art. but plato was rather ironical about inspiration, and had a high opinion of art; and nietzsche, with, his contrary instinct, rushes away without understanding the mind of the master or the truth of the situation. he thinks he alone has discovered the divinity of dionysus and of the muses, which plato took as a matter of course but would not venerate superstitiously. inspiration, like will, is a force without which reason can do nothing. inspiration must be presupposed; but in itself it can do nothing good unless it is in harmony with reason, or is brought into harmony with it. this two-edged wisdom that makes impulse the stuff of life and reason its criterion, is, of course, lost on nietzsche, and with it the whole marvel of greek genius. there is nothing exceptional in being alive and impulsive; any savage can run wild and be frenzied and enact histrionic passions: the virtue of the greeks lay in the exquisite firmness with which they banked their fires without extinguishing them, so that their life remained human (indeed, remained infra-human, like that of nietzsche's superman) and yet became beautiful: they were severe and fond of maxims, on a basis of universal tolerance; they governed themselves rationally, with a careful freedom, while well aware [pg 142] that nature and their own bosoms were full of gods, all of whom must be reverenced. after all, this defect in appreciation is inseparable from the transcendental pose. the ancients, like everything else, never seem to the egotist a reality co-ordinate with himself, from which he might still have something to learn. they are only so much "content" for his self-consciousness, so much matter for his thought to transcend. they can contain nothing for him but the part of his outgrown self which he deigns to identify with them. his mind must always envelop them and be the larger thing. no wonder that in this school learning is wasted for the purposes of moral education. whoever has seen the learned egotist flies at his approach. history in his hands is a demonstration of his philosophy. science is a quarry of proofs for his hobbies. if we do not agree with him we are not merely mistaken (every philosopher tells us that), but we are false to ourselves and ignorant of our ideal significance. his ego gives us our place in the world. he informs us of what we mean, whatever we may say; and he raises our opinions, as he might his food, to a higher unity in his own person. he is priest in every temple. he approaches a picture-gallery or a foreign religion in a dictatorial spirit, with his _a priori_ categories ready on his lips; pedantry and vanity speak in his [pg 143] every gesture, and the lesson of nothing can reach his heart. no, neither the philosophy inherited by nietzsche nor his wayward imagination was fit to suggest to him a nobler race of men. on the contrary, they shut him off from comprehension of the best men that have existed. like the utopias or ideals of many other satirists and minor philosophers, the superman is not a possibility, it is only a protest. our society is outworn, but hard to renew; the emancipated individual needs to master himself. in what spirit or to what end he will do so, we do not know, and nietzsche cannot tell us. he is the jester, to whom all incoherences are forgiven, because all indiscretions are allowed. his mind is undisciplined, and his tongue outrageous, but he is at bottom the friend of our conscience, and full of shrewd wit and tender wisps of intuition. behind his "gay wisdom" and trivial rhymes lies a great anguish. his intellect is lost in a chaos. his heart denies itself the relief of tears and can vent itself only in forced laughter and mock hopes that gladden nobody, least of all himself. [1] i was about to say: how false was the notion of winkelmann about the grandeur and repose of the greek spirit. but winkelmann, if his sense for the chained monsters in the greek soul was inadequate, was at least in real sympathy with what had inspired greek sculpture, love and knowledge of the human body in the life, made gentle by discipline and kept strong by training. for that reason winkelmann seems hardly a german: his learning was deficient and his heart was humble. he did not patronise the ancients, he believed in them. [pg 144] chapter xiv heathenism schopenhauer somewhere observes that the word heathen, no longer in reputable use elsewhere, had found a last asylum in oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies. even oxford, i believe, has now abandoned it; yet it is a good word. it conveys, as no other word can, the sense of vast multitudes tossing in darkness, harassed by demons of their own choice. no doubt it implies also a certain sanctimony in the superior person who uses it, as if he at least were not chattering in the general babel. what justified jews, christians, and moslems (as mohammed in particular insisted) in feeling this superiority was the possession of a book, a chart of life, as it were, in which the most important features of history and morals were mapped out for the guidance of teachable men. the heathen, on the contrary, were abandoned to their own devices, and even prided themselves on following only their spontaneous will, their habit, presumption, or caprice. most unprejudiced people would now agree that the value of those sacred histories and rules of life did not depend on their alleged miraculous origin, [pg 145] but rather on that solidity and perspicacity in their authors which enabled them to perceive the laws of sweet and profitable conduct in this world. it was not religion merely that was concerned, at least not that outlying, private, and almost negligible sphere to which we often apply this name; it was the whole fund of experience mankind had gathered by living; it was wisdom. now, to record these lessons of experience, the greeks and romans also had their books; their history, poetry, science, and civil law. so that while the theologically heathen may be those who have no bible, the morally and essentially heathen are those who possess no authoritative wisdom, or reject the authority of what wisdom they have; the untaught or unteachable who disdain not only revelation but what revelation stood for among early peoples, namely, funded experience. in this sense the greeks were the least heathen of men. they were singularly docile to political experiment, to law, to methodical art, to the proved limitations and resources of mortal life. this life they found closely hedged about by sky, earth, and sea, by war, madness, and conscience with their in-dwelling deities, by oracles and local genii with their accustomed cults, by a pervasive fate, and the jealousy of invisible gods. yet they saw that these divine forces were constant, and that they exercised [pg 146] their pressure and bounty with so much method that a prudent art and religion could be built up in their midst. all this was simply a poetic prologue to science and the arts; it largely passed into them, and would have passed into them altogether if the naturalistic genius of greece had not been crossed in socrates by a premature discouragement, and diverted into other channels. early hebraism itself had hardly been so wise. it had regarded its tribal and moral interests as absolute, and the creator as the champion and omnipotent agent of israel. but this arrogance and inexperience were heathen. soon the ascendency of israel over nature and history was proclaimed to be conditional on their fidelity to the law; and as the spirit of the nation under chastisement became more and more penitential, it was absorbed increasingly in the praise of wisdom. salvation was to come only by repentance, by being born again with a will wholly transformed and broken; so that the later jewish religion went almost as far as platonism or christianity in the direction opposite to heathenism. this movement in the direction of an orthodox wisdom was regarded as a progress in those latter days of antiquity when it occurred, and it continued to be so regarded in christendom until the rise of romanticism. the most radical reformers simply [pg 147] urged that the current orthodoxy, religious or scientific, was itself imperfectly orthodox, being corrupt, overloaded, too vague, or too narrow. as every actual orthodoxy is avowedly incomplete and partly ambiguous, a sympathetic reform of it is always in order. yet very often the reformers are deceived. what really offends them may not be what is false in the received orthodoxy, but what though true is uncongenial to them. in that case heathenism, under the guise of a search for a purer wisdom, is working in their souls against wisdom of any sort. such is the suspicion that catholics would throw on protestantism, naturalists on idealism, and conservatives generally on all revolutions. but if ever heathenism needed to pose as constructive reform, it is now quite willing and able to throw off the mask. desire for any orthodox wisdom at all may be repudiated; it may be set down to low vitality and failure of nerve. in various directions at once we see to-day an intense hatred and disbelief gathering head against the very notion of a cosmos to be discovered, or a stable human nature to be respected. nature, we are told, is an artificial symbol employed by life; truth is a temporary convention; art is an expression of personality; war is better than peace, effort than achievement, and feeling than intelligence; change is deeper than [pg 148] form; will is above morality. expressions of this kind are sometimes wanton and only half thought out; but they go very deep in the subjective direction. behind them all is a sincere revulsion against the difficult and confused undertakings of reason; against science, institutions, and moral compulsions. they mark an honest retreat into immediate experience and animal faith. man used to be called a rational animal, but his rationality is something eventual and ideal, whereas his animality is actual and profound. heathenism, if we consider life at large, is the primal and universal religion. it has never been my good fortune to see wild beasts in the jungle, but i have sometimes watched a wild bull in the ring, and i can imagine no more striking, simple, and heroic example of animal faith; especially when the bull is what is technically called noble, that is, when he follows the lure again and again with eternal singleness of thought, eternal courage, and no suspicion of a hidden agency that is mocking him. what the red rag is to this brave creature, their passions, inclinations, and chance notions are to the heathen. what they will they will; and they would deem it weakness and disloyalty to ask whether it is worth willing or whether it is attainable. the bull, magnificently sniffing the air, surveys the arena with the cool contempt and [pg 149] disbelief of the idealist, as if he said: "you seem, you are a seeming; i do not quarrel with you, i do not fear you. i am real, you are nothing." then suddenly, when his eye is caught by some bright cloak displayed before him, his whole soul changes. his will awakes and he seems to say: "you are my destiny; i want you, i hate you, you shall be mine, you shall not stand in my path. i will gore you. i will disprove you. i will pass beyond you. i shall be, you shall not have been." later, when sorely wounded and near his end, he grows blind to all these excitements. he smells the moist earth, and turns to the dungeon where an hour ago he was at peace. he remembers the herd, the pasture beyond, and he dreams: "i shall not die, for i love life. i shall be young again, young always, for i love youth. all this outcry is nought to me, this strange suffering is nought. i will go to the fields again, to graze, to roam, to love." so exactly, with not one least concession to the unsuspected reality, the heathen soul stands bravely before a painted world, covets some bauble, and defies death. heathenism is the religion of will, the faith which life has in itself because it is life, and in its aims because it is pursuing them. in their tentative, many-sided, indomitable way, the germans have been groping for four hundred [pg 150] years towards a restoration of their primitive heathenism. germany under the long tutelage of rome had been like a spirited and poetic child brought up by very old and very worldly foster-parents. for many years the elfin creature may drink in their gossip and their maxims with simple wonder; but at last he will begin to be restive under them, ask himself ominous questions, protest, suffer, and finally break into open rebellion. naturally he will not find at first theories and precepts of his own to take the place of his whole education; he will do what he can with his traditions, revising, interpreting, and patching them with new ideas; and only if he has great earnestness and speculative power will he ever reach an unalloyed expression of his oppressed soul. now in germany speculative power and earnestness existed in a high degree, not, of course, in most people, but in the best and most representative; and it was this _ã©lite_ that made the reformation, and carried it on into historical criticism and transcendental philosophy, until in the nineteenth century, in schopenhauer, wagner, and nietzsche, the last remnants of christian education were discarded and the spontaneous heathen morality of the race reasserted itself in its purity. that this assertion was not consistent, that it was thrown into the language and images of some alien system, is not to be [pg 151] wondered at; but the christianity of parsifal, like the buddhism of the denial of the will, is a pure piece of romanticism, an exotic setting for those vacillations and sinkings which absolute will may very well be subject to in its absolute chaos. the rebellion of the heathen soul is unmistakable in the reformation, but it is not recognised in this simple form, because those who feel that it was justified do not dream that it was heathen, and those who see that it was heathen will not admit that it was justified. externally, of course, it was an effort to recover the original essence of christianity; but why should a free and absolute being care for that original essence when he has discovered it, unless his own mind demanded that very thing? and if his mind demanded it, what need has he to read that demand into an ancient revelation which, as a matter of fact, turned on quite other matters? it was simply the inertia of established prejudice that made people use tradition to correct tradition; until the whole substance of tradition, worn away by that internal friction, should be dissolved, and impulse and native genius should assert themselves unimpeded. judaism and christianity, like greek philosophy, were singly inspired by the pursuit of happiness, in whatever form it might be really attainable: now [pg 152] on earth if possible, or in the millennium, or in some abstracted and inward life, like that of the stoics, or in the last resort, in a different life altogether beyond the grave. but heathenism ignores happiness, despises it, or thinks it impossible. the regimen and philosophy of germany are inspired by this contempt for happiness, for one's own happiness as well as for other people's. happiness seems to the german moralists something unheroic, an abdication before external things, a victory of the senses over the will. they think the pursuit of happiness low, materialistic, and selfish. they wish everybody to sacrifice or rather to forget happiness, and to do "deeds." it is in the nature of things that those who are incapable of happiness should have no idea of it. happiness is not for wild animals, who can only oscillate between apathy and passion. to be happy, even to conceive happiness, you must be reasonable or (if nietzsche prefers the word) you must be tamed. you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passions and learned your place in the world and what things in it can really serve you. to be happy you must be wise. this happiness is sometimes found instinctively, and then the rudest fanatic can hardly fail to see how lovely it is; but sometimes it comes of having learned something by experience (which empirical people never [pg 153] do) and involves some chastening and renunciation; but it is not less sweet for having this touch of holiness about it, and the spirit of it is healthy and beneficent. the nature of happiness, therefore, dawns upon philosophers when their wisdom begins to report the lessons of experience: an _a priori_ philosophy can have no inkling of it. happiness is the union of vitality with art, and in so far as vitality is a spiritual thing and not mere restlessness and vehemence, art increases vitality. it obviates friction, waste, and despair. without art, vitality is painful and big with monsters. it is hurried easily into folly and crime; it ignores the external forces and interests which it touches. german philosophy does this theoretically, by dethroning the natural world and calling it an idea created by the ego for its own purposes; and it does this practically also by obeying the categorical imperative--no longer the fabled imperatives of sinai or of kã¶nigsberg, but the inward and vital imperative which the bull obeys, when trusting absolutely in his own strength, rage, and courage, he follows a little red rag and his destiny this way and that way. [pg 154] chapter xv german genius it is customary to judge religions and philosophies by their truth, which is seldom their strong point; yet the application of that unsympathetic criterion is not unjust, since they aspire to be true, maintain that they are so, and forbid any opposed view, no matter how obvious and inevitable, to be called true in their stead. but when religions and philosophies are dead, or when we are so removed from them by time or training that the question of their truth is not a living question for us, they do not on that account lose all their interest; then, in fact, for the first time they manifest their virtues to the unbeliever. he sees that they are expressions of human genius; that however false to their subject-matter they may be, like the conventions of art they are true to the eye and to the spirit that fashioned them. and as nothing in the world, not even the truth, is so interesting as human genius, these incredible or obsolete religions and philosophies become delightful to us. the sting is gone out of their errors, which no longer threaten to delude us, and they have acquired a beauty invisible to the eye of their authors, because [pg 155] of the very refraction which the truth suffered in that vital medium. german philosophy is a work of genius. to be heathen is easy; to have an absolute will and a belief in chaos--or rather a blind battle with chance--is probably the lot of most animals; but to be condemned to be learned, industrious, moral, and christian, and yet, through that veil of unavoidable phenomena and conventions, to pierce to absolute will and freedom, and to set them forth persuasively as the true reality, in spite of all the ordered appearances which do not cease to confront and to occupy us--that is a work of genius. it is a wonderful achievement, to have recovered atavistically the depths of the primitive soul, in the midst of its later sophistication. in this philosophy the ancestral ego, the soul perplexed and incredulous at being born into this world, returns to haunt us in broad day-light and to persuade us with its ghostly eloquence that not that ego but this world is the ghost. the egotism which in german philosophy is justified by a theory in german genius is a form of experience. it turns everything it touches into a part of its own life, personal, spontaneous, sincere, original. it is young and self-sufficient; yet as a continual change of view is incompatible with art and learning, we see in germany, even more than elsewhere, [pg 156] a division of labour between genius and tradition; nowhere are the types of the young rebel and the tireless pedant so common and so extreme. the notion that something that moves and lives, as genius does, can at the same time be absolute has some interesting implications. such a genius and all its works must be unstable. as it has no external sources and no external objects, as its own past can exercise no control over it (for that would be the most lifeless of tyrannies), it is a sort of shooting star, with no guarantees for the future. this, for the complete egotist, has no terrors. a tragic end and a multitude of enemies may seem good to the absolute hero and necessary to his perfect heroism. in the same way, to be without a subject-matter or an audience may seem good to the absolute poet, who sings to himself as he goes, exclusively for the benefit of that glorious and fleeting moment. genius could not be purer than that: although perhaps it might be hard to prove that it was genius. a kindred implication, which perhaps might be less welcome to the egotist himself, is that an absolute genius is formless, and that the absolute freedom with which it thinks it takes on now this form and now that, is not really freedom at all, but subjection to unknown and perhaps ironical forces. absolute will, of which a perfectly free genius is an expression, [pg 157] cannot say specifically what it craves, for essentially it should crave everything indiscriminately. in practice, however, it must seem to aim at this or that precise result. these specific aims are suggested to it by circumstances, foisted upon it in its replete innocence; for it is all expectation, all vague heartiness and zeal for it knows not what. the logic it proclaims at any time and calls eternal is but the fashionable rhetoric of that hour. absolute will is a great dupe on whom fortune forces card after card. like faust it is helpless before the most vulgar temptations. why should it not fulfil itself now by the pursuit of magic, now by the seduction of a young girl, now by an archã¦ological pose, now by a piratical or an engineering enterprise? true, there are limits to its gullibility; there are suggestions from which it recoils. the german ego, after swallowing christianity whole, will in luther stick at indulgences. faust sometimes turns on mephistopheles, as the worm will turn: he says that he covets all experience, but in that he does himself a great injustice; there are experiences he scorns. after all this ego is not really absolute; it is specifically and pathetically human and directed upon a few natural ends. that is what saves it; for a mind can have no distinction and a soul no honour if its only maxim is to live on. it may take up with enthusiasm [pg 158] whatever it takes up, but it will take up anything; and it may do mightily whatever it does, but it will not do it long. consider, in this respect, the pathetic history of the german people. it conquered the roman empire and it became roman, or wished to become so. it had had a mythology and a morality of its own (very like in principle to those it has since rediscovered), yet it accepted christianity with the docility of a child. it began to feel, after some centuries, how alien to its genius this religion was, but it could find relief only in a fresh draught from the same foreign sources, or others more remote. to cease to be roman it tried to become hebraic and greek. in studying these models, however, it came upon a new scent. what passed for revelation or for classical perfection was of human national growth, stratified like the rocks, and not divine or authoritative at all. if you only made hypotheses enough, you could prove how it all arose according to necessary laws, logical, psychological, historical, economical, and ã¦sthetical. above all, you could prove how nobody had understood anything properly before, and how the key to it all was in your single hand. yet the triumphs of theory alone soon seemed unsatisfying. wine, science, and song once seemed to make germany happy, but if a prince imposed [pg 159] military discipline, might not that be an even better thing? for a time wistfulness, longing, and the feeling of titanic loneliness and of a world to be evoked and snuffed out like a dream, seemed to fill the cup of intense living, and the greatest and happiest of germans could cry-_nur wer die sehnsucht kennt_ _weiss, was ich leide,_ _allein und abgetrennt_ _von aller freude_. but presently true intensity of life appeared to lie rather in being a victorious general, or an ironmaster, or a commercial traveller, or a reveller in the friedrich-strasse, or a spy and conspirator anywhere in the world. all these turbid and nondescript ambitions are in a sense artificial; the germans accept them now as a thousand years ago they accepted christianity, because such things are suddenly thrust upon them. by nature they are simple, honest, kindly, easily pleased. there is no latent irony or disbelief in their souls. the pleasures of sense, plain and copious, they enjoy hugely, long labour does not exasperate them, science fills them with satisfaction, music entrances them. there ought to be no happier or more innocent nation in this world. unfortunately their very goodness and simplicity render them helpless; they are what they are dragooned to be. there is no social or intellectual disease to which, in spots, [pg 160] they do not succumb, as to an epidemic: their philosophy itself is an example of this. they have the defects of the newly prosperous; they are far too proud of their possessions, esteeming them for being theirs, without knowing whether they are good of their kind. culture is a thing seldom mentioned by those who have it. the real strength of the germans lies not in those external achievements of which at this moment they make so much--for they may outgrow this new materialism of theirs--it lies rather in what they have always prized, their _gemã¼th_ and their music. perhaps these two things have a common root. emotion is inarticulate, yet there is a mighty movement in it, and a great complexity of transitions and shades. this intrinsic movement of the feelings is ordinarily little noticed because people are too wide awake, or too imaginative. everything is a fact or a picture to them, and their emotions seem to them little but obvious qualities of things. they roundly call _things_ beautiful, painful, holy, or ridiculous; they do not speak of their _gemã¼th_, although, of course, it is by virtue of their emotions that they pass such judgments. but when the occasions of our emotions, the objects that call them forth, are not so instantly focussed, when we know better what we feel than why we feel it, then we seem to have a richer and more massive sensibility. our feelings [pg 161] absorb our attention because they remain a thing apart: they seem to us wonderfully deep because we do not ground them in things external. now music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings without attaching them to events or objects in the world. music is articulate, but articulate in a language which avoids, or at least veils the articulation of the world we live in; it is, therefore, the chosen art of a mind to whom the world is still foreign. if this seems in one way an incapacity, it is also a privilege. not to be at home in the world, to prize it chiefly for echoes which it may have in the soul, to have a soul that can give forth echoes, or that can generate internal dramas of sound out of its own resources--may this not be a more enviable endowment than that of a mind all surface, a sensitive plate only able to photograph this not too beautiful earth? in any case, for better or for worse, inward sensibility, unabsorbed in worldly affairs, exists in some people; a life, as it were, still in the womb and not yet in contact with the air. but let these inspired musicians, masters in their own infinite realms, beware of the touch of matter. let them not compose a system of the universe out of their _gemã¼th,_ as they might a symphony. let them not raise their baton in the face of the stars or of the nations, and think to lead them like an orchestra. [pg 162] chapter xvi egotism in practice theories in their own ethereal essence can have no influence on events. but the men who conceive and adopt a theory form, in doing so, certain habits of discrimination and of reaction to things. in fact, they have conceived and adopted their theory because their habits of apprehension and action suggested it to them, or could be brought to suggest it: the explicit theory is a symbol and omen of their practical attitude, of their way, as the phrase has it, of grasping the situation. all philosophies have the common property of being speculative, and, therefore, their immediate influence on those who hold them is in many ways alike, however opposed the theories may be to one another: they all make people theoretical. in this sense any philosophy, if warmly embraced, has a moralising force, because, even if it belittles morality, it absorbs the mind in intellectual contemplation, accustoms it to wide and reasoned comparisons, and makes the sorry escapades of human nature from convention seem even more ignominious than its ruling prejudices. the particular theory of egotism arises from an [pg 163] exorbitant interest in ourselves, in the medium of thought and action rather than in its objects. it is not necessarily incorrect, because the self is actual and indispensable; but the insistence on it is a little abnormal, because the self, like consciousness, ought to be diaphanous. egotism in philosophy is, therefore, a pretty sure symptom of excessive pedantry and inordinate self-assertion. in the lofty theory of egotism life is represented as a sort of game of patience, in which the rules, the cards, the table, and the empty time on our hands, all are mere images created by the fancy, as in a dream. the _sense_ of being occupied, though one really has nothing to do, will then be the secret of the whole affair, and the sole good to be attained by living. of course this fantastic theory is put forward only on great occasions, when an extreme profundity is in place; but like other esoteric doctrines it expresses very well the spirit in which those people live habitually who would appeal to it in the last resort. obviously such an egotist should in consistency be a man of principle. he would feel it to be derogatory to his dignity, and contrary to his settled purpose, to cheat at the game he has instituted. that luck should sometimes go against him is pre-ordained by himself; otherwise the game would have no zest, and to be interested, to be pressed, [pg 164] even to be annoyed seems the highest good to him in his great tedium. he will, therefore, be assiduous, patient, and law-abiding; and the idea of ever abandoning his chosen game for anything less forced and less arbitrary will seem to him disloyalty to himself, and a great wickedness. indeed, nothing beside his own purpose will have any value in his eyes, or even any existence. he will therefore inevitably act without consideration for others, without courtesy, without understanding. when he chooses to observe anything external--and he is studious--his very attentions will be an insult; for he will assume that his idea of that external thing is the reality of it, and that other people can have only such rights and only such a character as he is willing to assign to them. it follows from his egotistical principles that in judging others he should be officious and rude, learned and mistaken. what the egotist calls his will and his ideals are, taken together, simply his passions; but the passions of the egotist are turned into a system and go unrebuked. a man who lowers his precepts to the level of his will may the more easily raise his practice to the level of his precepts. he endows his life with a certain coherence, momentum, and integrity, just because he has suppressed all vain aspiration and all useless shame. he does not call himself a sinner; [pg 165] he would be at a loss for a reason to think himself one; for really his standard of virtue expresses nothing but his prevalent will. is it not intelligible that such a morality should be more efficacious, more unifying, heavier, and more convinced than one which begins by condemning our natural passions and the habitual course of human life? in fact, egotism in practice is a solemn and arduous business; there is nothing malicious about it and nothing gay. there is rather a stolid surprise that such honest sentiments and so much enterprise should not meet everywhere with applause. if other people are put thereby at a disadvantage, why should they not learn their lesson and adopt in their turn the methods of the superman? if they are touched by the vanity and the charm of existence and neglect the intense pursuit of their absolute will, why do they complain if they are jostled and beaten? only he deserves life and freedom, said goethe, who is forced daily to win them afresh. if the egotist suffers passion to speak in his philosophy, it is perhaps because he has so little passion. men of frank passions quickly see the folly of them; but the passions of the egotist are muffled, dull, like the miserly passions of old men; they are diffused into sensuality and sentiment, or hardened into maxims. egotistical lovers can hold hands for hours [pg 166] and chastely kiss each other for years; such tokens of affection help to keep them in love and at the same time are a sop to more troublesome impulses. sentimentality and gush mark the absence of passion: the blood has been diluted to lymph. hence the egotist can the more easily mistake his passions for duties, and his cupidities for ideals. his devotion to these ideals is pure and enthusiastic; but in serving them he fattens steadily, as punctual at his work as at his meals, as dutifully moved by the approved music as by the official patriotism, vicious when it seems manly to be vicious, brutal when it seems politic to be brutal; he feels he is impeccable, and he must die in his sins. nothing can ruffle the autonomous conscience of this kind of idealist, whose nature may be gross, but whose life is busy and conventional, and who loudly congratulates himself daily on all he knows and does. turn the circumstances about as you like, the egotist finds only one ultimate reason for everything. it is not a reason; it is absolute will. suppose we asked the ego, in the fichtean system, why it posited a material world to be its implacable enemy and rebellious toy, and why without necessity it raised this infinity of trouble for itself and for the unhappy world which it created by its fiat. it could only reply: "because such is the categorical imperative [pg 167] within me; because so i will, so i must, and so my absolute duty and its logic require. if the consequences are tragic--and in the end i know they must be tragic--that only proves the sublime unselfishness of my egotism, the purity of my sacred folly, the ideality of my groundless will. all reasons, all justifications which might appeal to me must be posterior to my will; my will itself can have no justification and no reason." let us admire the sincerity of this searching confession. virtue itself, if it relied on self-consciousness for its philosophy, could not justify itself on other grounds. if the difference between virtue and vice is hereby obliterated, that only proves that the difference is not founded on self-consciousness but on the circumstances and powers under which we live. what self-consciousness can disclose is not the basis of anything. all will is the expression of some animal i body, frail and mortal, but teachable and rich in resource. the environment in which this will finds itself controls and rewards its various movements, and establishes within it the difference between virtue and vice, wisdom and folly. the whole transcendental philosophy, if made ultimate, is false, and nothing but a private perspective. the will is absolute neither in the individual nor in humanity. nature is not a product of [pg 168] the mind, but on the contrary there is an external world, ages prior to any idea of it, which the mind recognises and feeds upon. there is a steady human nature within us, which our moods and passions may wrong but cannot annul. there is no categorical imperative but only the operation of instincts and interests more or less subject to discipline and mutual adjustment. our whole life is a compromise, an incipient loose harmony between the passions of the soul and the forces of nature, forces which likewise generate and protect the souls of other creatures, endowing them with powers of expression and self-assertion comparable with our own, and with aims no less sweet and worthy in their own eyes; so that the quick and honest mind cannot but practise courtesy in the universe, exercising its will without vehemence or forced assurance, judging with serenity, and in everything discarding the word absolute as the most false and the most odious of words. as montaigne observes, "he who sets before him, as in a picture, this vast image of our mother nature in her entire majesty; who reads in her aspect such universal and continual variety; who discerns himself therein, and not himself only but a whole kingdom, to be but a most delicate dot--he alone esteems things according to the just measure of their greatness." [pg 169] index alexander the great, a model for german idealists, 80, 81 aristotle, 120, 124 belief in god, disproved pragmatically, 134 bull-psychology, 148, 153 burckhardt, 47 byron, 48, 49 cã¦sar borgia, a superman, 138 calvinism, in kant, 57; in fichte, 25, 77; in hegel, 111 categorical imperative, its origin, 56; its prerogatives, 62; its dangers, 63 chancellor, the german, his chivalrous after-thought about belgium, 50 christianity, foreign to germany, 11; undermined by german philosophy, 104, 105; patronised by goethe, 46; abandoned by romantic individualists, 107; denounced by nietzsche, 130-132; has one element in common with egotism, 106 classicism, romantic in goethe, 46; missed by nietzsche, 139-142; when truly vital, 48 conquest, a sublime duty, 80, 81 contraries, alleged to be inseparable, 89, 90 criticism, historical, has a transcendental basis, 29 _critique of pure reason_, its agnosticism, 14; its sophistical foundation, 20 durer, 27 egotism, defined, 6; distinguished from selfishness, 95-97, 100-102, 118; based on error, 167; implicit in the kantian imperative and postulates, 62-64; implies integrity, force, self-complacency, 163-166; is odious in pedants, 142 emerson, 24, 49; quoted, 119 england, judged by fichte, 76 evil, justified, 123, 132-134 faith, german conception of it, 13, 27; corroborated only by itself, 31, 68 faust, typical egotist, 13, 14; prefigures the evolution of germany, 50, 51, 157; improves on saint john, 52 fichte, 65-83 _gemã¼th_, why self-conscious, 160 german ethics, its faults, 103 german language, its merits, 75 german nation, its purity, 75; its mission, 78, 79; in what sense the chosen people, 73, 74; necessary to the continued existence of god, 68; and of history, 79; its fortunes, 158-160 german philosophy, not all philosophy in germany, 11; primitive, 27; subjective, 12; in what senses idealistic, 15; in what sense not so, 16; ambiguous, 17, 18; a revelation, 22; must continually be proved afresh, 26; is a work of genius, 155 gobineau, 77 goethe, 43-53; quoted, 159, 165 good and evil above right and wrong, 124 gospel, amended by faust, 52; glossed by hegelians, 105 happiness, not for the egotist, 14, 15; he despises it, 152; not abstract nor absolute, 110, 111; attainable, 118; its nature, 152, 153 heathenism, use of the word, 144; contrast with paganism, 145, 146; its modern form, 147, 148 hegel, 84-98 human nature, 117, 118 idealism, meanings of the word, 15, 16; fosters practical materialism, 5, 69-72, 78, 81, 82; should be imposed on the young, 80; its mystical issue, 38-40 ideals, when captious, when solid, 137 infinity, evaded by hegel, 88, 89; recognised again by schopenhauer, 108, 109 kant, 54-64; 25, 34, 35, 42 knowledge, assumed to be impossible, 15; abuse of the term, 39, 60 leibniz, anticipates transcendentalism, 33; his insidious theology, 104 lessing, on truth, 129 locke, sets the ball rolling, 32 luther, 135, 157 max stirner, 99-103; quoted, 73 montaigne, quoted, 168 music, 16, 161 musset, 49 mysticism, in knowledge, 38-40; in morals, 123 nietzsche, 114-143 optimism, egotistical, 25, 111, 114, 116, 118, 119 passion, not naturally egotistical, 101; may become so, 95, 98; dull in egotists, 165, 166 paulsen, 42 perception, terminates in things not in ideas, 19 pessimism, inherits disregard of intrinsic values, 109; reacts against optimism, 25, 111; is arbitrary, 116 pier gynt, typical egotist, 13, 14 plato, his idealism contrasted with the german, 16; his oppressive politics, 81; on inspiration, 141 postulates of practical reason, equivocal, 58-64 power, divers meanings of the word, 125-127 preservation, no law of nature, 115 progress, when illusory, 17; when real, 112 protestantism, 21-31, 151 religion in german philosophy, 7, 13, 75, 76, 82, 83 rome and german genius, 150 schopenhauer, 108-122 selfishness, distinguished from egotism, 95, 97, 100-102, 118 society, its alleged consciousness, 17, 18; a "spook," 99 socrates, 146 spinoza, religious feeling transferred to nature, 24; his mysticism in ethics, 123 spirit, its meanings, 37; its mystic unity, 38 state, the absolute, an idol, 96-98 substance, egotistical use of the term, 17, 92 superman, 136-143 tender minds, how attracted to german philosophy, 24 transcendentalism, 32-42 truth, a figment of the will, 28; made in germany, 88; less valuable than illusion, 14, 128-130; not the strong point of philosophies, 154 understanding, hostility of hegel to the, 90, 91 wagner, 136, 150 war, a boon, 96; how it should be started, 79; is to rage for two hundred years, 115 wilhelm meister, 44 will, used metaphorically, 36, 114; should be disinterested, 67; may be fulfilled in defeat, 66, 67; is unstable and indeterminate, 156-158; may be denied, 119, 120 winkelmann, 140, note (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. 1788 the critique of practical reason by immanuel kant translated by thomas kingsmill abbott preface. this work is called the critique of practical reason, not of the pure practical reason, although its parallelism with the speculative critique would seem to require the latter term. the reason of this appears sufficiently from the treatise itself. its business is to show that there is pure practical reason, and for this purpose it criticizes the entire practical faculty of reason. if it succeeds in this, it has no need to criticize the pure faculty itself in order to see whether reason in making such a claim does not presumptuously overstep itself (as is the case with the speculative reason). for if, as pure reason, it is actually practical, it proves its own reality and that of its concepts by fact, and all disputation against the possibility of its being real is futile. with this faculty, transcendental freedom is also established; freedom, namely, in that absolute sense in which speculative reason required it in its use of the concept of causality in order to escape the antinomy into which it inevitably falls, when in the chain of cause and effect it tries to think the unconditioned. speculative reason could only exhibit this concept (of freedom) problematically as not impossible to thought, without assuring it any objective reality, and merely lest the supposed impossibility of what it must at least allow to be thinkable should endanger its very being and plunge it into an abyss of scepticism. inasmuch as the reality of the concept of freedom is proved by an apodeictic law of practical reason, it is the keystone of the whole system of pure reason, even the speculative, and all other concepts (those of god and immortality) which, as being mere ideas, remain in it unsupported, now attach themselves to this concept, and by it obtain consistence and objective reality; that is to say, their possibility is proved by the fact that freedom actually exists, for this idea is revealed by the moral law. freedom, however, is the only one of all the ideas of the speculative reason of which we know the possibility a priori (without, however, understanding it), because it is the condition of the moral law which we know. * the ideas of god and immortality, however, are not conditions of the moral law, but only conditions of the necessary object of a will determined by this law; that is to say, conditions of the practical use of our pure reason. hence, with respect to these ideas, we cannot affirm that we know and understand, i will not say the actuality, but even the possibility of them. however they are the conditions of the application of the morally determined will to its object, which is given to it a priori, viz., the summum bonum. consequently in this practical point of view their possibility must be assumed, although we cannot theoretically know and understand it. to justify this assumption it is sufficient, in a practical point of view, that they contain no intrinsic impossibility (contradiction). here we have what, as far as speculative reason is concerned, is a merely subjective principle of assent, which, however, is objectively valid for a reason equally pure but practical, and this principle, by means of the concept of freedom, assures objective reality and authority to the ideas of god and immortality. nay, there is a subjective necessity (a need of pure reason) to assume them. nevertheless the theoretical knowledge of reason is not hereby enlarged, but only the possibility is given, which heretofore was merely a problem and now becomes assertion, and thus the practical use of reason is connected with the elements of theoretical reason. and this need is not a merely hypothetical one for the arbitrary purposes of speculation, that we must assume something if we wish in speculation to carry reason to its utmost limits, but it is a need which has the force of law to assume something without which that cannot be which we must inevitably set before us as the aim of our action. {preface ^paragraph 5} * lest any one should imagine that he finds an inconsistency here when i call freedom the condition of the moral law, and hereafter maintain in the treatise itself that the moral law is the condition under which we can first become conscious of freedom, i will merely remark that freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law, while the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. for had not the moral law been previously distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom, although it be not contradictory. but were there no freedom it would be impossible to trace the moral law in ourselves at all. it would certainly be more satisfactory to our speculative reason if it could solve these problems for itself without this circuit and preserve the solution for practical use as a thing to be referred to, but in fact our faculty of speculation is not so well provided. those who boast of such high knowledge ought not to keep it back, but to exhibit it publicly that it may be tested and appreciated. they want to prove: very good, let them prove; and the critical philosophy lays its arms at their feet as the victors. quid statis? nolint. atqui licet esse beatis. as they then do not in fact choose to do so, probably because they cannot, we must take up these arms again in order to seek in the mortal use of reason, and to base on this, the notions of god, freedom, and immortality, the possibility of which speculation cannot adequately prove. here first is explained the enigma of the critical philosophy, viz.: how we deny objective reality to the supersensible use of the categories in speculation and yet admit this reality with respect to the objects of pure practical reason. this must at first seem inconsistent as long as this practical use is only nominally known. but when, by a thorough analysis of it, one becomes aware that the reality spoken of does not imply any theoretical determination of the categories and extension of our knowledge to the supersensible; but that what is meant is that in this respect an object belongs to them, because either they are contained in the necessary determination of the will a priori, or are inseparably connected with its object; then this inconsistency disappears, because the use we make of these concepts is different from what speculative reason requires. on the other hand, there now appears an unexpected and very satisfactory proof of the consistency of the speculative critical philosophy. for whereas it insisted that the objects of experience as such, including our own subject, have only the value of phenomena, while at the same time things in themselves must be supposed as their basis, so that not everything supersensible was to be regarded as a fiction and its concept as empty; so now practical reason itself, without any concert with the speculative, assures reality to a supersensible object of the category of causality, viz., freedom, although (as becomes a practical concept) only for practical use; and this establishes on the evidence of a fact that which in the former case could only be conceived. by this the strange but certain doctrine of the speculative critical philosophy, that the thinking subject is to itself in internal intuition only a phenomenon, obtains in the critical examination of the practical reason its full confirmation, and that so thoroughly that we should be compelled to adopt this doctrine, even if the former had never proved it at all. * {preface ^paragraph 10} * the union of causality as freedom with causality as rational mechanism, the former established by the moral law, the latter by the law of nature in the same subject, namely, man, is impossible, unless we conceive him with reference to the former as a being in himself, and with reference to the latter as a phenomenonthe former in pure consciousness, the latter in empirical consciousness. otherwise reason inevitably contradicts itself. by this also i can understand why the most considerable objections which i have as yet met with against the critique turn about these two points, namely, on the one side, the objective reality of the categories as applied to noumena, which is in the theoretical department of knowledge denied, in the practical affirmed; and on the other side, the paradoxical demand to regard oneself qua subject of freedom as a noumenon, and at the same time from the point of view of physical nature as a phenomenon in one's own empirical consciousness; for as long as one has formed no definite notions of morality and freedom, one could not conjecture on the one side what was intended to be the noumenon, the basis of the alleged phenomenon, and on the other side it seemed doubtful whether it was at all possible to form any notion of it, seeing that we had previously assigned all the notions of the pure understanding in its theoretical use exclusively to phenomena. nothing but a detailed criticism of the practical reason can remove all this misapprehension and set in a clear light the consistency which constitutes its greatest merit. so much by way of justification of the proceeding by which, in this work, the notions and principles of pure speculative reason which have already undergone their special critical examination are, now and then, again subjected to examination. this would not in other cases be in accordance with the systematic process by which a science is established, since matters which have been decided ought only to be cited and not again discussed. in this case, however, it was not only allowable but necessary, because reason is here considered in transition to a different use of these concepts from what it had made of them before. such a transition necessitates a comparison of the old and the new usage, in order to distinguish well the new path from the old one and, at the same time, to allow their connection to be observed. accordingly considerations of this kind, including those which are once more directed to the concept of freedom in the practical use of the pure reason, must not be regarded as an interpolation serving only to fill up the gaps in the critical system of speculative reason (for this is for its own purpose complete), or like the props and buttresses which in a hastily constructed building are often added afterwards; but as true members which make the connexion of the system plain, and show us concepts, here presented as real, which there could only be presented problematically. this remark applies especially to the concept of freedom, respecting which one cannot but observe with surprise that so many boast of being able to understand it quite well and to explain its possibility, while they regard it only psychologically, whereas if they had studied it in a transcendental point of view, they must have recognized that it is not only indispensable as a problematical concept, in the complete use of speculative reason, but also quite incomprehensible; and if they afterwards came to consider its practical use, they must needs have come to the very mode of determining the principles of this, to which they are now so loth to assent. the concept of freedom is the stone of stumbling for all empiricists, but at the same time the key to the loftiest practical principles for critical moralists, who perceive by its means that they must necessarily proceed by a rational method. for this reason i beg the reader not to pass lightly over what is said of this concept at the end of the analytic. i must leave it to those who are acquainted with works of this kind to judge whether such a system as that of the practical reason, which is here developed from the critical examination of it, has cost much or little trouble, especially in seeking not to miss the true point of view from which the whole can be rightly sketched. it presupposes, indeed, the fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals, but only in so far as this gives a preliminary acquaintance with the principle of duty, and assigns and justifies a definite formula thereof; in other respects it is independent. * it results from the nature of this practical faculty itself that the complete classification of all practical sciences cannot be added, as in the critique of the speculative reason. for it is not possible to define duties specially, as human duties, with a view to their classification, until the subject of this definition (viz., man) is known according to his actual nature, at least so far as is necessary with respect to duty; this, however, does not belong to a critical examination of the practical reason, the business of which is only to assign in a complete manner the principles of its possibility, extent, and limits, without special reference to human nature. the classification then belongs to the system of science, not to the system of criticism. {preface ^paragraph 15} * a reviewer who wanted to find some fault with this work has hit the truth better, perhaps, than he thought, when he says that no new principle of morality is set forth in it, but only a new formula. but who would think of introducing a new principle of all morality and making himself as it were the first discoverer of it, just as if all the world before him were ignorant what duty was or had been in thorough-going error? but whoever knows of what importance to a mathematician a formula is, which defines accurately what is to be done to work a problem, will not think that a formula is insignificant and useless which does the same for all duty in general. in the second part of the analytic i have given, as i trust, a sufficient answer to the objection of a truth-loving and acute critic * of the fundamental principles of the metaphysic of moralsa critic always worthy of respectthe objection, namely, that the notion of good was not established before the moral principle, as he thinks it ought to have been. *(2) i have also had regard to many of the objections which have reached me from men who show that they have at heart the discovery of the truth, and i shall continue to do so (for those who have only their old system before their eyes, and who have already settled what is to be approved or disapproved, do not desire any explanation which might stand in the way of their own private opinion.) {preface ^paragraph 20} * [see kant's "das mag in der theoric ricktig seyn," etc. werke, vol. vii, p. 182.] *(2) it might also have been objected to me that i have not first defined the notion of the faculty of desire, or of the feeling of pleasure, although this reproach would be unfair, because this definition might reasonably be presupposed as given in psychology. however, the definition there given might be such as to found the determination of the faculty of desire on the feeling of pleasure (as is commonly done), and thus the supreme principle of practical philosophy would be necessarily made empirical, which, however, remains to be proved and in this critique is altogether refuted. it will, therefore, give this definition here in such a manner as it ought to be given, in order to leave this contested point open at the beginning, as it should be. life is the faculty a being has of acting according to laws of the faculty of desire. the faculty of desire is the being's faculty of becoming by means of its ideas the cause of the actual existence of the objects of these ideas. pleasure is the idea of the agreement of the object, or the action with the subjective conditions of life, i.e., with the faculty of causality of an idea in respect of the actuality of its object (or with the determination of the forces of the subject to action which produces it). i have no further need for the purposes of this critique of notions borrowed from psychology; the critique itself supplies the rest. it is easily seen that the question whether the faculty of desire is always based on pleasure, or whether under certain conditions pleasure only follows the determination of desire, is by this definition left undecided, for it is composed only of terms belonging to the pure understanding, i.e., of categories which contain nothing empirical. such precaution is very desirable in all philosophy and yet is often neglected; namely, not to prejudge questions by adventuring definitions before the notion has been completely analysed, which is often very late. it may be observed through the whole course of the critical philosophy (of the theoretical as well as the practical reason) that frequent opportunity offers of supplying defects in the old dogmatic method of philosophy, and of correcting errors which are not observed until we make such rational use of these notions viewing them as a whole. when we have to study a particular faculty of the human mind in its sources, its content, and its limits; then from the nature of human knowledge we must begin with its parts, with an accurate and complete exposition of them; complete, namely, so far as is possible in the present state of our knowledge of its elements. but there is another thing to be attended to which is of a more philosophical and architectonic character, namely, to grasp correctly the idea of the whole, and from thence to get a view of all those parts as mutually related by the aid of pure reason, and by means of their derivation from the concept of the whole. this is only possible through the most intimate acquaintance with the system; and those who find the first inquiry too troublesome, and do not think it worth their while to attain such an acquaintance, cannot reach the second stage, namely, the general view, which is a synthetical return to that which had previously been given analytically. it is no wonder then if they find inconsistencies everywhere, although the gaps which these indicate are not in the system itself, but in their own incoherent train of thought. i have no fear, as regards this treatise, of the reproach that i wish to introduce a new language, since the sort of knowledge here in question has itself somewhat of an everyday character. nor even in the case of the former critique could this reproach occur to anyone who had thought it through and not merely turned over the leaves. to invent new words where the language has no lack of expressions for given notions is a childish effort to distinguish oneself from the crowd, if not by new and true thoughts, yet by new patches on the old garment. if, therefore, the readers of that work know any more familiar expressions which are as suitable to the thought as those seem to me to be, or if they think they can show the futility of these thoughts themselves and hence that of the expression, they would, in the first case, very much oblige me, for i only desire to be understood: and, in the second case, they would deserve well of philosophy. but, as long as these thoughts stand, i very much doubt that suitable and yet more common expressions for them can be found. * {preface ^paragraph 25} * i am more afraid in the present treatise of occasional misconception in respect of some expressions which i have chosen with the greatest care in order that the notion to which they point may not be missed. thus, in the table of categories of the practical reason under the title of modality, the permitted, and forbidden (in a practical objective point of view, possible and impossible) have almost the same meaning in common language as the next category, duty and contrary to duty. here, however, the former means what coincides with, or contradicts, a merely possible practical precept (for example, the solution of all problems of geometry and mechanics); the latter, what is similarly related to a law actually present in the reason; and this distinction is not quite foreign even to common language, although somewhat unusual. for example, it is forbidden to an orator, as such, to forge new words or constructions; in a certain degree this is permitted to a poet; in neither case is there any question of duty. for if anyone chooses to forfeit his reputation as an orator, no one can prevent him. we have here only to do with the distinction of imperatives into problematical, assertorial, and apodeictic. similarly in the note in which i have pared the moral ideas of practical perfection in different philosophical schools, i have distinguished the idea of wisdom from that of holiness, although i have stated that essentially and objectively they are the same. but in that place i understand by the former only that wisdom to which man (the stoic) lays claim; therefore i take it subjectively as an attribute alleged to belong to man. (perhaps the expression virtue, with which also the stoic made great show, would better mark the characteristic of his school.) the expression of a postulate of pure practical reason might give most occasion to misapprehension in case the reader confounded it with the signification of the postulates in pure mathematics, which carry apodeictic certainty with them. these, however, postulate the possibility of an action, the object of which has been previously recognized a priori in theory as possible, and that with perfect certainty. but the former postulates the possibility of an object itself (god and the immortality of the soul) from apodeictic practical laws, and therefore only for the purposes of a practical reason. this certainty of the postulated possibility then is not at all theoretic, and consequently not apodeictic; that is to say, it is not a known necessity as regards the object, but a necessary supposition as regards the subject, necessary for the obedience to its objective but practical laws. it is, therefore, merely a necessary hypothesis. i could find no better expression for this rational necessity, which is subjective, but yet true and unconditional. in this manner, then, the a priori principles of two faculties of the mind, the faculty of cognition and that of desire, would be found and determined as to the conditions, extent, and limits of their use, and thus a sure foundation be paid for a scientific system of philosophy, both theoretic and practical. nothing worse could happen to these labours than that anyone should make the unexpected discovery that there neither is, nor can be, any a priori knowledge at all. but there is no danger of this. this would be the same thing as if one sought to prove by reason that there is no reason. for we only say that we know something by reason, when we are conscious that we could have known it, even if it had not been given to us in experience; hence rational knowledge and knowledge a priori are one and the same. it is a clear contradiction to try to extract necessity from a principle of experience (ex pumice aquam), and to try by this to give a judgement true universality (without which there is no rational inference, not even inference from analogy, which is at least a presumed universality and objective necessity). to substitute subjective necessity, that is, custom, for objective, which exists only in a priori judgements, is to deny to reason the power of judging about the object, i.e., of knowing it, and what belongs to it. it implies, for example, that we must not say of something which often or always follows a certain antecedent state that we can conclude from this to that (for this would imply objective necessity and the notion of an a priori connexion), but only that we may expect similar cases (just as animals do), that is that we reject the notion of cause altogether as false and a mere delusion. as to attempting to remedy this want of objective and consequently universal validity by saying that we can see no ground for attributing any other sort of knowledge to other rational beings, if this reasoning were valid, our ignorance would do more for the enlargement of our knowledge than all our meditation. for, then, on this very ground that we have no knowledge of any other rational beings besides man, we should have a right to suppose them to be of the same nature as we know ourselves to be: that is, we should really know them. i omit to mention that universal assent does not prove the objective validity of a judgement (i.e., its validity as a cognition), and although this universal assent should accidentally happen, it could furnish no proof of agreement with the object; on the contrary, it is the objective validity which alone constitutes the basis of a necessary universal consent. {preface ^paragraph 30} hume would be quite satisfied with this system of universal empiricism, for, as is well known, he desired nothing more than that, instead of ascribing any objective meaning to the necessity in the concept of cause, a merely subjective one should be assumed, viz., custom, in order to deny that reason could judge about god, freedom, and immortality; and if once his principles were granted, he was certainly well able to deduce his conclusions therefrom, with all logical coherence. but even hume did not make his empiricism so universal as to include mathematics. he holds the principles of mathematics to be analytical; and if his were correct, they would certainly be apodeictic also: but we could not infer from this that reason has the faculty of forming apodeictic judgements in philosophy alsothat is to say, those which are synthetical judgements, like the judgement of causality. but if we adopt a universal empiricism, then mathematics will be included. now if this science is in contradiction with a reason that admits only empirical principles, as it inevitably is in the antinomy in which mathematics prove the infinite divisibility of space, which empiricism cannot admit; then the greatest possible evidence of demonstration is in manifest contradiction with the alleged conclusions from experience, and we are driven to ask, like cheselden's blind patient, "which deceives me, sight or touch?" (for empiricism is based on a necessity felt, rationalism on a necessity seen). and thus universal empiricism reveals itself as absolute scepticism. it is erroneous to attribute this in such an unqualified sense to hume, * since he left at least one certain touchstone (which can only be found in a priori principles), although experience consists not only of feelings, but also of judgements. * names that designate the followers of a sect have always been accompanied with much injustice; just as if one said, "n is an idealist." for although he not only admits, but even insists, that our ideas of external things have actual objects of external things corresponding to them, yet he holds that the form of the intuition does not depend on them but on the human mind. {preface ^paragraph 35} however, as in this philosophical and critical age such empiricism can scarcely be serious, and it is probably put forward only as an intellectual exercise and for the purpose of putting in a clearer light, by contrast, the necessity of rational a priori principles, we can only be grateful to those who employ themselves in this otherwise uninstructive labour. introduction introduction. of the idea of a critique of practical reason. the theoretical use of reason was concerned with objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a critical examination of it with reference to this use applied properly only to the pure faculty of cognition; because this raised the suspicion, which was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily pass beyond its limits, and be lost among unattainable objects, or even contradictory notions. it is quite different with the practical use of reason. in this, reason is concerned with the grounds of determination of the will, which is a faculty either to produce objects corresponding to ideas, or to determine ourselves to the effecting of such objects (whether the physical power is sufficient or not); that is, to determine our causality. for here, reason can at least attain so far as to determine the will, and has always objective reality in so far as it is the volition only that is in question. the first question here then is whether pure reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will, or whether it can be a ground of determination only as dependent on empirical conditions. now, here there comes in a notion of causality justified by the critique of the pure reason, although not capable of being presented empirically, viz., that of freedom; and if we can now discover means of proving that this property does in fact belong to the human will (and so to the will of all rational beings), then it will not only be shown that pure reason can be practical, but that it alone, and not reason empirically limited, is indubitably practical; consequently, we shall have to make a critical examination, not of pure practical reason, but only of practical reason generally. for when once pure reason is shown to exist, it needs no critical examination. for reason itself contains the standard for the critical examination of every use of it. the critique, then, of practical reason generally is bound to prevent the empirically conditioned reason from claiming exclusively to furnish the ground of determination of the will. if it is proved that there is a [practical] reason, its employment is alone immanent; the empirically conditioned use, which claims supremacy, is on the contrary transcendent and expresses itself in demands and precepts which go quite beyond its sphere. this is just the opposite of what might be said of pure reason in its speculative employment. however, as it is still pure reason, the knowledge of which is here the foundation of its practical employment, the general outline of the classification of a critique of practical reason must be arranged in accordance with that of the speculative. we must, then, have the elements and the methodology of it; and in the former an analytic as the rule of truth, and a dialectic as the exposition and dissolution of the illusion in the judgements of practical reason. but the order in the subdivision of the analytic will be the reverse of that in the critique of the pure speculative reason. for, in the present case, we shall commence with the principles and proceed to the concepts, and only then, if possible, to the senses; whereas in the case of the speculative reason we began with the senses and had to end with the principles. the reason of this lies again in this: that now we have to do with a will, and have to consider reason, not in its relation to objects, but to this will and its causality. we must, then, begin with the principles of a causality not empirically conditioned, after which the attempt can be made to establish our notions of the determining grounds of such a will, of their application to objects, and finally to the subject and its sense faculty. we necessarily begin with the law of causality from freedom, that is, with a pure practical principle, and this determines the objects to which alone it can be applied. book_1|chapter_1 first part. elements of pure practical reason. book i. the analytic of pure practical reason. chapter i. of the principles of pure practical reason. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 5} i. definition. practical principles are propositions which contain a general determination of the will, having under it several practical rules. they are subjective, or maxims, when the condition is regarded by the subject as valid only for his own will, but are objective, or practical laws, when the condition is recognized as objective, that is, valid for the will of every rational being. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 10} remark. supposing that pure reason contains in itself a practical motive, that is, one adequate to determine the will, then there are practical laws; otherwise all practical principles will be mere maxims. in case the will of a rational being is pathologically affected, there may occur a conflict of the maxims with the practical laws recognized by itself. for example, one may make it his maxim to let no injury pass unrevenged, and yet he may see that this is not a practical law, but only his own maxim; that, on the contrary, regarded as being in one and the same maxim a rule for the will of every rational being, it must contradict itself. in natural philosophy the principles of what happens, (e.g., the principle of equality of action and reaction in the communication of motion) are at the same time laws of nature; for the use of reason there is theoretical and determined by the nature of the object. in practical philosophy, i.e., that which has to do only with the grounds of determination of the will, the principles which a man makes for himself are not laws by which one is inevitably bound; because reason in practical matters has to do with the subject, namely, with the faculty of desire, the special character of which may occasion variety in the rule. the practical rule is always a product of reason, because it prescribes action as a means to the effect. but in the case of a being with whom reason does not of itself determine the will, this rule is an imperative, i.e., a rule characterized by "shall," which expresses the objective necessitation of the action and signifies that, if reason completely determined the will, the action would inevitably take place according to this rule. imperatives, therefore, are objectively valid, and are quite distinct from maxims, which are subjective principles. the former either determine the conditions of the causality of the rational being as an efficient cause, i.e., merely in reference to the effect and the means of attaining it; or they determine the will only, whether it is adequate to the effect or not. the former would be hypothetical imperatives, and contain mere precepts of skill; the latter, on the contrary, would be categorical, and would alone be practical laws. thus maxims are principles, but not imperatives. imperatives themselves, however, when they are conditional (i.e., do not determine the will simply as will, but only in respect to a desired effect, that is, when they are hypothetical imperatives), are practical precepts but not laws. laws must be sufficient to determine the will as will, even before i ask whether i have power sufficient for a desired effect, or the means necessary to produce it; hence they are categorical: otherwise they are not laws at all, because the necessity is wanting, which, if it is to be practical, must be independent of conditions which are pathological and are therefore only contingently connected with the will. tell a man, for example, that he must be industrious and thrifty in youth, in order that he may not want in old age; this is a correct and important practical precept of the will. but it is easy to see that in this case the will is directed to something else which it is presupposed that it desires; and as to this desire, we must leave it to the actor himself whether he looks forward to other resources than those of his own acquisition, or does not expect to be old, or thinks that in case of future necessity he will be able to make shift with little. reason, from which alone can spring a rule involving necessity, does, indeed, give necessity to this precept (else it would not be an imperative), but this is a necessity dependent on subjective conditions, and cannot be supposed in the same degree in all subjects. but that reason may give laws it is necessary that it should only need to presuppose itself, because rules are objectively and universally valid only when they hold without any contingent subjective conditions, which distinguish one rational being from another. now tell a man that he should never make a deceitful promise, this is a rule which only concerns his will, whether the purposes he may have can be attained thereby or not; it is the volition only which is to be determined a priori by that rule. if now it is found that this rule is practically right, then it is a law, because it is a categorical imperative. thus, practical laws refer to the will only, without considering what is attained by its causality, and we may disregard this latter (as belonging to the world of sense) in order to have them quite pure. ii. theorem i. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 15} all practical principles which presuppose an object (matter) of the faculty of desire as the ground of determination of the will are empirical and can furnish no practical laws. by the matter of the faculty of desire i mean an object the realization of which is desired. now, if the desire for this object precedes the practical rule and is the condition of our making it a principle, then i say (in the first place) this principle is in that case wholly empirical, for then what determines the choice is the idea of an object and that relation of this idea to the subject by which its faculty of desire is determined to its realization. such a relation to the subject is called the pleasure in the realization of an object. this, then, must be presupposed as a condition of the possibility of determination of the will. but it is impossible to know a priori of any idea of an object whether it will be connected with pleasure or pain, or be indifferent. in such cases, therefore, the determining principle of the choice must be empirical and, therefore, also the practical material principle which presupposes it as a condition. in the second place, since susceptibility to a pleasure or pain can be known only empirically and cannot hold in the same degree for all rational beings, a principle which is based on this subjective condition may serve indeed as a maxim for the subject which possesses this susceptibility, but not as a law even to him (because it is wanting in objective necessity, which must be recognized a priori); it follows, therefore, that such a principle can never furnish a practical law. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 20} iii. theorem ii. all material practical principles as such are of one and the same kind and come under the general principle of self-love or private happiness. pleasure arising from the idea of the idea of the existence of a thing, in so far as it is to determine the desire of this thing, is founded on the susceptibility of the subject, since it depends on the presence of an object; hence it belongs to sense (feeling), and not to understanding, which expresses a relation of the idea to an object according to concepts, not to the subject according to feelings. it is, then, practical only in so far as the faculty of desire is determined by the sensation of agreeableness which the subject expects from the actual existence of the object. now, a rational being's consciousness of the pleasantness of life uninterruptedly accompanying his whole existence is happiness; and the principle which makes this the supreme ground of determination of the will is the principle of self-love. all material principles, then, which place the determining ground of the will in the pleasure or pain to be received from the existence of any object are all of the same kind, inasmuch as they all belong to the principle of self-love or private happiness. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 25} corollary. all material practical rules place the determining principle of the will in the lower desires; and if there were no purely formal laws of the will adequate to determine it, then we could not admit any higher desire at all. remark i. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 30} it is surprising that men, otherwise acute, can think it possible to distinguish between higher and lower desires, according as the ideas which are connected with the feeling of pleasure have their origin in the senses or in the understanding; for when we inquire what are the determining grounds of desire, and place them in some expected pleasantness, it is of no consequence whence the idea of this pleasing object is derived, but only how much it pleases. whether an idea has its seat and source in the understanding or not, if it can only determine the choice by presupposing a feeling of pleasure in the subject, it follows that its capability of determining the choice depends altogether on the nature of the inner sense, namely, that this can be agreeably affected by it. however dissimilar ideas of objects may be, though they be ideas of the understanding, or even of the reason in contrast to ideas of sense, yet the feeling of pleasure, by means of which they constitute the determining principle of the will (the expected satisfaction which impels the activity to the production of the object), is of one and the same kind, not only inasmuch as it can only be known empirically, but also inasmuch as it affects one and the same vital force which manifests itself in the faculty of desire, and in this respect can only differ in degree from every other ground of determination. otherwise, how could we compare in respect of magnitude two principles of determination, the ideas of which depend upon different faculties, so as to prefer that which affects the faculty of desire in the highest degree. the same man may return unread an instructive book which he cannot again obtain, in order not to miss a hunt; he may depart in the midst of a fine speech, in order not to be late for dinner; he may leave a rational conversation, such as he otherwise values highly, to take his place at the gaming-table; he may even repulse a poor man whom he at other times takes pleasure in benefiting, because he has only just enough money in his pocket to pay for his admission to the theatre. if the determination of his will rests on the feeling of the agreeableness or disagreeableness that he expects from any cause, it is all the same to him by what sort of ideas he will be affected. the only thing that concerns him, in order to decide his choice, is, how great, how long continued, how easily obtained, and how often repeated, this agreeableness is. just as to the man who wants money to spend, it is all the same whether the gold was dug out of the mountain or washed out of the sand, provided it is everywhere accepted at the same value; so the man who cares only for the enjoyment of life does not ask whether the ideas are of the understanding or the senses, but only how much and how great pleasure they will give for the longest time. it is only those that would gladly deny to pure reason the power of determining the will, without the presupposition of any feeling, who could deviate so far from their own exposition as to describe as quite heterogeneous what they have themselves previously brought under one and the same principle. thus, for example, it is observed that we can find pleasure in the mere exercise of power, in the consciousness of our strength of mind in overcoming obstacles which are opposed to our designs, in the culture of our mental talents, etc.; and we justly call these more refined pleasures and enjoyments, because they are more in our power than others; they do not wear out, but rather increase the capacity for further enjoyment of them, and while they delight they at the same time cultivate. but to say on this account that they determine the will in a different way and not through sense, whereas the possibility of the pleasure presupposes a feeling for it implanted in us, which is the first condition of this satisfaction; this is just as when ignorant persons that like to dabble in metaphysics imagine matter so subtle, so supersubtle that they almost make themselves giddy with it, and then think that in this way they have conceived it as a spiritual and yet extended being. if with epicurus we make virtue determine the will only by means of the pleasure it promises, we cannot afterwards blame him for holding that this pleasure is of the same kind as those of the coarsest senses. for we have no reason whatever to charge him with holding that the ideas by which this feeling is excited in us belong merely to the bodily senses. as far as can be conjectured, he sought the source of many of them in the use of the higher cognitive faculty, but this did not prevent him, and could not prevent him, from holding on the principle above stated, that the pleasure itself which those intellectual ideas give us, and by which alone they can determine the will, is just of the same kind. consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher, and yet the most rarely found. the ancient greek schools give us more examples of it than we find in our syncretistic age, in which a certain shallow and dishonest system of compromise of contradictory principles is devised, because it commends itself better to a public which is content to know something of everything and nothing thoroughly, so as to please every party. the principle of private happiness, however much understanding and reason may be used in it, cannot contain any other determining principles for the will than those which belong to the lower desires; and either there are no [higher] desires at all, or pure reason must of itself alone be practical; that is, it must be able to determine the will by the mere form of the practical rule without supposing any feeling, and consequently without any idea of the pleasant or unpleasant, which is the matter of the desire, and which is always an empirical condition of the principles. then only, when reason of itself determines the will (not as the servant of the inclination), it is really a higher desire to which that which is pathologically determined is subordinate, and is really, and even specifically, distinct from the latter, so that even the slightest admixture of the motives of the latter impairs its strength and superiority; just as in a mathematical demonstration the least empirical condition would degrade and destroy its force and value. reason, with its practical law, determines the will immediately, not by means of an intervening feeling of pleasure or pain, not even of pleasure in the law itself, and it is only because it can, as pure reason, be practical, that it is possible for it to be legislative. remark ii. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 35} to be happy is necessarily the wish of every finite rational being, and this, therefore, is inevitably a determining principle of its faculty of desire. for we are not in possession originally of satisfaction with our whole existencea bliss which would imply a consciousness of our own independent self-sufficiency this is a problem imposed upon us by our own finite nature, because we have wants and these wants regard the matter of our desires, that is, something that is relative to a subjective feeling of pleasure or pain, which determines what we need in order to be satisfied with our condition. but just because this material principle of determination can only be empirically known by the subject, it is impossible to regard this problem as a law; for a law being objective must contain the very same principle of determination of the will in all cases and for all rational beings. for, although the notion of happiness is in every case the foundation of practical relation of the objects to the desires, yet it is only a general name for the subjective determining principles, and determines nothing specifically; whereas this is what alone we are concerned with in this practical problem, which cannot be solved at all without such specific determination. for it is every man's own special feeling of pleasure and pain that decides in what he is to place his happiness, and even in the same subject this will vary with the difference of his wants according as this feeling changes, and thus a law which is subjectively necessary (as a law of nature) is objectively a very contingent practical principle, which can and must be very different in different subjects and therefore can never furnish a law; since, in the desire for happiness it is not the form (of conformity to law) that is decisive, but simply the matter, namely, whether i am to expect pleasure in following the law, and how much. principles of self-love may, indeed, contain universal precepts of skill (how to find means to accomplish one's purpose), but in that case they are merely theoretical principles; * as, for example, how he who would like to eat bread should contrive a mill; but practical precepts founded on them can never be universal, for the determining principle of the desire is based on the feeling pleasure and pain, which can never be supposed to be universally directed to the same objects. * propositions which in mathematics or physics are called practical ought properly to be called technical. for they have nothing to do with the determination of the will; they only point out how a certain effect is to be produced and are, therefore, just as theoretical as any propositions which express the connection of a cause with an effect. now whoever chooses the effect must also choose the cause. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 40} even supposing, however, that all finite rational beings were thoroughly agreed as to what were the objects of their feelings of pleasure and pain, and also as to the means which they must employ to attain the one and avoid the other; still, they could by no means set up the principle of self-love as a practical law, for this unanimity itself would be only contingent. the principle of determination would still be only subjectively valid and merely empirical, and would not possess the necessity which is conceived in every law, namely, an objective necessity arising from a priori grounds; unless, indeed, we hold this necessity to be not at all practical, but merely physical, viz., that our action is as inevitably determined by our inclination, as yawning when we see others yawn. it would be better to maintain that there are no practical laws at all, but only counsels for the service of our desires, than to raise merely subjective principles to the rank of practical laws, which have objective necessity, and not merely subjective, and which must be known by reason a priori, not by experience (however empirically universal this may be). even the rules of corresponding phenomena are only called laws of nature (e.g., the mechanical laws), when we either know them really a priori, or (as in the case of chemical laws) suppose that they would be known a priori from objective grounds if our insight reached further. but in the case of merely subjective practical principles, it is expressly made a condition that they rest, not on objective, but on subjective conditions of choice, and hence that they must always be represented as mere maxims, never as practical laws. this second remark seems at first sight to be mere verbal refinement, but it defines the terms of the most important distinction which can come into consideration in practical investigations. iv. theorem ii. a rational being cannot regard his maxims as practical universal laws, unless he conceives them as principles which determine the will, not by their matter, but by their form only. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 45} by the matter of a practical principle i mean the object of the will. this object is either the determining ground of the will or it is not. in the former case the rule of the will is subjected to an empirical condition (viz., the relation of the determining idea to the feeling of pleasure and pain), consequently it can not be a practical law. now, when we abstract from a law all matter, i.e., every object of the will (as a determining principle), nothing is left but the mere form of a universal legislation. therefore, either a rational being cannot conceive his subjective practical principles, that is, his maxims, as being at the same time universal laws, or he must suppose that their mere form, by which they are fitted for universal legislation, is alone what makes them practical laws. remark. the commonest understanding can distinguish without instruction what form of maxim is adapted for universal legislation, and what is not. suppose, for example, that i have made it my maxim to increase my fortune by every safe means. now, i have a deposit in my hands, the owner of which is dead and has left no writing about it. this is just the case for my maxim. i desire then to know whether that maxim can also bold good as a universal practical law. i apply it, therefore, to the present case, and ask whether it could take the form of a law, and consequently whether i can by my maxim at the same time give such a law as this, that everyone may deny a deposit of which no one can produce a proof. i at once become aware that such a principle, viewed as a law, would annihilate itself, because the result would be that there would be no deposits. a practical law which i recognise as such must be qualified for universal legislation; this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. now, if i say that my will is subject to a practical law, i cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put in the form of a universal law, it would destroy itself. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 50} it is, therefore, surprising that intelligent men could have thought of calling the desire of happiness a universal practical law on the ground that the desire is universal, and, therefore, also the maxim by which everyone makes this desire determine his will. for whereas in other cases a universal law of nature makes everything harmonious; here, on the contrary, if we attribute to the maxim the universality of a law, the extreme opposite of harmony will follow, the greatest opposition and the complete destruction of the maxim itself and its purpose. for, in that case, the will of all has not one and the same object, but everyone has his own (his private welfare), which may accidentally accord with the purposes of others which are equally selfish, but it is far from sufficing for a law; because the occasional exceptions which one is permitted to make are endless, and cannot be definitely embraced in one universal rule. in this manner, then, results a harmony like that which a certain satirical poem depicts as existing between a married couple bent on going to ruin, "o, marvellous harmony, what he wishes, she wishes also"; or like what is said of the pledge of francis i to the emperor charles v, "what my brother charles wishes that i wish also" (viz., milan). empirical principles of determination are not fit for any universal external legislation, but just as little for internal; for each man makes his own subject the foundation of his inclination, and in the same subject sometimes one inclination, sometimes another, has the preponderance. to discover a law which would govern them all under this condition, namely, bringing them all into harmony, is quite impossible. v. problem i. supposing that the mere legislative form of maxims is alone the sufficient determining principle of a will, to find the nature of the will which can be determined by it alone. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 55} since the bare form of the law can only be conceived by reason, and is, therefore, not an object of the senses, and consequently does not belong to the class of phenomena, it follows that the idea of it, which determines the will, is distinct from all the principles that determine events in nature according to the law of causality, because in their case the determining principles must themselves be phenomena. now, if no other determining principle can serve as a law for the will except that universal legislative form, such a will must be conceived as quite independent of the natural law of phenomena in their mutual relation, namely, the law of causality; such independence is called freedom in the strictest, that is, in the transcendental, sense; consequently, a will which can have its law in nothing but the mere legislative form of the maxim is a free will. vi. problem ii. supposing that a will is free, to find the law which alone is competent to determine it necessarily. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 60} since the matter of the practical law, i.e., an object of the maxim, can never be given otherwise than empirically, and the free will is independent on empirical conditions (that is, conditions belonging to the world of sense) and yet is determinable, consequently a free will must find its principle of determination in the law, and yet independently of the matter of the law. but, besides the matter of the law, nothing is contained in it except the legislative form. it is the legislative form, then, contained in the maxim, which can alone constitute a principle of determination of the [free] will. remark. thus freedom and an unconditional practical law reciprocally imply each other. now i do not ask here whether they are in fact distinct, or whether an unconditioned law is not rather merely the consciousness of a pure practical reason and the latter identical with the positive concept of freedom; i only ask, whence begins our knowledge of the unconditionally practical, whether it is from freedom or from the practical law? now it cannot begin from freedom, for of this we cannot be immediately conscious, since the first concept of it is negative; nor can we infer it from experience, for experience gives us the knowledge only of the law of phenomena, and hence of the mechanism of nature, the direct opposite of freedom. it is therefore the moral law, of which we become directly conscious (as soon as we trace for ourselves maxims of the will), that first presents itself to us, and leads directly to the concept of freedom, inasmuch as reason presents it as a principle of determination not to be outweighed by any sensible conditions, nay, wholly independent of them. but how is the consciousness, of that moral law possible? we can become conscious of pure practical laws just as we are conscious of pure theoretical principles, by attending to the necessity with which reason prescribes them and to the elimination of all empirical conditions, which it directs. the concept of a pure will arises out of the former, as that of a pure understanding arises out of the latter. that this is the true subordination of our concepts, and that it is morality that first discovers to us the notion of freedom, hence that it is practical reason which, with this concept, first proposes to speculative reason the most insoluble problem, thereby placing it in the greatest perplexity, is evident from the following consideration: since nothing in phenomena can be explained by the concept of freedom, but the mechanism of nature must constitute the only clue; moreover, when pure reason tries to ascend in the series of causes to the unconditioned, it falls into an antinomy which is entangled in incomprehensibilities on the one side as much as the other; whilst the latter (namely, mechanism) is at least useful in the explanation of phenomena, therefore no one would ever have been so rash as to introduce freedom into science, had not the moral law, and with it practical reason, come in and forced this notion upon us. experience, however, confirms this order of notions. suppose some one asserts of his lustful appetite that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible. [ask him]if a gallows were erected before the house where he finds this opportunity, in order that he should be hanged thereon immediately after the gratification of his lust, whether he could not then control his passion; we need not be long in doubt what he would reply. ask him, howeverif his sovereign ordered him, on pain of the same immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable man, whom the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible pretext, would he consider it possible in that case to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. he would perhaps not venture to affirm whether he would do so or not, but he must unhesitatingly admit that it is possible to do so. he judges, therefore, that he can do a certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes that he is freea fact which but for the moral law he would never have known. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 65} vii. fundamental law of the pure practical reason. act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 70} remark. pure geometry has postulates which are practical propositions, but contain nothing further than the assumption that we can do something if it is required that we should do it, and these are the only geometrical propositions that concern actual existence. they are, then, practical rules under a problematical condition of the will; but here the rule says: we absolutely must proceed in a certain manner. the practical rule is, therefore, unconditional, and hence it is conceived a priori as a categorically practical proposition by which the will is objectively determined absolutely and immediately (by the practical rule itself, which thus is in this case a law); for pure reason practical of itself is here directly legislative. the will is thought as independent on empirical conditions, and, therefore, as pure will determined by the mere form of the law, and this principle of determination is regarded as the supreme condition of all maxims. the thing is strange enough, and has no parallel in all the rest of our practical knowledge. for the a priori thought of a possible universal legislation which is therefore merely problematical, is unconditionally commanded as a law without borrowing anything from experience or from any external will. this, however, is not a precept to do something by which some desired effect can be attained (for then the will would depend on physical conditions), but a rule that determines the will a priori only so far as regards the forms of its maxims; and thus it is at least not impossible to conceive that a law, which only applies to the subjective form of principles, yet serves as a principle of determination by means of the objective form of law in general. we may call the consciousness of this fundamental law a fact of reason, because we cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, e.g., the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given), but it forces itself on us as a synthetic a priori proposition, which is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical. it would, indeed, be analytical if the freedom of the will were presupposed, but to presuppose freedom as a positive concept would require an intellectual intuition, which cannot here be assumed; however, when we regard this law as given, it must be observed, in order not to fall into any misconception, that it is not an empirical fact, but the sole fact of the pure reason, which thereby announces itself as originally legislative (sic volo, sic jubeo). corollary. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 75} pure reason is practical of itself alone and gives (to man) a universal law which we call the moral law. remark. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 80} the fact just mentioned is undeniable. it is only necessary to analyse the judgement that men pass on the lawfulness of their actions, in order to find that, whatever inclination may say to the contrary, reason, incorruptible and self-constrained, always confronts the maxim of the will in any action with the pure will, that is, with itself, considering itself as a priori practical. now this principle of morality, just on account of the universality of the legislation which makes it the formal supreme determining principle of the will, without regard to any subjective differences, is declared by the reason to be a law for all rational beings, in so far as they have a will, that is, a power to determine their causality by the conception of rules; and, therefore, so far as they are capable of acting according to principles, and consequently also according to practical a priori principles (for these alone have the necessity that reason requires in a principle). it is, therefore, not limited to men only, but applies to all finite beings that possess reason and will; nay, it even includes the infinite being as the supreme intelligence. in the former case, however, the law has the form of an imperative, because in them, as rational beings, we can suppose a pure will, but being creatures affected with wants and physical motives, not a holy will, that is, one which would be incapable of any maxim conflicting with the moral law. in their case, therefore, the moral law is an imperative, which commands categorically, because the law is unconditioned; the relation of such a will to this law is dependence under the name of obligation, which implies a constraint to an action, though only by reason and its objective law; and this action is called duty, because an elective will, subject to pathological affections (though not determined by them, and, therefore, still free), implies a wish that arises from subjective causes and, therefore, may often be opposed to the pure objective determining principle; whence it requires the moral constraint of a resistance of the practical reason, which may be called an internal, but intellectual, compulsion. in the supreme intelligence the elective will is rightly conceived as incapable of any maxim which could not at the same time be objectively a law; and the notion of holiness, which on that account belongs to it, places it, not indeed above all practical laws, but above all practically restrictive laws, and consequently above obligation and duty. this holiness of will is, however, a practical idea, which must necessarily serve as a type to which finite rational beings can only approximate indefinitely, and which the pure moral law, which is itself on this account called holy, constantly and rightly holds before their eyes. the utmost that finite practical reason can effect is to be certain of this indefinite progress of one's maxims and of their steady disposition to advance. this is virtue, and virtue, at least as a naturally acquired faculty, can never be perfect, because assurance in such a case never becomes apodeictic certainty and, when it only amounts to persuasion, is very dangerous. viii. theorem iv. the autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of all duties which conform to them; on the other hand, heteronomy of the elective will not only cannot be the basis of any obligation, but is, on the contrary, opposed to the principle thereof and to the morality of the will. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 85} in fact the sole principle of morality consists in the independence on all matter of the law (namely, a desired object), and in the determination of the elective will by the mere universal legislative form of which its maxim must be capable. now this independence is freedom in the negative sense, and this self-legislation of the pure, and therefore practical, reason is freedom in the positive sense. thus the moral law expresses nothing else than the autonomy of the pure practical reason; that is, freedom; and this is itself the formal condition of all maxims, and on this condition only can they agree with the supreme practical law. if therefore the matter of the volition, which can be nothing else than the object of a desire that is connected with the law, enters into the practical law, as the condition of its possibility, there results heteronomy of the elective will, namely, dependence on the physical law that we should follow some impulse or inclination. in that case the will does not give itself the law, but only the precept how rationally to follow pathological law; and the maxim which, in such a case, never contains the universally legislative form, not only produces no obligation, but is itself opposed to the principle of a pure practical reason and, therefore, also to the moral disposition, even though the resulting action may be conformable to the law. remark. hence a practical precept, which contains a material (and therefore empirical) condition, must never be reckoned a practical law. for the law of the pure will, which is free, brings the will into a sphere quite different from the empirical; and as the necessity involved in the law is not a physical necessity, it can only consist in the formal conditions of the possibility of a law in general. all the matter of practical rules rests on subjective conditions, which give them only a conditional universality (in case i desire this or that, what i must do in order to obtain it), and they all turn on the principle of private happiness. now, it is indeed undeniable that every volition must have an object, and therefore a matter; but it does not follow that this is the determining principle and the condition of the maxim; for, if it is so, then this cannot be exhibited in a universally legislative form, since in that case the expectation of the existence of the object would be the determining cause of the choice, and the volition must presuppose the dependence of the faculty of desire on the existence of something; but this dependence can only be sought in empirical conditions and, therefore, can never furnish a foundation for a necessary and universal rule. thus, the happiness of others may be the object of the will of a rational being. but if it were the determining principle of the maxim, we must assume that we find not only a rational satisfaction in the welfare of others, but also a want such as the sympathetic disposition in some men occasions. but i cannot assume the existence of this want in every rational being (not at all in god). the matter, then, of the maxim may remain, but it must not be the condition of it, else the maxim could not be fit for a law. hence, the mere form of law, which limits the matter, must also be a reason for adding this matter to the will, not for presupposing it. for example, let the matter be my own happiness. this (rule), if i attribute it to everyone (as, in fact, i may, in the case of every finite being), can become an objective practical law only if i include the happiness of others. therefore, the law that we should promote the happiness of others does not arise from the assumption that this is an object of everyone's choice, but merely from this, that the form of universality which reason requires as the condition of giving to a maxim of self-love the objective validity of a law is the principle that determines the will. therefore it was not the object (the happiness of others) that determined the pure will, but it was the form of law only, by which i restricted my maxim, founded on inclination, so as to give it the universality of a law, and thus to adapt it to the practical reason; and it is this restriction alone, and not the addition of an external spring, that can give rise to the notion of the obligation to extend the maxim of my self-love to the happiness of others. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 90} remark ii. the direct opposite of the principle of morality is, when the principle of private happiness is made the determining principle of the will, and with this is to be reckoned, as i have shown above, everything that places the determining principle which is to serve as a law, anywhere but in the legislative form of the maxim. this contradiction, however, is not merely logical, like that which would arise between rules empirically conditioned, if they were raised to the rank of necessary principles of cognition, but is practical, and would ruin morality altogether were not the voice of reason in reference to the will so clear, so irrepressible, so distinctly audible, even to the commonest men. it can only, indeed, be maintained in the perplexing speculations of the schools, which are bold enough to shut their ears against that heavenly voice, in order to support a theory that costs no trouble. suppose that an acquaintance whom you otherwise liked were to attempt to justify himself to you for having borne false witness, first by alleging the, in his view, sacred duty of consulting his own happiness; then by enumerating the advantages which he had gained thereby, pointing out the prudence he had shown in securing himself against detection, even by yourself, to whom he now reveals the secret, only in order that he may be able to deny it at any time; and suppose he were then to affirm, in all seriousness, that he has fulfilled a true human duty; you would either laugh in his face, or shrink back from him with disgust; and yet, if a man has regulated his principles of action solely with a view to his own advantage, you would have nothing whatever to object against this mode of proceeding. or suppose some one recommends you a man as steward, as a man to whom you can blindly trust all your affairs; and, in order to inspire you with confidence, extols him as a prudent man who thoroughly understands his own interest, and is so indefatigably active that he lets slip no opportunity of advancing it; lastly, lest you should be afraid of finding a vulgar selfishness in him, praises the good taste with which he lives; not seeking his pleasure in money-making, or in coarse wantonness, but in the enlargement of his knowledge, in instructive intercourse with a select circle, and even in relieving the needy; while as to the means (which, of course, derive all their value from the end), he is not particular, and is ready to use other people's money for the purpose as if it were his own, provided only he knows that he can do so safely, and without discovery; you would either believe that the recommender was mocking you, or that he had lost his senses. so sharply and clearly marked are the boundaries of morality and self-love that even the commonest eye cannot fail to distinguish whether a thing belongs to the one or the other. the few remarks that follow may appear superfluous where the truth is so plain, but at least they may serve to give a little more distinctness to the judgement of common sense. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 95} the principle of happiness may, indeed, furnish maxims, but never such as would be competent to be laws of the will, even if universal happiness were made the object. for since the knowledge of this rests on mere empirical data, since every man's judgement on it depends very much on his particular point of view, which is itself moreover very variable, it can supply only general rules, not universal; that is, it can give rules which on the average will most frequently fit, but not rules which must hold good always and necessarily; hence, no practical laws can be founded on it. just because in this case an object of choice is the foundation of the rule and must therefore precede it, the rule can refer to nothing but what is [felt], and therefore it refers to experience and is founded on it, and then the variety of judgement must be endless. this principle, therefore, does not prescribe the same practical rules to all rational beings, although the rules are all included under a common title, namely, that of happiness. the moral law, however, is conceived as objectively necessary, only because it holds for everyone that has reason and will. the maxim of self-love (prudence) only advises; the law of morality commands. now there is a great difference between that which we are advised to do and that to which we are obliged. the commonest intelligence can easily and without hesitation see what, on the principle of autonomy of the will, requires to be done; but on supposition of heteronomy of the will, it is hard and requires knowledge of the world to see what is to be done. that is to say, what duty is, is plain of itself to everyone; but what is to bring true durable advantage, such as will extend to the whole of one's existence, is always veiled in impenetrable obscurity; and much prudence is required to adapt the practical rule founded on it to the ends of life, even tolerably, by making proper exceptions. but the moral law commands the most punctual obedience from everyone; it must, therefore, not be so difficult to judge what it requires to be done, that the commonest unpractised understanding, even without worldly prudence, should fail to apply it rightly. it is always in everyone's power to satisfy the categorical command of morality; whereas it is seldom possible, and by no means so to everyone, to satisfy the empirically conditioned precept of happiness, even with regard to a single purpose. the reason is that in the former case there is question only of the maxim, which must be genuine and pure; but in the latter case there is question also of one's capacity and physical power to realize a desired object. a command that everyone should try to make himself happy would be foolish, for one never commands anyone to do what he of himself infallibly wishes to do. we must only command the means, or rather supply them, since he cannot do everything that he wishes. but to command morality under the name of duty is quite rational; for, in the first place, not everyone is willing to obey its precepts if they oppose his inclinations; and as to the means of obeying this law, these need not in this case be taught, for in this respect whatever he wishes to do he can do. he who has lost at play may be vexed at himself and his folly, but if he is conscious of having cheated at play (although he has gained thereby), he must despise himself as soon as he compares himself with the moral law. this must, therefore, be something different from the principle of private happiness. for a man must have a different criterion when he is compelled to say to himself: "i am a worthless fellow, though i have filled my purse"; and when he approves himself, and says: "i am a prudent man, for i have enriched my treasure." {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 100} finally, there is something further in the idea of our practical reason, which accompanies the transgression of a moral lawnamely, its ill desert. now the notion of punishment, as such, cannot be united with that of becoming a partaker of happiness; for although he who inflicts the punishment may at the same time have the benevolent purpose of directing this punishment to this end, yet it must first be justified in itself as punishment, i.e., as mere harm, so that if it stopped there, and the person punished could get no glimpse of kindness hidden behind this harshness, he must yet admit that justice was done him, and that his reward was perfectly suitable to his conduct. in every punishment, as such, there must first be justice, and this constitutes the essence of the notion. benevolence may, indeed, be united with it, but the man who has deserved punishment has not the least reason to reckon upon this. punishment, then, is a physical evil, which, though it be not connected with moral evil as a natural consequence, ought to be connected with it as a consequence by the principles of a moral legislation. now, if every crime, even without regarding the physical consequence with respect to the actor, is in itself punishable, that is, forfeits happiness (at least partially), it is obviously absurd to say that the crime consisted just in this, that he has drawn punishment on himself, thereby injuring his private happiness (which, on the principle of self-love, must be the proper notion of all crime). according to this view, the punishment would be the reason for calling anything a crime, and justice would, on the contrary, consist in omitting all punishment, and even preventing that which naturally follows; for, if this were done, there would no longer be any evil in the action, since the harm which otherwise followed it, and on account of which alone the action was called evil, would now be prevented. to look, however, on all rewards and punishments as merely the machinery in the hand of a higher power, which is to serve only to set rational creatures striving after their final end (happiness), this is to reduce the will to a mechanism destructive of freedom; this is so evident that it need not detain us. more refined, though equally false, is the theory of those who suppose a certain special moral sense, which sense and not reason determines the moral law, and in consequence of which the consciousness of virtue is supposed to be directly connected with contentment and pleasure; that of vice, with mental dissatisfaction and pain; thus reducing the whole to the desire of private happiness. without repeating what has been said above, i will here only remark the fallacy they fall into. in order to imagine the vicious man as tormented with mental dissatisfaction by the consciousness of his transgressions, they must first represent him as in the main basis of his character, at least in some degree, morally good; just as he who is pleased with the consciousness of right conduct must be conceived as already virtuous. the notion of morality and duty must, therefore, have preceded any regard to this satisfaction, and cannot be derived from it. a man must first appreciate the importance of what we call duty, the authority of the moral law, and the immediate dignity which the following of it gives to the person in his own eyes, in order to feel that satisfaction in the consciousness of his conformity to it and the bitter remorse that accompanies the consciousness of its transgression. it is, therefore, impossible to feel this satisfaction or dissatisfaction prior to the knowledge of obligation, or to make it the basis of the latter. a man must be at least half honest in order even to be able to form a conception of these feelings. i do not deny that as the human will is, by virtue of liberty, capable of being immediately determined by the moral law, so frequent practice in accordance with this principle of determination can, at least, produce subjectively a feeling of satisfaction; on the contrary, it is a duty to establish and to cultivate this, which alone deserves to be called properly the moral feeling; but the notion of duty cannot be derived from it, else we should have to suppose a feeling for the law as such, and thus make that an object of sensation which can only be thought by the reason; and this, if it is not to be a flat contradiction, would destroy all notion of duty and put in its place a mere mechanical play of refined inclinations sometimes contending with the coarser. if now we compare our formal supreme principle of pure practical reason (that of autonomy of the will) with all previous material principles of morality, we can exhibit them all in a table in which all possible cases are exhausted, except the one formal principle; and thus we can show visibly that it is vain to look for any other principle than that now proposed. in fact all possible principles of determination of the will are either merely subjective, and therefore empirical, or are also objective and rational; and both are either external or internal. practical material principles of determination taken as the foundation of morality, are: {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 105} subjective. external internal education physical feeling {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 110} (montaigne) (epicurus) the civil moral feeling constitution (hutcheson) (mandeville) {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 115} objective. internal external perfection will of god (wolf and the (crusius and other {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 120} stoics) theological moralists) those of the upper table are all empirical and evidently incapable of furnishing the universal principle of morality; but those in the lower table are based on reason (for perfection as a quality of things, and the highest perfection conceived as substance, that is, god, can only be thought by means of rational concepts). but the former notion, namely, that of perfection, may either be taken in a theoretic signification, and then it means nothing but the completeness of each thing in its own kind (transcendental), or that of a thing merely as a thing (metaphysical); and with that we are not concerned here. but the notion of perfection in a practical sense is the fitness or sufficiency of a thing for all sorts of purposes. this perfection, as a quality of man and consequently internal, is nothing but talent and, what strengthens or completes this, skill. supreme perfection conceived as substance, that is god, and consequently external (considered practically), is the sufficiency of this being for all ends. ends then must first be given, relatively to which only can the notion of perfection (whether internal in ourselves or external in god) be the determining principle of the will. but an endbeing an object which must precede the determination of the will by a practical rule and contain the ground of the possibility of this determination, and therefore contain also the matter of the will, taken as its determining principlesuch an end is always empirical and, therefore, may serve for the epicurean principle of the happiness theory, but not for the pure rational principle of morality and duty. thus, talents and the improvement of them, because they contribute to the advantages of life; or the will of god, if agreement with it be taken as the object of the will, without any antecedent independent practical principle, can be motives only by reason of the happiness expected therefrom. hence it follows, first, that all the principles here stated are material; secondly, that they include all possible material principles; and, finally, the conclusion, that since material principles are quite incapable of furnishing the supreme moral law (as has been shown), the formal practical principle of the pure reason (according to which the mere form of a universal legislation must constitute the supreme and immediate determining principle of the will) is the only one possible which is adequate to furnish categorical imperatives, that is, practical laws (which make actions a duty), and in general to serve as the principle of morality, both in criticizing conduct and also in its application to the human will to determine it. i. of the deduction of the fundamental principles of pure practical reason. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 125} this analytic shows that pure reason can be practical, that is, can of itself determine the will independently of anything empirical; and this it proves by a fact in which pure reason in us proves itself actually practical, namely, the autonomy shown in the fundamental principle of morality, by which reason determines the will to action. it shows at the same time that this fact is inseparably connected with the consciousness of freedom of the will, nay, is identical with it; and by this the will of a rational being, although as belonging to the world of sense it recognizes itself as necessarily subject to the laws of causality like other efficient causes; yet, at the same time, on another side, namely, as a being in itself, is conscious of existing in and being determined by an intelligible order of things; conscious not by virtue of a special intuition of itself, but by virtue of certain dynamical laws which determine its causality in the sensible world; for it has been elsewhere proved that if freedom is predicated of us, it transports us into an intelligible order of things. now, if we compare with this the analytical part of the critique of pure speculative reason, we shall see a remarkable contrast. there it was not fundamental principles, but pure, sensible intuition (space and time), that was the first datum that made a priori knowledge possible, though only of objects of the senses. synthetical principles could not be derived from mere concepts without intuition; on the contrary, they could only exist with reference to this intuition, and therefore to objects of possible experience, since it is the concepts of the understanding, united with this intuition, which alone make that knowledge possible which we call experience. beyond objects of experience, and therefore with regard to things as noumena, all positive knowledge was rightly disclaimed for speculative reason. this reason, however, went so far as to establish with certainty the concept of noumena; that is, the possibility, nay, the necessity, of thinking them; for example, it showed against all objections that the supposition of freedom, negatively considered, was quite consistent with those principles and limitations of pure theoretic reason. but it could not give us any definite enlargement of our knowledge with respect to such objects, but, on the contrary, cut off all view of them altogether. on the other hand, the moral law, although it gives no view, yet gives us a fact absolutely inexplicable from any data of the sensible world, and the whole compass of our theoretical use of reason, a fact which points to a pure world of the understanding, nay, even defines it positively and enables us to know something of it, namely, a law. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 130} this law (as far as rational beings are concerned) gives to the world of sense, which is a sensible system of nature, the form of a world of the understanding, that is, of a supersensible system of nature, without interfering with its mechanism. now, a system of nature, in the most general sense, is the existence of things under laws. the sensible nature of rational beings in general is their existence under laws empirically conditioned, which, from the point of view of reason, is heteronomy. the supersensible nature of the same beings, on the other hand, is their existence according to laws which are independent of every empirical condition and, therefore, belong to the autonomy of pure reason. and, since the laws by which the existence of things depends on cognition are practical, supersensible nature, so far as we can form any notion of it, is nothing else than a system of nature under the autonomy of pure practical reason. now, the law of this autonomy is the moral law, which, therefore, is the fundamental law of a supersensible nature, and of a pure world of understanding, whose counterpart must exist in the world of sense, but without interfering with its laws. we might call the former the archetypal world (natura archetypa), which we only know in the reason; and the latter the ectypal world (natura ectypa), because it contains the possible effect of the idea of the former which is the determining principle of the will. for the moral law, in fact, transfers us ideally into a system in which pure reason, if it were accompanied with adequate physical power, would produce the summum bonum, and it determines our will to give the sensible world the form of a system of rational beings. the least attention to oneself proves that this idea really serves as the model for the determinations of our will. when the maxim which i am disposed to follow in giving testimony is tested by the practical reason, i always consider what it would be if it were to hold as a universal law of nature. it is manifest that in this view it would oblige everyone to speak the truth. for it cannot hold as a universal law of nature that statements should be allowed to have the force of proof and yet to be purposely untrue. similarly, the maxim which i adopt with respect to disposing freely of my life is at once determined, when i ask myself what it should be, in order that a system, of which it is the law, should maintain itself. it is obvious that in such a system no one could arbitrarily put an end to his own life, for such an arrangement would not be a permanent order of things. and so in all similar cases. now, in nature, as it actually is an object of experience, the free will is not of itself determined to maxims which could of themselves be the foundation of a natural system of universal laws, or which could even be adapted to a system so constituted; on the contrary, its maxims are private inclinations which constitute, indeed, a natural whole in conformity with pathological (physical) laws, but could not form part of a system of nature, which would only be possible through our will acting in accordance with pure practical laws. yet we are, through reason, conscious of a law to which all our maxims are subject, as though a natural order must be originated from our will. this law, therefore, must be the idea of a natural system not given in experience, and yet possible through freedom; a system, therefore, which is supersensible, and to which we give objective reality, at least in a practical point of view, since we look on it as an object of our will as pure rational beings. hence the distinction between the laws of a natural system to which the will is subject, and of a natural system which is subject to a will (as far as its relation to its free actions is concerned), rests on this, that in the former the objects must be causes of the ideas which determine the will; whereas in the latter the will is the cause of the objects; so that its causality has its determining principle solely in the pure faculty of reason, which may therefore be called a pure practical reason. there are therefore two very distinct problems: how, on the one side, pure reason can cognise objects a priori, and how on the other side it can be an immediate determining principle of the will, that is, of the causality of the rational being with respect to the reality of objects (through the mere thought of the universal validity of its own maxims as laws). {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 135} the former, which belongs to the critique of the pure speculative reason, requires a previous explanation, how intuitions without which no object can be given, and, therefore, none known synthetically, are possible a priori; and its solution turns out to be that these are all only sensible and, therefore, do not render possible any speculative knowledge which goes further than possible experience reaches; and that therefore all the principles of that pure speculative reason avail only to make experience possible; either experience of given objects or of those that may be given ad infinitum, but never are completely given. the latter, which belongs to the critique of practical reason, requires no explanation how the objects of the faculty of desire are possible, for that being a problem of the theoretical knowledge of nature is left to the critique of the speculative reason, but only how reason can determine the maxims of the will; whether this takes place only by means of empirical ideas as principles of determination, or whether pure reason can be practical and be the law of a possible order of nature, which is not empirically knowable. the possibility of such a supersensible system of nature, the conception of which can also be the ground of its reality through our own free will, does not require any a priori intuition (of an intelligible world) which, being in this case supersensible, would be impossible for us. for the question is only as to the determining principle of volition in its maxims, namely, whether it is empirical, or is a conception of the pure reason (having the legal character belonging to it in general), and how it can be the latter. it is left to the theoretic principles of reason to decide whether the causality of the will suffices for the realization of the objects or not, this being an inquiry into the possibility of the objects of the volition. intuition of these objects is therefore of no importance to the practical problem. we are here concerned only with the determination of the will and the determining principles of its maxims as a free will, not at all with the result. for, provided only that the will conforms to the law of pure reason, then let its power in execution be what it may, whether according to these maxims of legislation of a possible system of nature any such system really results or not, this is no concern of the critique, which only inquires whether, and in what way, pure reason can be practical, that is directly determine the will. in this inquiry criticism may and must begin with pure practical laws and their reality. but instead of intuition it takes as their foundation the conception of their existence in the intelligible world, namely, the concept of freedom. for this concept has no other meaning, and these laws are only possible in relation to freedom of the will; but freedom being supposed, they are necessary; or conversely freedom is necessary because those laws are necessary, being practical postulates. it cannot be further explained how this consciousness of the moral law, or, what is the same thing, of freedom, is possible; but that it is admissible is well established in the theoretical critique. the exposition of the supreme principle of practical reason is now finished; that is to say, it has been shown first, what it contains, that it subsists for itself quite a priori and independent of empirical principles; and next in what it is distinguished from all other practical principles. with the deduction, that is, the justification of its objective and universal validity, and the discernment of the possibility of such a synthetical proposition a priori, we cannot expect to succeed so well as in the case of the principles of pure theoretical reason. for these referred to objects of possible experience, namely, to phenomena, and we could prove that these phenomena could be known as objects of experience only by being brought under the categories in accordance with these laws; and consequently that all possible experience must conform to these laws. but i could not proceed in this way with the deduction of the moral law. for this does not concern the knowledge of the properties of objects, which may be given to the reason from some other source; but a knowledge which can itself be the ground of the existence of the objects, and by which reason in a rational being has causality, i.e., pure reason, which can be regarded as a faculty immediately determining the will. now all our human insight is at an end as soon as we have arrived at fundamental powers or faculties, for the possibility of these cannot be understood by any means, and just as little should it be arbitrarily invented and assumed. therefore, in the theoretic use of reason, it is experience alone that can justify us in assuming them. but this expedient of adducing empirical proofs, instead of a deduction from a priori sources of knowledge, is denied us here in respect to the pure practical faculty of reason. for whatever requires to draw the proof of its reality from experience must depend for the grounds of its possibility on principles of experience; and pure, yet practical, reason by its very notion cannot be regarded as such. further, the moral law is given as a fact of pure reason of which we are a priori conscious, and which is apodeictically certain, though it be granted that in experience no example of its exact fulfilment can be found. hence, the objective reality of the moral law cannot be proved by any deduction by any efforts of theoretical reason, whether speculative or empirically supported, and therefore, even if we renounced its apodeictic certainty, it could not be proved a posteriori by experience, and yet it is firmly established of itself. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 140} but instead of this vainly sought deduction of the moral principle, something else is found which was quite unexpected, namely, that this moral principle serves conversely as the principle of the deduction of an inscrutable faculty which no experience could prove, but of which speculative reason was compelled at least to assume the possibility (in order to find amongst its cosmological ideas the unconditioned in the chain of causality, so as not to contradict itself)i mean the faculty of freedom. the moral law, which itself does not require a justification, proves not merely the possibility of freedom, but that it really belongs to beings who recognize this law as binding on themselves. the moral law is in fact a law of the causality of free agents and, therefore, of the possibility of a supersensible system of nature, just as the metaphysical law of events in the world of sense was a law of causality of the sensible system of nature; and it therefore determines what speculative philosophy was compelled to leave undetermined, namely, the law for a causality, the concept of which in the latter was only negative; and therefore for the first time gives this concept objective reality. this sort of credential of the moral law, viz., that it is set forth as a principle of the deduction of freedom, which is a causality of pure reason, is a sufficient substitute for all a priori justification, since theoretic reason was compelled to assume at least the possibility of freedom, in order to satisfy a want of its own. for the moral law proves its reality, so as even to satisfy the critique of the speculative reason, by the fact that it adds a positive definition to a causality previously conceived only negatively, the possibility of which was incomprehensible to speculative reason, which yet was compelled to suppose it. for it adds the notion of a reason that directly determines the will (by imposing on its maxims the condition of a universal legislative form); and thus it is able for the first time to give objective, though only practical, reality to reason, which always became transcendent when it sought to proceed speculatively with its ideas. it thus changes the transcendent use of reason into an immanent use (so that reason is itself, by means of ideas, an efficient cause in the field of experience). the determination of the causality of beings in the world of sense, as such, can never be unconditioned; and yet for every series of conditions there must be something unconditioned, and therefore there must be a causality which is determined wholly by itself. hence, the idea of freedom as a faculty of absolute spontaneity was not found to be a want but, as far as its possibility is concerned, an analytic principle of pure speculative reason. but as it is absolutely impossible to find in experience any example in accordance with this idea, because amongst the causes of things as phenomena it would be impossible to meet with any absolutely unconditioned determination of causality, we were only able to defend our supposition that a freely acting cause might be a being in the world of sense, in so far as it is considered in the other point of view as a noumenon, showing that there is no contradiction in regarding all its actions as subject to physical conditions so far as they are phenomena, and yet regarding its causality as physically unconditioned, in so far as the acting being belongs to the world of understanding, and in thus making the concept of freedom the regulative principle of reason. by this principle i do not indeed learn what the object is to which that sort of causality is attributed; but i remove the difficulty, for, on the one side, in the explanation of events in the world, and consequently also of the actions of rational beings, i leave to the mechanism of physical necessity the right of ascending from conditioned to condition ad infinitum, while on the other side i keep open for speculative reason the place which for it is vacant, namely, the intelligible, in order to transfer the unconditioned thither. but i was not able to verify this supposition; that is, to change it into the knowledge of a being so acting, not even into the knowledge of the possibility of such a being. this vacant place is now filled by pure practical reason with a definite law of causality in an intelligible world (causality with freedom), namely, the moral law. speculative reason does not hereby gain anything as regards its insight, but only as regards the certainty of its problematical notion of freedom, which here obtains objective reality, which, though only practical, is nevertheless undoubted. even the notion of causalitythe application, and consequently the signification, of which holds properly only in relation to phenomena, so as to connect them into experiences (as is shown by the critique of pure reason)is not so enlarged as to extend its use beyond these limits. for if reason sought to do this, it would have to show how the logical relation of principle and consequence can be used synthetically in a different sort of intuition from the sensible; that is how a causa noumenon is possible. this it can never do; and, as practical reason, it does not even concern itself with it, since it only places the determining principle of causality of man as a sensible creature (which is given) in pure reason (which is therefore called practical); and therefore it employs the notion of cause, not in order to know objects, but to determine causality in relation to objects in general. it can abstract altogether from the application of this notion to objects with a view to theoretical knowledge (since this concept is always found a priori in the understanding even independently of any intuition). reason, then, employs it only for a practical purpose, and hence we can transfer the determining principle of the will into the intelligible order of things, admitting, at the same time, that we cannot understand how the notion of cause can determine the knowledge of these things. but reason must cognise causality with respect to the actions of the will in the sensible world in a definite manner; otherwise, practical reason could not really produce any action. but as to the notion which it forms of its own causality as noumenon, it need not determine it theoretically with a view to the cognition of its supersensible existence, so as to give it significance in this way. for it acquires significance apart from this, though only for practical use, namely, through the moral law. theoretically viewed, it remains always a pure a priori concept of the understanding, which can be applied to objects whether they have been given sensibly or not, although in the latter case it has no definite theoretical significance or application, but is only a formal, though essential, conception of the understanding relating to an object in general. the significance which reason gives it through the moral law is merely practical, inasmuch as the idea of the law of causality (of the will) has self causality, or is its determining principle. ii. of the right that pure reason in its practical use has to an extension which is not possible to it in its speculative use. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 145} we have in the moral principle set forth a law of causality, the determining principle of which is set above all the conditions of the sensible world; we have it conceived how the will, as belonging to the intelligible world, is determinable, and therefore have its subject (man) not merely conceived as belonging to a world of pure understanding, and in this respect unknown (which the critique of speculative reason enabled us to do), but also defined as regards his causality by means of a law which cannot be reduced to any physical law of the sensible world; and therefore our knowledge is extended beyond the limits of that world, a pretension which the critique of pure reason declared to be futile in all speculation. now, how is the practical use of pure reason here to be reconciled with the theoretical, as to the determination of the limits of its faculty? david hume, of whom we may say that he commenced the assault on the claims of pure reason, which made a thorough investigation of it necessary, argued thus: the notion of cause is a notion that involves the necessity of the connexion of the existence of different things (and that, in so far as they are different), so that, given a, i know that something quite distinct there from, namely b, must necessarily also exist. now necessity can be attributed to a connection, only in so far as it is known a priori, for experience would only enable us to know of such a connection that it exists, not that it necessarily exists. now, it is impossible, says he, to know a priori and as necessary the connection between one thing and another (or between one attribute and another quite distinct) when they have not been given in experience. therefore the notion of a cause is fictitious and delusive and, to speak in the mildest way, is an illusion, only excusable inasmuch as the custom (a subjective necessity) of perceiving certain things, or their attributes as often associated in existence along with or in succession to one another, is insensibly taken for an objective necessity of supposing such a connection in the objects themselves; and thus the notion of a cause has been acquired surreptitiously and not legitimately; nay, it can never be so acquired or authenticated, since it demands a connection in itself vain, chimerical, and untenable in presence of reason, and to which no object can ever correspond. in this way was empiricism first introduced as the sole source of principles, as far as all knowledge of the existence of things is concerned (mathematics therefore remaining excepted); and with empiricism the most thorough scepticism, even with regard to the whole science of nature( as philosophy). for on such principles we can never conclude from given attributes of things as existing to a consequence (for this would require the notion of cause, which involves the necessity of such a connection); we can only, guided by imagination, expect similar casesan expectation which is never certain, however often it has been fulfilled. of no event could we say: a certain thing must have preceded it, on which it necessarily followed; that is, it must have a cause; and therefore, however frequent the cases we have known in which there was such an antecedent, so that a rule could be derived from them, yet we never could suppose it as always and necessarily so happening; we should, therefore, be obliged to leave its share to blind chance, with which all use of reason comes to an end; and this firmly establishes scepticism in reference to arguments ascending from effects to causes and makes it impregnable. mathematics escaped well, so far, because hume thought that its propositions were analytical; that is, proceeded from one property to another, by virtue of identity and, consequently, according to the principle of contradiction. this, however, is not the case, since, on the contrary, they are synthetical; and although geometry, for example, has not to do with the existence of things, but only with their a priori properties in a possible intuition, yet it proceeds just as in the case of the causal notion, from one property (a) to another wholly distinct (b), as necessarily connected with the former. nevertheless, mathematical science, so highly vaunted for its apodeictic certainty, must at last fall under this empiricism for the same reason for which hume put custom in the place of objective necessity in the notion of cause and, in spite of all its pride, must consent to lower its bold pretension of claiming assent a priori and depend for assent to the universality of its propositions on the kindness of observers, who, when called as witnesses, would surely not hesitate to admit that what the geometer propounds as a theorem they have always perceived to be the fact, and, consequently, although it be not necessarily true, yet they would permit us to expect it to be true in the future. in this manner hume's empiricism leads inevitably to scepticism, even with regard to mathematics, and consequently in every scientific theoretical use of reason (for this belongs either to philosophy or mathematics). whether with such a terrible overthrow of the chief branches of knowledge, common reason will escape better, and will not rather become irrecoverably involved in this destruction of all knowledge, so that from the same principles a universal scepticism should follow (affecting, indeed, only the learned), this i will leave everyone to judge for himself. as regards my own labours in the critical examination of pure reason, which were occasioned by hume's sceptical teaching, but went much further and embraced the whole field of pure theoretical reason in its synthetic use and, consequently, the field of what is called metaphysics in general; i proceeded in the following manner with respect to the doubts raised by the scottish philosopher touching the notion of causality. if hume took the objects of experience for things in themselves (as is almost always done), he was quite right in declaring the notion of cause to be a deception and false illusion; for as to things in themselves, and their attributes as such, it is impossible to see why because a is given, b, which is different, must necessarily be also given, and therefore he could by no means admit such an a priori knowledge of things in themselves. still less could this acute writer allow an empirical origin of this concept, since this is directly contradictory to the necessity of connection which constitutes the essence of the notion of causality, hence the notion was proscribed, and in its place was put custom in the observation of the course of perceptions. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 150} it resulted, however, from my inquiries, that the objects with which we have to do in experience are by no means things in themselves, but merely phenomena; and that although in the case of things in themselves it is impossible to see how, if a is supposed, it should be contradictory that b, which is quite different from a, should not also be supposed (i.e., to see the necessity of the connection between a as cause and b as effect); yet it can very well be conceived that, as phenomena, they may be necessarily connected in one experience in a certain way (e.g., with regard to time-relations); so that they could not be separated without contradicting that connection, by means of which this experience is possible in which they are objects and in which alone they are cognisable by us. and so it was found to be in fact; so that i was able not only to prove the objective reality of the concept of cause in regard to objects of experience, but also to deduce it as an a priori concept by reason of the necessity of the connection it implied; that is, to show the possibility of its origin from pure understanding without any empirical sources; and thus, after removing the source of empiricism, i was able also to overthrow the inevitable consequence of this, namely, scepticism, first with regard to physical science, and then with regard to mathematics (in which empiricism has just the same grounds), both being sciences which have reference to objects of possible experience; herewith overthrowing the thorough doubt of whatever theoretic reason professes to discern. but how is it with the application of this category of causality (and all the others; for without them there can be no knowledge of anything existing) to things which are not objects of possible experience, but lie beyond its bounds? for i was able to deduce the objective reality of these concepts only with regard to objects of possible experience. but even this very fact, that i have saved them, only in case i have proved that objects may by means of them be thought, though not determined a priori; this it is that gives them a place in the pure understanding, by which they are referred to objects in general (sensible or not sensible). if anything is still wanting, it is that which is the condition of the application of these categories, and especially that of causality, to objects, namely, intuition; for where this is not given, the application with a view to theoretic knowledge of the object, as a noumenon, is impossible and, therefore, if anyone ventures on it, is (as in the critique of pure reason) absolutely forbidden. still, the objective reality of the concept (of causality) remains, and it can be used even of noumena, but without our being able in the least to define the concept theoretically so as to produce knowledge. for that this concept, even in reference to an object, contains nothing impossible, was shown by this, that, even while applied to objects of sense, its seat was certainly fixed in the pure understanding; and although, when referred to things in themselves (which cannot be objects of experience), it is not capable of being determined so as to represent a definite object for the purpose of theoretic knowledge; yet for any other purpose (for instance, a practical) it might be capable of being determined so as to have such application. this could not be the case if, as hume maintained, this concept of causality contained something absolutely impossible to be thought. in order now to discover this condition of the application of the said concept to noumena, we need only recall why we are not content with its application to objects of experience, but desire also to apply it to things in themselves. it will appear, then, that it is not a theoretic but a practical purpose that makes this a necessity. in speculation, even if we were successful in it, we should not really gain anything in the knowledge of nature, or generally with regard to such objects as are given, but we should make a wide step from the sensibly conditioned (in which we have already enough to do to maintain ourselves, and to follow carefully the chain of causes) to the supersensible, in order to complete our knowledge of principles and to fix its limits; whereas there always remains an infinite chasm unfilled between those limits and what we know; and we should have hearkened to a vain curiosity rather than a solid-desire of knowledge. but, besides the relation in which the understanding stands to objects (in theoretical knowledge), it has also a relation to the faculty of desire, which is therefore called the will, and the pure will, inasmuch as pure understanding (in this case called reason) is practical through the mere conception of a law. the objective reality of a pure will, or, what is the same thing, of a pure practical reason, is given in the moral law a priori, as it were, by a fact, for so we may name a determination of the will which is inevitable, although it does not rest on empirical principles. now, in the notion of a will the notion of causality is already contained, and hence the notion of a pure will contains that of a causality accompanied with freedom, that is, one which is not determinable by physical laws, and consequently is not capable of any empirical intuition in proof of its reality, but, nevertheless, completely justifies its objective reality a priori in the pure practical law; not, indeed (as is easily seen) for the purposes of the theoretical, but of the practical use of reason. now the notion of a being that has free will is the notion of a causa noumenon, and that this notion involves no contradiction, we are already assured by the factthat inasmuch as the concept of cause has arisen wholly from pure understanding, and has its objective reality assured by the deduction, as it is moreover in its origin independent of any sensible conditions, it is, therefore, not restricted to phenomena (unless we wanted to make a definite theoretic use of it), but can be applied equally to things that are objects of the pure understanding. but, since this application cannot rest on any intuition (for intuition can only be sensible), therefore, causa noumenon, as regards the theoretic use of reason, although a possible and thinkable, is yet an empty notion. now, i do not desire by means of this to understand theoretically the nature of a being, in so far as it has a pure will; it is enough for me to have thereby designated it as such, and hence to combine the notion of causality with that of freedom (and what is inseparable from it, the moral law, as its determining principle). now, this right i certainly have by virtue of the pure, not-empirical origin of the notion of cause, since i do not consider myself entitled to make any use of it except in reference to the moral law which determines its reality, that is, only a practical use. if, with hume, i had denied to the notion of causality all objective reality in its [theoretic] use, not merely with regard to things in themselves (the supersensible), but also with regard to the objects of the senses, it would have lost all significance, and being a theoretically impossible notion would have been declared to be quite useless; and since what is nothing cannot be made any use of, the practical use of a concept theoretically null would have been absurd. but, as it is, the concept of a causality free from empirical conditions, although empty, i.e., without any appropriate intuition), is yet theoretically possible, and refers to an indeterminate object; but in compensation significance is given to it in the moral law and consequently in a practical sense. i have, indeed, no intuition which should determine its objective theoretic reality, but not the less it has a real application, which is exhibited in concreto in intentions or maxims; that is, it has a practical reality which can be specified, and this is sufficient to justify it even with a view to noumena. {book_1|chapter_1 ^paragraph 155} now, this objective reality of a pure concept of the understanding in the sphere of the supersensible, once brought in, gives an objective reality also to all the other categories, although only so far as they stand in necessary connexion with the determining principle of the will (the moral law); a reality only of practical application, which has not the least effect in enlarging our theoretical knowledge of these objects, or the discernment of their nature by pure reason. so we shall find also in the sequel that these categories refer only to beings as intelligences, and in them only to the relation of reason to the will; consequently, always only to the practical, and beyond this cannot pretend to any knowledge of these beings; and whatever other properties belonging to the theoretical representation of supersensible things may be brought into connexion with these categories, this is not to be reckoned as knowledge, but only as a right (in a practical point of view, however, it is a necessity) to admit and assume such beings, even in the case where we [conceive] supersensible beings (e.g., god) according to analogy, that is, a purely rational relation, of which we make a practical use with reference to what is sensible; and thus the application to the supersensible solely in a practical point of view does not give pure theoretic reason the least encouragement to run riot into the transcendent. book_1|chapter_2 chapter ii. of the concept of an object of pure practical reason. by a concept of the practical reason i understand the idea of an object as an effect possible to be produced through freedom. to be an object of practical knowledge, as such, signifies, therefore, only the relation of the will to the action by which the object or its opposite would be realized; and to decide whether something is an object of pure practical reason or not is only to discern the possibility or impossibility of willing the action by which, if we had the required power (about which experience must decide), a certain object would be realized. if the object be taken as the determining principle of our desire, it must first be known whether it is physically possible by the free use of our powers, before we decide whether it is an object of practical reason or not. on the other hand, if the law can be considered a priori as the determining principle of the action, and the latter therefore as determined by pure practical reason, the judgement whether a thing is an object of pure practical reason or not does not depend at all on the comparison with our physical power; and the question is only whether we should will an action that is directed to the existence of an object, if the object were in our power; hence the previous question is only as the moral possibility of the action, for in this case it is not the object, but the law of the will, that is the determining principle of the action. the only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. for by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason. if the notion of good is not to be derived from an antecedent practical law, but, on the contrary, is to serve as its foundation, it can only be the notion of something whose existence promises pleasure, and thus determines the causality of the subject to produce it, that is to say, determines the faculty of desire. now, since it is impossible to discern a priori what idea will be accompanied with pleasure and what with pain, it will depend on experience alone to find out what is primarily good or evil. the property of the subject, with reference to which alone this experiment can be made, is the feeling of pleasure and pain, a receptivity belonging to the internal sense; thus that only would be primarily good with which the sensation of pleasure is immediately connected, and that simply evil which immediately excites pain. since, however, this is opposed even to the usage of language, which distinguishes the pleasant from the good, the unpleasant from the evil, and requires that good and evil shall always be judged by reason, and, therefore, by concepts which can be communicated to everyone, and not by mere sensation, which is limited to individual [subjects] and their susceptibility; and, since nevertheless, pleasure or pain cannot be connected with any idea of an object a priori, the philosopher who thought himself obliged to make a feeling of pleasure the foundation of his practical judgements would call that good which is a means to the pleasant, and evil, what is a cause of unpleasantness and pain; for the judgement on the relation of means to ends certainly belongs to reason. but, although reason is alone capable of discerning the connexion of means with their ends (so that the will might even be defined as the faculty of ends, since these are always determining principles of the desires), yet the practical maxims which would follow from the aforesaid principle of the good being merely a means, would never contain as the object of the will anything good in itself, but only something good for something; the good would always be merely the useful, and that for which it is useful must always lie outside the will, in sensation. now if this as a pleasant sensation were to be distinguished from the notion of good, then there would be nothing primarily good at all, but the good would have to be sought only in the means to something else, namely, some pleasantness. it is an old formula of the schools: nihil appetimus nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur nisi sub ratione mali, and it is used often correctly, but often also in a manner injurious to philosophy, because the expressions boni and mali are ambiguous, owing to the poverty of language, in consequence of which they admit a double sense, and, therefore, inevitably bring the practical laws into ambiguity; and philosophy, which in employing them becomes aware of the different meanings in the same word, but can find no special expressions for them, is driven to subtile distinctions about which there is subsequently no unanimity, because the distinction could not be directly marked by any suitable expression. * * besides this, the expression sub ratione boni is also ambiguous. for it may mean: "we represent something to ourselves as good, when and because we desire (will) it"; or "we desire something because we represent it to ourselves as good," so that either the desire determines the notion of the object as a good, or the notion of good determines the desire (the will); so that in the first case sub ratione boni would mean, "we will something under the idea of the good"; in the second, "in consequence of this idea," which, as determining the volition, must precede it. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 5} the german language has the good fortune to possess expressions which do not allow this difference to be overlooked. it possesses two very distinct concepts and especially distinct expressions for that which the latins express by a single word, bonum. for bonum it has das gute [good], and das wohl [well, weal], for malum das bose [evil], and das ubel [ill, bad], or das well [woe]. so that we express two quite distinct judgements when we consider in an action the good and evil of it, or our weal and woe (ill). hence it already follows that the above quoted psychological proposition is at least very doubtful if it is translated: "we desire nothing except with a view to our weal or woe"; on the other hand, if we render it thus: "under the direction of reason we desire nothing except so far as we esteem it good or evil," it is indubitably certain and at the same time quite clearly expressed. well or ill always implies only a reference to our condition, as pleasant or unpleasant, as one of pleasure or pain, and if we desire or avoid an object on this account, it is only so far as it is referred to our sensibility and to the feeling of pleasure or pain that it produces. but good or evil always implies a reference to the will, as determined by the law of reason, to make something its object; for it is never determined directly by the object and the idea of it, but is a faculty of taking a rule of reason for or motive of an action (by which an object may be realized). good and evil therefore are properly referred to actions, not to the sensations of the person, and if anything is to be good or evil absolutely (i.e., in every respect and without any further condition), or is to be so esteemed, it can only be the manner of acting, the maxim of the will, and consequently the acting person himself as a good or evil man that can be so called, and not a thing. however, then, men may laugh at the stoic, who in the severest paroxysms of gout cried out: "pain, however thou tormentest me, i will never admit that thou art an evil (kakov, malum)": he was right. a bad thing it certainly was, and his cry betrayed that; but that any evil attached to him thereby, this he had no reason whatever to admit, for pain did not in the least diminish the worth of his person, but only that of his condition. if he had been conscious of a single lie, it would have lowered his pride, but pain served only to raise it, when he was conscious that he had not deserved it by any unrighteous action by which he had rendered himself worthy of punishment. what we call good must be an object of desire in the judgement of every rational man, and evil an object of aversion in the eyes of everyone; therefore, in addition to sense, this judgement requires reason. so it is with truthfulness, as opposed to lying; so with justice, as opposed to violence, &c. but we may call a thing a bad [or ill] thing, which yet everyone must at the same time acknowledge to be good, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. the man who submits to a surgical operation feels it no doubt as a bad thing, but by their reason he and everyone acknowledge it to be good. if a man who delights in annoying and vexing peaceable people at last receives a right good beating, this is no doubt a bad thing; but everyone approves it and regards it as a good thing, even though nothing else resulted from it; nay, even the man who receives it must in his reason acknowledge that he has met justice, because he sees the proportion between good conduct and good fortune, which reason inevitably places before him, here put into practice. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 10} no doubt our weal and woe are of very great importance in the estimation of our practical reason, and as far as our nature as sensible beings is concerned, our happiness is the only thing of consequence, provided it is estimated as reason especially requires, not by the transitory sensation, but by the influence that this has on our whole existence, and on our satisfaction therewith; but it is not absolutely the only thing of consequence. man is a being who, as belonging to the world of sense, has wants, and so far his reason has an office which it cannot refuse, namely, to attend to the interest of his sensible nature, and to form practical maxims, even with a view to the happiness of this life, and if possible even to that of a future. but he is not so completely an animal as to be indifferent to what reason says on its own account, and to use it merely as an instrument for the satisfaction of his wants as a sensible being. for the possession of reason would not raise his worth above that of the brutes, if it is to serve him only for the same purpose that instinct serves in them; it would in that case be only a particular method which nature had employed to equip man for the same ends for which it has qualified brutes, without qualifying him for any higher purpose. no doubt once this arrangement of nature has been made for him he requires reason in order to take into consideration his weal and woe, but besides this he possesses it for a higher purpose also, namely, not only to take into consideration what is good or evil in itself, about which only pure reason, uninfluenced by any sensible interest, can judge, but also to distinguish this estimate thoroughly from the former and to make it the supreme condition thereof. in estimating what is good or evil in itself, as distinguished from what can be so called only relatively, the following points are to be considered. either a rational principle is already conceived, as of itself the determining principle of the will, without regard to possible objects of desire (and therefore by the more legislative form of the maxim), and in that case that principle is a practical a priori law, and pure reason is supposed to be practical of itself. the law in that case determines the will directly; the action conformed to it is good in itself; a will whose maxim always conforms to this law is good absolutely in every respect and is the supreme condition of all good. or the maxim of the will is consequent on a determining principle of desire which presupposes an object of pleasure or pain, something therefore that pleases or displeases, and the maxim of reason that we should pursue the former and avoid the latter determines our actions as good relatively to our inclination, that is, good indirectly, (i.e., relatively to a different end to which they are means), and in that case these maxims can never be called laws, but may be called rational practical precepts. the end itself, the pleasure that we seek, is in the latter case not a good but a welfare; not a concept of reason, but an empirical concept of an object of sensation; but the use of the means thereto, that is, the action, is nevertheless called good (because rational deliberation is required for it), not however, good absolutely, but only relatively to our sensuous nature, with regard to its feelings of pleasure and displeasure; but the will whose maxim is affected thereby is not a pure will; this is directed only to that in which pure reason by itself can be practical. this is the proper place to explain the paradox of method in a critique of practical reason, namely, that the concept of good and evil must not be determined before the moral law (of which it seems as if it must be the foundation), but only after it and by means of it. in fact, even if we did not know that the principle of morality is a pure a priori law determining the will, yet, that we may not assume principles quite gratuitously, we must, at least at first, leave it undecided, whether the will has merely empirical principles of determination, or whether it has not also pure a priori principles; for it is contrary to all rules of philosophical method to assume as decided that which is the very point in question. supposing that we wished to begin with the concept of good, in order to deduce from it the laws of the will, then this concept of an object (as a good) would at the same time assign to us this object as the sole determining principle of the will. now, since this concept had not any practical a priori law for its standard, the criterion of good or evil could not be placed in anything but the agreement of the object with our feeling of pleasure or pain; and the use of reason could only consist in determining in the first place this pleasure or pain in connexion with all the sensations of my existence, and in the second place the means of securing to myself the object of the pleasure. now, as experience alone can decide what conforms to the feeling of pleasure, and by hypothesis the practical law is to be based on this as a condition, it follows that the possibility of a priori practical laws would be at once excluded, because it was imagined to be necessary first of all to find an object the concept of which, as a good, should constitute the universal though empirical principle of determination of the will. but what it was necessary to inquire first of all was whether there is not an a priori determining principle of the will (and this could never be found anywhere but in a pure practical law, in so far as this law prescribes to maxims merely their form without regard to an object). since, however, we laid the foundation of all practical law in an object determined by our conceptions of good and evil, whereas without a previous law that object could not be conceived by empirical concepts, we have deprived ourselves beforehand of the possibility of even conceiving a pure practical law. on the other hand, if we had first investigated the latter analytically, we should have found that it is not the concept of good as an object that determines the moral law and makes it possible, but that, on the contrary, it is the moral law that first determines the concept of good and makes it possible, so far as it deserves the name of good absolutely. this remark, which only concerns the method of ultimate ethical inquiries, is of importance. it explains at once the occasion of all the mistakes of philosophers with respect to the supreme principle of morals. for they sought for an object of the will which they could make the matter and principle of a law (which consequently could not determine the will directly, but by means of that object referred to the feeling of pleasure or pain; whereas they ought first to have searched for a law that would determine the will a priori and directly, and afterwards determine the object in accordance with the will). now, whether they placed this object of pleasure, which was to supply the supreme conception of goodness, in happiness, in perfection, in moral [feeling], or in the will of god, their principle in every case implied heteronomy, and they must inevitably come upon empirical conditions of a moral law, since their object, which was to be the immediate principle of the will, could not be called good or bad except in its immediate relation to feeling, which is always empirical. it is only a formal lawthat is, one which prescribes to reason nothing more than the form of its universal legislation as the supreme condition of its maximsthat can be a priori a determining principle of practical reason. the ancients avowed this error without concealment by directing all their moral inquiries to the determination of the notion of the summum bonum, which they intended afterwards to make the determining principle of the will in the moral law; whereas it is only far later, when the moral law has been first established for itself, and shown to be the direct determining principle of the will, that this object can be presented to the will, whose form is now determined a priori; and this we shall undertake in the dialectic of the pure practical reason. the moderns, with whom the question of the summum bonum has gone out of fashion, or at least seems to have become a secondary matter, hide the same error under vague (expressions as in many other cases). it shows itself, nevertheless, in their systems, as it always produces heteronomy of practical reason; and from this can never be derived a moral law giving universal commands. now, since the notions of good and evil, as consequences of the a priori determination of the will, imply also a pure practical principle, and therefore a causality of pure reason; hence they do not originally refer to objects (so as to be, for instance, special modes of the synthetic unity of the manifold of given intuitions in one consciousness) like the pure concepts of the understanding or categories of reason in its theoretic employment; on the contrary, they presuppose that objects are given; but they are all modes (modi) of a single category, namely, that of causality, the determining principle of which consists in the rational conception of a law, which as a law of freedom reason gives to itself, thereby a priori proving itself practical. however, as the actions on the one side come under a law which is not a physical law, but a law of freedom, and consequently belong to the conduct of beings in the world of intelligence, yet on the other side as events in the world of sense they belong to phenomena; hence the determinations of a practical reason are only possible in reference to the latter and, therefore, in accordance with the categories of the understanding; not indeed with a view to any theoretic employment of it, i.e., so as to bring the manifold of (sensible) intuition under one consciousness a priori; but only to subject the manifold of desires to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason, giving it commands in the moral law, i.e., to a pure will a priori. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 15} these categories of freedomfor so we choose to call them in contrast to those theoretic categories which are categories of physical naturehave an obvious advantage over the latter, inasmuch as the latter are only forms of thought which designate objects in an indefinite manner by means of universal concept of every possible intuition; the former, on the contrary, refer to the determination of a free elective will (to which indeed no exactly corresponding intuition can be assigned, but which has as its foundation a pure practical a priori law, which is not the case with any concepts belonging to the theoretic use of our cognitive faculties); hence, instead of the form of intuition (space and time), which does not lie in reason itself, but has to be drawn from another source, namely, the sensibility, these being elementary practical concepts have as their foundation the form of a pure will, which is given in reason and, therefore, in the thinking faculty itself. from this it happens that as all precepts of pure practical reason have to do only with the determination of the will, not with the physical conditions (of practical ability) of the execution of one's purpose, the practical a priori principles in relation to the supreme principle of freedom are at once cognitions, and have not to wait for intuitions in order to acquire significance, and that for this remarkable reason, because they themselves produce the reality of that to which they refer (the intention of the will), which is not the case with theoretical concepts. only we must be careful to observe that these categories only apply to the practical reason; and thus they proceed in order from those which are as yet subject to sensible conditions and morally indeterminate to those which are free from sensible conditions and determined merely by the moral law. table of the categories of freedom relatively to the notions of good and evil. i. quantity. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 20} subjective, according to maxims (practical opinions of the individual) objective, according to principles (precepts) a priori both objective and subjective principles of freedom (laws) {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 25} ii. quality. practical rules of action (praeceptivae) practical rules of omission (prohibitivae) practical rules of exceptions (exceptivae) {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 30} iii. relation. to personality to the condition of the person. reciprocal, of one person to the others of the others. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 35} iv. modality. the permitted and the forbidden duty and the contrary to duty. perfect and imperfect duty. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 40} it will at once be observed that in this table freedom is considered as a sort of causality not subject to empirical principles of determination, in regard to actions possible by it, which are phenomena in the world of sense, and that consequently it is referred to the categories which concern its physical possibility, whilst yet each category is taken so universally that the determining principle of that causality can be placed outside the world of sense in freedom as a property of a being in the world of intelligence; and finally the categories of modality introduce the transition from practical principles generally to those of morality, but only problematically. these can be established dogmatically only by the moral law. i add nothing further here in explanation of the present table, since it is intelligible enough of itself. a division of this kind based on principles is very useful in any science, both for the sake of thoroughness and intelligibility. thus, for instance, we know from the preceding table and its first number what we must begin from in practical inquiries; namely, from the maxims which every one founds on his own inclinations; the precepts which hold for a species of rational beings so far as they agree in certain inclinations; and finally the law which holds for all without regard to their inclinations, etc. in this way we survey the whole plan of what has to be done, every question of practical philosophy that has to be answered, and also the order that is to be followed. of the typic of the pure practical judgement. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 45} it is the notions of good and evil that first determine an object of the will. they themselves, however, are subject to a practical rule of reason which, if it is pure reason, determines the will a priori relatively to its object. now, whether an action which is possible to us in the world of sense, comes under the rule or not, is a question to be decided by the practical judgement, by which what is said in the rule universally (in abstracto) is applied to an action in concreto. but since a practical rule of pure reason in the first place as practical concerns the existence of an object, and in the second place as a practical rule of pure reason implies necessity as regards the existence of the action and, therefore, is a practical law, not a physical law depending on empirical principles of determination, but a law of freedom by which the will is to be determined independently on anything empirical (merely by the conception of a law and its form), whereas all instances that can occur of possible actions can only be empirical, that is, belong to the experience of physical nature; hence, it seems absurd to expect to find in the world of sense a case which, while as such it depends only on the law of nature, yet admits of the application to it of a law of freedom, and to which we can apply the supersensible idea of the morally good which is to be exhibited in it in concreto. thus, the judgement of the pure practical reason is subject to the same difficulties as that of the pure theoretical reason. the latter, however, had means at hand of escaping from these difficulties, because, in regard to the theoretical employment, intuitions were required to which pure concepts of the understanding could be applied, and such intuitions (though only of objects of the senses) can be given a priori and, therefore, as far as regards the union of the manifold in them, conforming to the pure a priori concepts of the understanding as schemata. on the other hand, the morally good is something whose object is supersensible; for which, therefore, nothing corresponding can be found in any sensible intuition. judgement depending on laws of pure practical reason seems, therefore, to be subject to special difficulties arising from this, that a law of freedom is to be applied to actions, which are events taking place in the world of sense, and which, so far, belong to physical nature. but here again is opened a favourable prospect for the pure practical judgement. when i subsume under a pure practical law an action possible to me in the world of sense, i am not concerned with the possibility of the action as an event in the world of sense. this is a matter that belongs to the decision of reason in its theoretic use according to the law of causality, which is a pure concept of the understanding, for which reason has a schema in the sensible intuition. physical causality, or the condition under which it takes place, belongs to the physical concepts, the schema of which is sketched by transcendental imagination. here, however, we have to do, not with the schema of a case that occurs according to laws, but with the schema of a law itself (if the word is allowable here), since the fact that the will (not the action relatively to its effect) is determined by the law alone without any other principle, connects the notion of causality with quite different conditions from those which constitute physical connection. the physical law being a law to which the objects of sensible intuition, as such, are subject, must have a schema corresponding to itthat is, a general procedure of the imagination (by which it exhibits a priori to the senses the pure concept of the understanding which the law determines). but the law of freedom (that is, of a causality not subject to sensible conditions), and consequently the concept of the unconditionally good, cannot have any intuition, nor consequently any schema supplied to it for the purpose of its application in concreto. consequently the moral law has no faculty but the understanding to aid its application to physical objects (not the imagination); and the understanding for the purposes of the judgement can provide for an idea of the reason, not a schema of the sensibility, but a law, though only as to its form as law; such a law, however, as can be exhibited in concreto in objects of the senses, and therefore a law of nature. we can therefore call this law the type of the moral law. the rule of the judgement according to laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to take place by a law of the system of nature of which you were yourself a part, you could regard it as possible by your own will. everyone does, in fact, decide by this rule whether actions are morally good or evil. thus, people say: "if everyone permitted himself to deceive, when he thought it to his advantage; or thought himself justified in shortening his life as soon as he was thoroughly weary of it; or looked with perfect indifference on the necessity of others; and if you belonged to such an order of things, would you do so with the assent of your own will?" now everyone knows well that if he secretly allows himself to deceive, it does not follow that everyone else does so; or if, unobserved, he is destitute of compassion, others would not necessarily be so to him; hence, this comparison of the maxim of his actions with a universal law of nature is not the determining principle of his will. such a law is, nevertheless, a type of the estimation of the maxim on moral principles. if the maxim of the action is not such as to stand the test of the form of a universal law of nature, then it is morally impossible. this is the judgement even of common sense; for its ordinary judgements, even those of experience, are always based on the law of nature. it has it therefore always at hand, only that in cases where causality from freedom is to be criticised, it makes that law of nature only the type of a law of freedom, because, without something which it could use as an example in a case of experience, it could not give the law of a pure practical reason its proper use in practice. it is therefore allowable to use the system of the world of sense as the type of a supersensible system of things, provided i do not transfer to the latter the intuitions, and what depends on them, but merely apply to it the form of law in general (the notion of which occurs even in the commonest use of reason, but cannot be definitely known a priori for any other purpose than the pure practical use of reason); for laws, as such, are so far identical, no matter from what they derive their determining principles. {book_1|chapter_2 ^paragraph 50} further, since of all the supersensible absolutely nothing [is known] except freedom (through the moral law), and this only so far as it is inseparably implied in that law, and moreover all supersensible objects to which reason might lead us, following the guidance of that law, have still no reality for us, except for the purpose of that law, and for the use of mere practical reason; and as reason is authorized and even compelled to use physical nature (in its pure form as an object of the understanding) as the type of the judgement; hence, the present remark will serve to guard against reckoning amongst concepts themselves that which belongs only to the typic of concepts. this, namely, as a typic of the judgement, guards against the empiricism of practical reason, which founds the practical notions of good and evil merely on experienced consequences (so-called happiness). no doubt happiness and the infinite advantages which would result from a will determined by self-love, if this will at the same time erected itself into a universal law of nature, may certainly serve as a perfectly suitable type of the morally good, but it is not identical with it. the same typic guards also against the mysticism of practical reason, which turns what served only as a symbol into a schema, that is, proposes to provide for the moral concepts actual intuitions, which, however, are not sensible (intuitions of an invisible kingdom of god), and thus plunges into the transcendent. what is befitting the use of the moral concepts is only the rationalism of the judgement, which takes from the sensible system of nature only what pure reason can also conceive of itself, that is, conformity to law, and transfers into the supersensible nothing but what can conversely be actually exhibited by actions in the world of sense according to the formal rule of a law of nature. however, the caution against empiricism of practical reason is much more important; for mysticism is quite reconcilable with the purity and sublimity of the moral law, and, besides, it is not very natural or agreeable to common habits of thought to strain one's imagination to supersensible intuitions; and hence the danger on this side is not so general. empiricism, on the contrary, cuts up at the roots the morality of intentions (in which, and not in actions only, consists the high worth that men can and ought to give to themselves), and substitutes for duty something quite different, namely, an empirical interest, with which the inclinations generally are secretly leagued; and empiricism, moreover, being on this account allied with all the inclinations which (no matter what fashion they put on) degrade humanity when they are raised to the dignity of a supreme practical principle; and as these, nevertheless, are so favourable to everyone's feelings, it is for that reason much more dangerous than mysticism, which can never constitute a lasting condition of any great number of persons. book_1|chapter_3 chapter iii. of the motives of pure practical reason. what is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral law should directly determine the will. if the determination of the will takes place in conformity indeed to the moral law, but only by means of a feeling, no matter of what kind, which has to be presupposed in order that the law may be sufficient to determine the will, and therefore not for the sake of the law, then the action will possess legality, but not morality. now, if we understand by motive (elater animi) the subjective ground of determination of the will of a being whose reason does not necessarily conform to the objective law, by virtue of its own nature, then it will follow, first, that no motives can be attributed to the divine will, and that the motives of the human will (as well as that of every created rational being) can never be anything else than the moral law, and consequently that the objective principle of determination must always and alone be also the subjectively sufficient determining principle of the action, if this is not merely to fulfil the letter of the law, without containing its spirit. * * we may say of every action that conforms to the law, but is not done for the sake of the law, that it is morally good in the letter, not in the spirit (the intention). since, then, for the purpose of giving the moral law influence over the will, we must not seek for any other motives that might enable us to dispense with the motive of the law itself, because that would produce mere hypocrisy, without consistency; and it is even dangerous to allow other motives (for instance, that of interest) even to co-operate along with the moral law; hence nothing is left us but to determine carefully in what way the moral law becomes a motive, and what effect this has upon the faculty of desire. for as to the question how a law can be directly and of itself a determining principle of the will (which is the essence of morality), this is, for human reason, an insoluble problem and identical with the question: how a free will is possible. therefore what we have to show a priori is not why the moral law in itself supplies a motive, but what effect it, as such, produces (or, more correctly speaking, must produce) on the mind. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 5} the essential point in every determination of the will by the moral law is that being a free will it is determined simply by the moral law, not only without the co-operation of sensible impulses, but even to the rejection of all such, and to the checking of all inclinations so far as they might be opposed to that law. so far, then, the effect of the moral law as a motive is only negative, and this motive can be known a priori to be such. for all inclination and every sensible impulse is founded on feeling, and the negative effect produced on feeling (by the check on the inclinations) is itself feeling; consequently, we can see a priori that the moral law, as a determining principle of the will, must by thwarting all our inclinations produce a feeling which may be called pain; and in this we have the first, perhaps the only, instance in which we are able from a priori considerations to determine the relation of a cognition (in this case of pure practical reason) to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. all the inclinations together (which can be reduced to a tolerable system, in which case their satisfaction is called happiness) constitute self-regard (solipsismus). this is either the self-love that consists in an excessive fondness for oneself (philautia), or satisfaction with oneself (arrogantia). the former is called particularly selfishness; the latter self-conceit. pure practical reason only checks selfishness, looking on it as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, so far as to limit it to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. but self-conceit reason strikes down altogether, since all claims to self-esteem which precede agreement with the moral law are vain and unjustifiable, for the certainty of a state of mind that coincides with this law is the first condition of personal worth (as we shall presently show more clearly), and prior to this conformity any pretension to worth is false and unlawful. now the propensity to self-esteem is one of the inclinations which the moral law checks, inasmuch as that esteem rests only on morality. therefore the moral law breaks down self-conceit. but as this law is something positive in itself, namely, the form of an intellectual causality, that is, of freedom, it must be an object of respect; for, by opposing the subjective antagonism of the inclinations, it weakens self-conceit; and since it even breaks down, that is, humiliates, this conceit, it is an object of the highest respect and, consequently, is the foundation of a positive feeling which is not of empirical origin, but is known a priori. therefore respect for the moral law is a feeling which is produced by an intellectual cause, and this feeling is the only one that we know quite a priori and the necessity of which we can perceive. in the preceding chapter we have seen that everything that presents itself as an object of the will prior to the moral law is by that law itself, which is the supreme condition of practical reason, excluded from the determining principles of the will which we have called the unconditionally good; and that the mere practical form which consists in the adaptation of the maxims to universal legislation first determines what is good in itself and absolutely, and is the basis of the maxims of a pure will, which alone is good in every respect. however, we find that our nature as sensible beings is such that the matter of desire (objects of inclination, whether of hope or fear) first presents itself to us; and our pathologically affected self, although it is in its maxims quite unfit for universal legislation; yet, just as if it constituted our entire self, strives to put its pretensions forward first, and to have them acknowledged as the first and original. this propensity to make ourselves in the subjective determining principles of our choice serve as the objective determining principle of the will generally may be called self-love; and if this pretends to be legislative as an unconditional practical principle it may be called self-conceit. now the moral law, which alone is truly objective (namely, in every respect), entirely excludes the influence of self-love on the supreme practical principle, and indefinitely checks the self-conceit that prescribes the subjective conditions of the former as laws. now whatever checks our self-conceit in our own judgement humiliates; therefore the moral law inevitably humbles every man when he compares with it the physical propensities of his nature. that, the idea of which as a determining principle of our will humbles us in our self-consciousness, awakes respect for itself, so far as it is itself positive and a determining principle. therefore the moral law is even subjectively a cause of respect. now since everything that enters into self-love belongs to inclination, and all inclination rests on feelings, and consequently whatever checks all the feelings together in self-love has necessarily, by this very circumstance, an influence on feeling; hence we comprehend how it is possible to perceive a priori that the moral law can produce an effect on feeling, in that it excludes the inclinations and the propensity to make them the supreme practical condition, i.e., self-love, from all participation in the supreme legislation. this effect is on one side merely negative, but on the other side, relatively to the restricting principle of pure practical reason, it is positive. no special kind of feeling need be assumed for this under the name of a practical or moral feeling as antecedent to the moral law and serving as its foundation. the negative effect on feeling (unpleasantness) is pathological, like every influence on feeling and like every feeling generally. but as an effect of the consciousness of the moral law, and consequently in relation to a supersensible cause, namely, the subject of pure practical reason which is the supreme lawgiver, this feeling of a rational being affected by inclinations is called humiliation (intellectual self-depreciation); but with reference to the positive source of this humiliation, the law, it is respect for it. there is indeed no feeling for this law; but inasmuch as it removes the resistance out of the way, this removal of an obstacle is, in the judgement of reason, esteemed equivalent to a positive help to its causality. therefore this feeling may also be called a feeling of respect for the moral law, and for both reasons together a moral feeling. while the moral law, therefore, is a formal determining principle of action by practical pure reason, and is moreover a material though only objective determining principle of the objects of action as called good and evil, it is also a subjective determining principle, that is, a motive to this action, inasmuch as it has influence on the morality of the subject and produces a feeling conducive to the influence of the law on the will. there is here in the subject no antecedent feeling tending to morality. for this is impossible, since every feeling is sensible, and the motive of moral intention must be free from all sensible conditions. on the contrary, while the sensible feeling which is at the bottom of all our inclinations is the condition of that impression which we call respect, the cause that determines it lies in the pure practical reason; and this impression therefore, on account of its origin, must be called, not a pathological but a practical effect. for by the fact that the conception of the moral law deprives self-love of its influence, and self-conceit of its illusion, it lessens the obstacle to pure practical reason and produces the conception of the superiority of its objective law to the impulses of the sensibility; and thus, by removing the counterpoise, it gives relatively greater weight to the law in the judgement of reason (in the case of a will affected by the aforesaid impulses). thus the respect for the law is not a motive to morality, but is morality itself subjectively considered as a motive, inasmuch as pure practical reason, by rejecting all the rival pretensions of self-love, gives authority to the law, which now alone has influence. now it is to be observed that as respect is an effect on feeling, and therefore on the sensibility, of a rational being, it presupposes this sensibility, and therefore also the finiteness of such beings on whom the moral law imposes respect; and that respect for the law cannot be attributed to a supreme being, or to any being free from all sensibility, in whom, therefore, this sensibility cannot be an obstacle to practical reason. this feeling (which we call the moral feeling) is therefore produced simply by reason. it does not serve for the estimation of actions nor for the foundation of the objective moral law itself, but merely as a motive to make this of itself a maxim. but what name could we more suitably apply to this singular feeling which cannot be compared to any pathological feeling? it is of such a peculiar kind that it seems to be at the disposal of reason only, and that pure practical reason. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 10} respect applies always to persons onlynot to things. the latter may arouse inclination, and if they are animals (e.g., horses, dogs, etc.), even love or fear, like the sea, a volcano, a beast of prey; but never respect. something that comes nearer to this feeling is admiration, and this, as an affection, astonishment, can apply to things also, e.g., lofty mountains, the magnitude, number, and distance of the heavenly bodies, the strength and swiftness of many animals, etc. but all this is not respect. a man also may be an object to me of love, fear, or admiration, even to astonishment, and yet not be an object of respect. his jocose humour, his courage and strength, his power from the rank he has amongst others, may inspire me with sentiments of this kind, but still inner respect for him is wanting. fontenelle says, "i bow before a great man, but my mind does not bow." i would add, before an humble plain man, in whom i perceive uprightness of character in a higher degree than i am conscious of in myself,my mind bows whether i choose it or not, and though i bear my head never so high that he may not forget my superior rank. why is this? because his example exhibits to me a law that humbles my self-conceit when i compare it with my conduct: a law, the practicability of obedience to which i see proved by fact before my eyes. now, i may even be conscious of a like degree of uprightness, and yet the respect remains. for since in man all good is defective, the law made visible by an example still humbles my pride, my standard being furnished by a man whose imperfections, whatever they may be, are not known to me as my own are, and who therefore appears to me in a more favourable light. respect is a tribute which we cannot refuse to merit, whether we will or not; we may indeed outwardly withhold it, but we cannot help feeling it inwardly. respect is so far from being a feeling of pleasure that we only reluctantly give way to it as regards a man. we try to find out something that may lighten the burden of it, some fault to compensate us for the humiliation which such an example causes. even the dead are not always secure from this criticism, especially if their example appears inimitable. even the moral law itself in its solemn majesty is exposed to this endeavour to save oneself from yielding it respect. can it be thought that it is for any other reason that we are so ready to reduce it to the level of our familiar inclination, or that it is for any other reason that we all take such trouble to make it out to be the chosen precept of our own interest well understood, but that we want to be free from the deterrent respect which shows us our own unworthiness with such severity? nevertheless, on the other hand, so little is there pain in it that if once one has laid aside self-conceit and allowed practical influence to that respect, he can never be satisfied with contemplating the majesty of this law, and the soul believes itself elevated in proportion as it sees the holy law elevated above it and its frail nature. no doubt great talents and activity proportioned to them may also occasion respect or an analogous feeling. it is very proper to yield it to them, and then it appears as if this sentiment were the same thing as admiration. but if we look closer we shall observe that it is always uncertain how much of the ability is due to native talent, and how much to diligence in cultivating it. reason represents it to us as probably the fruit of cultivation, and therefore as meritorious, and this notably reduces our self-conceit, and either casts a reproach on us or urges us to follow such an example in the way that is suitable to us. this respect, then, which we show to such a person (properly speaking, to the law that his example exhibits) is not mere admiration; and this is confirmed also by the fact that when the common run of admirers think they have learned from any source the badness of such a man's character (for instance voltaire's) they give up all respect for him; whereas the true scholar still feels it at least with regard to his talents, because he is himself engaged in a business and a vocation which make imitation of such a man in some degree a law. respect for the moral law is, therefore, the only and the undoubted moral motive, and this feeling is directed to no object, except on the ground of this law. the moral law first determines the will objectively and directly in the judgement of reason; and freedom, whose causality can be determined only by the law, consists just in this, that it restricts all inclinations, and consequently self-esteem, by the condition of obedience to its pure law. this restriction now has an effect on feeling, and produces the impression of displeasure which can be known a priori from the moral law. since it is so far only a negative effect which, arising from the influence of pure practical reason, checks the activity of the subject, so far as it is determined by inclinations, and hence checks the opinion of his personal worth (which, in the absence of agreement with the moral law, is reduced to nothing); hence, the effect of this law on feeling is merely humiliation. we can, therefore, perceive this a priori, but cannot know by it the force of the pure practical law as a motive, but only the resistance to motives of the sensibility. but since the same law is objectively, that is, in the conception of pure reason, an immediate principle of determination of the will, and consequently this humiliation takes place only relatively to the purity of the law; hence, the lowering of the pretensions of moral self-esteem, that is, humiliation on the sensible side, is an elevation of the moral, i.e., practical, esteem for the law itself on the intellectual side; in a word, it is respect for the law, and therefore, as its cause is intellectual, a positive feeling which can be known a priori. for whatever diminishes the obstacles to an activity furthers this activity itself. now the recognition of the moral law is the consciousness of an activity of practical reason from objective principles, which only fails to reveal its effect in actions because subjective (pathological) causes hinder it. respect for the moral law then must be regarded as a positive, though indirect, effect of it on feeling, inasmuch as this respect weakens the impeding influence of inclinations by humiliating self-esteem; and hence also as a subjective principle of activity, that is, as a motive to obedience to the law, and as a principle of the maxims of a life conformable to it. from the notion of a motive arises that of an interest, which can never be attributed to any being unless it possesses reason, and which signifies a motive of the will in so far as it is conceived by the reason. since in a morally good will the law itself must be the motive, the moral interest is a pure interest of practical reason alone, independent of sense. on the notion of an interest is based that of a maxim. this, therefore, is morally good only in case it rests simply on the interest taken in obedience to the law. all three notions, however, that of a motive, of an interest, and of a maxim, can be applied only to finite beings. for they all suppose a limitation of the nature of the being, in that the subjective character of his choice does not of itself agree with the objective law of a practical reason; they suppose that the being requires to be impelled to action by something, because an internal obstacle opposes itself. therefore they cannot be applied to the divine will. there is something so singular in the unbounded esteem for the pure moral law, apart from all advantage, as it is presented for our obedience by practical reason, the voice of which makes even the boldest sinner tremble and compels him to hide himself from it, that we cannot wonder if we find this influence of a mere intellectual idea on the feelings quite incomprehensible to speculative reason and have to be satisfied with seeing so much of this a priori that such a feeling is inseparably connected with the conception of the moral law in every finite rational being. if this feeling of respect were pathological, and therefore were a feeling of pleasure based on the inner sense, it would be in vain to try to discover a connection of it with any idea a priori. but [it] is a feeling that applies merely to what is practical, and depends on the conception of a law, simply as to its form, not on account of any object, and therefore cannot be reckoned either as pleasure or pain, and yet produces an interest in obedience to the law, which we call the moral interest, just as the capacity of taking such an interest in the law (or respect for the moral law itself) is properly the moral feeling. the consciousness of a free submission of the will to the law, yet combined with an inevitable constraint put upon all inclinations, though only by our own reason, is respect for the law. the law that demands this respect and inspires it is clearly no other than the moral (for no other precludes all inclinations from exercising any direct influence on the will). an action which is objectively practical according to this law, to the exclusion of every determining principle of inclination, is duty, and this by reason of that exclusion includes in its concept practical obligation, that is, a determination to actions, however reluctantly they may be done. the feeling that arises from the consciousness of this obligation is not pathological, as would be a feeling produced by an object of the senses, but practical only, that is, it is made possible by a preceding (objective) determination of the will and a causality of the reason. as submission to the law, therefore, that is, as a command (announcing constraint for the sensibly affected subject), it contains in it no pleasure, but on the contrary, so far, pain in the action. on the other hand, however, as this constraint is exercised merely by the legislation of our own reason, it also contains something elevating, and this subjective effect on feeling, inasmuch as pure practical reason is the sole cause of it, may be called in this respect self-approbation, since we recognize ourselves as determined thereto solely by the law without any interest, and are now conscious of a quite different interest subjectively produced thereby, and which is purely practical and free; and our taking this interest in an action of duty is not suggested by any inclination, but is commanded and actually brought about by reason through the practical law; whence this feeling obtains a special name, that of respect. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 15} the notion of duty, therefore, requires in the action, objectively, agreement with the law, and, subjectively in its maxim, that respect for the law shall be the sole mode in which the will is determined thereby. and on this rests the distinction between the consciousness of having acted according to duty and from duty, that is, from respect for the law. the former (legality) is possible even if inclinations have been the determining principles of the will; but the latter (morality), moral worth, can be placed only in this, that the action is done from duty, that is, simply for the sake of the law. * * if we examine accurately the notion of respect for persons as it has been already laid down, we shall perceive that it always rests on the consciousness of a duty which an example shows us, and that respect, therefore, can never have any but a moral ground, and that it is very good and even, in a psychological point of view, very useful for the knowledge of mankind, that whenever we use this expression we should attend to this secret and marvellous, yet often recurring, regard which men in their judgement pay to the moral law. it is of the greatest importance to attend with the utmost exactness in all moral judgements to the subjective principle of all maxims, that all the morality of actions may be placed in the necessity of acting from duty and from respect for the law, not from love and inclination for that which the actions are to produce. for men and all created rational beings moral necessity is constraint, that is obligation, and every action based on it is to be conceived as a duty, not as a proceeding previously pleasing, or likely to be pleasing to us of our own accord. as if indeed we could ever bring it about that without respect for the law, which implies fear, or at least apprehension of transgression, we of ourselves, like the independent deity, could ever come into possession of holiness of will by the coincidence of our will with the pure moral law becoming as it were part of our nature, never to be shaken (in which case the law would cease to be a command for us, as we could never be tempted to be untrue to it). {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 20} the moral law is in fact for the will of a perfect being a law of holiness, but for the will of every finite rational being a law of duty, of moral constraint, and of the determination of its actions by respect for this law and reverence for its duty. no other subjective principle must be assumed as a motive, else while the action might chance to be such as the law prescribes, yet, as does not proceed from duty, the intention, which is the thing properly in question in this legislation, is not moral. it is a very beautiful thing to do good to men from love to them and from sympathetic good will, or to be just from love of order; but this is not yet the true moral maxim of our conduct which is suitable to our position amongst rational beings as men, when we pretend with fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like volunteers, and, as if we were independent on the command, to want to do of our own good pleasure what we think we need no command to do. we stand under a discipline of reason and in all our maxims must not forget our subjection to it, nor withdraw anything therefrom, or by an egotistic presumption diminish aught of the authority of the law (although our own reason gives it) so as to set the determining principle of our will, even though the law be conformed to, anywhere else but in the law itself and in respect for this law. duty and obligation are the only names that we must give to our relation to the moral law. we are indeed legislative members of a moral kingdom rendered possible by freedom, and presented to us by reason as an object of respect; but yet we are subjects in it, not the sovereign, and to mistake our inferior position as creatures, and presumptuously to reject the authority of the moral law, is already to revolt from it in spirit, even though the letter of it is fulfilled. with this agrees very well the possibility of such a command as: love god above everything, and thy neighbour as thyself. * for as a command it requires respect for a law which commands love and does not leave it to our own arbitrary choice to make this our principle. love to god, however, considered as an inclination (pathological love), is impossible, for he is not an object of the senses. the same affection towards men is possible no doubt, but cannot be commanded, for it is not in the power of any man to love anyone at command; therefore it is only practical love that is meant in that pith of all laws. to love god means, in this sense, to like to do his commandments; to love one's neighbour means to like to practise all duties towards him. but the command that makes this a rule cannot command us to have this disposition in actions conformed to duty, but only to endeavour after it. for a command to like to do a thing is in itself contradictory, because if we already know of ourselves what we are bound to do, and if further we are conscious of liking to do it, a command would be quite needless; and if we do it not willingly, but only out of respect for the law, a command that makes this respect the motive of our maxim would directly counteract the disposition commanded. that law of all laws, therefore, like all the moral precepts of the gospel, exhibits the moral disposition in all its perfection, in which, viewed as an ideal of holiness, it is not attainable by any creature, but yet is the pattern which we should strive to approach, and in an uninterrupted but infinite progress become like to. in fact, if a rational creature could ever reach this point, that he thoroughly likes to do all moral laws, this would mean that there does not exist in him even the possibility of a desire that would tempt him to deviate from them; for to overcome such a desire always costs the subject some sacrifice and therefore requires self-compulsion, that is, inward constraint to something that one does not quite like to do; and no creature can ever reach this stage of moral disposition. for, being a creature, and therefore always dependent with respect to what he requires for complete satisfaction, he can never be quite free from desires and inclinations, and as these rest on physical causes, they can never of themselves coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are quite different; and therefore they make it necessary to found the mental disposition of one's maxims on moral obligation, not on ready inclination, but on respect, which demands obedience to the law, even though one may not like it; not on love, which apprehends no inward reluctance of the will towards the law. nevertheless, this latter, namely, love to the law (which would then cease to be a command, and then morality, which would have passed subjectively into holiness, would cease to be virtue) must be the constant though unattainable goal of his endeavours. for in the case of what we highly esteem, but yet (on account of the consciousness of our weakness) dread, the increased facility of satisfying it changes the most reverential awe into inclination, and respect into love; at least this would be the perfection of a disposition devoted to the law, if it were possible for a creature to attain it. * this law is in striking contrast with the principle of private happiness which some make the supreme principle of morality. this would be expressed thus: love thyself above everything, and god and thy neighbour for thine own sake. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 25} this reflection is intended not so much to clear up the evangelical command just cited, in order to prevent religious fanaticism in regard to love of god, but to define accurately the moral disposition with regard directly to our duties towards men, and to check, or if possible prevent, a merely moral fanaticism which infects many persons. the stage of morality on which man (and, as far as we can see, every rational creature) stands is respect for the moral law. the disposition that he ought to have in obeying this is to obey it from duty, not from spontaneous inclination, or from an endeavour taken up from liking and unbidden; and this proper moral condition in which he can always be is virtue, that is, moral disposition militant, and not holiness in the fancied possession of a perfect purity of the disposition of the will. it is nothing but moral fanaticism and exaggerated self-conceit that is infused into the mind by exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous, by which men are led into the delusion that it is not duty, that is, respect for the law, whose yoke (an easy yoke indeed, because reason itself imposes it on us) they must bear, whether they like it or not, that constitutes the determining principle of their actions, and which always humbles them while they obey it; fancying that those actions are expected from them, not from duty, but as pure merit. for not only would they, in imitating such deeds from such a principle, not have fulfilled the spirit of the law in the least, which consists not in the legality of the action (without regard to principle), but in the subjection of the mind to the law; not only do they make the motives pathological (seated in sympathy or self-love), not moral (in the law), but they produce in this way a vain, high-flying, fantastic way of thinking, flattering themselves with a spontaneous goodness of heart that needs neither spur nor bridle, for which no command is needed, and thereby forgetting their obligation, which they ought to think of rather than merit. indeed actions of others which are done with great sacrifice, and merely for the sake of duty, may be praised as noble and sublime, but only so far as there are traces which suggest that they were done wholly out of respect for duty and not from excited feelings. if these, however, are set before anyone as examples to be imitated, respect for duty (which is the only true moral feeling) must be employed as the motivethis severe holy precept which never allows our vain self-love to dally with pathological impulses (however analogous they may be to morality), and to take a pride in meritorious worth. now if we search we shall find for all actions that are worthy of praise a law of duty which commands, and does not leave us to choose what may be agreeable to our inclinations. this is the only way of representing things that can give a moral training to the soul, because it alone is capable of solid and accurately defined principles. if fanaticism in its most general sense is a deliberate over stepping of the limits of human reason, then moral fanaticism is such an over stepping of the bounds that practical pure reason sets to mankind, in that it forbids us to place the subjective determining principle of correct actions, that is, their moral motive, in anything but the law itself, or to place the disposition which is thereby brought into the maxims in anything but respect for this law, and hence commands us to take as the supreme vital principle of all morality in men the thought of duty, which strikes down all arrogance as well as vain self-love. if this is so, it is not only writers of romance or sentimental educators (although they may be zealous opponents of sentimentalism), but sometimes even philosophers, nay, even the severest of all, the stoics, that have brought in moral fanaticism instead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although the fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of the former of an insipid, effeminate character; and we may, without hypocrisy, say of the moral teaching of the gospel, that it first, by the purity of its moral principle, and at the same time by its suitability to the limitations of finite beings, brought all the good conduct of men under the discipline of a duty plainly set before their eyes, which does not permit them to indulge in dreams of imaginary moral perfections; and that it also set the bounds of humility (that is, self-knowledge) to self-conceit as well as to self-love, both which are ready to mistake their limits. duty! thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and yet seekest not to move the will by threatening aught that would arouse natural aversion or terror, but merely holdest forth a law which of itself finds entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant reverence (though not always obedience), a law before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it; what origin is there worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy noble descent which proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations; a root to be derived from which is the indispensable condition of the only worth which men can give themselves? {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 30} it can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above himself (as a part of the world of sense), a power which connects him with an order of things that only the understanding can conceive, with a world which at the same time commands the whole sensible world, and with it the empirically determinable existence of man in time, as well as the sum total of all ends (which totality alone suits such unconditional practical laws as the moral). this power is nothing but personality, that is, freedom and independence on the mechanism of nature, yet, regarded also as a faculty of a being which is subject to special laws, namely, pure practical laws given by its own reason; so that the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible] world. it is then not to be wondered at that man, as belonging to both worlds, must regard his own nature in reference to its second and highest characteristic only with reverence, and its laws with the highest respect. on this origin are founded many expressions which designate the worth of objects according to moral ideas. the moral law is holy (inviolable). man is indeed unholy enough, but he must regard humanity in his own person as holy. in all creation every thing one chooses and over which one has any power, may be used merely as means; man alone, and with him every rational creature, is an end in himself. by virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the moral law, which is holy. just for this reason every will, even every person's own individual will, in relation to itself, is restricted to the condition of agreement with the autonomy of the rational being, that is to say, that it is not to be subject to any purpose which cannot accord with a law which might arise from the will of the passive subject himself; the latter is, therefore, never to be employed merely as means, but as itself also, concurrently, an end. we justly attribute this condition even to the divine will, with regard to the rational beings in the world, which are his creatures, since it rests on their personality, by which alone they are ends in themselves. this respect-inspiring idea of personality which sets before our eyes the sublimity of our nature (in its higher aspect), while at the same time it shows us the want of accord of our conduct with it and thereby strikes down self-conceit, is even natural to the commonest reason and easily observed. has not every even moderately honourable man sometimes found that, where by an otherwise inoffensive lie he might either have withdrawn himself from an unpleasant business, or even have procured some advantages for a loved and well-deserving friend, he has avoided it solely lest he should despise himself secretly in his own eyes? when an upright man is in the greatest distress, which he might have avoided if he could only have disregarded duty, is he not sustained by the consciousness that he has maintained humanity in its proper dignity in his own person and honoured it, that he has no reason to be ashamed of himself in his own sight, or to dread the inward glance of self-examination? this consolation is not happiness, it is not even the smallest part of it, for no one would wish to have occasion for it, or would, perhaps, even desire a life in such circumstances. but he lives, and he cannot endure that he should be in his own eyes unworthy of life. this inward peace is therefore merely negative as regards what can make life pleasant; it is, in fact, only the escaping the danger of sinking in personal worth, after everything else that is valuable has been lost. it is the effect of a respect for something quite different from life, something in comparison and contrast with which life with all its enjoyment has no value. he still lives only because it is his duty, not because he finds anything pleasant in life. such is the nature of the true motive of pure practical reason; it is no other than the pure moral law itself, inasmuch as it makes us conscious of the sublimity of our own supersensible existence and subjectively produces respect for their higher nature in men who are also conscious of their sensible existence and of the consequent dependence of their pathologically very susceptible nature. now with this motive may be combined so many charms and satisfactions of life that even on this account alone the most prudent choice of a rational epicurean reflecting on the greatest advantage of life would declare itself on the side of moral conduct, and it may even be advisable to join this prospect of a cheerful enjoyment of life with that supreme motive which is already sufficient of itself; but only as a counterpoise to the attractions which vice does not fail to exhibit on the opposite side, and not so as, even in the smallest degree, to place in this the proper moving power when duty is in question. for that would be just the same as to wish to taint the purity of the moral disposition in its source. the majesty of duty has nothing to do with enjoyment of life; it has its special law and its special tribunal, and though the two should be never so well shaken together to be given well mixed, like medicine, to the sick soul, yet they will soon separate of themselves; and if they do not, the former will not act; and although physical life might gain somewhat in force, the moral life would fade away irrecoverably. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 35} critical examination of the analytic of pure practical reason. by the critical examination of a science, or of a portion of it, which constitutes a system by itself, i understand the inquiry and proof why it must have this and no other systematic form, when we compare it with another system which is based on a similar faculty of knowledge. now practical and speculative reason are based on the same faculty, so far as both are pure reason. therefore the difference in their systematic form must be determined by the comparison of both, and the ground of this must be assigned. the analytic of pure theoretic reason had to do with the knowledge of such objects as may have been given to the understanding, and was obliged therefore to begin from intuition and consequently (as this is always sensible) from sensibility; and only after that could advance to concepts (of the objects of this intuition), and could only end with principles after both these had preceded. on the contrary, since practical reason has not to do with objects so as to know them, but with its own faculty of realizing them (in accordance with the knowledge of them), that is, with a will which is a causality, inasmuch as reason contains its determining principle; since, consequently, it has not to furnish an object of intuition, but as practical reason has to furnish only a law (because the notion of causality always implies the reference to a law which determines the existence of the many in relation to one another); hence a critical examination of the analytic of reason, if this is to be practical reason (and this is properly the problem), must begin with the possibility of practical principles a priori. only after that can it proceed to concepts of the objects of a practical reason, namely, those of absolute good and evil, in order to assign them in accordance with those principles (for prior to those principles they cannot possibly be given as good and evil by any faculty of knowledge), and only then could the section be concluded with the last chapter, that, namely, which treats of the relation of the pure practical reason to the sensibility and of its necessary influence thereon, which is a priori cognisable, that is, of the moral sentiment. thus the analytic of the practical pure reason has the whole extent of the conditions of its use in common with the theoretical, but in reverse order. the analytic of pure theoretic reason was divided into transcendental aesthetic and transcendental logic, that of the practical reversely into logic and aesthetic of pure practical reason (if i may, for the sake of analogy merely, use these designations, which are not quite suitable). this logic again was there divided into the analytic of concepts and that of principles: here into that of principles and concepts. the aesthetic also had in the former case two parts, on account of the two kinds of sensible intuition; here the sensibility is not considered as a capacity of intuition at all, but merely as feeling (which can be a subjective ground of desire), and in regard to it pure practical reason admits no further division. it is also easy to see the reason why this division into two parts with its subdivision was not actually adopted here (as one might have been induced to attempt by the example of the former critique). for since it is pure reason that is here considered in its practical use, and consequently as proceeding from a priori principles, and not from empirical principles of determination, hence the division of the analytic of pure practical reason must resemble that of a syllogism; namely, proceeding from the universal in the major premiss (the moral principle), through a minor premiss containing a subsumption of possible actions (as good or evil) under the former, to the conclusion, namely, the subjective determination of the will (an interest in the possible practical good, and in the maxim founded on it). he who has been able to convince himself of the truth of the positions occurring in the analytic will take pleasure in such comparisons; for they justly suggest the expectation that we may perhaps some day be able to discern the unity of the whole faculty of reason (theoretical as well as practical) and be able to derive all from one principle, which, is what human reason inevitably demands, as it finds complete satisfaction only in a perfectly systematic unity of its knowledge. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 40} if now we consider also the contents of the knowledge that we can have of a pure practical reason, and by means of it, as shown by the analytic, we find, along with a remarkable analogy between it and the theoretical, no less remarkable differences. as regards the theoretical, the faculty of a pure rational cognition a priori could be easily and evidently proved by examples from sciences (in which, as they put their principles to the test in so many ways by methodical use, there is not so much reason as in common knowledge to fear a secret mixture of empirical principles of cognition). but, that pure reason without the admixture of any empirical principle is practical of itself, this could only be shown from the commonest practical use of reason, by verifying the fact, that every man's natural reason acknowledges the supreme practical principle as the supreme law of his willa law completely a priori and not depending on any sensible data. it was necessary first to establish and verify the purity of its origin, even in the judgement of this common reason, before science could take it in hand to make use of it, as a fact, that is, prior to all disputation about its possibility, and all the consequences that may be drawn from it. but this circumstance may be readily explained from what has just been said; because practical pure reason must necessarily begin with principles, which therefore must be the first data, the foundation of all science, and cannot be derived from it. it was possible to effect this verification of moral principles as principles of a pure reason quite well, and with sufficient certainty, by a single appeal to the judgement of common sense, for this reason, that anything empirical which might slip into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain which necessarily attaches to it as exciting desire; whereas pure practical reason positively refuses to admit this feeling into its principle as a condition. the heterogeneity of the determining principles (the empirical and rational) is clearly detected by this resistance of a practically legislating reason against every admixture of inclination, and by a peculiar kind of sentiment, which, however, does not precede the legislation of the practical reason, but, on the contrary, is produced by this as a constraint, namely, by the feeling of a respect such as no man has for inclinations of whatever kind but for the law only; and it is detected in so marked and prominent a manner that even the most uninstructed cannot fail to see at once in an example presented to him, that empirical principles of volition may indeed urge him to follow their attractions, but that he can never be expected to obey anything but the pure practical law of reason alone. the distinction between the doctrine of happiness and the doctrine of morality, in the former of which empirical principles constitute the entire foundation, while in the second they do not form the smallest part of it, is the first and most important office of the analytic of pure practical reason; and it must proceed in it with as much exactness and, so to speak, scrupulousness, as any geometer in his work. the philosopher, however, has greater difficulties to contend with here (as always in rational cognition by means of concepts merely without construction), because he cannot take any intuition as a foundation (for a pure noumenon). he has, however, this advantage that, like the chemist, he can at any time make an experiment with every man's practical reason for the purpose of distinguishing the moral (pure) principle of determination from the empirical; namely, by adding the moral law (as a determining principle) to the empirically affected will (e.g., that of the man who would be ready to lie because he can gain something thereby). it is as if the analyst added alkali to a solution of lime in hydrochloric acid, the acid at once forsakes the lime, combines with the alkali, and the lime is precipitated. just in the same way, if to a man who is otherwise honest (or who for this occasion places himself only in thought in the position of an honest man), we present the moral law by which he recognises the worthlessness of the liar, his practical reason (in forming a judgement of what ought to be done) at once forsakes the advantage, combines with that which maintains in him respect for his own person (truthfulness), and the advantage after it has been separated and washed from every particle of reason (which is altogether on the side of duty) is easily weighed by everyone, so that it can enter into combination with reason in other cases, only not where it could be opposed to the moral law, which reason never forsakes, but most closely unites itself with. but it does not follow that this distinction between the principle of happiness and that of morality is an opposition between them, and pure practical reason does not require that we should renounce all claim to happiness, but only that the moment duty is in question we should take no account of happiness. it may even in certain respects be a duty to provide for happiness; partly, because (including skill, wealth, riches) it contains means for the fulfilment of our duty; partly, because the absence of it (e.g., poverty) implies temptations to transgress our duty. but it can never be an immediate duty to promote our happiness, still less can it be the principle of all duty. now, as all determining principles of the will, except the law of pure practical reason alone (the moral law), are all empirical and, therefore, as such, belong to the principle of happiness, they must all be kept apart from the supreme principle of morality and never be incorporated with it as a condition; since this would be to destroy all moral worth just as much as any empirical admixture with geometrical principles would destroy the certainty of mathematical evidence, which in plato's opinion is the most excellent thing in mathematics, even surpassing their utility. instead, however, of the deduction of the supreme principle of pure practical reason, that is, the explanation of the possibility of such a knowledge a priori, the utmost we were able to do was to show that if we saw the possibility of the freedom of an efficient cause, we should also see not merely the possibility, but even the necessity, of the moral law as the supreme practical law of rational beings, to whom we attribute freedom of causality of their will; because both concepts are so inseparably united that we might define practical freedom as independence of the will on anything but the moral law. but we cannot perceive the possibility of the freedom of an efficient cause, especially in the world of sense; we are fortunate if only we can be sufficiently assured that there is no proof of its impossibility, and are now, by the moral law which postulates it, compelled and therefore authorized to assume it. however, there are still many who think that they can explain this freedom on empirical principles, like any other physical faculty, and treat it as a psychological property, the explanation of which only requires a more exact study of the nature of the soul and of the motives of the will, and not as a transcendental predicate of the causality of a being that belongs to the world of sense (which is really the point). they thus deprive us of the grand revelation which we obtain through practical reason by means of the moral law, the revelation, namely, of a supersensible world by the realization of the otherwise transcendent concept of freedom, and by this deprive us also of the moral law itself, which admits no empirical principle of determination. therefore it will be necessary to add something here as a protection against this delusion and to exhibit empiricism in its naked superficiality. the notion of causality as physical necessity, in opposition to the same notion as freedom, concerns only the existence of things so far as it is determinable in time, and, consequently, as phenomena, in opposition to their causality as things in themselves. now if we take the attributes of existence of things in time for attributes of things in themselves (which is the common view), then it is impossible to reconcile the necessity of the causal relation with freedom; they are contradictory. for from the former it follows that every event, and consequently every action that takes place at a certain point of time, is a necessary result of what existed in time preceding. now as time past is no longer in my power, hence every action that i perform must be the necessary result of certain determining grounds which are not in my power, that is, at the moment in which i am acting i am never free. nay, even if i assume that my whole existence is independent on any foreign cause (for instance, god), so that the determining principles of my causality, and even of my whole existence, were not outside myself, yet this would not in the least transform that physical necessity into freedom. for at every moment of time i am still under the necessity of being determined to action by that which is not in my power, and the series of events infinite a parte priori, which i only continue according to a pre-determined order and could never begin of myself, would be a continuous physical chain, and therefore my causality would never be freedom. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 45} if, then, we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is determined in time, we cannot except him from the law of necessity as to all events in his existence and, consequently, as to his actions also; for that would be to hand him over to blind chance. now as this law inevitably applies to all the causality of things, so far as their existence is determinable in time, it follows that if this were the mode in which we had also to conceive the existence of these things in themselves, freedom must be rejected as a vain and impossible conception. consequently, if we would still save it, no other way remains but to consider that the existence of a thing, so far as it is determinable in time, and therefore its causality, according to the law of physical necessity, belong to appearance, and to attribute freedom to the same being as a thing in itself. this is certainly inevitable, if we would retain both these contradictory concepts together; but in application, when we try to explain their combination in one and the same action, great difficulties present themselves which seem to render such a combination impracticable. when i say of a man who commits a theft that, by the law of causality, this deed is a necessary result of the determining causes in preceding time, then it was impossible that it could not have happened; how then can the judgement, according to the moral law, make any change, and suppose that it could have been omitted, because the law says that it ought to have been omitted; that is, how can a man be called quite free at the same moment, and with respect to the same action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity? some try to evade this by saying that the causes that determine his causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom. according to this, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing itself, e.g., that which a projectile performs when it is in free motion, in which case we use the word freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion, because it moves its hands itself, which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force; so although the actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which precede in time, we yet call them free, because these causes are ideas produced by our own faculties, whereby desires are evoked on occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according to our own pleasure. this is a wretched subterfuge with which some persons still let themselves be put off, and so think they have solved, with a petty wordjugglery, that difficult problem, at the solution of which centuries have laboured in vain, and which can therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface. in fact, in the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of all moral laws and the consequent responsibility, it does not matter whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by a physical law reside within the subject or without him, or in the former case whether these principles are instinctive or are conceived by reason, if, as is admitted by these men themselves, these determining ideas have the ground of their existence in time and in the antecedent state, and this again in an antecedent, etc. then it matters not that these are internal; it matters not that they have a psychological and not a mechanical causality, that is, produce actions by means of ideas and not by bodily movements; they are still determining principles of the causality of a being whose existence is determinable in time, and therefore under the necessitation of conditions of past time, which therefore, when the subject has to act, are no longer in his power. this may imply psychological freedom (if we choose to apply this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in the mind), but it involves physical necessity and, therefore, leaves no room for transcendental freedom, which must be conceived as independence on everything empirical, and, consequently, on nature generally, whether it is an object of the internal sense considered in time only, or of the external in time and space. without this freedom (in the latter and true sense), which alone is practical a priori, no moral law and no moral imputation are possible. just for this reason the necessity of events in time, according to the physical law of causality, may be called the mechanism of nature, although we do not mean by this that things which are subject to it must be really material machines. we look here only to the necessity of the connection of events in a time-series as it is developed according to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is moved by matter, or with leibnitz spirituale when it is impelled by ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter (say the psychological and comparative, not also transcendental, that is, absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the freedom of a turnspit, which, when once it is wound up, accomplishes its motions of itself. now, in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and the same action, we must remember what was said in the critique of pure reason, or what follows therefrom; viz., that the necessity of nature, which cannot co-exist with the freedom of the subject, appertains only to the attributes of the thing that is subject to time-conditions, consequently only to those of the acting subject as a phenomenon; that therefore in this respect the determining principles of every action of the same reside in what belongs to past time and is no longer in his power (in which must be included his own past actions and the character that these may determine for him in his own eyes as a phenomenon). but the very same subject, being on the other side conscious of himself as a thing in himself, considers his existence also in so far as it is not subject to time-conditions, and regards himself as only determinable by laws which he gives himself through reason; and in this his existence nothing is antecedent to the determination of his will, but every action, and in general every modification of his existence, varying according to his internal sense, even the whole series of his existence as a sensible being is in the consciousness of his supersensible existence nothing but the result, and never to be regarded as the determining principle, of his causality as a noumenon. in this view now the rational being can justly say of every unlawful action that he performs, that he could very well have left it undone; although as appearance it is sufficiently determined in the past, and in this respect is absolutely necessary; for it, with all the past which determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character which he makes for himself, in consequence of which he imputes the causality of those appearances to himself as a cause independent on sensibility. with this agree perfectly the judicial sentences of that wonderful faculty in us which we call conscience. a man may use as much art as he likes in order to paint to himself an unlawful act, that he remembers, as an unintentional error, a mere oversight, such as one can never altogether avoid, and therefore as something in which he was carried away by the stream of physical necessity, and thus to make himself out innocent, yet he finds that the advocate who speaks in his favour can by no means silence the accuser within, if only he is conscious that at the time when he did this wrong he was in his senses, that is, in possession of his freedom; and, nevertheless, he accounts for his error from some bad habits, which by gradual neglect of attention he has allowed to grow upon him to such a degree that he can regard his error as its natural consequence, although this cannot protect him from the blame and reproach which he casts upon himself. this is also the ground of repentance for a long past action at every recollection of it; a painful feeling produced by the moral sentiment, and which is practically void in so far as it cannot serve to undo what has been done. (hence priestley, as a true and consistent fatalist, declares it absurd, and he deserves to be commended for this candour more than those who, while they maintain the mechanism of the will in fact, and its freedom in words only, yet wish it to be thought that they include it in their system of compromise, although they do not explain the possibility of such moral imputation.) but the pain is quite legitimate, because when the law of our intelligible [supersensible] existence (the moral law) is in question, reason recognizes no distinction of time, and only asks whether the event belongs to me, as my act, and then always morally connects the same feeling with it, whether it has happened just now or long ago. for in reference to the supersensible consciousness of its existence (i.e., freedom) the life of sense is but a single phenomenon, which, inasmuch as it contains merely manifestations of the mental disposition with regard to the moral law (i.e., of the character), must be judged not according to the physical necessity that belongs to it as phenomenon, but according to the absolute spontaneity of freedom. it may therefore be admitted that, if it were possible to have so profound an insight into a man's mental character as shown by internal as well as external actions as to know all its motives, even the smallest, and likewise all the external occasions that can influence them, we could calculate a man's conduct for the future with as great certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse; and nevertheless we may maintain that the man is free. in fact, if we were capable of a further glance, namely, an intellectual intuition of the same subject (which indeed is not granted to us, and instead of it we have only the rational concept), then we should perceive that this whole chain of appearances in regard to all that concerns the moral laws depends on the spontaneity of the subject as a thing in itself, of the determination of which no physical explanation can be given. in default of this intuition, the moral law assures us of this distinction between the relation of our actions as appearance to our sensible nature, and the relation of this sensible nature to the supersensible substratum in us. in this view, which is natural to our reason, though inexplicable, we can also justify some judgements which we passed with all conscientiousness, and which yet at first sight seem quite opposed to all equity. there are cases in which men, even with the same education which has been profitable to others, yet show such early depravity, and so continue to progress in it to years of manhood, that they are thought to be born villains, and their character altogether incapable of improvement; and nevertheless they are judged for what they do or leave undone, they are reproached for their faults as guilty; nay, they themselves (the children) regard these reproaches as well founded, exactly as if in spite of the hopeless natural quality of mind ascribed to them, they remained just as responsible as any other man. this could not happen if we did not suppose that whatever springs from a man's choice (as every action intentionally performed undoubtedly does) has as its foundation a free causality, which from early youth expresses its character in its manifestations (i.e., actions). these, on account of the uniformity of conduct, exhibit a natural connection, which however does not make the vicious quality of the will necessary, but on the contrary, is the consequence of the evil principles voluntarily adopted and unchangeable, which only make it so much the more culpable and deserving of punishment. there still remains a difficulty in the combination of freedom with the mechanism of nature in a being belonging to the world of sense; a difficulty which, even after all the foregoing is admitted, threatens freedom with complete destruction. but with this danger there is also a circumstance that offers hope of an issue still favourable to freedom; namely, that the same difficulty presses much more strongly (in fact as we shall presently see, presses only) on the system that holds the existence determinable in time and space to be the existence of things in themselves; it does not therefore oblige us to give up our capital supposition of the ideality of time as a mere form of sensible intuition, and consequently as a mere manner of representation which is proper to the subject as belonging to the world of sense; and therefore it only requires that this view be reconciled with this idea. the difficulty is as follows: even if it is admitted that the supersensible subject can be free with respect to a given action, although, as a subject also belonging to the world of sense, he is under mechanical conditions with respect to the same action, still, as soon as we allow that god as universal first cause is also the cause of the existence of substance (a proposition which can never be given up without at the same time giving up the notion of god as the being of all beings, and therewith giving up his all sufficiency, on which everything in theology depends), it seems as if we must admit that a man's actions have their determining principle in something which is wholly out of his powernamely, in the causality of a supreme being distinct from himself and on whom his own existence and the whole determination of his causality are absolutely dependent. in point of fact, if a man's actions as belonging to his modifications in time were not merely modifications of him as appearance, but as a thing in itself, freedom could not be saved. man would be a marionette or an automaton, like vaucanson's, prepared and wound up by the supreme artist. self-consciousness would indeed make him a thinking automaton; but the consciousness of his own spontaneity would be mere delusion if this were mistaken for freedom, and it would deserve this name only in a comparative sense, since, although the proximate determining causes of its motion and a long series of their determining causes are internal, yet the last and highest is found in a foreign hand. therefore i do not see how those who still insist on regarding time and space as attributes belonging to the existence of things in themselves, can avoid admitting the fatality of actions; or if (like the otherwise acute mendelssohn) they allow them to be conditions necessarily belonging to the existence of finite and derived beings, but not to that of the infinite supreme being, i do not see on what ground they can justify such a distinction, or, indeed, how they can avoid the contradiction that meets them, when they hold that existence in time is an attribute necessarily belonging to finite things in themselves, whereas god is the cause of this existence, but cannot be the cause of time (or space) itself (since this must be presupposed as a necessary a priori condition of the existence of things); and consequently as regards the existence of these things. his causality must be subject to conditions and even to the condition of time; and this would inevitably bring in everything contradictory to the notions of his infinity and independence. on the other hand, it is quite easy for us to draw the distinction between the attribute of the divine existence of being independent on all time-conditions, and that of a being of the world of sense, the distinction being that between the existence of a being in itself and that of a thing in appearance. hence, if this ideality of time and space is not adopted, nothing remains but spinozism, in which space and time are essential attributes of the supreme being himself, and the things dependent on him (ourselves, therefore, included) are not substances, but merely accidents inhering in him; since, if these things as his effects exist in time only, this being the condition of their existence in themselves, then the actions of these beings must be simply his actions which he performs in some place and time. thus, spinozism, in spite of the absurdity of its fundamental idea, argues more consistently than the creation theory can, when beings assumed to be substances, and beings in themselves existing in time, are regarded as effects of a supreme cause, and yet as not [belonging] to him and his action, but as separate substances. {book_1|chapter_3 ^paragraph 50} the above-mentioned difficulty is resolved briefly and clearly as follows: if existence in time is a mere sensible mode of representation belonging to thinking beings in the world and consequently does not apply to them as things in themselves, then the creation of these beings is a creation of things in themselves, since the notion of creation does not belong to the sensible form of representation of existence or to causality, but can only be referred to noumena. consequently, when i say of beings in the world of sense that they are created, i so far regard them as noumena. as it would be a contradiction, therefore, to say that god is a creator of appearances, so also it is a contradiction to say that as creator he is the cause of actions in the world of sense, and therefore as appearances, although he is the cause of the existence of the acting beings (which are noumena). if now it is possible to affirm freedom in spite of the natural mechanism of actions as appearances (by regarding existence in time as something that belongs only to appearances, not to things in themselves), then the circumstance that the acting beings are creatures cannot make the slightest difference, since creation concerns their supersensible and not their sensible existence, and, therefore, cannot be regarded as the determining principle of the appearances. it would be quite different if the beings in the world as things in themselves existed in time, since in that case the creator of substance would be at the same time the author of the whole mechanism of this substance. of so great importance is the separation of time (as well as space) from the existence of things in themselves which was effected in the critique of the pure speculative reason. it may be said that the solution here proposed involves great difficulty in itself and is scarcely susceptible of a lucid exposition. but is any other solution that has been attempted, or that may be attempted, easier and more intelligible? rather might we say that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more shrewdness than candour in keeping this difficult point out of sight as much as possible, in the hope that if they said nothing about it, probably no one would think of it. if science is to be advanced, all difficulties must be laid open, and we must even search for those that are hidden, for every difficulty calls forth a remedy, which cannot be discovered without science gaining either in extent or in exactness; and thus even obstacles become means of increasing the thoroughness of science. on the other hand, if the difficulties are intentionally concealed, or merely removed by palliatives, then sooner or later they burst out into incurable mischiefs, which bring science to ruin in an absolute scepticism. since it is, properly speaking, the notion of freedom alone amongst all the ideas of pure speculative reason that so greatly enlarges our knowledge in the sphere of the supersensible, though only of our practical knowledge, i ask myself why it exclusively possesses so great fertility, whereas the others only designate the vacant space for possible beings of the pure understanding, but are unable by any means to define the concept of them. i presently find that as i cannot think anything without a category, i must first look for a category for the rational idea of freedom with which i am now concerned; and this is the category of causality; and although freedom, a concept of the reason, being a transcendent concept, cannot have any intuition corresponding to it, yet the concept of the understandingfor the synthesis of which the former demands the unconditioned(namely, the concept of causality) must have a sensible intuition given, by which first its objective reality is assured. now, the categories are all divided into two classesthe mathematical, which concern the unity of synthesis in the conception of objects, and the dynamical, which refer to the unity of synthesis in the conception of the existence of objects. the former (those of magnitude and quality) always contain a synthesis of the homogeneous, and it is not possible to find in this the unconditioned antecedent to what is given in sensible intuition as conditioned in space and time, as this would itself have to belong to space and time, and therefore be again still conditioned. whence it resulted in the dialectic of pure theoretic reason that the opposite methods of attaining the unconditioned and the totality of the conditions were both wrong. the categories of the second class (those of causality and of the necessity of a thing) did not require this homogeneity (of the conditioned and the condition in synthesis), since here what we have to explain is not how the intuition is compounded from a manifold in it, but only how the existence of the conditioned object corresponding to it is added to the existence of the condition (added, namely, in the understanding as connected therewith); and in that case it was allowable to suppose in the supersensible world the unconditioned antecedent to the altogether conditioned in the world of sense (both as regards the causal connection and the contingent existence of things themselves), although this unconditioned remained indeterminate, and to make the synthesis transcendent. hence, it was found in the dialectic of the pure speculative reason that the two apparently opposite methods of obtaining for the conditioned the unconditioned were not really contradictory, e.g., in the synthesis of causality to conceive for the conditioned in the series of causes and effects of the sensible world, a causality which has no sensible condition, and that the same action which, as belonging to the world of sense, is always sensibly conditioned, that is, mechanically necessary, yet at the same time may be derived from a causality not sensibly conditionedbeing the causality of the acting being as belonging to the supersensible worldand may consequently be conceived as free. now, the only point in question was to change this may be into is; that is, that we should be able to show in an actual case, as it were by a fact, that certain actions imply such a causality (namely, the intellectual, sensibly unconditioned), whether they are actual or only commanded, that is, objectively necessary in a practical sense. we could not hope to find this connexion in actions actually given in experience as events of the sensible world, since causality with freedom must always be sought outside the world of sense in the world of intelligence. but things of sense are the only things offered to our perception and observation. hence, nothing remained but to find an incontestable objective principle of causality which excludes all sensible conditions: that is, a principle in which reason does not appeal further to something else as a determining ground of its causality, but contains this determining ground itself by means of that principle, and in which therefore it is itself as pure reason practical. now, this principle had not to be searched for or discovered; it had long been in the reason of all men, and incorporated in their nature, and is the principle of morality. therefore, that unconditioned causality, with the faculty of it, namely, freedom, is no longer merely indefinitely and problematically thought (this speculative reason could prove to be feasible), but is even as regards the law of its causality definitely and assertorially known; and with it the fact that a being (i myself), belonging to the world of sense, belongs also to the supersensible world, this is also positively known, and thus the reality of the supersensible world is established and in practical respects definitely given, and this definiteness, which for theoretical purposes would be transcendent, is for practical purposes immanent. we could not, however, make a similar step as regards the second dynamical idea, namely, that of a necessary being. we could not rise to it from the sensible world without the aid of the first dynamical idea. for if we attempted to do so, we should have ventured to leave at a bound all that is given to us, and to leap to that of which nothing is given us that can help us to effect the connection of such a supersensible being with the world of sense (since the necessary being would have to be known as given outside ourselves). on the other hand, it is now obvious that this connection is quite possible in relation to our own subject, inasmuch as i know myself to be on the one side as an intelligible [supersensible] being determined by the moral law (by means of freedom), and on the other side as acting in the world of sense. it is the concept of freedom alone that enables us to find the unconditioned and intelligible for the conditioned and sensible without going out of ourselves. for it is our own reason that by means of the supreme and unconditional practical law knows that itself and the being that is conscious of this law (our own person) belong to the pure world of understanding, and moreover defines the manner in which, as such, it can be active. in this way it can be understood why in the whole faculty of reason it is the practical reason only that can help us to pass beyond the world of sense and give us knowledge of a supersensible order and connection, which, however, for this very reason cannot be extended further than is necessary for pure practical purposes. let me be permitted on this occasion to make one more remark, namely, that every step that we make with pure reason, even in the practical sphere where no attention is paid to subtle speculation, nevertheless accords with all the material points of the critique of the theoretical reason as closely and directly as if each step had been thought out with deliberate purpose to establish this confirmation. such a thorough agreement, wholly unsought for and quite obvious (as anyone can convince himself, if he will only carry moral inquiries up to their principles), between the most important proposition of practical reason and the often seemingly too subtle and needless remarks of the critique of the speculative reason, occasions surprise and astonishment, and confirms the maxim already recognized and praised by others, namely, that in every scientific inquiry we should pursue our way steadily with all possible exactness and frankness, without caring for any objections that may be raised from outside its sphere, but, as far as we can, to carry out our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. frequent observation has convinced me that, when such researches are concluded, that which in one part of them appeared to me very questionable, considered in relation to other extraneous doctrines, when i left this doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business in hand until it was completed, at last was unexpectedly found to agree perfectly with what had been discovered separately without the least regard to those doctrines, and without any partiality or prejudice for them. authors would save themselves many errors and much labour lost (because spent on a delusion) if they could only resolve to go to work with more frankness. book_2|chapter_1 book ii. dialectic of pure practical reason. chapter i. of a dialectic of pure practical reason generally. pure reason always has its dialetic, whether it is considered in its speculative or its practical employment; for it requires the absolute totality of the 'conditions of what is given conditioned, and this can only be found in things in themselves. but as all conceptions of things in themselves must be referred to intuitions, and with us men these can never be other than sensible and hence can never enable us to know objects as things in themselves but only as appearances, and since the unconditioned can never be found in this chain of appearances which consists only of conditioned and conditions; thus from applying this rational idea of the totality of the conditions (in other words of the unconditioned) to appearances, there arises an inevitable illusion, as if these latter were things in themselves (for in the absence of a warning critique they are always regarded as such). this illusion would never be noticed as delusive if it did not betray itself by a conflict of reason with itself, when it applies to appearances its fundamental principle of presupposing the unconditioned to everything conditioned. by this, however, reason is compelled to trace this illusion to its source, and search how it can be removed, and this can only be done by a complete critical examination of the whole pure faculty of reason; so that the antinomy of the pure reason which is manifest in its dialectic is in fact the most beneficial error into which human reason could ever have fallen, since it at last drives us to search for the key to escape from this labyrinth; and when this key is found, it further discovers that which we did not seek but yet had need of, namely, a view into a higher and an immutable order of things, in which we even now are, and in which we are thereby enabled by definite precepts to continue to live according to the highest dictates of reason. it may be seen in detail in the critique of pure reason how in its speculative employment this natural dialectic is to be solved, and how the error which arises from a very natural illusion may be guarded against. but reason in its practical use is not a whit better off. as pure practical reason, it likewise seeks to find the unconditioned for the practically conditioned (which rests on inclinations and natural wants), and this is not as the determining principle of the will, but even when this is given (in the moral law) it seeks the unconditioned totality of the object of pure practical reason under the name of the summum bonum. to define this idea practically, i.e., sufficiently for the maxims of our rational conduct, is the business of practical wisdom, and this again as a science is philosophy, in the sense in which the word was understood by the ancients, with whom it meant instruction in the conception in which the summum bonum was to be placed, and the conduct by which it was to be obtained. it would be well to leave this word in its ancient signification as a doctrine of the summum bonum, so far as reason endeavours to make this into a science. for on the one hand the restriction annexed would suit the greek expression (which signifies the love of wisdom), and yet at the same time would be sufficient to embrace under the name of philosophy the love of science: that is to say, of all speculative rational knowledge, so far as it is serviceable to reason, both for that conception and also for the practical principle determining our conduct, without letting out of sight the main end, on account of which alone it can be called a doctrine of practical wisdom. on the other hand, it would be no harm to deter the self-conceit of one who ventures to claim the title of philosopher by holding before him in the very definition a standard of self-estimation which would very much lower his pretensions. for a teacher of wisdom would mean something more than a scholar who has not come so far as to guide himself, much less to guide others, with certain expectation of attaining so high an end: it would mean a master in the knowledge of wisdom, which implies more than a modest man would claim for himself. thus philosophy as well as wisdom would always remain an ideal, which objectively is presented complete in reason alone, while subjectively for the person it is only the goal of his unceasing endeavours; and no one would be justified in professing to be in possession of it so as to assume the name of philosopher who could not also show its infallible effects in his own person as an example (in his self-mastery and the unquestioned interest that he takes pre-eminently in the general good), and this the ancients also required as a condition of deserving that honourable title. {book_2|chapter_1 ^paragraph 5} we have another preliminary remark to make respecting the dialectic of the pure practical reason, on the point of the definition of the summum bonum (a successful solution of which dialectic would lead us to expect, as in case of that of the theoretical reason, the most beneficial effects, inasmuch as the self-contradictions of pure practical reason honestly stated, and not concealed, force us to undertake a complete critique of this faculty). the moral law is the sole determining principle of a pure will. but since this is merely formal (viz., as prescribing only the form of the maxim as universally legislative), it abstracts as a determining principle from all matter that is to say, from every object of volition. hence, though the summum bonum may be the whole object of a pure practical reason, i.e., a pure will, yet it is not on that account to be regarded as its determining principle; and the moral law alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its realization or promotion are aimed at. this remark is important in so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds. for it will have been seen from the analytic that, if we assume any object under the name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle, this would always introduce heteronomy and crush out the moral principle. it is, however, evident that if the notion of the summum bonum includes that of the moral law as its supreme condition, then the summum bonum would not merely be an object, but the notion of it and the conception of its existence as possible by our own practical reason would likewise be the determining principle of the will, since in that case the will is in fact determined by the moral law which is already included in this conception, and by no other object, as the principle of autonomy requires. this order of the conceptions of determination of the will must not be lost sight of, as otherwise we should misunderstand ourselves and think we had fallen into a contradiction, while everything remains in perfect harmony. book_2|chapter_2 chapter ii. of the dialectic of pure reason in defining the conception of the "summum bonum". the conception of the summum itself contains an ambiguity which might occasion needless disputes if we did not attend to it. the summum may mean either the supreme (supremum) or the perfect (consummatum). the former is that condition which is itself unconditioned, i.e., is not subordinate to any other (originarium); the second is that whole which is not a part of a greater whole of the same kind (perfectissimum). it has been shown in the analytic that virtue (as worthiness to be happy) is the supreme condition of all that can appear to us desirable, and consequently of all our pursuit of happiness, and is therefore the supreme good. but it does not follow that it is the whole and perfect good as the object of the desires of rational finite beings; for this requires happiness also, and that not merely in the partial eyes of the person who makes himself an end, but even in the judgement of an impartial reason, which regards persons in general as ends in themselves. for to need happiness, to deserve it, and yet at the same time not to participate in it, cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a rational being possessed at the same time of all power, if, for the sake of experiment, we conceive such a being. now inasmuch as virtue and happiness together constitute the possession of the summum bonum in a person, and the distribution of happiness in exact proportion to morality (which is the worth of the person, and his worthiness to be happy) constitutes the summum bonum of a possible world; hence this summum bonum expresses the whole, the perfect good, in which, however, virtue as the condition is always the supreme good, since it has no condition above it; whereas happiness, while it is pleasant to the possessor of it, is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good, but always presupposes morally right behaviour as its condition. when two elements are necessarily united in one concept, they must be connected as reason and consequence, and this either so that their unity is considered as analytical (logical connection), or as synthetical (real connection) the former following the law of identity, the latter that of causality. the connection of virtue and happiness may therefore be understood in two ways: either the endeavour to be virtuous and the rational pursuit of happiness are not two distinct actions, but absolutely identical, in which case no maxim need be made the principle of the former, other than what serves for the latter; or the connection consists in this, that virtue produces happiness as something distinct from the consciousness of virtue, as a cause produces an effect. the ancient greek schools were, properly speaking, only two, and in determining the conception of the summum bonum these followed in fact one and the same method, inasmuch as they did not allow virtue and happiness to be regarded as two distinct elements of the summum bonum, and consequently sought the unity of the principle by the rule of identity; but they differed as to which of the two was to be taken as the fundamental notion. the epicurean said: "to be conscious that one's maxims lead to happiness is virtue"; the stoic said: "to be conscious of one's virtue is happiness." with the former, prudence was equivalent to morality; with the latter, who chose a higher designation for virtue, morality alone was true wisdom. while we must admire the men who in such early times tried all imaginable ways of extending the domain of philosophy, we must at the same time lament that their acuteness was unfortunately misapplied in trying to trace out identity between two extremely heterogeneous notions, those of happiness and virtue. but it agrees with the dialectical spirit of their times (and subtle minds are even now sometimes misled in the same way) to get rid of irreconcilable differences in principle by seeking to change them into a mere contest about words, and thus apparently working out the identity of the notion under different names, and this usually occurs in cases where the combination of heterogeneous principles lies so deep or so high, or would require so complete a transformation of the doctrines assumed in the rest of the philosophical system, that men are afraid to penetrate deeply into the real difference and prefer treating it as a difference in questions of form. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 5} while both schools sought to trace out the identity of the practical principles of virtue and happiness, they were not agreed as to the way in which they tried to force this identity, but were separated infinitely from one another, the one placing its principle on the side of sense, the other on that of reason; the one in the consciousness of sensible wants, the other in the independence of practical reason on all sensible grounds of determination. according to the epicurean, the notion of virtue was already involved in the maxim: "to promote one's own happiness"; according to the stoics, on the other hand, the feeling of happiness was already contained in the consciousness of virtue. now whatever is contained in another notion is identical with part of the containing notion, but not with the whole, and moreover two wholes may be specifically distinct, although they consist of the same parts; namely if the parts are united into a whole in totally different ways. the stoic maintained that the virtue was the whole summum bonum, and happiness only the consciousness of possessing it, as making part of the state of the subject. the epicurean maintained that happiness was the whole summum bonum, and virtue only the form of the maxim for its pursuit; viz., the rational use of the means for attaining it. now it is clear from the analytic that the maxims of virtue and those of private happiness are quite heterogeneous as to their supreme practical principle, and, although they belong to one summum bonum which together they make possible, yet they are so far from coinciding that they restrict and check one another very much in the same subject. thus the question: "how is the summum bonum practically possible?" still remains an unsolved problem, notwithstanding all the attempts at coalition that have hitherto been made. the analytic has, however, shown what it is that makes the problem difficult to solve; namely, that happiness and morality are two specifically distinct elements of the summum bonum and, therefore, their combination cannot be analytically cognised (as if the man that seeks his own happiness should find by mere analysis of his conception that in so acting he is virtuous, or as if the man that follows virtue should in the consciousness of such conduct find that he is already happy ipso facto), but must be a synthesis of concepts. now since this combination is recognised as a priori, and therefore as practically necessary, and consequently not as derived from experience, so that the possibility of the summum bonum does not rest on any empirical principle, it follows that the deduction [legitimation] of this concept must be transcendental. it is a priori (morally) necessary to produce the summum bonum by freedom of will: therefore the condition of its possibility must rest solely on a priori principles of cognition. i. the antinomy of practical reason. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 10} in the summum bonum which is practical for us, i.e., to be realized by our will, virtue and happiness are thought as necessarily combined, so that the one cannot be assumed by pure practical reason without the other also being attached to it. now this combination (like every other) is either analytical or synthetical. it has been shown that it cannot be analytical; it must then be synthetical and, more particularly, must be conceived as the connection of cause and effect, since it concerns a practical good, i.e., one that is possible by means of action; consequently either the desire of happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue, or the maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of happiness. the first is absolutely impossible, because (as was proved in the analytic) maxims which place the determining principle of the will in the desire of personal happiness are not moral at all, and no virtue can be founded on them. but the second is also impossible, because the practical connection of causes and effects in the world, as the result of the determination of the will, does not depend upon the moral dispositions of the will, but on the knowledge of the laws of nature and the physical power to use them for one's purposes; consequently we cannot expect in the world by the most punctilious observance of the moral laws any necessary connection of happiness with virtue adequate to the summum bonum. now, as the promotion of this summum bonum, the conception of which contains this connection, is a priori a necessary object of our will and inseparably attached to the moral law, the impossibility of the former must prove the falsity of the latter. if then the supreme good is not possible by practical rules, then the moral law also which commands us to promote it is directed to vain imaginary ends and must consequently be false. ii. critical solution of the antinomy of practical reason. the antinomy of pure speculative reason exhibits a similar conflict between freedom and physical necessity in the causality of events in the world. it was solved by showing that there is no real contradiction when the events and even the world in which they occur are regarded (as they ought to be) merely as appearances; since one and the same acting being, as an appearance (even to his own inner sense), has a causality in the world of sense that always conforms to the mechanism of nature, but with respect to the same events, so far as the acting person regards himself at the same time as a noumenon (as pure intelligence in an existence not dependent on the condition of time), he can contain a principle by which that causality acting according to laws of nature is determined, but which is itself free from all laws of nature. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 15} it is just the same with the foregoing antinomy of pure practical reason. the first of the two propositions, "that the endeavour after happiness produces a virtuous mind," is absolutely false; but the second, "that a virtuous mind necessarily produces happiness," is not absolutely false, but only in so far as virtue is considered as a form of causality in the sensible world, and consequently only if i suppose existence in it to be the only sort of existence of a rational being; it is then only conditionally false. but as i am not only justified in thinking that i exist also as a noumenon in a world of the understanding, but even have in the moral law a purely intellectual determining principle of my causality (in the sensible world), it is not impossible that morality of mind should have a connection as cause with happiness (as an effect in the sensible world) if not immediate yet mediate (viz., through an intelligent author of nature), and moreover necessary; while in a system of nature which is merely an object of the senses, this combination could never occur except contingently and, therefore, could not suffice for the summum bonum. thus, notwithstanding this seeming conflict of practical reason with itself, the summum bonum, which is the necessary supreme end of a will morally determined, is a true object thereof; for it is practically possible, and the maxims of the will which as regards their matter refer to it have objective reality, which at first was threatened by the antinomy that appeared in the connection of morality with happiness by a general law; but this was merely from a misconception, because the relation between appearances was taken for a relation of the things in themselves to these appearances. when we find ourselves obliged to go so far, namely, to the connection with an intelligible world, to find the possibility of the summum bonum, which reason points out to all rational beings as the goal of all their moral wishes, it must seem strange that, nevertheless, the philosophers both of ancient and modern times have been able to find happiness in accurate proportion to virtue even in this life (in the sensible world), or have persuaded themselves that they were conscious thereof. for epicurus as well as the stoics extolled above everything the happiness that springs from the consciousness of living virtuously; and the former was not so base in his practical precepts as one might infer from the principles of his theory, which he used for explanation and not for action, or as they were interpreted by many who were misled by his using the term pleasure for contentment; on the contrary, he reckoned the most disinterested practice of good amongst the ways of enjoying the most intimate delight, and his scheme of pleasure (by which he meant constant cheerfulness of mind) included the moderation and control of the inclinations, such as the strictest moral philosopher might require. he differed from the stoics chiefly in making this pleasure the motive, which they very rightly refused to do. for, on the one hand, the virtuous epicurus, like many well-intentioned men of this day who do not reflect deeply enough on their principles, fell into the error of presupposing the virtuous disposition in the persons for whom he wished to provide the springs to virtue (and indeed the upright man cannot be happy if he is not first conscious of his uprightness; since with such a character the reproach that his habit of thought would oblige him to make against himself in case of transgression and his moral self-condemnation would rob him of all enjoyment of the pleasantness which his condition might otherwise contain). but the question is: how is such a disposition possible in the first instance, and such a habit of thought in estimating the worth of one's existence, since prior to it there can be in the subject no feeling at all for moral worth? if a man is virtuous without being conscious of his integrity in every action, he will certainly not enjoy life, however favourable fortune may be to him in its physical circumstances; but can we make him virtuous in the first instance, in other words, before he esteems the moral worth of his existence so highly, by praising to him the peace of mind that would result from the consciousness of an integrity for which he has no sense? on the other hand, however, there is here an occasion of a vitium subreptionis, and as it were of an optical illusion, in the self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one feelsan illusion which even the most experienced cannot altogether avoid. the moral disposition of mind is necessarily combined with a consciousness that the will is determined directly by the law. now the consciousness of a determination of the faculty of desire is always the source of a satisfaction in the resulting action; but this pleasure, this satisfaction in oneself, is not the determining principle of the action; on the contrary, the determination of the will directly by reason is the source of the feeling of pleasure, and this remains a pure practical not sensible determination of the faculty of desire. now as this determination has exactly the same effect within in impelling to activity, that a feeling of the pleasure to be expected from the desired action would have had, we easily look on what we ourselves do as something which we merely passively feel, and take the moral spring for a sensible impulse, just as it happens in the so-called illusion of the senses (in this case the inner sense). it is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined to actions immediately by a purely rational law; sublime even is the illusion that regards the subjective side of this capacity of intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a contradiction). it is also of great importance to attend to this property of our personality and as much as possible to cultivate the effect of reason on this feeling. but we must beware lest by falsely extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its source lie in particular feelings of pleasure (which are in fact only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the law itself, by putting as it were a false foil upon it. respect, not pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its foundation (for this would always be sensible and pathological); and consciousness of immediate obligation of the will by the law is by no means analogous to the feeling of pleasure, although in relation to the faculty of desire it produces the same effect, but from different sources: it is only by this mode of conception, however, that we can attain what we are seeking, namely, that actions be done not merely in accordance with duty (as a result of pleasant feelings), but from duty, which must be the true end of all moral cultivation. have we not, however, a word which does not express enjoyment, as happiness does, but indicates a satisfaction in one's existence, an analogue of the happiness which must necessarily accompany the consciousness of virtue? yes this word is self-contentment which in its proper signification always designates only a negative satisfaction in one's existence, in which one is conscious of needing nothing. freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of following the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence of inclinations, at least as motives determining (though not as affecting) our desire, and so far as i am conscious of this freedom in following my moral maxims, it is the only source of an unaltered contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no special feeling. this may be called intellectual contentment. the sensible contentment (improperly so-called) which rests on the satisfaction of the inclinations, however delicate they may be imagined to be, can never be adequate to the conception of it. for the inclinations change, they grow with the indulgence shown them, and always leave behind a still greater void than we had thought to fill. hence they are always burdensome to a rational being, and, although he cannot lay them aside, they wrest from him the wish to be rid of them. even an inclination to what is right (e.g., to beneficence), though it may much facilitate the efficacy of the moral maxims, cannot produce any. for in these all must be directed to the conception of the law as a determining principle, if the action is to contain morality and not merely legality. inclination is blind and slavish, whether it be of a good sort or not, and, when morality is in question, reason must not play the part merely of guardian to inclination, but disregarding it altogether must attend simply to its own interest as pure practical reason. this very feeling of compassion and tender sympathy, if it precedes the deliberation on the question of duty and becomes a determining principle, is even annoying to right thinking persons, brings their deliberate maxims into confusion, and makes them wish to be delivered from it and to be subject to lawgiving reason alone. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 20} from this we can understand how the consciousness of this faculty of a pure practical reason produces by action (virtue) a consciousness of mastery over one's inclinations, and therefore of independence of them, and consequently also of the discontent that always accompanies them, and thus a negative satisfaction with one's state, i.e., contentment, which is primarily contentment with one's own person. freedom itself becomes in this way (namely, indirectly) capable of an enjoyment which cannot be called happiness, because it does not depend on the positive concurrence of a feeling, nor is it, strictly speaking, bliss, since it does not include complete independence of inclinations and wants, but it resembles bliss in so far as the determination of one's will at least can hold itself free from their influence; and thus, at least in its origin, this enjoyment is analogous to the self-sufficiency which we can ascribe only to the supreme being. from this solution of the antinomy of practical pure reason, it follows that in practical principles we may at least conceive as possible a natural and necessary connection between the consciousness of morality and the expectation of a proportionate happiness as its result, though it does not follow that we can know or perceive this connection; that, on the other hand, principles of the pursuit of happiness cannot possibly produce morality; that, therefore, morality is the supreme good (as the first condition of the summum bonum), while happiness constitutes its second element, but only in such a way that it is the morally conditioned, but necessary consequence of the former. only with this subordination is the summum bonum the whole object of pure practical reason, which must necessarily conceive it as possible, since it commands us to contribute to the utmost of our power to its realization. but since the possibility of such connection of the conditioned with its condition belongs wholly to the supersensual relation of things and cannot be given according to the laws of the world of sense, although the practical consequences of the idea belong to the world of sense, namely, the actions that aim at realizing the summum bonum; we will therefore endeavour to set forth the grounds of that possibility, first, in respect of what is immediately in our power, and then, secondly, in that which is not in our power, but which reason presents to us as the supplement of our impotence, for the realization of the summum bonum (which by practical principles is necessary). iii. of the primacy of pure practical reason in its union with the speculative reason. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 25} by primacy between two or more things connected by reason, i understand the prerogative, belonging to one, of being the first determining principle in the connection with all the rest. in a narrower practical sense it means the prerogative of the interest of one in so far as the interest of the other is subordinated to it, while it is not postponed to any other. to every faculty of the mind we can attribute an interest, that is, a principle, that contains the condition on which alone the former is called into exercise. reason, as the faculty of principles, determines the interest of all the powers of the mind and is determined by its own. the interest of its speculative employment consists in the cognition of the object pushed to the highest a priori principles: that of its practical employment, in the determination of the will in respect of the final and complete end. as to what is necessary for the possibility of any employment of reason at all, namely, that its principles and affirmations should not contradict one another, this constitutes no part of its interest, but is the condition of having reason at all; it is only its development, not mere consistency with itself, that is reckoned as its interest. if practical reason could not assume or think as given anything further than what speculative reason of itself could offer it from its own insight, the latter would have the primacy. but supposing that it had of itself original a priori principles with which certain theoretical positions were inseparably connected, while these were withdrawn from any possible insight of speculative reason (which, however, they must not contradict); then the question is: which interest is the superior (not which must give way, for they are not necessarily conflicting), whether speculative reason, which knows nothing of all that the practical offers for its acceptance, should take up these propositions and (although they transcend it) try to unite them with its own concepts as a foreign possession handed over to it, or whether it is justified in obstinately following its own separate interest and, according to the canonic of epicurus, rejecting as vain subtlety everything that cannot accredit its objective reality by manifest examples to be shown in experience, even though it should be never so much interwoven with the interest of the practical (pure) use of reason, and in itself not contradictory to the theoretical, merely because it infringes on the interest of the speculative reason to this extent, that it removes the bounds which this latter had set to itself, and gives it up to every nonsense or delusion of imagination? in fact, so far as practical reason is taken as dependent on pathological conditions, that is, as merely regulating the inclinations under the sensible principle of happiness, we could not require speculative reason to take its principles from such a source. mohammed's paradise, or the absorption into the deity of the theosophists and mystics would press their monstrosities on the reason according to the taste of each, and one might as well have no reason as surrender it in such fashion to all sorts of dreams. but if pure reason of itself can be practical and is actually so, as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept them, though it be as something offered to it from a foreign source, something that has not grown on its own ground, but yet is sufficiently authenticated; and it must try to compare and connect them with everything that it has in its power as speculative reason. it must remember, however, that these are not additions to its insight, but yet are extensions of its employment in another, namely, a practical aspect; and this is not in the least opposed to its interest, which consists in the restriction of wild speculation. thus, when pure speculative and pure practical reason are combined in one cognition, the latter has the primacy, provided, namely, that this combination is not contingent and arbitrary, but founded a priori on reason itself and therefore necessary. for without this subordination there would arise a conflict of reason with itself; since, if they were merely co-ordinate, the former would close its boundaries strictly and admit nothing from the latter into its domain, while the latter would extend its bounds over everything and when its needs required would seek to embrace the former within them. nor could we reverse the order and require pure practical reason to be subordinate to the speculative, since all interest is ultimately practical, and even that of speculative reason is conditional, and it is only in the practical employment of reason that it is complete. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 30} iv. the immortality of the soul as a postulate of pure practical reason. the realization of the summum bonum in the world is the necessary object of a will determinable by the moral law. but in this will the perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law is the supreme condition of the summum bonum. this then must be possible, as well as its object, since it is contained in the command to promote the latter. now, the perfect accordance of the will with the moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence. since, nevertheless, it is required as practically necessary, it can only be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance, and on the principles of pure practical reason it is necessary to assume such a practical progress as the real object of our will. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 35} now, this endless progress is only possible on the supposition of an endless duration of the existence and personality of the same rational being (which is called the immortality of the soul). the summum bonum, then, practically is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of the soul; consequently this immortality, being inseparably connected with the moral law, is a postulate of pure practical reason (by which i mean a theoretical proposition, not demonstrable as such, but which is an inseparable result of an unconditional a priori practical law. this principle of the moral destination of our nature, namely, that it is only in an endless progress that we can attain perfect accordance with the moral law, is of the greatest use, not merely for the present purpose of supplementing the impotence of speculative reason, but also with respect to religion. in default of it, either the moral law is quite degraded from its holiness, being made out to be indulgent and conformable to our convenience, or else men strain their notions of their vocation and their expectation to an unattainable goal, hoping to acquire complete holiness of will, and so they lose themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams, which wholly contradict self-knowledge. in both cases the unceasing effort to obey punctually and thoroughly a strict and inflexible command of reason, which yet is not ideal but real, is only hindered. for a rational but finite being, the only thing possible is an endless progress from the lower to higher degrees of moral perfection. the infinite being, to whom the condition of time is nothing, sees in this to us endless succession a whole of accordance with the moral law; and the holiness which his command inexorably requires, in order to be true to his justice in the share which he assigns to each in the summum bonum, is to be found in a single intellectual intuition of the whole existence of rational beings. all that can be expected of the creature in respect of the hope of this participation would be the consciousness of his tried character, by which from the progress he has hitherto made from the worse to the morally better, and the immutability of purpose which has thus become known to him, he may hope for a further unbroken continuance of the same, however long his existence may last, even beyond this life, * and thus he may hope, not indeed here, nor in any imaginable point of his future existence, but only in the endlessness of his duration (which god alone can survey) to be perfectly adequate to his will (without indulgence or excuse, which do not harmonize with justice). * it seems, nevertheless, impossible for a creature to have the conviction of his unwavering firmness of mind in the progress towards goodness. on this account the christian religion makes it come only from the same spirit that works sanctification, that is, this firm purpose, and with it the consciousness of steadfastness in the moral progress. but naturally one who is conscious that he has persevered through a long portion of his life up to the end in the progress to the better, and this genuine moral motives, may well have the comforting hope, though not the certainty, that even in an existence prolonged beyond this life he will continue in these principles; and although he is never justified here in his own eyes, nor can ever hope to be so in the increased perfection of his nature, to which he looks forward, together with an increase of duties, nevertheless in this progress which, though it is directed to a goal infinitely remote, yet is in god's sight regarded as equivalent to possession, he may have a prospect of a blessed future; for this is the word that reason employs to designate perfect well-being independent of all contingent causes of the world, and which, like holiness, is an idea that can be contained only in an endless progress and its totality, and consequently is never fully attained by a creature. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 40} v. the existence of god as a postulate of pure practical reason. in the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a practical problem which is prescribed by pure reason alone, without the aid of any sensible motives, namely, that of the necessary completeness of the first and principle element of the summum bonum, viz., morality; and, as this can be perfectly solved only in eternity, to the postulate of immortality. the same law must also lead us to affirm the possibility of the second element of the summum bonum, viz., happiness proportioned to that morality, and this on grounds as disinterested as before, and solely from impartial reason; that is, it must lead to the supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; in other words, it must postulate the existence of god, as the necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum (an object of the will which is necessarily connected with the moral legislation of pure reason). we proceed to exhibit this connection in a convincing manner. happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world with whom everything goes according to his wish and will; it rests, therefore, on the harmony of physical nature with his whole end and likewise with the essential determining principle of his will. now the moral law as a law of freedom commands by determining principles, which ought to be quite independent of nature and of its harmony with our faculty of desire (as springs). but the acting rational being in the world is not the cause of the world and of nature itself. there is not the least ground, therefore, in the moral law for a necessary connection between morality and proportionate happiness in a being that belongs to the world as part of it, and therefore dependent on it, and which for that reason cannot by his will be a cause of this nature, nor by his own power make it thoroughly harmonize, as far as his happiness is concerned, with his practical principles. nevertheless, in the practical problem of pure reason, i.e., the necessary pursuit of the summum bonum, such a connection is postulated as necessary: we ought to endeavour to promote the summum bonum, which, therefore, must be possible. accordingly, the existence of a cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself and containing the principle of this connection, namely, of the exact harmony of happiness with morality, is also postulated. now this supreme cause must contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not merely with a law of the will of rational beings, but with the conception of this law, in so far as they make it the supreme determining principle of the will, and consequently not merely with the form of morals, but with their morality as their motive, that is, with their moral character. therefore, the summum bonum is possible in the world only on the supposition of a supreme being having a causality corresponding to moral character. now a being that is capable of acting on the conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as a condition of the summum bonum is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, that is god. it follows that the postulate of the possibility of the highest derived good (the best world) is likewise the postulate of the reality of a highest original good, that is to say, of the existence of god. now it was seen to be a duty for us to promote the summum bonum; consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that we should presuppose the possibility of this summum bonum; and as this is possible only on condition of the existence of god, it inseparably connects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally necessary to assume the existence of god. it must be remarked here that this moral necessity is subjective, that is, it is a want, and not objective, that is, itself a duty, for there cannot be a duty to suppose the existence of anything (since this concerns only the theoretical employment of reason). moreover, it is not meant by this that it is necessary to suppose the existence of god as a basis of all obligation in general (for this rests, as has been sufficiently proved, simply on the autonomy of reason itself). what belongs to duty here is only the endeavour to realize and promote the summum bonum in the world, the possibility of which can therefore be postulated; and as our reason finds it not conceivable except on the supposition of a supreme intelligence, the admission of this existence is therefore connected with the consciousness of our duty, although the admission itself belongs to the domain of speculative reason. considered in respect of this alone, as a principle of explanation, it may be called a hypothesis, but in reference to the intelligibility of an object given us by the moral law (the summum bonum), and consequently of a requirement for practical purposes, it may be called faith, that is to say a pure rational faith, since pure reason (both in its theoretical and practical use) is the sole source from which it springs. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 45} from this deduction it is now intelligible why the greek schools could never attain the solution of their problem of the practical possibility of the summum bonum, because they made the rule of the use which the will of man makes of his freedom the sole and sufficient ground of this possibility, thinking that they had no need for that purpose of the existence of god. no doubt they were so far right that they established the principle of morals of itself independently of this postulate, from the relation of reason only to the will, and consequently made it the supreme practical condition of the summum bonum; but it was not therefore the whole condition of its possibility. the epicureans had indeed assumed as the supreme principle of morality a wholly false one, namely that of happiness, and had substituted for a law a maxim of arbitrary choice according to every man's inclination; they proceeded, however, consistently enough in this, that they degraded their summum bonum likewise, just in proportion to the meanness of their fundamental principle, and looked for no greater happiness than can be attained by human prudence (including temperance and moderation of the inclinations), and this as we know would be scanty enough and would be very different according to circumstances; not to mention the exceptions that their maxims must perpetually admit and which make them incapable of being laws. the stoics, on the contrary, had chosen their supreme practical principle quite rightly, making virtue the condition of the summum bonum; but when they represented the degree of virtue required by its pure law as fully attainable in this life, they not only strained the moral powers of the man whom they called the wise beyond all the limits of his nature, and assumed a thing that contradicts all our knowledge of men, but also and principally they would not allow the second element of the summum bonum, namely, happiness, to be properly a special object of human desire, but made their wise man, like a divinity in his consciousness of the excellence of his person, wholly independent of nature (as regards his own contentment); they exposed him indeed to the evils of life, but made him not subject to them (at the same time representing him also as free from moral evil). they thus, in fact, left out the second element of the summum bonum namely, personal happiness, placing it solely in action and satisfaction with one's own personal worth, thus including it in the consciousness of being morally minded, in which they might have been sufficiently refuted by the voice of their own nature. the doctrine of christianity, * even if we do not yet consider it as a religious doctrine, gives, touching this point, a conception of the summum bonum (the kingdom of god), which alone satisfies the strictest demand of practical reason. the moral law is holy (unyielding) and demands holiness of morals, although all the moral perfection to which man can attain is still only virtue, that is, a rightful disposition arising from respect for the law, implying consciousness of a constant propensity to transgression, or at least a want of purity, that is, a mixture of many spurious (not moral) motives of obedience to the law, consequently a self-esteem combined with humility. in respect, then, of the holiness which the christian law requires, this leaves the creature nothing but a progress in infinitum, but for that very reason it justifies him in hoping for an endless duration of his existence. the worth of a character perfectly accordant with the moral law is infinite, since the only restriction on all possible happiness in the judgement of a wise and all powerful distributor of it is the absence of conformity of rational beings to their duty. but the moral law of itself does not promise any happiness, for according to our conceptions of an order of nature in general, this is not necessarily connected with obedience to the law. now christian morality supplies this defect (of the second indispensable element of the summum bonum) by representing the world in which rational beings devote themselves with all their soul to the moral law, as a kingdom of god, in which nature and morality are brought into a harmony foreign to each of itself, by a holy author who makes the derived summum bonum possible. holiness of life is prescribed to them as a rule even in this life, while the welfare proportioned to it, namely, bliss, is represented as attainable only in an eternity; because the former must always be the pattern of their conduct in every state, and progress towards it is already possible and necessary in this life; while the latter, under the name of happiness, cannot be attained at all in this world (so far as our own power is concerned), and therefore is made simply an object of hope. nevertheless, the christian principle of morality itself is not theological (so as to be heteronomy), but is autonomy of pure practical reason, since it does not make the knowledge of god and his will the foundation of these laws, but only of the attainment of the summum bonum, on condition of following these laws, and it does not even place the proper spring of this obedience in the desired results, but solely in the conception of duty, as that of which the faithful observance alone constitutes the worthiness to obtain those happy consequences. * it is commonly held that the christian precept of morality has no advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. the stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of the mind above the lower springs of the senses, which owe their power only to weakness of mind. with them therefore, virtue was a sort of heroism in the wise man raising himself above the animal nature of man, is sufficient for himself, and, while he prescribes duties to others, is himself raised above them, and is not subject to any temptation to transgress the moral law. all this, however, they could not have done if they had conceived this law in all its purity and strictness, as the precept of the gospel does. when i give the name idea to a perfection to which nothing adequate can be given in experience, it does not follow that the moral ideas are thing transcendent, that is something of which we could not even determine the concept adequately, or of which it is uncertain whether there is any object corresponding to it at all, as is the case with the ideas of speculative reason; on the contrary, being types of practical perfection, they serve as the indispensable rule of conduct and likewise as the standard of comparison. now if i consider christian morals on their philosophical side, then compared with the ideas of the greek schools, they would appear as follows: the ideas of the cynics, the epicureans, the stoics, and the christians are: simplicity of nature, prudence, wisdom, and holiness. in respect of the way of attaining them, the greek schools were distinguished from one another thus that the cynics only required common sense, the others the path of science, but both found the mere use of natural powers sufficient for the purpose. christian morality, because its precept is framed (as a moral precept must be) so pure and unyielding, takes from man all confidence that he can be fully adequate to it, at least in this life, but again sets it up by enabling us to hope that if we act as well as it is in our power to do, then what is not in our power will come in to our aid from another source, whether we know how this may be or not. aristotle and plato differed only as to the origin of our moral conceptions. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 50} in this manner, the moral laws lead through the conception of the summum bonum as the object and final end of pure practical reason to religion, that is, to the recognition of all duties as divine commands, not as sanctions, that is to say, arbitrary ordinances of a foreign and contingent in themselves, but as essential laws of every free will in itself, which, nevertheless, must be regarded as commands of the supreme being, because it is only from a morally perfect (holy and good) and at the same time all-powerful will, and consequently only through harmony with this will, that we can hope to attain the summum bonum which the moral law makes it our duty to take as the object of our endeavours. here again, then, all remains disinterested and founded merely on duty; neither fear nor hope being made the fundamental springs, which if taken as principles would destroy the whole moral worth of actions. the moral law commands me to make the highest possible good in a world the ultimate object of all my conduct. but i cannot hope to effect this otherwise than by the harmony of my will with that of a holy and good author of the world; and although the conception of the summum bonum as a whole, in which the greatest happiness is conceived as combined in the most exact proportion with the highest degree of moral perfection (possible in creatures), includes my own happiness, yet it is not this that is the determining principle of the will which is enjoined to promote the summum bonum, but the moral law, which, on the contrary, limits by strict conditions my unbounded desire of happiness. hence also morality is not properly the doctrine how we should make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness. it is only when religion is added that there also comes in the hope of participating some day in happiness in proportion as we have endeavoured to be not unworthy of it. a man is worthy to possess a thing or a state when his possession of it is in harmony with the summum bonum. we can now easily see that all worthiness depends on moral conduct, since in the conception of the summum bonum this constitutes the condition of the rest (which belongs to one's state), namely, the participation of happiness. now it follows from this that morality should never be treated as a doctrine of happiness, that is, an instruction how to become happy; for it has to do simply with the rational condition (conditio sine qua non) of happiness, not with the means of attaining it. but when morality has been completely expounded (which merely imposes duties instead of providing rules for selfish desires), then first, after the moral desire to promote the summum bonum (to bring the kingdom of god to us) has been awakened, a desire founded on a law, and which could not previously arise in any selfish mind, and when for the behoof of this desire the step to religion has been taken, then this ethical doctrine may be also called a doctrine of happiness because the hope of happiness first begins with religion only. we can also see from this that, when we ask what is god's ultimate end in creating the world, we must not name the happiness of the rational beings in it, but the summum bonum, which adds a further condition to that wish of such beings, namely, the condition of being worthy of happiness, that is, the morality of these same rational beings, a condition which alone contains the rule by which only they can hope to share in the former at the hand of a wise author. for as wisdom, theoretically considered, signifies the knowledge of the summum bonum and, practically, the accordance of the will with the summum bonum, we cannot attribute to a supreme independent wisdom an end based merely on goodness. for we cannot conceive the action of this goodness (in respect of the happiness of rational beings) as suitable to the highest original good, except under the restrictive conditions of harmony with the holiness * of his will. therefore, those who placed the end of creation in the glory of god (provided that this is not conceived anthropomorphically as a desire to be praised) have perhaps hit upon the best expression. for nothing glorifies god more than that which is the most estimable thing in the world, respect for his command, the observance of the holy duty that his law imposes on us, when there is added thereto his glorious plan of crowning such a beautiful order of things with corresponding happiness. if the latter (to speak humanly) makes him worthy of love, by the former he is an object of adoration. even men can never acquire respect by benevolence alone, though they may gain love, so that the greatest beneficence only procures them honour when it is regulated by worthiness. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 55} * in order to make these characteristics of these conceptions clear, i add the remark that whilst we ascribe to god various attributes, the quality of which we also find applicable to creatures, only that in him they are raised to the highest degree, e.g., power, knowledge, presence, goodness, etc., under the designations of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc., there are three that are ascribed to god exclusively, and yet without the addition of greatness, and which are all moral he is the only holy, the only blessed, the only wise, because these conceptions already imply the absence of limitation. in the order of these attributes he is also the holy lawgiver (and creator), the good governor (and preserver) and the just judge, three attributes which include everything by which god is the object of religion, and in conformity with which the metaphysical perfections are added of themselves in the reason. that in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being) is an end in himself, that is, that he can never be used merely as a means by any (not even by god) without being at the same time an end also himself, that therefore humanity in our person must be holy to ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the moral law, in other words, of that which is holy in itself, and on account of which and in agreement with which alone can anything be termed holy. for this moral law is founded on the autonomy of his will, as a free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself. vi. of the postulates of pure practical reason generally. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 60} they all proceed from the principle of morality, which is not a postulate but a law, by which reason determines the will directly, which will, because it is so determined as a pure will, requires these necessary conditions of obedience to its precept. these postulates are not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary; while then they do [not] extend our speculative knowledge, they give objective reality to the ideas of speculative reason in general (by means of their reference to what is practical), and give it a right to concepts, the possibility even of which it could not otherwise venture to affirm. these postulates are those of immortality, freedom positively considered (as the causality of a being so far as he belongs to the intelligible world), and the existence of god. the first results from the practically necessary condition of a duration adequate to the complete fulfilment of the moral law; the second from the necessary supposition of independence of the sensible world, and of the faculty of determining one's will according to the law of an intelligible world, that is, of freedom; the third from the necessary condition of the existence of the summum bonum in such an intelligible world, by the supposition of the supreme independent good, that is, the existence of god. thus the fact that respect for the moral law necessarily makes the summum bonum an object of our endeavours, and the supposition thence resulting of its objective reality, lead through the postulates of practical reason to conceptions which speculative reason might indeed present as problems, but could never solve. thus it leads: 1. to that one in the solution of which the latter could do nothing but commit paralogisms (namely, that of immortality), because it could not lay hold of the character of permanence, by which to complete the psychological conception of an ultimate subject necessarily ascribed to the soul in self-consciousness, so as to make it the real conception of a substance, a character which practical reason furnishes by the postulate of a duration required for accordance with the moral law in the summum bonum, which is the whole end of practical reason. 2. it leads to that of which speculative reason contained nothing but antinomy, the solution of which it could only found on a notion problematically conceivable indeed, but whose objective reality it could not prove or determine, namely, the cosmological idea of an intelligible world and the consciousness of our existence in it, by means of the postulate of freedom (the reality of which it lays down by virtue of the moral law), and with it likewise the law of an intelligible world, to which speculative reason could only point, but could not define its conception. 3. what speculative reason was able to think, but was obliged to leave undetermined as a mere transcendental ideal, viz., the theological conception of the first being, to this it gives significance (in a practical view, that is, as a condition of the possibility of the object of a will determined by that law), namely, as the supreme principle of the summum bonum in an intelligible world, by means of moral legislation in it invested with sovereign power. is our knowledge, however, actually extended in this way by pure practical reason, and is that immanent in practical reason which for the speculative was only transcendent? certainly, but only in a practical point of view. for we do not thereby take knowledge of the nature of our souls, nor of the intelligible world, nor of the supreme being, with respect to what they are in themselves, but we have merely combined the conceptions of them in the practical concept of the summum bonum as the object of our will, and this altogether a priori, but only by means of the moral law, and merely in reference to it, in respect of the object which it commands. but how freedom is possible, and how we are to conceive this kind of causality theoretically and positively, is not thereby discovered; but only that there is such a causality is postulated by the moral law and in its behoof. it is the same with the remaining ideas, the possibility of which no human intelligence will ever fathom, but the truth of which, on the other hand, no sophistry will ever wrest from the conviction even of the commonest man. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 65} vii. how is it possible to conceive an extension of pure reason in a practical point of view, without its knowledge as speculative being enlarged at the same time? {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 70} in order not to be too abstract, we will answer this question at once in its application to the present case. in order to extend a pure cognition practically, there must be an a priori purpose given, that is, an end as object (of the will), which independently of all theological principle is presented as practically necessary by an imperative which determines the will directly (a categorical imperative), and in this case that is the summum bonum. this, however, is not possible without presupposing three theoretical conceptions (for which, because they are mere conceptions of pure reason, no corresponding intuition can be found, nor consequently by the path of theory any objective reality); namely, freedom, immortality, and god. thus by the practical law which commands the existence of the highest good possible in a world, the possibility of those objects of pure speculative reason is postulated, and the objective reality which the latter could not assure them. by this the theoretical knowledge of pure reason does indeed obtain an accession; but it consists only in this, that those concepts which otherwise it had to look upon as problematical (merely thinkable) concepts, are now shown assertorially to be such as actually have objects; because practical reason indispensably requires their existence for the possibility of its object, the summum bonum, which practically is absolutely necessary, and this justifies theoretical reason in assuming them. but this extension of theoretical reason is no extension of speculative, that is, we cannot make any positive use of it in a theoretical point of view. for as nothing is accomplished in this by practical reason, further than that these concepts are real and actually have their (possible) objects, and nothing in the way of intuition of them is given thereby (which indeed could not be demanded), hence the admission of this reality does not render any synthetical proposition possible. consequently, this discovery does not in the least help us to extend this knowledge of ours in a speculative point of view, although it does in respect of the practical employment of pure reason. the above three ideas of speculative reason are still in themselves not cognitions; they are however (transcendent) thoughts, in which there is nothing impossible. now, by help of an apodeictic practical law, being necessary conditions of that which it commands to be made an object, they acquire objective reality; that is, we learn from it that they have objects, without being able to point out how the conception of them is related to an object, and this, too, is still not a cognition of these objects; for we cannot thereby form any synthetical judgement about them, nor determine their application theoretically; consequently, we can make no theoretical rational use of them at all, in which use all speculative knowledge of reason consists. nevertheless, the theoretical knowledge, not indeed of these objects, but of reason generally, is so far enlarged by this, that by the practical postulates objects were given to those ideas, a merely problematical thought having by this means first acquired objective reality. there is therefore no extension of the knowledge of given supersensible objects, but an extension of theoretical reason and of its knowledge in respect of the supersensible generally; inasmuch as it is compelled to admit that there are such objects, although it is not able to define them more closely, so as itself to extend this knowledge of the objects (which have now been given it on practical grounds, and only for practical use). for this accession, then, pure theoretical reason, for which all those ideas are transcendent and without object, has simply to thank its practical faculty. in this they become immanent and constitutive, being the source of the possibility of realizing the necessary object of pure practical reason (the summum bonum); whereas apart from this they are transcendent, and merely regulative principles of speculative reason, which do not require it to assume a new object beyond experience, but only to bring its use in experience nearer to completeness. but when once reason is in possession of this accession, it will go to work with these ideas as speculative reason (properly only to assure the certainty of its practical use) in a negative manner: that is, not extending but clearing up its knowledge so as on one side to keep off anthropomorphism, as the source of superstition, or seeming extension of these conceptions by supposed experience; and on the other side fanaticism, which promises the same by means of supersensible intuition or feelings of the like kind. all these are hindrances to the practical use of pure reason, so that the removal of them may certainly be considered an extension of our knowledge in a practical point of view, without contradicting the admission that for speculative purposes reason has not in the least gained by this. every employment of reason in respect of an object requires pure concepts of the understanding (categories), without which no object can be conceived. these can be applied to the theoretical employment of reason, i.e., to that kind of knowledge, only in case an intuition (which is always sensible) is taken as a basis, and therefore merely in order to conceive by means ofthem an object of possible experience. now here what have to be thought by means of the categories in order to be known are ideas of reason, which cannot be given in any experience. only we are not here concerned with the theoretical knowledge of the objects of these ideas, but only with this, whether they have objects at all. this reality is supplied by pure practical reason, and theoretical reason has nothing further to do in this but to think those objects by means of categories. this, as we have elsewhere clearly shown, can be done well enough without needing any intuition (either sensible or supersensible) because the categories have their seat and origin in the pure understanding, simply as the faculty of thought, before and independently of any intuition, and they always only signify an object in general, no matter in what way it may be given to us. now when the categories are to be applied to these ideas, it is not possible to give them any object in intuition; but that such an object actually exists, and consequently that the category as a mere form of thought is here not empty but has significance, this is sufficiently assured them by an object which practical reason presents beyond doubt in the concept of the summum bonum, the reality of the conceptions which are required for the possibility of the summum bonum; without, however, effecting by this accession the least extension of our knowledge on theoretical principles. when these ideas of god, of an intelligible world (the kingdom of god), and of immortality are further determined by predicates taken from our own nature, we must not regard this determination as a sensualizing of those pure rational ideas (anthropomorphism), nor as a transcendent knowledge of supersensible objects; for these predicates are no others than understanding and will, considered too in the relation to each other in which they must be conceived in the moral law, and therefore, only so far as a pure practical use is made of them. as to all the rest that belongs to these conceptions psychologically, that is, so far as we observe these faculties of ours empirically in their exercise (e.g., that the understanding of man is discursive, and its notions therefore not intuitions but thoughts, that these follow one another in time, that his will has its satisfaction always dependent on the existence of its object, etc., which cannot be the case in the supreme being), from all this we abstract in that case, and then there remains of the notions by which we conceive a pure intelligence nothing more than just what is required for the possibility of conceiving a moral law. there is then a knowledge of god indeed, but only for practical purposes, and, if we attempt to extend it to a theoretical knowledge, we find an understanding that has intuitions, not thoughts, a will that is directed to objects on the existence of which its satisfaction does not in the least depend (not to mention the transcendental predicates, as, for example, a magnitude of existence, that is duration, which, however, is not in time, the only possible means we have of conceiving existence as magnitude). now these are all attributes of which we can form no conception that would help to the knowledge of the object, and we learn from this that they can never be used for a theory of supersensible beings, so that on this side they are quite incapable of being the foundation of a speculative knowledge, and their use is limited simply to the practice of the moral law. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 75} this last is so obvious, and can be proved so clearly by fact, that we may confidently challenge all pretended natural theologians (a singular name) * to specify (over and above the merely ontological predicates) one single attribute, whether of the understanding or of the will, determining this object of theirs, of which we could not show incontrovertibly that, if we abstract from it everything anthropomorphic, nothing would remain to us but the mere word, without our being able to connect with it the smallest notion by which we could hope for an extension of theoretical knowledge. but as to the practical, there still remains to us of the attributes of understanding and will the conception of a relation to which objective reality is given by the practical law (which determines a priori precisely this relation of the understanding to the will). when once this is done, then reality is given to the conception of the object of a will morally determined (the conception of the summum bonum), and with it to the conditions of its possibility, the ideas of god, freedom, and immortality, but always only relatively to the practice of the moral law (and not for any speculative purpose). * learning is properly only the whole content of the historical sciences. consequently it is only the teacher of revealed theology that can be called a learned theologian. if, however, we choose to call a man learned who is in possession of the rational sciences (mathematics and philosophy), although even this would be contrary to the signification of the word (which always counts as learning only that which one must be "learned" and which, therefore, he cannot discover of himself by reason), even in that case the philosopher would make too poor a figure with his knowledge of god as a positive science to let himself be called on that account a learned man. according to these remarks it is now easy to find the answer to the weighty question whether the notion of god is one belonging to physics (and therefore also to metaphysics, which contains the pure a priori principles of the former in their universal import) or to morals. if we have recourse to god as the author of all things, in order to explain the arrangements of nature or its changes, this is at least not a physical explanation, and is a complete confession that our philosophy has come to an end, since we are obliged to assume something of which in itself we have otherwise no conception, in order to be able to frame a conception of the possibility of what we see before our eyes. metaphysics, however, cannot enable us to attain by certain inference from the knowledge of this world to the conception of god and to the proof of his existence, for this reason, that in order to say that this world could be produced only by a god (according to the conception implied by this word) we should know this world as the most perfect whole possible; and for this purpose should also know all possible worlds (in order to be able to compare them with this); in other words, we should be omniscient. it is absolutely impossible, however, to know the existence of this being from mere concepts, because every existential proposition, that is, every proposition that affirms the existence of a being of which i frame a concept, is a synthetic proposition, that is, one by which i go beyond that conception and affirm of it more than was thought in the conception itself; namely, that this concept in the understanding has an object corresponding to it outside the understanding, and this it is obviously impossible to elicit by any reasoning. there remains, therefore, only one single process possible for reason to attain this knowledge, namely, to start from the supreme principle of its pure practical use (which in every case is directed simply to the existence of something as a consequence of reason) and thus determine its object. then its inevitable problem, namely, the necessary direction of the will to the summum bonum, discovers to us not only the necessity of assuming such a first being in reference to the possibility of this good in the world, but, what is most remarkable, something which reason in its progress on the path of physical nature altogether failed to find, namely, an accurately defined conception of this first being. as we can know only a small part of this world, and can still less compare it with all possible worlds, we may indeed from its order, design, and greatness, infer a wise, good, powerful, etc., author of it, but not that he is all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, etc. it may indeed very well be granted that we should be justified in supplying this inevitable defect by a legitimate and reasonable hypothesis; namely, that when wisdom, goodness, etc, are displayed in all the parts that offer themselves to our nearer knowledge, it is just the same in all the rest, and that it would therefore be reasonable to ascribe all possible perfections to the author of the world, but these are not strict logical inferences in which we can pride ourselves on our insight, but only permitted conclusions in which we may be indulged and which require further recommendation before we can make use of them. on the path of empirical inquiry then (physics), the conception of god remains always a conception of the perfection of the first being not accurately enough determined to be held adequate to the conception of deity. (with metaphysic in its transcendental part nothing whatever can be accomplished.) {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 80} when i now try to test this conception by reference to the object of practical reason, i find that the moral principle admits as possible only the conception of an author of the world possessed of the highest perfection. he must be omniscient, in order to know my conduct up to the inmost root of my mental state in all possible cases and into all future time; omnipotent, in order to allot to it its fitting consequences; similarly he must be omnipresent, eternal, etc. thus the moral law, by means of the conception of the summum bonum as the object of a pure practical reason, determines the concept of the first being as the supreme being; a thing which the physical (and in its higher development the metaphysical), in other words, the whole speculative course of reason, was unable to effect. the conception of god, then, is one that belongs originally not to physics, i.e., to speculative reason, but to morals. the same may be said of the other conceptions of reason of which we have treated above as postulates of it in its practical use. in the history of grecian philosophy we find no distinct traces of a pure rational theology earlier than anaxagoras; but this is not because the older philosophers had not intelligence or penetration enough to raise themselves to it by the path of speculation, at least with the aid of a thoroughly reasonable hypothesis. what could have been easier, what more natural, than the thought which of itself occurs to everyone, to assume instead of several causes of the world, instead of an indeterminate degree of perfection, a single rational cause having all perfection? but the evils in the world seemed to them to be much too serious objections to allow them to feel themselves justified in such a hypothesis. they showed intelligence and penetration then in this very point, that they did not allow themselves to adopt it, but on the contrary looked about amongst natural causes to see if they could not find in them the qualities and power required for a first being. but when this acute people had advanced so far in their investigations of nature as to treat even moral questions philosophically, on which other nations had never done anything but talk, then first they found a new and practical want, which did not fail to give definiteness to their conception of the first being: and in this the speculative reason played the part of spectator, or at best had the merit of embellishing a conception that had not grown on its own ground, and of applying a series of confirmations from the study of nature now brought forward for the first time, not indeed to strengthen the authority of this conception (which was already established), but rather to make a show with a supposed discovery of theoretical reason. from these remarks, the reader of the critique of pure speculative reason will be thoroughly convinced how highly necessary that laborious deduction of the categories was, and how fruitful for theology and morals. for if, on the one hand, we place them in pure understanding, it is by this deduction alone that we can be prevented from regarding them, with plato, as innate, and founding on them extravagant pretensions to theories of the supersensible, to which we can see no end, and by which we should make theology a magic lantern of chimeras; on the other hand, if we regard them as acquired, this deduction saves us from restricting, with epicurus, all and every use of them, even for practical purposes, to the objects and motives of the senses. but now that the critique has shown by that deduction, first, that they are not of empirical origin, but have their seat and source a priori in the pure understanding; secondly, that as they refer to objects in general independently of the intuition of them, hence, although they cannot effect theoretical knowledge, except in application to empirical objects, yet when applied to an object given by pure practical reason they enable us to conceive the supersensible definitely, only so far, however, as it is defined by such predicates as are necessarily connected with the pure practical purpose given a priori and with its possibility. the speculative restriction of pure reason and its practical extension bring it into that relation of equality in which reason in general can be employed suitably to its end, and this example proves better than any other that the path to wisdom, if it is to be made sure and not to be impassable or misleading, must with us men inevitably pass through science; but it is not till this is complete that we can be convinced that it leads to this goal. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 85} viii. of belief from a requirement of pure reason. a want or requirement of pure reason in its speculative use leads only to a hypothesis; that of pure practical reason to a postulate; for in the former case i ascend from the result as high as i please in the series of causes, not in order to give objective reality to the result (e.g., the causal connection of things and changes in the world), but in order thoroughly to satisfy my inquiring reason in respect of it. thus i see before me order and design in nature, and need not resort to speculation to assure myself of their reality, but to explain them i have to presuppose a deity as their cause; and then since the inference from an effect to a definite cause is always uncertain and doubtful, especially to a cause so precise and so perfectly defined as we have to conceive in god, hence the highest degree of certainty to which this pre-supposition can be brought is that it is the most rational opinion for us men. * on the other hand, a requirement of pure practical reason is based on a duty, that of making something (the summum bonum) the object of my will so as to promote it with all my powers; in which case i must suppose its possibility and, consequently, also the conditions necessary thereto, namely, god, freedom, and immortality; since i cannot prove these by my speculative reason, although neither can i refute them. this duty is founded on something that is indeed quite independent of these suppositions and is of itself apodeictically certain, namely, the moral law; and so far it needs no further support by theoretical views as to the inner constitution of things, the secret final aim of the order of the world, or a presiding ruler thereof, in order to bind me in the most perfect manner to act in unconditional conformity to the law. but the subjective effect of this law, namely, the mental disposition conformed to it and made necessary by it, to promote the practically possible summum bonum, this pre-supposes at least that the latter is possible, for it would be practically impossible to strive after the object of a conception which at bottom was empty and had no object. now the above-mentioned postulates concern only the physical or metaphysical conditions of the possibility of the summum bonum; in a word, those which lie in the nature of things; not, however, for the sake of an arbitrary speculative purpose, but of a practically necessary end of a pure rational will, which in this case does not choose, but obeys an inexorable command of reason, the foundation of which is objective, in the constitution of things as they must be universally judged by pure reason, and is not based on inclination; for we are in nowise justified in assuming, on account of what we wish on merely subjective grounds, that the means thereto are possible or that its object is real. this, then, is an absolutely necessary requirement, and what it pre-supposes is not merely justified as an allowable hypothesis, but as a postulate in a practical point of view; and admitting that the pure moral law inexorably binds every man as a command (not as a rule of prudence), the righteous man may say: "i will that there be a god, that my existence in this world be also an existence outside the chain of physical causes and in a pure world of the understanding, and lastly, that my duration be endless; i firmly abide by this, and will not let this faith be taken from me; for in this instance alone my interest, because i must not relax anything of it, inevitably determines my judgement, without regarding sophistries, however unable i may be to answer them or to oppose them with others more plausible. *(2) * but even here we should not be able to allege a requirement of reason, if we had not before our eyes a problematical, but yet inevitable, conception of reason, namely, that of an absolutely necessary being. this conception now seeks to be defined, and this, in addition to the tendency to extend itself, is the objective ground of a requirement of speculative reason, namely, to have a more precise definition of the conception of a necessary being which is to serve as the first cause of other beings, so as to make these latter knowable by some means. without such antecedent necessary problems there are no requirementsat least not of pure reasonthe rest are requirements of inclination. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 90} *(2) in the deutsches museum, february, 1787, there is a dissertation by a very subtle and clear-headed man, the late wizenmann, whose early death is to be lamented, in which he disputes the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object, and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object really exists somewhere. i quite agree with him in this, in all cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man that is affected by it, much less can it contain a demand valid for everyone, and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of the wish. but in the present case we have a want of reason springing from an objective determining principle of the will, namely, the moral law, which necessarily binds every rational being, and therefore justifies him in assuming a priori in nature the conditions proper for it, and makes the latter inseparable from the complete practical use of reason. it is a duty to realize the summum bonum to the utmost of our power, therefore it must be possible, consequently it is unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective possibility. the assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in connection with which alone it is valid. in order to prevent misconception in the use of a notion as yet so unusual as that of a faith of pure practical reason, let me be permitted to add one more remark. it might almost seem as if this rational faith were here announced as itself a command, namely, that we should assume the summum bonum as possible. but a faith that is commanded is nonsense. let the preceding analysis, however, be remembered of what is required to be supposed in the conception of the summum bonum, and it will be seen that it cannot be commanded to assume this possibility, and no practical disposition of mind is required to admit it; but that speculative reason must concede it without being asked, for no one can affirm that it is impossible in itself that rational beings in the world should at the same time be worthy of happiness in conformity with the moral law and also possess this happiness proportionately. now in respect of the first element of the summum bonum, namely, that which concerns morality, the moral law gives merely a command, and to doubt the possibility of that element would be the same as to call in question the moral law itself. but as regards the second element of that object, namely, happiness perfectly proportioned to that worthiness, it is true that there is no need of a command to admit its possibility in general, for theoretical reason has nothing to say against it; but the manner in which we have to conceive this harmony of the laws of nature with those of freedom has in it something in respect of which we have a choice, because theoretical reason decides nothing with apodeictic certainty about it, and in respect of this there may be a moral interest which turns the scale. i had said above that in a mere course of nature in the world an accurate correspondence between happiness and moral worth is not to be expected and must be regarded as impossible, and that therefore the possibility of the summum bonum cannot be admitted from this side except on the supposition of a moral author of the world. i purposely reserved the restriction of this judgement to the subjective conditions of our reason, in order not to make use of it until the manner of this belief should be defined more precisely. the fact is that the impossibility referred to is merely subjective, that is, our reason finds it impossible for it to render conceivable in the way of a mere course of nature a connection so exactly proportioned and so thoroughly adapted to an end, between two sets of events happening according to such distinct laws; although, as with everything else in nature that is adapted to an end, it cannot prove, that is, show by sufficient objective reason, that it is not possible by universal laws of nature. now, however, a deciding principle of a different kind comes into play to turn the scale in this uncertainty of speculative reason. the command to promote the summum bonum is established on an objective basis (in practical reason); the possibility of the same in general is likewise established on an objective basis (in theoretical reason, which has nothing to say against it). but reason cannot decide objectively in what way we are to conceive this possibility; whether by universal laws of nature without a wise author presiding over nature, or only on supposition of such an author. now here there comes in a subjective condition of reason, the only way theoretically possible for it, of conceiving the exact harmony of the kingdom of nature with the kingdom of morals, which is the condition of the possibility of the summum bonum; and at the same time the only one conducive to morality (which depends on an objective law of reason). now since the promotion of this summum bonum, and therefore the supposition of its possibility, are objectively necessary (though only as a result of practical reason), while at the same time the manner in which we would conceive it rests with our own choice, and in this choice a free interest of pure practical reason decides for the assumption of a wise author of the world; it is clear that the principle that herein determines our judgement, though as a want it is subjective, yet at the same time being the means of promoting what is objectively (practically) necessary, is the foundation of a maxim of belief in a moral point of view, that is, a faith of pure practical reason. this, then, is not commanded, but being a voluntary determination of our judgement, conducive to the moral (commanded) purpose, and moreover harmonizing with the theoretical requirement of reason, to assume that existence and to make it the foundation of our further employment of reason, it has itself sprung from the moral disposition of mind; it may therefore at times waver even in the well-disposed, but can never be reduced to unbelief. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 95} ix. of the wise adaptation of man's cognitive faculties to his practical destination. if human nature is destined to endeavour after the summum bonum, we must suppose also that the measure of its cognitive faculties, and particularly their relation to one another, is suitable to this end. now the critique of pure speculative reason proves that this is incapable of solving satisfactorily the most weighty problems that are proposed to it, although it does not ignore the natural and important hints received from the same reason, nor the great steps that it can make to approach to this great goal that is set before it, which, however, it can never reach of itself, even with the help of the greatest knowledge of nature. nature then seems here to have provided us only in a step-motherly fashion with the faculty required for our end. {book_2|chapter_2 ^paragraph 100} suppose, now, that in this matter nature had conformed to our wish and had given us that capacity of discernment or that enlightenment which we would gladly possess, or which some imagine they actually possess, what would in all probability be the consequence? unless our whole nature were at the same time changed, our inclinations, which always have the first word, would first of all demand their own satisfaction, and, joined with rational reflection, the greatest possible and most lasting satisfaction, under the name of happiness; the moral law would afterwards speak, in order to keep them within their proper bounds, and even to subject them all to a higher end, which has no regard to inclination. but instead of the conflict that the moral disposition has now to carry on with the inclinations, in which, though after some defeats, moral strength of mind may be gradually acquired, god and eternity with their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes (for what we can prove perfectly is to us as certain as that of which we are assured by the sight of our eyes). transgression of the law, would, no doubt, be avoided; what is commanded would be done; but the mental disposition, from which actions ought to proceed, cannot be infused by any command, and in this case the spur of action is ever active and external, so that reason has no need to exert itself in order to gather strength to resist the inclinations by a lively representation of the dignity of the law: hence most of the actions that conformed to the law would be done from fear, a few only from hope, and none at all from duty, and the moral worth of actions, on which alone in the eyes of supreme wisdom the worth of the person and even that of the world depends, would cease to exist. as long as the nature of man remains what it is, his conduct would thus be changed into mere mechanism, in which, as in a puppet-show, everything would gesticulate well, but there would be no life in the figures. now, when it is quite otherwise with us, when with all the effort of our reason we have only a very obscure and doubtful view into the future, when the governor of the world allows us only to conjecture his existence and his majesty, not to behold them or prove them clearly; and on the other hand, the moral law within us, without promising or threatening anything with certainty, demands of us disinterested respect; and only when this respect has become active and dominant, does it allow us by means of it a prospect into the world of the supersensible, and then only with weak glances: all this being so, there is room for true moral disposition, immediately devoted to the law, and a rational creature can become worthy of sharing in the summum bonum that corresponds to the worth of his person and not merely to his actions. thus what the study of nature and of man teaches us sufficiently elsewhere may well be true here also; that the unsearchable wisdom by which we exist is not less worthy of admiration in what it has denied than in what it has granted. part_2|methodology second part. methodology of pure practical reason. by the methodology of pure practical reason we are not to understand the mode of proceeding with pure practical principles (whether in study or in exposition), with a view to a scientific knowledge of them, which alone is what is properly called method elsewhere in theoretical philosophy (for popular knowledge requires a manner, science a method, i.e., a process according to principles of reason by which alone the manifold of any branch of knowledge can become a system). on the contrary, by this methodology is understood the mode in which we can give the laws of pure practical reason access to the human mind and influence on its maxims, that is, by which we can make the objectively practical reason subjectively practical also. now it is clear enough that those determining principles of the will which alone make maxims properly moral and give them a moral worth, namely, the direct conception of the law and the objective necessity of obeying it as our duty, must be regarded as the proper springs of actions, since otherwise legality of actions might be produced, but not morality of character. but it is not so clear; on the contrary, it must at first sight seem to every one very improbable that even subjectively that exhibition of pure virtue can have more power over the human mind, and supply a far stronger spring even for effecting that legality of actions, and can produce more powerful resolutions to prefer the law, from pure respect for it, to every other consideration, than all the deceptive allurements of pleasure or of all that may be reckoned as happiness, or even than all threatenings of pain and misfortune. nevertheless, this is actually the case, and if human nature were not so constituted, no mode of presenting the law by roundabout ways and indirect recommendations would ever produce morality of character. all would be simple hypocrisy; the law would be hated, or at least despised, while it was followed for the sake of one's own advantage. the letter of the law (legality) would be found in our actions, but not the spirit of it in our minds (morality); and as with all our efforts we could not quite free ourselves from reason in our judgement, we must inevitably appear in our own eyes worthless, depraved men, even though we should seek to compensate ourselves for this mortification before the inner tribunal, by enjoying the pleasure that a supposed natural or divine law might be imagined to have connected with it a sort of police machinery, regulating its operations by what was done without troubling itself about the motives for doing it. it cannot indeed be denied that in order to bring an uncultivated or degraded mind into the track of moral goodness some preparatory guidance is necessary, to attract it by a view of its own advantage, or to alarm it by fear of loss; but as soon as this mechanical work, these leading-strings have produced some effect, then we must bring before the mind the pure moral motive, which, not only because it is the only one that can be the foundation of a character (a practically consistent habit of mind with unchangeable maxims), but also because it teaches a man to feel his own dignity, gives the mind a power unexpected even by himself, to tear himself from all sensible attachments so far as they would fain have the rule, and to find a rich compensation for the sacrifice he offers, in the independence of his rational nature and the greatness of soul to which he sees that he is destined. we will therefore show, by such observations as every one can make, that this property of our minds, this receptivity for a pure moral interest, and consequently the moving force of the pure conception of virtue, when it is properly applied to the human heart, is the most powerful spring and, when a continued and punctual observance of moral maxims is in question, the only spring of good conduct. it must, however, be remembered that if these observations only prove the reality of such a feeling, but do not show any moral improvement brought about by it, this is no argument against the only method that exists of making the objectively practical laws of pure reason subjectively practical, through the mere force of the conception of duty; nor does it prove that this method is a vain delusion. for as it has never yet come into vogue, experience can say nothing of its results; one can only ask for proofs of the receptivity for such springs, and these i will now briefly present, and then sketch the method of founding and cultivating genuine moral dispositions. {part_2|methodology ^paragraph 5} when we attend to the course of conversation in mixed companies, consisting not merely of learned persons and subtle reasoners, but also of men of business or of women, we observe that, besides story-telling and jesting, another kind of entertainment finds a place in them, namely, argument; for stories, if they are to have novelty and interest, are soon exhausted, and jesting is likely to become insipid. now of all argument there is none in which persons are more ready to join who find any other subtle discussion tedious, none that brings more liveliness into the company, than that which concerns the moral worth of this or that action by which the character of some person is to be made out. persons, to whom in other cases anything subtle and speculative in theoretical questions is dry and irksome, presently join in when the question is to make out the moral import of a good or bad action that has been related, and they display an exactness, a refinement, a subtlety, in excogitating everything that can lessen the purity of purpose, and consequently the degree of virtue in it, which we do not expect from them in any other kind of speculation. in these criticisms, persons who are passing judgement on others often reveal their own character: some, in exercising their judicial office, especially upon the dead, seem inclined chiefly to defend the goodness that is related of this or that deed against all injurious charges of insincerity, and ultimately to defend the whole moral worth of the person against the reproach of dissimulation and secret wickedness; others, on the contrary, turn their thoughts more upon attacking this worth by accusation and fault finding. we cannot always, however, attribute to these latter the intention of arguing away virtue altogether out of all human examples in order to make it an empty name; often, on the contrary, it is only well-meant strictness in determining the true moral import of actions according to an uncompromising law. comparison with such a law, instead of with examples, lowers self-conceit in moral matters very much, and not merely teaches humility, but makes every one feel it when he examines himself closely. nevertheless, we can for the most part observe, in those who defend the purity of purpose in giving examples that where there is the presumption of uprightness they are anxious to remove even the least spot, lest, if all examples had their truthfulness disputed, and if the purity of all human virtue were denied, it might in the end be regarded as a mere phantom, and so all effort to attain it be made light of as vain affectation and delusive conceit. i do not know why the educators of youth have not long since made use of this propensity of reason to enter with pleasure upon the most subtle examination of the practical questions that are thrown up; and why they have not, after first laying the foundation of a purely moral catechism, searched through the biographies of ancient and modern times with the view of having at hand instances of the duties laid down, in which, especially by comparison of similar actions under different circumstances, they might exercise the critical judgement of their scholars in remarking their greater or less moral significance. this is a thing in which they would find that even early youth, which is still unripe for speculation of other kinds, would soon become very acute and not a little interested, because it feels the progress of its faculty of judgement; and, what is most important, they could hope with confidence that the frequent practice of knowing and approving good conduct in all its purity, and on the other hand of remarking with regret or contempt the least deviation from it, although it may be pursued only as a sport in which children may compete with one another, yet will leave a lasting impression of esteem on the one hand and disgust on the other; and so, by the mere habit of looking on such actions as deserving approval or blame, a good foundation would be laid for uprightness in the future course of life. only i wish they would spare them the example of so-called noble (super-meritorious) actions, in which our sentimental books so much abound, and would refer all to duty merely, and to the worth that a man can and must give himself in his own eyes by the consciousness of not having transgressed it, since whatever runs up into empty wishes and longings after inaccessible perfection produces mere heroes of romance, who, while they pique themselves on their feeling for transcendent greatness, release themselves in return from the observance of common and every-day obligations, which then seem to them petty and insignificant. * * it is quite proper to extol actions that display a great, unselfish, sympathizing mind or humanity. but, in this case, we must fix attention not so much on the elevation of soul, which is very fleeting and transitory, as on the subjection of the heart to duty, from which a more enduring impression may be expected, because this implies principle (whereas the former only implies ebullitions). one need only reflect a little and he will always find a debt that he has by some means incurred towards the human race (even if it were only this, by the inequality of men in the civil constitution, enjoys advantages on account of which others must be the more in want), which will prevent the thought of duty from being repressed by the self-complacent imagination of merit. {part_2|methodology ^paragraph 10} but if it is asked: "what, then, is really pure morality, by which as a touchstone we must test the moral significance of every action," then i must admit that it is only philosophers that can make the decision of this question doubtful, for to common sense it has been decided long ago, not indeed by abstract general formulae, but by habitual use, like the distinction between the right and left hand. we will then point out the criterion of pure virtue in an example first, and, imagining that it is set before a boy, of say ten years old, for his judgement, we will see whether he would necessarily judge so of himself without being guided by his teacher. tell him the history of an honest man whom men want to persuade to join the calumniators of an innocent and powerless person (say anne boleyn, accused by henry viii of england). he is offered advantages, great gifts, or high rank; he rejects them. this will excite mere approbation and applause in the mind of the hearer. now begins the threatening of loss. amongst these traducers are his best friends, who now renounce his friendship; near kinsfolk, who threaten to disinherit him (he being without fortune); powerful persons, who can persecute and harass him in all places and circumstances; a prince, who threatens him with loss of freedom, yea, loss of life. then to fill the measure of suffering, and that he may feel the pain that only the morally good heart can feel very deeply, let us conceive his family threatened with extreme distress and want, entreating him to yield; conceive himself, though upright, yet with feelings not hard or insensible either to compassion or to his own distress; conceive him, i say, at the moment when he wishes that he had never lived to see the day that exposed him to such unutterable anguish, yet remaining true to his uprightness of purpose, without wavering or even doubting; then will my youthful hearer be raised gradually from mere approval to admiration, from that to amazement, and finally to the greatest veneration, and a lively wish that he himself could be such a man (though certainly not in such circumstances). yet virtue is here worth so much only because it costs so much, not because it brings any profit. all the admiration, and even the endeavour to resemble this character, rest wholly on the purity of the moral principle, which can only be strikingly shown by removing from the springs of action everything that men may regard as part of happiness. morality, then, must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is exhibited. whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any influence at all on our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity, for it is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly. now that whose removal strengthens the effect of a moving force must have been a hindrance, consequently every admixture of motives taken from our own happiness is a hindrance to the influence of the moral law on the heart. i affirm further that even in that admired action, if the motive from which it was done was a high regard for duty, then it is just this respect for the law that has the greatest influence on the mind of the spectator, not any pretension to a supposed inward greatness of mind or noble meritorious sentiments; consequently duty, not merit, must have not only the most definite, but, when it is represented in the true light of its inviolability, the most penetrating, influence on the mind. it is more necessary than ever to direct attention to this method in our times, when men hope to produce more effect on the mind with soft, tender feelings, or high-flown, puffing-up pretensions, which rather wither the heart than strengthen it, than by a plain and earnest representation of duty, which is more suited to human imperfection and to progress in goodness. to set before children, as a pattern, actions that are called noble, magnanimous, meritorious, with the notion of captivating them by infusing enthusiasm for such actions, is to defeat our end. for as they are still so backward in the observance of the commonest duty, and even in the correct estimation of it, this means simply to make them fantastical romancers betimes. but, even with the instructed and experienced part of mankind, this supposed spring has, if not an injurious, at least no genuine, moral effect on the heart, which, however, is what it was desired to produce. all feelings, especially those that are to produce unwonted exertions, must accomplish their effect at the moment they are at their height and before the calm down; otherwise they effect nothing; for as there was nothing to strengthen the heart, but only to excite it, it naturally returns to its normal moderate tone and, thus, falls back into its previous languor. principles must be built on conceptions; on any other basis there can only be paroxysms, which can give the person no moral worth, nay, not even confidence in himself, without which the highest good in man, consciousness of the morality of his mind and character, cannot exist. now if these conceptions are to become subjectively practical, we must not rest satisfied with admiring the objective law of morality, and esteeming it highly in reference to humanity, but we must consider the conception of it in relation to man as an individual, and then this law appears in a form indeed that is highly deserving of respect, but not so pleasant as if it belonged to the element to which he is naturally accustomed; but on the contrary as often compelling him to quit this element, not without self-denial, and to betake himself to a higher, in which he can only maintain himself with trouble and with unceasing apprehension of a relapse. in a word, the moral law demands obedience, from duty not from predilection, which cannot and ought not to be presupposed at all. let us now see, in an example, whether the conception of an action, as a noble and magnanimous one, has more subjective moving power than if the action is conceived merely as duty in relation to the solemn law of morality. the action by which a man endeavours at the greatest peril of life to rescue people from shipwreck, at last losing his life in the attempt, is reckoned on one side as duty, but on the other and for the most part as a meritorious action, but our esteem for it is much weakened by the notion of duty to himself which seems in this case to be somewhat infringed. more decisive is the magnanimous sacrifice of life for the safety of one's country; and yet there still remains some scruple whether it is a perfect duty to devote one's self to this purpose spontaneously and unbidden, and the action has not in itself the full force of a pattern and impulse to imitation. but if an indispensable duty be in question, the transgression of which violates the moral law itself, and without regard to the welfare of mankind, and as it were tramples on its holiness (such as are usually called duties to god, because in him we conceive the ideal of holiness in substance), then we give our most perfect esteem to the pursuit of it at the sacrifice of all that can have any value for the dearest inclinations, and we find our soul strengthened and elevated by such an example, when we convince ourselves by contemplation of it that human nature is capable of so great an elevation above every motive that nature can oppose to it. juvenal describes such an example in a climax which makes the reader feel vividly the force of the spring that is contained in the pure law of duty, as duty: {part_2|methodology ^paragraph 15} esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem integer; ambiguae si quando citabere testis incertaeque rei, phalaris licet imperet ut sis falsus, et admoto dictet periuria tauro, summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori, {part_2|methodology ^paragraph 20} et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. * * [juvenal, satirae, "be you a good soldier, a faithful tutor, an uncorrupted umpire also; if you are summoned as a witness in a doubtful and uncertain thing, though phalaris should command that you should be false, and should dictate perjuries with the bull brought to you, believe it the highest impiety to prefer life to reputation, and for the sake of life, to lose the causes of living."] when we can bring any flattering thought of merit into our action, then the motive is already somewhat alloyed with self-love and has therefore some assistance from the side of the sensibility. but to postpone everything to the holiness of duty alone, and to be conscious that we can because our own reason recognises this as its command and says that we ought to do it, this is, as it were, to raise ourselves altogether above the world of sense, and there is inseparably involved in the same a consciousness of the law, as a spring of a faculty that controls the sensibility; and although this is not always attended with effect, yet frequent engagement with this spring, and the at first minor attempts at using it, give hope that this effect may be wrought, and that by degrees the greatest, and that a purely moral interest in it may be produced in us. {part_2|methodology ^paragraph 25} the method then takes the following course. at first we are only concerned to make the judging of actions by moral laws a natural employment accompanying all our own free actions, as well as the observation of those of others, and to make it as it were a habit, and to sharpen this judgement, asking first whether the action conforms objectively to the moral law, and to what law; and we distinguish the law that merely furnishes a principle of obligation from that which is really obligatory (leges obligandi a legibus obligantibus); as, for instance, the law of what men's wants require from me, as contrasted with that which their rights demand, the latter of which prescribes essential, the former only non-essential duties; and thus we teach how to distinguish different kinds of duties which meet in the same action. the other point to which attention must be directed is the question whether the action was also (subjectively) done for the sake of the moral law, so that it not only is morally correct as a deed, but also, by the maxim from which it is done, has moral worth as a disposition. now there is no doubt that this practice, and the resulting culture of our reason in judging merely of the practical, must gradually produce a certain interest even in the law of reason, and consequently in morally good actions. for we ultimately take a liking for a thing, the contemplation of which makes us feel that the use of our cognitive faculties is extended; and this extension is especially furthered by that in which we find moral correctness, since it is only in such an order of things that reason, with its faculty of determining a priori on principle what ought to be done, can find satisfaction. an observer of nature takes liking at last to objects that at first offended his senses, when he discovers in them the great adaptation of their organization to design, so that his reason finds food in its contemplation. so leibnitz spared an insect that he had carefully examined with the microscope, and replaced it on its leaf, because he had found himself instructed by the view of it and had, as it were, received a benefit from it. but this employment of the faculty of judgement, which makes us feel our own cognitive powers, is not yet the interest in actions and in their morality itself. it merely causes us to take pleasure in engaging in such criticism, and it gives to virtue or the disposition that conforms to moral laws a form of beauty, which is admired, but not on that account sought after (laudatur et alget); as everything the contemplation of which produces a consciousness of the harmony of our powers of conception, and in which we feel the whole of our faculty of knowledge (understanding and imagination) strengthened, produces a satisfaction, which may also be communicated to others, while nevertheless the existence of the object remains indifferent to us, being only regarded as the occasion of our becoming aware of the capacities in us which are elevated above mere animal nature. now, however, the second exercise comes in, the living exhibition of morality of character by examples, in which attention is directed to purity of will, first only as a negative perfection, in so far as in an action done from duty no motives of inclination have any influence in determining it. by this the pupil's attention is fixed upon the consciousness of his freedom, and although this renunciation at first excites a feeling of pain, nevertheless, by its withdrawing the pupil from the constraint of even real wants, there is proclaimed to him at the same time a deliverance from the manifold dissatisfaction in which all these wants entangle him, and the mind is made capable of receiving the sensation of satisfaction from other sources. the heart is freed and lightened of a burden that always secretly presses on it, when instances of pure moral resolutions reveal to the man an inner faculty of which otherwise he has no right knowledge, the inward freedom to release himself from the boisterous importunity of inclinations, to such a degree that none of them, not even the dearest, shall have any influence on a resolution, for which we are now to employ our reason. suppose a case where i alone know that the wrong is on my side, and although a free confession of it and the offer of satisfaction are so strongly opposed by vanity, selfishness, and even an otherwise not illegitimate antipathy to the man whose rights are impaired by me, i am nevertheless able to discard all these considerations; in this there is implied a consciousness of independence on inclinations and circumstances, and of the possibility of being sufficient for myself, which is salutary to me in general for other purposes also. and now the law of duty, in consequence of the positive worth which obedience to it makes us feel, finds easier access through the respect for ourselves in the consciousness of our freedom. when this is well established, when a man dreads nothing more than to find himself, on self-examination, worthless and contemptible in his own eyes, then every good moral disposition can be grafted on it, because this is the best, nay, the only guard that can keep off from the mind the pressure of ignoble and corrupting motives. i have only intended to point out the most general maxims of the methodology of moral cultivation and exercise. as the manifold variety of duties requires special rules for each kind, and this would be a prolix affair, i shall be readily excused if in a work like this, which is only preliminary, i content myself with these outlines. part_2|conclusion conclusion. two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. i have not to search for them and conjecture them as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; i see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence. the former begins from the place i occupy in the external world of sense, and enlarges my connection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into limitless times of their periodic motion, its beginning and continuance. the second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity, but which is traceable only by the understanding, and with which i discern that i am not in a merely contingent but in a universal and necessary connection, as i am also thereby with all those visible worlds. the former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates as it were my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital power, one knows not how, must again give back the matter of which it was formed to the planet it inhabits (a mere speck in the universe). the second, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as may be inferred from the destination assigned to my existence by this law, a destination not restricted to conditions and limits of this life, but reaching into the infinite. but though admiration and respect may excite to inquiry, they cannot supply the want of it. what, then, is to be done in order to enter on this in a useful manner and one adapted to the loftiness of the subject? examples may serve in this as a warning and also for imitation. the contemplation of the world began from the noblest spectacle that the human senses present to us, and that our understanding can bear to follow in their vast reach; and it endedin astrology. morality began with the noblest attribute of human nature, the development and cultivation of which give a prospect of infinite utility; and endedin fanaticism or superstition. so it is with all crude attempts where the principal part of the business depends on the use of reason, a use which does not come of itself, like the use of the feet, by frequent exercise, especially when attributes are in question which cannot be directly exhibited in common experience. but after the maxim had come into vogue, though late, to examine carefully beforehand all the steps that reason purposes to take, and not to let it proceed otherwise than in the track of a previously well considered method, then the study of the structure of the universe took quite a different direction, and thereby attained an incomparably happier result. the fall of a stone, the motion of a sling, resolved into their elements and the forces that are manifested in them, and treated mathematically, produced at last that clear and henceforward unchangeable insight into the system of the world which, as observation is continued, may hope always to extend itself, but need never fear to be compelled to retreat. this example may suggest to us to enter on the same path in treating of the moral capacities of our nature, and may give us hope of a like good result. we have at hand the instances of the moral judgement of reason. by analysing these into their elementary conceptions, and in default of mathematics adopting a process similar to that of chemistry, the separation of the empirical from the rational elements that may be found in them, by repeated experiments on common sense, we may exhibit both pure, and learn with certainty what each part can accomplish of itself, so as to prevent on the one hand the errors of a still crude untrained judgement, and on the other hand (what is far more necessary) the extravagances of genius, by which, as by the adepts of the philosopher's stone, without any methodical study or knowledge of nature, visionary treasures are promised and the true are thrown away. in one word, science (critically undertaken and methodically directed) is the narrow gate that leads to the true doctrine of practical wisdom, if we understand by this not merely what one ought to do, but what ought to serve teachers as a guide to construct well and clearly the road to wisdom which everyone should travel, and to secure others from going astray. philosophy must always continue to be the guardian of this science; and although the public does not take any interest in its subtle investigations, it must take an interest in the resulting doctrines, which such an examination first puts in a clear light. the end this ebook was produced by holden mcgroin. thoughts out of season part one by friedrich nietzsche the complete works of friedrich nietzsche the first complete and authorised english translation edited by dr. oscar levy volume one thoughts out of season part one _________________________________________________________________ of the first impression of one thousand copies this is no. 1 friedrich nietzsche thoughts out of season part i david strauss, the confessor and the writer richard wagner in bayreuth translated by anthony m. ludovici _________________________________________________________________ contents. editorial note nietzsche in england (by the editor) translator's preface to david strauss and richard wagner in reuth david strauss, the confessor and the writer richard wagner in bayreuth _________________________________________________________________ editorial note. _______ the editor begs to call attention to some of the difficulties he had to encounter in preparing this edition of the complete works of friedrich nietzsche. not being english himself, he had to rely upon the help of collaborators, who were somewhat slow in coming forward. they were also few in number; for, in addition to an exact knowledge of the german language, there was also required sympathy and a certain enthusiasm for the startling ideas of the original, as well as a considerable feeling for poetry, and that highest form of it, religious poetry. such a combination--a biblical mind, yet one open to new thoughts--was not easily found. and yet it was necessary to find translators with such a mind, and not be satisfied, as the french are and must be, with a free though elegant version of nietzsche. what is impossible and unnecessary in french--a faithful and powerful rendering of the psalmistic grandeur of nietzsche --is possible and necessary in english, which is a rougher tongue of the teutonic stamp, and moreover, like german, a tongue influenced and formed by an excellent version of the bible. the english would never be satisfied, as bible-ignorant france is, with a nietzsche à l'eau de cologne--they would require the natural, strong, real teacher, and would prefer his outspoken words to the finely-chiselled sentences of the raconteur. it may indeed be safely predicted that once the english people have recovered from the first shock of nietzsche's thoughts, their biblical training will enable them, more than any other nation, to appreciate the deep piety underlying nietzsche's cause. as this cause is a somewhat holy one to the editor himself, he is ready to listen to any suggestions as to improvements of style or sense coming from qualified sources. the editor, during a recent visit to mrs. foerster-nietzsche at weimar, acquired the rights of translation by pointing out to her that in this way her brother's works would not fall into the hands of an ordinary publisher and his staff of translators: he has not, therefore, entered into any engagement with publishers, not even with the present one, which could hinder his task, bind him down to any text found faulty, or make him consent to omissions or the falsification or "sugaring" of the original text to further the sale of the books. he is therefore in a position to give every attention to a work which he considers as of no less importance for the country of his residence than for the country of his birth, as well as for the rest of europe. it is the consciousness of the importance of this work which makes the editor anxious to point out several difficulties to the younger student of nietzsche. the first is, of course, not to begin reading nietzsche at too early an age. while fully admitting that others may be more gifted than himself, the editor begs to state that he began to study nietzsche at the age of twenty-six, and would not have been able to endure the weight of such teaching before that time. secondly, the editor wishes to dissuade the student from beginning the study of nietzsche by reading first of all his most complicated works. not having been properly prepared for them, he will find the zarathustra abstruse, the ecce homo conceited, and the antichrist violent. he should rather begin with the little pamphlet on education, the thoughts out of season, beyond good and evil, or the genealogy of morals. thirdly, the editor wishes to remind students of nietzsche's own advice to them, namely: to read him slowly, to think over what they have read, and not to accept too readily a teaching which they have only half understood. by a too ready acceptance of nietzsche it has come to pass that his enemies are, as a rule, a far superior body of men to those who call themselves his eager and enthusiastic followers. surely it is not every one who is chosen to combat a religion or a morality of two thousand years' standing, first within and then without himself; and whoever feels inclined to do so ought at least to allow his attention to be drawn to the magnitude of his task. _________________________________________________________________ nietzsche in england: an introductory essay by the editor. dear englishmen,--in one of my former writings i have made the remark that the world would have seen neither the great jewish prophets nor the great german thinkers, if the people from among whom these eminent men sprang had not been on the whole such a misguided, and, in their misguidedness, such a tough and stubborn race. the arrow that is to fly far must be discharged from a well distended bow: if, therefore, anything is necessary for greatness, it is a fierce and tenacious opposition, an opposition either of open contempt, or of malicious irony, or of sly silence, or of gross stupidity, an opposition regardless of the wounds it inflicts and of the precious lives it sacrifices, an opposition that nobody would dare to attack who was not prepared, like the spartan of old, to return either with his shield or on it. an opposition so devoid of pity is not as a rule found amongst you, dear and fair-minded englishmen, which may account for the fact that you have neither produced the greatest prophets nor the greatest thinkers in this world. you would never have crucified christ, as did the jews, or driven nietzsche into madness, as did the germans--you would have made nietzsche, on account of his literary faculties, minister of state in a whig ministry, you would have invited jesus christ to your country houses, where he would have been worshipped by all the ladies on account of his long hair and interesting looks, and tolerated by all men as an amusing, if somewhat romantic, foreigner. i know that the current opinion is to the contrary, and that your country is constantly accused, even by yourselves, of its insularity; but i, for my part, have found an almost feminine receptivity amongst you in my endeavour to bring you into contact with some ideas of my native country--a receptivity which, however, has also this in common with that of the female mind, that evidently nothing sticks deeply, but is quickly wiped out by what any other lecturer, or writer, or politician has to tell you. i was prepared for indifference--i was not prepared for receptivity and that benign lady's smile, behind which ladies, like all people who are only clever, usually hide their inward contempt for the foolishness of mere men! i was prepared for abuse, and even a good fight--i was not prepared for an extremely faint-hearted criticism; i did not expect that some of my opponents would be so utterly inexperienced in that most necessary work of literary execution. no, no: give me the germans or the jews for executioners: they can do the hanging properly, while the english hangman is like the russian, to whom, when the rope broke, the half-hanged revolutionary said: "what a country, where they cannot hang a man properly!" what a country, where they do not hang philosophers properly--which would be the proper thing to do to them--but smile at them, drink tea with them, discuss with them, and ask them to contribute to their newspapers! to get to the root of the matter: in spite of many encouraging signs, remarks and criticisms, adverse or benevolent, i do not think i have been very successful in my crusade for that european thought which began with goethe and has found so fine a development in nietzsche. true, i have made many a convert, but amongst them are very undesirable ones, as, for instance, some enterprising publishers, who used to be the toughest disbelievers in england, but who have now come to understand the "value" of the new gospel--but as neither this gospel is exactly christian, nor i, the importer of it, i am not allowed to count my success by the conversion of publishers and sinners, but have to judge it by the more spiritual standard of the quality of the converted. in this respect, i am sorry to say, my success has been a very poor one. as an eager missionary, i have naturally asked myself the reason of my failure. why is there no male audience in england willing to listen to a manly and daring philosophy? why are there no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no hearts to feel, no brains to understand? why is my trumpet, which after all i know how to blow pretty well, unable to shatter the walls of english prejudice against a teacher whose school cannot possibly be avoided by any european with a higher purpose in his breast?... there is plenty of time for thought nowadays for a man who does not allow himself to be drawn into that aimless bustle of pleasure business or politics, which is called modern life because outside that life there is--just as outside those noisy oriental cities-a desert, a calmness, a true and almost majestic leisure, a leisure unprecedented in any age, a leisure in which one may arrive at several conclusions concerning english indifference towards the new thought. first of all, of course, there stands in the way the terrible abuse which nietzsche has poured upon the heads of the innocent britishers. while france and the latin countries, while the orient and india, are within the range of his sympathies, this most outspoken of all philosophers, this prophet and poet-philosopher, cannot find words enough to express his disgust at the illogical, plebeian, shallow, utilitarian englishman. it must certainly be disagreeable to be treated like this, especially when one has a fairly good opinion of one's self; but why do you take it so very, very seriously? did nietzsche, perchance, spare the germans? and aren't you accustomed to criticism on the part of german philosophers? is it not the ancient and time-honoured privilege of the whole range of them from leibnitz to hegel -even of german poets, like goethe and heine -to call you bad names and to use unkind language towards you? has there not always been among the few thinking heads in germany a silent consent and an open contempt for you and your ways; the sort of contempt you yourselves have for the even more anglo-saxon culture of the americans? i candidly confess that in my more german moments i have felt and still feel as the german philosophers do; but i have also my european turns and moods, and then i try to understand you and even excuse you, and take your part against earnest and thinking germany. then i feel like telling the german philosophers that if you, poor fellows, had practised everything they preached, they would have had to renounce the pleasure of abusing you long ago, for there would now be no more englishmen left to abuse! as it is, you have suffered enough on account of the wild german ideals you luckily only partly believed in: for what the german thinker wrote on patient paper in his study, you always had to write the whole world over on tender human skins, black and yellow skins, enveloping ungrateful beings who sometimes had no very high esteem for the depth and beauty of german philosophy. and you have never taken revenge upon the inspired masters of the european thinking-shop, you have never reabused them, you have never complained of their want of worldly wisdom: you have invariably suffered in silence and agony, just as brave and staunch sancho panza used to do. for this is what you are, dear englishmen, and however well you brave, practical, materialistic john bulls and sancho panzas may know this world, however much better you may be able to perceive, to count, to judge, and to weigh things than your ideal german knight: there is an eternal law in this world that the sancho panzas have to follow the don quixotes; for matter has to follow the spirit, even the poor spirit of a german philosopher! so it has been in the past, so it is at present, and so it will be in the future; and you had better prepare yourselves in time for the eventuality. for if nietzsche were nothing else but this customary type of german philosopher, you would again have to pay the bill largely; and it would be very wise on your part to study him: sancho panza may escape a good many sad experiences by knowing his master's weaknesses. but as nietzsche no longer belongs to the quixotic class, as germany seems to emerge with him from her youthful and cranky nebulosity, you will not even have the pleasure of being thrashed in the company of your master: no, you will be thrashed all alone, which is an abominable thing for any right-minded human being. "solamen miseris socios habuisse malorum."[6]* [footnote * : it is a comfort to the afflicted to have companions in their distress.] the second reason for the neglect of nietzsche in this country is that you do not need him yet. and you do not need him yet because you have always possessed the british virtue of not carrying things to extremes, which, according to the german version, is an euphemism for the british want of logic and critical capacity. you have, for instance, never let your religion have any great influence upon your politics, which is something quite abhorrent to the moral german, and makes him so angry about you. for the german sees you acting as a moral and law-abiding christian at home, and as an unscrupulous and machiavellian conqueror abroad; and if he refrains from the reproach of hypocrisy, with which the more stupid continentals invariably charge you, he will certainly call you a "british muddlehead." well, i myself do not take things so seriously as that, for i know that men of action have seldom time to think. it is probably for this reason also that liberty of thought and speech has been granted to you, the law-giver knowing very well all the time that you would be much too busy to use and abuse such extraordinary freedom. anyhow, it might now be time to abuse it just a little bit, and to consider what an extraordinary amalgamation is a christian power with imperialistic ideas. true, there has once before been another christian conquering and colonising empire like yours, that of venice--but these venetians were thinkers compared with you, and smuggled their gospel into the paw of their lion.... why don't you follow their example, in order not to be unnecessarily embarrassed by it in your enterprises abroad? in this manner you could also reconcile the proper germans, who invariably act up to their theories, their christianity, their democratic principles, although, on the other hand, in so doing you would, i quite agree, be most unfaithful to your own traditions, which are of a more democratic character than those of any other european nation. for democracy, as every schoolboy knows, was born in an english cradle: individual liberty, parliamentary institutions, the sovereign rights of the people, are ideas of british origin, and have been propagated from this island over the whole of europe. but as the prophet and his words are very often not honoured in his own country, those ideas have been embraced with much more fervour by other nations than by that in which they originated. the continent of europe has taken the desire for liberty and equality much more seriously than their levelling but also level-headed inventors, and the fervent imagination of france has tried to put into practice all that was quite hidden to the more sober english eye. every one nowadays knows the good and the evil consequences of the french revolution, which swept over the whole of europe, throwing it into a state of unrest, shattering thrones and empires, and everywhere undermining authority and traditional institutions. while this was going on in europe, the originator of the merry game was quietly sitting upon his island smiling broadly at the excitable foreigners across the channel, fishing as much as he could out of the water he himself had so cleverly disturbed, and thus in every way reaping the benefit from the mighty fight for the apple of eros which he himself had thrown amongst them. as i have endeavoured above to draw a parallel between the germans and the jews, i may now be allowed to follow this up with one between the jews and the english. it is a striking parallel, which will specially appeal to those religious souls amongst you who consider themselves the lost tribes of our race (and who are perhaps even more lost than they think),--and it is this: just as the jews have brought christianity into the world, but never accepted it themselves, just as they, in spite of their democratic offspring, have always remained the most conservative, exclusive, aristocratic, and religious people, so have the english never allowed themselves to be intoxicated by the strong drink of the natural equality of men, which they once kindly offered to all europe to quaff; but have, on the contrary, remained the most sober, the most exclusive, the most feudal, the most conservative people of our continent. but because the ravages of democracy have been less felt here than abroad, because there is a good deal of the mediaeval building left standing over here, because things have never been carried to that excess which invariably brings a reaction with it--this reaction has not set in in this country, and no strong desire for the necessity of it, no craving for the counterbalancing influence of a nietzsche, has arisen yet in the british mind. i cannot help pointing out the grave consequences of this backwardness of england, which has arisen from the fact that you have never taken any ideas or theories, not even your own, seriously. democracy, dear englishmen, is like a stream, which all the peoples of europe will have to cross: they will come out of it cleaner, healthier, and stronger, but while the others are already in the water, plunging, puffing, paddling, losing their ground, trying to swim, and even half-drowned, you are still standing on the other side of it, roaring unmercifully about the poor swimmers, screamers, and fighters below,--but one day you will have to cross this same river too, and when you enter it the others will just be out of it, and will laugh at the poor english straggler in their turn! the third and last reason for the icy silence which has greeted nietzsche in this country is due to the fact that he has--as far as i know--no literary ancestor over here whose teachings could have prepared you for him. germany has had her goethe to do this; france her stendhal; in russia we find that fearless curiosity for all problems, which is the sign of a youthful, perhaps too youthful nation; while in spain, on the other hand, we have an old and experienced people, with a long training away from christianity under the dominion of the semitic arabs, who undoubtedly left some of their blood behind,--but i find great difficulty in pointing out any man over here who could serve as a useful guide to the heights of the nietzschean thought, except one, who was not a britisher. i am alluding to a man whose politics you used to consider and whose writings you even now consider as fantastic, but who, like another fantast of his race, may possess the wonderful gift of resurrection, and come again to life amongst you--to benjamin disraeli. the disraelian novels are in my opinion the best and only preparation for those amongst you who wish gradually to become acquainted with the nietzschean spirit. there, and nowhere else, will you find the true heroes of coming times, men of moral courage, men whose failures and successes are alike admirable, men whose noble passions have altogether superseded the ordinary vulgarities and moralities of lower beings, men endowed with an extraordinary imagination, which, however, is balanced by an equal power of reason, men already anointed with a drop of that sacred and noble oil, without which the high priest-philosopher of modern germany would not have crowned his royal race of the future. both disraeli and nietzsche you perceive starting from the same pessimistic diagnosis of the wild anarchy, the growing melancholy, the threatening nihilism of modern europe, for both recognised the danger of the age behind its loud and forced "shipwreck gaiety," behind its big-mouthed talk about progress and evolution, behind that veil of business-bustle, which hides its fear and utter despair--but for all that black outlook they are not weaklings enough to mourn and let things go, nor do they belong to that cheap class of society doctors who mistake the present wretchedness of humanity for sinfulness, and wish to make their patient less sinful and still more wretched. both nietzsche and disraeli have clearly recognised that this patient of theirs is suffering from weakness and not from sinfulness, for which latter some kind of strength may still be required; both are therefore entirely opposed to a further dieting him down to complete moral emaciation, but are, on the contrary, prescribing a tonic, a roborating, a natural regime for him --advice for which both doctors have been reproached with immorality by their contemporaries as well as by posterity. but the younger doctor has turned the tables upon their accusers, and has openly reproached his nazarene colleagues with the immorality of endangering life itself, he has clearly demonstrated to the world that their trustful and believing patient was shrinking beneath their very fingers, he has candidly foretold these christian quacks that one day they would be in the position of the quack skin-specialist at the fair, who, as a proof of his medical skill, used to show to the peasants around him the skin of a completly cured patient of his. both nietzsche and disraeli know the way to health, for they have had the disease of the age themselves, but they have--the one partly, the other entirely-cured themselves of it, they have resisted the spirit of their time, they have escaped the fate of their contemporaries; they therefore, and they alone, know their danger. this is the reason why they both speak so violently, why they both attack with such bitter fervour the utilitarian and materialistic attitude of english science, why they both so ironically brush aside the airy and fantastic ideals of german philosophy--this is why they both loudly declare (to use disraeli's words) "that we are the slaves of false knowledge; that our memories are filled with ideas that have no origin in truth; that we believe what our fathers credited, who were convinced without a cause; that we study human nature in a charnel house, and, like the nations of the east, pay divine honours to the maniac and the fool." but if these two great men cannot refrain from such outspoken vituperation--they also lead the way: they both teach the divinity of ideas and the vileness of action without principle; they both exalt the value of personality and character; they both deprecate the influence of society and socialisation; they both intensely praise and love life, but they both pour contempt and irony upon the shallow optimist, who thinks it delightful, and the quietist, who wishes it to be calm, sweet, and peaceful. they thus both preach a life of danger, in opposition to that of pleasure, of comfort, of happiness, and they do not only preach this noble life, they also act it: for both have with equal determination staked even their lives on the fulfilment of their ideal. it is astonishing--but only astonishing to your superficial student of the jewish character--that in disraeli also we find an almost nietzschean appreciation of that eternal foe of the jewish race, the hellenist, which makes disraeli, just like nietzsche, confess that the greek and the hebrew are both amongst the highest types of the human kind. it is not less astonishing--but likewise easily intelligible for one who knows something of the great jews of the middle ages--that in disraeli we discover that furious enmity against the doctrine of the natural equality of men which nietzsche combated all his life. it was certainly the great maimonides himself, that spiritual father of spinoza, who guided the pen of his sephardic descendant, when he thus wrote in his tancred: "it is to be noted, although the omnipotent creator might have formed, had it pleased him, in the humblest of his creations, an efficient agent for his purpose that divine majesty has never thought fit to communicate except with human beings of the very highest order." but what about christianity, to which disraeli was sincerely attached, and whose creation he always considered as one of the eternal glories of his race? did not the divine majesty think it fit then to communicate with the most humble of its creatures, with the fishermen of galilee, with the rabble of corinth, with the slaves, the women, the criminals of the roman empire? as i wish to be honest about disraeli, i must point out here, that his genius, although the most prominent in england during his lifetime, and although violently opposed to its current superstitions, still partly belongs to his age--and for this very pardonable reason, that in his jewish pride he overrated and even misunderstood christianity. he all but overlooked the narrow connection between christianity and democracy. he did not see that in fighting liberalism and nonconformity all his life, he was really fighting christianity, the protestant form of which is at the root of british liberalism and individualism to this very day. and when later in his life disraeli complained that the disturbance in the mind of nations has been occasioned by "the powerful assault on the divinity of the semitic literature by the germans," he overlooked likewise the connection of this german movement with the same protestantism, from the narrow and vulgar middle-class of which have sprung all those rationalising, unimaginative, and merely clever professors, who have so successfully undermined the ancient and venerable lore. and thirdly, and worst of all, disraeli never suspected that the french revolution, which in the same breath he once contemptuously denounced as "the celtic rebellion against semitic laws," was, in spite of its professed attack against religion, really a profoundly christian, because a democratic and revolutionary movement. what a pity he did not know all this! what a shower of splendid additional sarcasms he would have poured over those flat-nosed franks, had he known what i know now, that it is the eternal way of the christian to be a rebel, and that just as he has once rebelled against us, he has never ceased pestering and rebelling against any one else either of his own or any other creed. but it is so easy for me to be carried away by that favourite sport of mine, of which i am the first inventor among the jews--christian baiting. you must forgive this, however, in a jew, who, while he has been baited for two thousand years by you, likes to turn round now that the opportunity has come, and tries to indulge on his part also in a little bit of that genial pastime. i candidly confess it is delightful, and i now quite understand your ancestors hunting mine as much as they could--had i been a christian, i would, probably, have done the same; perhaps have done it even better, for no one would now be left to write any such impudent truisms against me-rest assured of that! but as i am a jew, and have had too much experience of the other side of the question, i must try to control myself in the midst of victory; i must judge things calmly; i must state fact honestly; i must not allow myself to be unjust towards you. first of all, then, this rebelling faculty of yours is a jewish inheritance, an inheritance, however, of which you have made a more than generous, a truly christian use, because you did not keep it niggardly for yourselves, but have distributed it all over the earth, from nazareth to nishni-novgorod, from jerusalem to jamaica, from palestine to pimlico, so that every one is a rebel and an anarchist nowadays. but, secondly, i must not forget that in every anarchist, and therefore in every christian, there is also, or may be, an aristocrat--a man who, just like the anarchist, but with a perfectly holy right, wishes to obey no laws but those of his own conscience; a man who thinks too highly of his own faith and persuasion, to convert other people to it; a man who, therefore, would never carry it to caffres and coolis; a man, in short, with whom even the noblest and exclusive hebrew could shake hands. in friedrich nietzsche this aristocratic element which may be hidden in a christian has been brought to light, in him the christian's eternal claim for freedom of conscience, for his own priesthood, for justification by his own faith, is no longer used for purposes of destruction and rebellion, but for those of command and creation; in him--and this is the key to the character of this extraordinary man, who both on his father's and mother's side was the descendant of a long line of protestant parsons--the christian and protestant spirit of anarchy became so strong that he rebelled even against his own fellow-anarchists, and told them that anarchy was a low and contemptible thing, and that revolution was an occupation fit only for superior slaves. but with this event the circle of christianity has become closed, and the exclusive house of israel is now under the delightful obligation to make its peace with its once lost and now reforming son. the venerable owner of this old house is still standing on its threshold: his face is pale, his expression careworn, his eyes apparently scanning something far in the distance. the wind--for there is a terrible wind blowing just now--is playing havoc with his long white jew-beard, but this white jew-beard of his is growing black again at the end, and even the sad eyes are still capable of quite youthful flashes, as may be noticed at this very moment. for the eyes of the old jew, apparently so dreamy and so far away, have suddenly become fixed upon something in the distance yonder. the old jew looks and looks-and then he rubs his eyes--and then he eagerly looks again. and now he is sure of himself. his old and haggard face is lighting up, his stooped figure suddenly becomes more erect, and a tear of joy is seen running over his pale cheek into that long beard of his. for the old jew has recognised some one coming from afar--some one whom he had missed, but never mentioned, for his law forbade him to do this--some one, however, for whom he had secretly always mourned, as only the race of the psalmists and the prophets can mourn--and he rushes toward him, and he falls on his neck and he kisses him, and he says to his servants: "bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it and let us eat and be merry!" amen. oscar levy. london, january 1909. _________________________________________________________________ translator's preface. to the reader who knows nietzsche, who has studied his zarathustra and understood it, and who, in addition, has digested the works entitled beyond good and evil, the genealogy of morals, the twilight of the idols, and the antichrist,-to such a reader everything in this volume will be perfectly clear and comprehensible. in the attack on strauss he will immediately detect the germ of the whole of nietzsche's subsequent attitude towards too hasty contentment and the foolish beatitude of the "easily pleased"; in the paper on wagner he will recognise nietzsche the indefatigable borer, miner and underminer, seeking to define his ideals, striving after self-knowledge above all, and availing himself of any contemporary approximation to his ideal man, in order to press it forward as the incarnation of his thoughts. wagner the reformer of mankind! wagner the dithyrambic dramatist!--the reader who knows nietzsche will not be misled by these expressions. to the uninitiated reader, however, some words of explanation are due, not only in regard to the two papers before us, but in regard to nietzsche himself. so much in our time is learnt from hearsay concerning prominent figures in science, art, religion, or philosophy, that it is hardly possible for anybody to-day, however badly informed he may be, to begin the study of any great writer or scientist with a perfectly open mind. it were well, therefore, to begin the study of nietzsche with some definite idea as to his unaltered purpose, if he ever possessed such a thing; as to his lifelong ideal, if he ever kept one so long; and as to the one direction in which he always travelled, despite apparent deviations and windings. had he such a purpose, such an ideal, such a direction? we have no wish to open a controversy here, neither do we think that in replying to this question in the affirmative we shall give rise to one; for every careful student of nietzsche, we know, will uphold us in our view. nietzsche had one very definite and unaltered purpose, ideal and direction, and this was "the elevation of the type man." he tells us in the will to power: "all is truth to me that tends to elevate man!" to this principle he was already pledged as a student at leipzig; we owe every line that he ever wrote to his devotion to it, and it is the key to all his complexities, blasphemies, prolixities, and terrible earnestness. all was good to nietzsche that tended to elevate man; all was bad that kept man stationary or sent him backwards. hence he wrote david strauss, the confessor and writer (1873). the franco-german war had only just come to an end, and the keynote of this polemical pamphlet is, "beware of the intoxication of success." when the whole of germany was delirious with joy over her victory, at a time when the unquestioned triumph of her arms tended rather to reflect unearned glory upon every department of her social organisation, it required both courage and discernment to raise the warning voice and to apply the wet blanket. but nietzsche did both, and with spirit, because his worst fears were aroused. smug content (erbärmliches behagen) was threatening to thwart his one purpose--the elevation of man; smug content personified in the german scholar was giving itself airs of omniscience, omnipotence, and ubiquity, and all the while it was a mere cover for hidden rottenness and jejune pedantry. nietzsche's attack on hegelian optimism alone (pp. 46, 53-54), in the first paper, fully reveals the fundamental idea underlying this essay; and if the personal attack on strauss seems sometimes to throw the main theme into the background, we must remember the author's own attitude towards this aspect of the case. nietzsche, as a matter of fact, had neither the spite nor the meanness requisite for the purely personal attack. in his ecce homo, he tells us most emphatically: "i have no desire to attack particular persons--i do but use a personality as a magnifying glass; i place it over the subject to which i wish to call attention, merely that the appeal may be stronger." david strauss, in a letter to a friend, soon after the publication of the first thought out of season, expresses his utter astonishment that a total stranger should have made such a dead set at him. the same problem may possibly face the reader on every page of this fssay: if, however, we realise nietzsche's purpose, if we understand his struggle to be one against "culture-philistinism" in general, as a stemming, stultifying and therefore degenerate factor, and regard david strauss--as the author himself did, that is to say, simply as a glass, focusing the whole light of our understanding upon the main theme-then the strauss paper is seen to be one of such enormous power, and its aim appears to us so lofty, that, whatever our views may be concerning the nature of the person assailed, we are forced to conclude that, to nietzsche at least, he was but the incarnation and concrete example of the evil and danger then threatening to overtake his country, which it was the object of this essay to expose. when we read that at the time of strauss's death (february 7th, 1874) nietzsche was greatly tormented by the fear that the old scholar might have been hastened to his end by the use that had been made of his personality in the first unzeitgemässe betrachtung; when we remember that in the midst of this torment he ejaculated, "i was indeed not made to hate and have enemies!"--we are then in a better position to judge of the motives which, throughout his life, led him to engage such formidable opponents and to undertake such relentless attacks. it was merely his ruling principle that, all is true and good that tends to elevate man; everything is bad and false that keeps man stationary or sends him backwards. those who may think that his attacks were often unwarrantable and ill-judged will do well, therefore, to bear this in mind, that whatever his value or merits may have been as an iconoclast, at least the aim he had was sufficiently lofty and honourable, and that he never shirked the duties which he rightly or wrongly imagined would help him to wagner paper (1875-1876) we are faced by a somewhat different problem. most readers who will have heard of nietzsche's subsequent denunciation of wagner's music will probably stand aghast before this panegyric of him; those who, like professor saintsbury, will fail to discover the internal evidence in this essay which points so infallibly to nietzsche's real but still subconscious opinion of his hero, may even be content to regard his later attitude as the result of a complete volte-face, and at any rate a flat contradiction of the one revealed in this paper. let us, however, examine the internal evidence we speak of, and let us also discuss the purpose and spirit of the essay. we have said that nietzsche was a man with a very fixed and powerful ideal, and we have heard what this ideal was. can we picture him, then,--a young and enthusiastic scholar with a cultured love of music, and particularly of wagner's music, eagerly scanning all his circle, the whole city and country in which he lived--yea, even the whole continent on which he lived--for something or some one that would set his doubts at rest concerning the feasibility of his ideal? can we now picture this young man coming face to face with probably one of the greatest geniuses of his age--with a man whose very presence must have been electric, whose every word or movement must have imparted some power to his surroundings--with richard wagner? if we can conceive of what the mere attention, even, of a man like wagner must have meant to nietzsche in his twenties, if we can form any idea of the intoxicating effect produced upon him when this attention developed into friendship, we almost refuse to believe that nietzsche could have been critical at all at first. in wagner, as was but natural, he soon began to see the ideal, or at least the means to the ideal, which was his one obsession. all his hope for the future of germany and europe cleaved, as it were, to this highest manifestation of their people's life, and gradually he began to invest his already great friend with all the extra greatness which he himself drew from the depths of his own soul. the friendship which grew between them was of that rare order in which neither can tell who influences the other more. wagner would often declare that the beautiful music in the third act of siegfried was to be ascribed to nietzsche's influence over him; he also adopted the young man's terminology in art matters, and the concepts implied by the words "dionysian" and "apollonian" were borrowed by him from his friend's discourses. how much nietzsche owed to wagner may perhaps never be definitely known; to those who are sufficiently interested to undertake the investigation of this matter, we would recommend hans belart's book, nietzsche's ethik; in it references will be found which give some clue as to the probable sources from which the necessary information may be derived. in any case, however, the reciprocal effects of their conversations will never be exactly known; and although it would be ridiculous to assume that nietzsche was essentially the same when he left as when he met him, what the real nature of the change was it is now difficult to say. for some years their friendship continued firm, and grew ever more and more intimate. the birth of tragedy was one of the first public declarations of it, and after its publication many were led to consider that wagner's art was a sort of resurrection of the dionysian grecian art. enemies of nietzsche began to whisper that he was merely wagner's "literary lackey"; many friends frowned upon the promising young philologist, and questioned the exaggerated importance he was beginning to ascribe to the art of music and to art in general, in their influence upon the world; and all the while nietzsche's one thought and one aim was to help the cause and further the prospects of the man who he earnestly believed was destined to be the salvation of european culture. every great ideal coined in his own brain he imagined to be the ideal of his hero; all his sublimest hopes for society were presented gratis, in his writings, to wagner, as though products of the latter's own mind; and just as the prophet of old never possessed the requisite assurance to suppose that his noblest ideas were his own, but attributed them to some higher and supernatural power, whom he thereby learnt to worship for its fancied nobility of sentiment, so nietzsche, still doubting his own powers, created a fetich out of nis most distinguished friend, and was ultimately wounded and well-nigh wrecked with disappointment when he found that the wagner of the gotterdammerung and parsifal was not the wagner of his own mind. while writing ecce homo, he was so well aware of the extent to which he had gone in idealising his friend, that he even felt able to say: "wagner in bayreuth is a vision of my own future.... now that i can look back upon this work, i would not like to deny that, at bottom, it speaks only of myself" (p. 74). and on another page of the same book we read: "... what i heard, as a young man, in wagnerian music, had absolutely nothing to do with wagner: when i described dionysian music, i only described what i had heard, and i thus translated and transfigured all that i bore in my own soul into the spirit of the new art. the strongest proof of this is my essay, wagner in bayreuth: in all decidedly psychological passages of this book the reader may simply read my name, or the name 'zarathustra,' wherever the text contains the name 'wagner'" (p. 68). as we have already hinted, there are evidences of his having subconsciously discerned the real wagner, even in the heyday of their friendship, behind the ideal he had formed of him; for his eyes were too intelligent to be deceived, even though his understanding refused at first to heed the messages they sent it: both the birth of tragedy and wagner in bayreuth are with us to prove this, and not merely when we read these works between the lines, but when we take such passages as those found on pp. 115, 149, 150, 151, 156, 158, 159 of this book quite literally. nietzsche's infatuation we have explained; the consequent idealisation of the object of his infatuation he himself has confessed; we have also pointed certain passages which we believe show beyond a doubt that almost everything to be found in the case of wagner and nietzsche contra wagner was already subconscious in our author, long before he had begun to feel even a coolness towards his hero: let those who think our interpretation of the said passages is either strained or unjustified turn to the literature to which we have referred and judge for themselves. it seems to us that those distinguished critics who complain of nietzsche's complete volte-face and his uncontrollable recantations and revulsions of feeling have completely overlooked this aspect of the question. it were well for us to bear in mind that we are not altogether free to dispose of nietzsche's attitude to wagner, at any given period in their relationship, with a single sentence of praise or of blame. after all, we are faced by a problem which no objectivity or dispassionate detachment on our parts can solve. nietzsche endowed both schopenhauer and wagner with qualities and aspirations so utterly foreign to them both, that neither of them would have recognised himself in the images he painted of them. his love for them was unusual; perhaps it can only be fully understood emotionally by us: like all men who are capable of very great love, nietzsche lent the objects of his affection anything they might happen to lack in the way of greatness, and when at last his eyes were opened, genuine pain, not malice, was the motive of even the most bitter of his diatribes. finally, we should just like to give one more passage from ecce homo bearing upon the subject under discussion. it is particularly interesting from an autobiographical standpoint, and will perhaps afford the best possible conclusion to this preface. nietzsche is writing about wagner's music, and he says: "the world must indeed be empty for him who has never been unhealthy enough for this 'infernal voluptuousness'; it is allowable and yet almost forbidden to use a mystical expression in this behalf. i suppose i know better than any one the prodigies wagner was capable of, the fifty worlds of strange raptures to which no one save him could soar; and as i stand to-day--strong enough to convert even the most suspicious and dangerous phenomenon to my own use and be the stronger for it--i declare wagner to be the great benefactor of my life. something will always keep our names associated in the minds of men, and that is, that we are two who have suffered more excruciatingly--even at each other's hands--than most men are able to suffer nowadays. and just as wagner is merely a misunderstanding among germans, so am i and ever will be. you lack two centuries of psychological and artistic discipline, my dear countrymen!... but it will be impossible for you ever to recover the time now lost" (p. 43). anthony m. ludovici. _________________________________________________________________ david strauss, the confessor and the writer. david strauss _______ i. public opinion in germany seems strictly to forbid any allusion to the evil and dangeious consequences of a war, more particularly when the war in question has been a victorious one. those writers, therefore, command a more ready attention who, regarding this public opinion as final, proceed to vie with each other in their jubilant praise of the war, and of the powerful influences it has brought to bear upon morality, culture, and art. yet it must be confessed that a gieat victory is a great danger. human nature bears a triumph less easily than a defeat; indeed, it might even be urged that it is simpler to gain a victory of this sort than to turn it to such account that it may not ultimately proxe a seiious rout. but of all evil results due to the last contest with france, the most deplorable, peihaps, is that widespread and even universal error of public opinion and of all who think publicly, that german culture was also victorious in the struggle, and that it should now, therefore, be decked with garlands, as a fit recognition of such extraordinary events and successes. this error is in the highest degree pernicious: not because it is an error,--for there are illusions which are both salutary and blessed,--but because it threatens to convert our victory into a signal defeat. a defeat? --i should say rather, into the uprooting of the "german mind" for the benefit of the "german empire." even supposing that the fight had been between the two cultures, the standard for the value of the victor would still be a very relative one, and, in any case, would certainly not justify such exaggerated triumph or self-glorification. for, in the first place, it would be necessary to ascertain the worth of the conquered culture. this might be very little; in which case, even if the victory had involved the most glorious display of arms, it would still offer no warrant for inordinate rapture. even so, however, there can be no question, in our case, of the victory of german culture; and for the simple reason, that french culture remains as heretofore, and that we depend upon it as heretofore. it did not even help towards the success of our arms. severe military discipline, natural bravery and sustaining power, the superior generalship, unity and obedience in the rank and file--in short, factors which have nothing to do with culture, were instrumental in making us conquer an opponent in whom the most essential of these factors were absent. the only wonder is, that precisely what is now called "culture" in germany did not prove an obstacle to the military operations which seemed vitally necessary to a great victory. perhaps, though, this was only owing to the fact that this "thing" which dubs itself "culture" saw its advantage, for once, in keeping in the background. if however, it be permitted to grow and to spread, if it be spoilt by the flattering and nonsensical assurance that it has been victorious,--then, as i have said, it will have the power to extirpate german mind, and, when that is done, who knows whether there will still be anything to be made out of the surviving german body! provided it were possible to direct that calm and tenacious bravery which the german opposed to the pathetic and spontaneous fury of the frenchman, against the inward enemy, against the highly suspicious and, at all events, unnative "cultivation" which, owing to a dangerous misunderstanding, is called "culture" in germany, then all hope of a really genuine german "culture"--the reverse of that "cultivation"--would not be entirely lost. for the germans have never known any lack of clear-sighted and heroic leaders, though these, often enough, probably, have lacked germans. but whether it be possible to turn german bravery into a new direction seems to me to become ever more and more doubtful; for i realise how fully convinced every one is that such a struggle and such bravery are no longer requisite; on the contrary, that most things are regulated as satisactorily as they possibly can be--or, at all events, that everything of moment has long ago been discovered and accomplished: in a word, that the seed of culture is already sown everywhere, and is now either shooting up its fresh green blades, or, here and there, even bursting forth into luxuriant blossom. in this sphere, not only happiness but ecstasy reigns supreme. i am conscious of this ecstasy and happiness, in the ineffable, truculent assurance of german journalists and manufacturers of novels, tragedies, poems, and histories (for it must be clear that these people belong to one category), who seem to have conspired to improve the leisure and ruminative hours--that is to say, "the intellectual lapses"--of the modern man, by bewildering him with their printed paper. since the war, all is gladness, dignity, and self-consciousness in this merry throng. after the startling successes of german culture, it regards itself, not only as approved and sanctioned, but almost as sanctified. it therefore speaks with gravity, affects to apostrophise the german people, and issues complete works, after the manner of the classics; nor does it shrink from proclaiming in those journals which are open to it some few of its adherents as new german classical writers and model authors. it might be supposed that the dangers of such an abuse of success would be recognised by the more thoughtful and enlightened among cultivated germans; or, at least, that these would feel how painful is the comedy that is being enacted around them: for what in truth could more readily inspire pity than the sight of a cripple strutting like a cock before a mirror, and exchanging complacent glances with his reflection! but the "scholar" caste willingly allow things to remain as they are, and re too much concerned with their own affairs to busy themselves with the care of the german mind. moreover, the units of this caste are too thoroughly convinced that their own scholarship is the ripest and most perfect fruit of the age--in fact, of all ages--to see any necessity for a care of german culture in general; since, in so far as they and the legion of their brethren are concerned, preoccupations of this order have everywhere been, so to speak, surpassed. the more conscientious observer, more particularly if he be a foreigner, cannot help noticing withal that no great disparity exists between that which the german scholar regards as his culture and that other triumphant culture of the new german classics, save in respect of the quantum of knowledge. everywhere, where knowledge and not ability, where information and not art, hold the first rank,--everywhere, therefore, where life bears testimony to the kind of culture extant, there is now only one specific german culture--and this is the culture that is supposed to have conquered france? the contention appears to be altogether too preposterous. it was solely to the more extensive knowledge of german officers, to the superior training of their soldiers, and to their more scientific military strategy, that all impartial judges, and even the french nation, in the end, ascribed the victory. hence, if it be intended to regard german erudition as a thing apart, in what sense can german culture be said to have conquered? in none whatsoever; for the moral qualities of severe discipline, of more placid obedience, have nothing in common with culture: these were characteristic of the macedonian army, for instance, despite the fact that the greek soldiers were infinitely more cultivated. to speak of german scholarship and culture as having conquered, therefore, can only be the outcome of a misapprehension, probably resulting from the circumstance that every precise notion of culture has now vanished from germany. culture is, before all things, the unity of artistic style, in every expression of the life of a people. abundant knowledge and learning, however, are not essential to it, nor are they a sign of its existence; and, at a pinch, they might coexist much more harmoniously with the very opposite of culture--with barbarity: that is to say, with a complete lack of style, or with a riotous jumble of all styles. but it is precisely amid this riotous jumble that the german of to-day subsists; and the serious problem to be solved is: how, with all his learning, he can possibly avoid noticing it; how, into the bargain, he can rejoice with all his heart in his present "culture"? for everything conduces to open his eyes for him--every glance he casts at his clothes, his room, his house; every walk he takes through the streets of his town; every visit he pays to his art-dealers and to his trader in the articles of fashion. in his social intercourse he ought to realise the origin of his manners and movements; in the heart of our art-institutions, the pleasures of our concerts, theatres, and museums, he ought to become apprised of the superand juxta-position of all imaginable styles. the german heaps up around him the forms, colours, products, and curiosities of all ages and zones, and thereby succeeds in producing that garish newness, as of a country fair, which his scholars then proceed to contemplate and to define as "modernism per se"; and there he remains, squatting peacefully, in the midst of this conflict of styles. but with this kind of culture, which is, at bottom, nothing more nor less than a phlegmatic insensibility to real culture, men cannot vanquish an enemy, least of all an enemy like the french, who, whatever their worth may be, do actually possess a genuine and productive culture, and whom, up to the present, we have systematically copied, though in the majority of cases without skill. even supposing we had really ceased copying them, it would still not mean that we had overcome them, but merely that we had lifted their yoke from our necks. not before we have succeeded in forcing an original german culture upon them can there be any question of the triumph of german culture. meanwhile, let us not forget that in all matters of form we are, and must be, just as dependent upon paris now as we were before the war; for up to the present there has been no such thing as a original german culture. we all ought to have become aware of this, of our own accord. besides, one of the few who had he right to speak to germans in terms of reproach publicly drew attention to the fact. "we germans are of yesterday," goethe once said to eckermann. "true, for the last hundred years we have diligently cultivated ourselves, but a few centuries may yet have to run their course before our fellow-countrymen become permeated with sufficient intellectuality and higher culture to have it said of them, it is a long time since they were barbarians." ii. if, however, our public and private life is so manifestly devoid of all signs of a productive and characteristic culture; if, moreover, our great artists, with that earnest vehemence and honesty which is peculiar to greatness admit, and have admitted, this monstrous fact--so very humiliating to a gifted nation; how can it still be possible for contentment to reign to such an astonishing extent among german scholars? and since the last war this complacent spirit has seemed ever more and morerready to break forth into exultant cries and demonstrations of triumph. at all events, the belief seems to be rife that we are in possession of a genuine culture, and the enormous incongruity of this triumphant satisfaction in the face of the inferiority which should be patent to all, seems only to be noticed by the few and the select. for all those who think with the public mind have blindfolded their eyes and closed their ears. the incongruity is not even acknowledged to exist. how is this possible? what power is sufficiently influential to deny this existence? what species of men must have attained to supremacy in germany that feelings which are so strong and simple should he denied or prevented from obtaining expression? this power, this species of men, i will name--they are the philistines of culture. as every one knows, the word "philistine" is borrowed from the vernacular of student-life, and, in its widest and most popular sense, it signifies the reverse of a son of the muses, of an artist, and of the genuine man of culture. the philistine of culture, however, the study of whose type and the hearing of whose confessions (when he makes them) have now become tiresome duties, distinguishes himself from the general notion of the order "philistine" by means of a superstition: he fancies that he is himself a son of the muses and a man of culture. this incomprehensible error clearly shows that he does not even know the difference between a philistine and his opposite. we must not be surprised, therefore, if we find him, for the most part, solemnly protesting that he is no philistine. owing to this lack of self-knowledge, he is convinced that his "culture" is the consummate manifestation of real german culture; and, since he everywhere meets with scholars of his own type, since all public institutions, whether schools, universities, or academies, are so organised as to be in complete harmony with his education and needs, wherever he goes he bears with him the triumphant feeling that he is the worthy champion of prevailing german culture, and he frames his pretensions and claims accordingly. if, however, real culture takes unity of style for granted (and even an inferior and degenerate culture cannot be imagined in which a certain coalescence of the profusion of forms has not taken place), it is just possible that the confusion underlying the culture-philistine's error may arise from the fact that, since he comes into contact everywhere with creatures cast in the same mould as himself, he concludes that this uniformity among all "scholars" must point to a certain uniformity in german education--hence to culture. all round him, he sees only needs and views similar to his own; wherever he goes, he finds himself embraced by a ring of tacit conventions concerning almost everything, but more especially matters of religion and art. this imposing sameness, this tutti unisono which, though it responds to no word of command, is yet ever ready to burst forth, cozens him into the belief that here a culture must be established and flourishing. but philistinism, despite its systematic organisation and power, does not constitute a culture by virtue of its system alone; it does not even constitute an inferior culture, but invariably the reverse--namely, firmly established barbarity. for the uniformity of character which is so apparent in the german scholars of to-day is only the result of a conscious or unconscious exclusion and negation of all the artistically productive forms and requirements of a genuine style. the mind of the cultured philistine must have become sadly unhinged; for precisely what culture repudiates he regards as culture itself; and, since he proceeds logically, he succeeds in creating a connected group of these repudiations--a system of non-culture, to which one might at a pinch grant a certain "unity of style," provided of course it were ot nonsense to attribute style to barbarity. if he have to choose between a stylish act and its opposite, he will invariably adopt the latter, and, since this rule holds good throughout, every one of his acts bears the same negative stamp. now, it is by means of this stamp that he is able to identify the character of the "german culture," which is his own patent; and all things that do not bear it are so many enemies and obstacles drawn up against him. in the presence of these arrayed forces the culture-philistine either does no more than ward off the blows, or else he denies, holds his tongue, stops his ears, and refuses to face facts. he is a negative creature--even in his hatred and animosity. nobody, however, is more disliked by him than the man who regards him as a philistine, and tells him what he is--namely, the barrier in the way of all powerful men and creators, the labyrinth for all who doubt and go astray, the swamp for all the weak and the weary, the fetters of those who would run towards lofty goals, the poisonous mist that chokes all germinating hopes, the scorching sand to all those german thinkers who seek for, and thirst after, a new life. for the mind of germany is seeking; and ye hate it because it is seeking, and because it will not accept your word, when ye declare that ye have found what it is seeking. how could it have been possible for a type like that of the culture-philistine to develop? and even granting its development, how was it able to rise to the powerful position of supreme judge concerning all questions of german culture? how could this have been possible, seeing that a whole procession of grand and heroic figures has already filed past us, whose every movement, the expression of whose every feature, whose questioning voice and burning eye betrayed the one fact, that they were seekers, and that they sought that which the culture-philistine had long fancied he had found--to wit, a genuine original german culture? is there a soil--thus they seemed to ask--a soil that is pure enough, unhandselled enough, of sufficient virgin sanctity, to allow the mind of germany to build its house upon it? questioning thus, they wandered through the wilderness, and the woods of wretched ages and narrow conditions, and as seekers they disappeared from our vision; one of them, at an advanced age, was even able to say, in the name of all: "for half a century my life has been hard and bitter enough; i have allowed myself no rest, but have ever striven, sought and done, to the best and to the utmost of my ability." what does our culture-philistinism say of these seekers? it regards them simply as discoverers, and seems to forget that they themselves only claimed to be seekers. we have our culture, say her sons; for have we not our "classics"? not only is the foundation there, but the building already stands upon it--we ourselves constitute that building. and, so saying, the philistine raises his hand to his brow. but, in order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. this, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. for, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honouring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search. but to foist the doubtful title of "classics" upon them, and to "edify" oneself from time to time by reading their works, means to yield to those feeble and selfish emotions which all the paying public may purchase at concert-halls and theatres. even the raising of monuments to their memory, and the christening of feasts and societies with their names--all these things are but so many ringing cash payments by means of which the culture-philistine discharges his indebtedness to them, so that in all other respects he may be rid of them, and, above all, not bound to follow in their wake and prosecute his search further. for henceforth inquiry is to cease: that is the philistine watchword. this watchword once had some meaning. in germany, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, for instance, when the heyday and confusion of seeking, experimenting, destroying, promising, surmising, and hoping was sweeping in currents and cross-currents over the land, the thinking middle-classes were right in their concern for their own security. it was then quite right of them to dismiss from their minds with a shrug of their shoulders the omnium gatherum of fantastic and language-maiming philosophies, and of rabid special-pleading historical studies, the carnival of all gods and myths, and the poetical affectations and fooleries which a drunken spirit may be responsible for. in this respect they were quite right; for the philistine has not even the privilege of licence. with the cunning proper to base natures, however, he availed himself of the opportunity, in order to throw suspicion even upon the seeking spirit, and to invite people to join in the more comfortable pastime of finding. his eye opened to the joy of philistinism; he saved himself from wild experimenting by clinging to the idyllic, and opposed the restless creative spirit that animates the artist, by means of a certain smug ease--the ease of self-conscious narrowness, tranquillity, and self-sufficiency. his tapering finger pointed, without any affectation of modesty, to all the hidden and intimate incidents of his life, to the many touching and ingenuous joys which sprang into existence in the wretched depths of his uncultivated existence, and which modestly blossomed forth on the bog-land of philistinism. there were, naturally, a few gifted narrators who, with a nice touch, drew vivid pictures of the happiness, the prosaic simplicity, the bucolic robustness, and all the well-being which floods the quarters of children, scholars, and peasants. with picture-books of this class in their hands, these smug ones now once and for all sought to escape from the yoke of these dubious classics and the command which they contained--to seek further and to find. they only started the notion of an epigone-age in order to secure peace for themselves, and to be able to reject all the efforts of disturbing innovators summarily as the work of epigones. with the view of ensuring their own tranquillity, these smug ones even appropriated history, and sought to transform all sciences that threatened to disturb their wretched ease into branches of history--more particularly philosophy and classical philology. through historical consciousness, they saved themselves from enthusiasm; for, in opposition to goethe, it was maintained that history would no longer kindle enthusiasm. no, in their desire to acquire an historical grasp of everything, stultification became the sole aim of these philosophical admirers of "nil admirari." while professing to hate every form of fanaticism and intolerance, what they really hated, at bottom, was the dominating genius and the tyranny of the real claims of culture. they therefore concentrated and utilised all their forces in those quarters where a fresh and vigorous movement was to be expected, and then paralysed, stupefied, and tore it to shreds. in this way, a philosophy which veiled the philistine confessions of its founder beneath neat twists and flourishes of language proceeded further to discover a formula for the canonisation of the commonplace. it expatiated upon the rationalism of all reality, and thus ingratiated itself with the culture-philistine, who also loves neat twists and flourishes, and who, above all, considers himself real, and regards his reality as the standard of reason for the world. from this time forward he began to allow every one, and even himself, to reflect, to investigate, to astheticise, and, more particularly, to make poetry, rnusic, and even pictures--not to mention systems philosophy; provided, of course, that everything were done according to the old pattern, and that no assault were made upon the "reasonable" and the "real"--that is to say, upon the philistine. the latter really does not at all mind giving himself up, from time to time, to the delightful and daring transgressions of art or of sceptical historical studies, and he does not underestimate the charm of such recreations and entertainments; but he strictly separates "the earnestness of life" (under which term he understands his calling, his business, and his wife and child) from such trivialities, and among the latter he includes all things which have any relation to culture. therefore, woe to the art that takes itself seriously, that has a notion of what it may exact, and that dares to endanger his income, his business, and his habits! upon such an art he turns his back, as though it were something dissolute; and, affecting the attitude of a. guardian of chastity, he cautions every unprotected virtue on no account to look. being such an adept at cautioning people, he is always grateful to any artist who heeds him and listens to caution. he then assures his protege that things are to be made more easy for him; that, as a kindred spirit, he will no longer be expected to make sublime masterpieces, but that his work must be one of two kinds--either the imitation of reality to the point of simian mimicry, in idylls or gentle and humorous satires, or the free copying of the best-known and most famous classical works, albeit with shamefast concessions to the taste of the age. for, although he may only be able to appreciate slavish copying or accurate portraiture of the present, still he knows that the latter will but glorify him, and increase the well-being of "reality"; while the former, far from doing him any harm, rather helps to establish his reputation as a classical judge of taste, and is not otherwise troublesome; for he has, once and for all, come to terms with the classics. finally, he discovers the general and effective formula "health" for his habits, methods of observation, judgments, and the objects of his patronage; while he dismisses the importunate disturber of the peace with the epithets "hysterical" and "morbid." it is thus that david strauss--a genuine example of the satisfait in regard to our scholastic institutions, and a typical philistine--it is thus that he speaks of "the philosophy of schopenhauer" as being "thoroughly intellectual, yet often unhealthy and unprofitable." it is indeed a deplorable fact that intellect should show such a decided preference for the "unhealthy" and the "unprofitable"; and even the philistine, if he be true to himself, will admit that, in regard to the philosophies which men of his stamp produce, he is conscious of a frequent lack of intellectuality, although of course they are always thoroughly healthy and profitable. now and again, the philistines, provided they are by themselves, indulge in a bottle of wine, and then they grow reminiscent, and speak of the great deeds of the war, honestly and ingenuously. on such occasions it often happens that a great deal comes to light which would otherwise have been most stead-fastly concealed, and one of them may even be heard to blurt out the most precious secrets of the whole brotherhood. indeed, a lapse of this sort occurred but a short while ago, to a well-known aesthete of the hegelian school of reasoning. it must, however, be admitted that the provocation thereto was of an unusual character. a company of philistines were feasting together, in celebration of the memory of a genuine anti-philistine--one who, moreover, had been, in the strictest sense of the words, wrecked by philistinism. this man was holderlin, and the afore-mentioned aesthete was therefore justified, under the circumstances, in speaking of the tragic souls who had foundered on "reality"--reality being understood, here, to mean philistine reason. but the "reality" is now different, and it might well be asked whether holderlin would be able to find his way at all in the present great age. "i doubt," says dr. vischer, "whether his delicate soul could have borne all the roughness which is inseparable from war, and whether it had survived the amount of perversity which, since the war, we now see flourishing in every quarter. perhaps he would have succumbed to despair. his was one of the unarmed souls; he was the werther of greece, a hopeless lover; his life was full of softness and yearning, but there was strength and substance in his will, and in his style, greatness, riches and life; here and there it is even reminiscent of aeschylus. his spirit, however, lacked hardness. he lacked the weapon humour; he could not grant that one may be a philistine and still be no barbarian." not the sugary condolence of the post-prandial speaker, but this last sentence concerns us. yes, it is admitted that one is a philistine; but, a barbarian?--no, not at any price! unfortunately, poor holderlin could not make such flne distinctions. if one reads the reverse of civilisation, or perhaps sea-pirating, or cannibalism, into the word "barbarian," then the distinction is justifiable enough. but what the aesthete obviously wishes to prove to us is, that we may be philistines and at the same time men of culture. therein lies the humour which poor holderlin lacked and the need of which ultimately wrecked him.[7]* [footnote * : nietzsche's allusion to holderlin here is full of tragic significance; for, like holderlin, he too was ultimately wrecked and driven insane by the philistinism of his age. --translator's note.] on this occasion a second admission was made by the speaker: "it is not always strength of will, but weakness, which makes us superior to those tragic souls which are so passionately responsive to the attractions of beauty," or words to this effect. and this was said in the name of the assembled "we"; that is to say, the "superiors," the "superiors through weakness." let us content ourselves with these admissions. we are now in possession of information concerning two matters from one of the initiated: first, that these "we" stand beyond the passion for beauty; secondly, that their position was reached by means of weakness. in less confidential moments, however, it was just this weakness which masqueraded in the guise of a much more beautiful name: it was the famous "healthiness" of the culture-philistine. in view of this very recent restatement of the case, however, it would be as well not to speak of them any longer as the "healthy ones," but as the "weakly," or, still better, as the "feeble." oh, if only these feeble ones were not in power! how is it that they concern themselves at all about what we call them! they are the rulers, and he is a poor ruler who cannot endure to be called by a nickname. yes, if one only have power, one soon learns to poke fun--even at oneself. it cannot matter so very much, therefore, even if one do give oneself away; for what could not the purple mantle of triumph conceal? the strength of the culture-philistine steps into the broad light of day when he acknowledges his weakness; and the more he acknowledges it-the more cynically he acknowledges it--the more completely he betrays his consciousness of his own importance and superiority. we are living in a period of cynical philistine confessions. just as friedrich vischer gave us his in a word, so has david strauss handed us his in a book; and both that word and that book are cynical. iii. concerning culture-philistinism, david strauss makes a double confession, by word and by deed; that is to say, by the word of the confessor, and the act of the writer. his book entitled the old faith and the new is, first in regard to its contents, and secondly in regard to its being a book and a literary production, an uninterrupted confession; while, in the very fact that he allows himself to write confessions at all about his faith, there already lies a confession. presumably, every one seems to have the right to compile an autobiography after his fortieth year; for the humblest amongst us may have experienced things, and may have seen them at such close quarters, that the recording of them may prove of use and value to the thinker. but to write a confession of one's faith cannot but be regarded as a thousand times more pretentious, since it takes for granted that the writer attaches worth, not only to the experiences and investigations of his life, but also to his beliefs. now, what the nice thinker will require to know, above all else, is the kind of faith which happens to be compatible with natures of the straussian order, and what it is they have "half dreamily conjured up" (p. 10) concerning matters of which those alone have the right to speak who are acquainted with them at first hand. whoever would have desired to possess the confessions, say, of a ranke or a mommsen? and these men were scholars and historians of a very different stamp from david strauss. if, however, they had ever ventured to interest us in their faith instead of in their scientific investigations, we should have felt that they were overstepping their limits in a most irritating fashion. yet strauss does this when he discusses his faith. nobody wants to know anything about it, save, perhaps, a few bigoted opponents of the straussian doctrines, who, suspecting, as they do, a substratum of satanic principles beneath these doctrines, hope that he may compromise his learned utterances by revealing the nature of those principles. these clumsy creatures may, perhaps, have found what they sought in the last book; but we, who had no occasion to suspect a satanic substratum, discovered nothing of the sort, and would have felt rather pleased than not had we been able to discern even a dash of the diabolical in any part of the volume. but surely no evil spirit could speak as strauss speaks of his new faith. in fact, spirit in general seems to be altogether foreign to the book-more particularly the spirit of genius. only those whom strauss designates as his "we," speak as he does, and then, when they expatiate upon their faith to us, they bore us even more than when they relate their dreams; be they "scholars, artists, military men, civil employes, merchants, or landed proprietors; come they in their thousands, and not the worst people in the land either!" if they do not wish to remain the peaceful ones in town or county, but threaten to wax noisy, then let not the din of their unisono deceive us concerning the poverty and vulgarity of the melody they sing. how can it dispose us more favourably towards a profession of faith to hear that it is approved by a crowd, when it is of such an order that if any individual of that crowd attempted to make it known to us, we should not only fail to hear him out, but should interrupt him with a yawn? if thou sharest such a belief, we should say unto him, in heaven's name, keep it to thyself! maybe, in the past, some few harmless types looked for the thinker in david strauss; now they have discovered the "believer" in him, and are disappointed. had he kept silent, he would have remained, for these, at least, the philosopher; whereas, now, no one regards him as such. he no longer craved the honours of the thinker, however; all he wanted to be was a new believer, and he is proud of his new belief. in making a written declaration of it, he fancied he was writing the catechism of "modern thought," and building the "broad highway of the world's future." indeed, our philistines have ceased to be faint-hearted and bashful, and have acquired almost cynical assurance. there was a time, long, long ago, when the philistine was only tolerated as something that did not speak, and about which no one spoke; then a period ensued during which his roughness was smoothed, during which he was found amusing, and people talked about him. under this treatment he gradually became a prig, rejoiced with all his heart over his rough places and his wrongheaded and candid singularities, and began to talk, on his own account, after the style of riehl's music for the home. "but what do i see? is it a shadow? is it reality? how long and broad my poodle grows!" for now he is already rolling like a hippopotamus along "the broad highway of the world's future," and his growling and barking have become transformed into the proud incantations of a religious founder. and is it your own sweet wish, great master, to found the religion of the future? "the times seem to us not yet ripe (p. 7). it does not occur to us to wish to destroy a church." but why not, great master? one but needs the ability. besides, to speak quite openly in the latter, you yourself are convinced that you possess this ability. look at the last page of your book. there you actually state, forsooth, that your new way "alone is the future highway of the world, which now only requires partial completion, and especially general use, in order also to become easy and pleasant." make no further denials, then. the religious founder is unmasked, the convenient and agreeable highway leading to the straussian paradise is built. it is only the coach in which you wish to convey us that does not altogether satisfy you, unpretentious man that you are! you tell us in your concluding remarks: "nor will i pretend that the coach to which my esteemed readers have been obliged to trust themselves with me fulfils every requirement,... all through one is much jolted" (p. 438). ah! you are casting about for a compliment, you gallant old religious founder! but let us be straightforward with you. if your reader so regulates the perusal of the 368 pages of your religious catechism as to read only one page a day--that is to say, if he take it in the smallest possible doses-then, perhaps, we should be able to believe that he might suffer some evil effect from the book--if only as the outcome of his vexation when the results he expected fail to make themselves felt. gulped down more heartily, however, and as much as possible being taken at each draught, according to the prescription to be recommended in the case of all modern books, the drink can work no mischief; and, after taking it, the reader will not necessarily be either out of sorts or out of temper, but rather merry and well-disposed, as though nothing had happened; as though no religion had been assailed, no world's highway been built, and no profession of faith been made. and i do indeed call this a result! the doctor, the drug, and the disease--everything forgotten! and the joyous laughter! the continual provocation to hilarity! you are to be envied, sir; for you have founded the most attractive of all religions --one whose followers do honour to its founder by laughing at him. iv. the philistine as founder of the religion of the future--that is the new belief in its most emphatic form of expression. the philistine becomes a dreamer--that is the unheard-of occurrence which distinguishes the german nation of to-day. but for the present, in any case, let us maintain an attitude of caution towards this fantastic exaltation. for does not david strauss himself advise us to exercise such caution, in the following profound passage, the general tone of which leads us to think of the founder of christianity rather than of our particular author? (p. 92): "we know there have been noble enthusiasts--enthusiasts of genius; the influence of an enthusiast can rouse, exalt, and produce prolonged historic effects; but we do not wish to choose him as the guide of our life. he will be sure to mislead us, if we do not subject his influence to the control of reason." but we know something more: we know that there are enthusiasts who are not intellectual, who do not rouse or exalt, and who, nevertheless, not only expect to be the guides of our lives, but, as such, to exercise a very lasting historical influence into the bargain, and to rule the future;--all the more reason why we should place their influence under the control of reason. lichtenberg even said: "there are enthusiasts quite devoid of ability, and these are really dangerous people." in the first place, as regards the above-mentioned control of reason, we should like to have candid answers to the three following questions: first, how does the new believer picture his heaven? secondly, how far does the courage lent him by the new faith extend? and, thirdly, how does he write his books? strauss the confessor must answer the first and second questions; strauss the writer must answer the third. the heaven of the new believer must, perforce, be a heaven upon earth; for the christian "prospect of an immortal life in heaven," together with the other consolations, "must irretrievably vanish" for him who has but "one foot" on the straussian platform. the way in which a religion represents its heaven is significant, and if it be true that christianity knows no other heavenly occupations than singing and making music, the prospect of the philistine, à la strauss, is truly not a very comforting one. in the book of confessions, however, there is a page which treats of paradise (p. 342). happiest of philistines, unroll this parchment scroll before anything else, and the whole of heaven will seem to clamber down to thee! "we would but indicate how we act, how we have acted these many years. besides our profession--for we are members of the most various professions, and by no means exclusively consist of scholars or artists, but of military men and civil employes, of merchants and landed proprietors;... and again, as i have said already, there are not a few of us, but many thousands, and not the worst people in the country;--besides our profession, then, i say, we are eagerly accessible to all the higher interests of humanity; we have taken a vivid interest, during late years, and each after his manner has participated in the great national war, and the reconstruction of the german state; and we have been profoundly exalted by the turn events have taken, as unexpected as glorious, for our much tried nation. to the end of forming just conclusions in these things, we study history, which has now been made easy, even to the unlearned, by a series of attractively and popularly written works; at the same time, we endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences, where also there is no lack of sources of information; and lastly, in the writings of our great poets, in the performances of our great musicians, we find a stimulus for the intellect and heart, for wit and imagination, which leaves nothing to be desired. thus we live, and hold on our way in joy." "here is our man!" cries the philistine exultingly, who reads this: "for this is exactly how we live; it is indeed our daily life."[8]* and how perfectly he understands the euphemism! when, for example, he refers to the historical studies by means of which we help ourselves in forming just conclusions regarding the political situation, what can he be thinking of, if it be not our newspaper-reading? when he speaks of the active part we take in the reconstruction of the german state, he surely has only our daily visits to the beer-garden in his mind; and is not a walk in the zoological gardens implied by 'the sources of information through which we endeavour to enlarge our knowledge of the natural sciences'? finally, the theatres and concert-halls are referred to as places from which we take home 'a stimulus for wit and imagination which leaves nothing to be desired.'--with what dignity and wit he describes even the most suspicious of our doings! here indeed is our man; for his heaven is our heaven!" [footnote * : this alludes to a german student-song.] thus cries the philistine; and if we are not quite so satisfied as he, it is merely owing to the fact that we wanted to know more. scaliger used to say: "what does it matter to us whether montaigne drank red or white wine?" but, in this more important case, how greatly ought we to value definite particulars of this sort! if we could but learn how many pipes the philistine smokes daily, according to the prescriptions of the new faith, and whether it is the spener or the national gazette that appeals to him over his coffee! but our curiosity is not satisfied. with regard to one point only do we receive more exhaustive information, and fortunately this point relates to the heaven in heaven--the private little art-rooms which will be consecrated to the use of great poets and musicians, and to which the philistine will go to edify himself; in which, moreover, according to his own showing, he will even get "all his stains removed and wiped away" (p. 433); so that we are led to regard these private little art-rooms as a kind of bath-rooms. "but this is only effected for some fleeting moments; it happens and counts only in the realms of phantasy; as soon as we return to rude reality, and the cramping confines of actual life, we are again on all sides assailed by the old cares,"--thus our master sighs. let us, however, avail ourselves of the fleeting moments during which we remain in those little rooms; there is just sufficient time to get a glimpse of the apotheosis of the philistine-that is to say, the philistine whose stains have been removed and wiped away, and who is now an absolutely pure sample of his type. in truth, the opportunity we have here may prove instructive: let no one who happens to have fallen a victim to the confession-book lay it aside before having read the two appendices, "of our great poets" and "of our great musicians." here the rainbow of the new brotherhood is set, and he who can find no pleasure in it "for such an one there is no help," as strauss says on another occasion; and, as he might well say here, "he is not yet ripe for our point of view." for are we not in the heaven of heavens? the enthusiastic explorer undertakes to lead us about, and begs us to excuse him if, in the excess of his joy at all the beauties to be seen, he should by any chance be tempted to talk too much. "if i should, perhaps, become more garrulous than may seem warranted in this place, let the reader be indulgent to me; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. let him only be assured that what he is now about to read does not consist of older materials, which i take the opportunity of inserting here, but that these remarks have been written for their present place and purpose" (pp. 345-46). this confession surprises us somewhat for the moment. what can it matter to us whether or not the little chapters were freshly written? as if it were a matter of writing! between ourselves, i should have been glad if they had been written a quarter of a century earlier; then, at least, i should have understood why the thoughts seem to be so bleached, and why they are so redolent of resuscitated antiquities. but that a thing should have been written in 1872 and already smell of decay in 1872 strikes me as suspicious. let us imagine some one's falling asleep while reading these chapters--what would he most probably dream about? a friend answered this question for me, because he happened to have had the experience himself. he dreamt of a wax-work show. the classical writers stood there, elegantly represented in wax and beads. their arms and eyes moved, and a screw inside them creaked an accompaniment to their movements. he saw something gruesome among them--a misshapen figure, decked with tapes and jaundiced paper, out of whose mouth a ticket hung, on which "lessing" was written. my friend went close up to it and learned the worst: it was the homeric chimera; in front it was strauss, behind it was gervinus, and in the middle chimera. the tout-ensemble was lessing. this discovery caused him to shriek with terror: he waked, and read no more. in sooth, great master, why have you written such fusty little chapters? we do, indeed, learn something new from them; for instance, that gervinus made it known to the world how and why goethe was no dramatic genius; that, in the second part of faust, he had only produced a world of phantoms and of symbols; that wallenstein is a macbeth as well as a hamlet; that the straussian reader extracts the short stories out of the wanderjahre "much as naughty children pick the raisins and almonds out of a tough plum-cake"; that no complete effect can be produced on the stage without the forcible element, and that schiller emerged from kant as from a cold-water cure. all this is certainly new and striking; but, even so, it does not strike us with wonder, and so sure as it is new, it will never grow old, for it never was young; it was senile at birth. what extraordinary ideas seem to occur to these blessed ones, after the new style, in their aesthetic heaven! and why can they not manage to forget a few of them, more particularly when they are of that unaesthetic, earthly, and ephemeral order to which the scholarly thoughts of gervinus belong, and when they so obviously bear the stamp of puerility? but it almost seems as though the modest greatness of a strauss and the vain insignificance of a gervinus were only too well able to harmonise: then long live all those blessed ones! may we, the rejected, also live long, if this unchallenged judge of art continues any longer to teach his borrowed enthusiasm, and the gallop of that hired steed of which the honest grillparzer speaks with such delightful clearness, until the whole of heaven rings beneath the hoof of that galumphing enthusiasm. then, at least, things will be livelier and noisier than they are at the present moment, in which the carpet-slippered rapture of our heavenly leader and the lukewarm eloquence of his lips only succeed in the end in making us sick and tired. i should like to know how a hallelujah sung by strauss would sound: i believe one would have to listen very carefully, lest it should seem no more than a courteous apology or a lisped compliment. apropos of this, i might adduce an instructive and somewhat forbidding example. strauss strongly resented the action of one of his opponents who happened to refer to his reverence for lessing. the unfortunate man had misunderstood;--true, strauss did declare that one must be of a very obtuse mind not to recognise that the simple words of paragraph 86 come from the writer's heart. now, i do not question this warmth in the very least; on the contrary, the fact that strauss fosters these feelings towards lessing has always excited my suspicion; i find the same warmth for lessing raised almost to heat in gervinus--yea, on the whole, no great german writer is so popular among little german writers as lessing is; but for all that, they deserve no thanks for their predilection; for what is it, in sooth, that they praise in lessing? at one moment it is his catholicity-the fact that he was critic and poet, archaeologist and philosopher, dramatist and theologian. anon, "it is the unity in him of the writer and the man, of the head and the heart." the last quality, as a rule, is just as characteristic of the great writer as of the little one; as a rule, a narrow head agrees only too fatally with a narrow heart. and as to the catholicity; this is no distinction, more especially when, as in lessing's case, it was a dire necessity. what astonishes one in regard to lessing-enthusiasts is rather that they have no conception of the devouring necessity which drove him on through life and to this catholicity; no feeling for the fact that such a man is too prone to consume himself rapidly, like a flame; nor any indignation at the thought that the vulgar narrowness and pusillanimity of his whole environment, especially of his learned contemporaries, so saddened, tormented, and stifled the tender and ardent creature that he was, that the very universality for which he is praised should give rise to feelings of the deepest compassion. "have pity on the exceptional man!" goethe cries to us; "for it was his lot to live in such a wretched age that his life was one long polemical effort." how can ye, my worthy philistines, think of lessing without shame? he who was ruined precisely on account of your stupidity, while struggling with your ludicrous fetiches and idols, with the defects of your theatres, scholars, and theologists, without once daring to attempt that eternal flight for which he had been born. and what are your feelings when ye think of winckelman, who, in order to turn his eyes from your grotesque puerilities, went begging to the jesuits for help, and whose ignominious conversion dishonours not him, but you? dare ye mention schiller's name without blushing? look at his portrait. see the flashing eyes that glance contemptuously over your heads, the deadly red cheek--do these things mean nothing to you? in him ye had such a magnificent and divine toy that ye shattered it. suppose, for a moment, it had been possible to deprive this harassed and hunted life of goethe's friendship, ye would then have been reponsible for its still earlier end. ye have had no finger in any one of the life-works of your great geniuses, and yet ye would make a dogma to the effect that no one is to be helped in the future. but for every one of them, ye were "the resistance of the obtuse world," which goethe calls by its name in his epilogue to the bell; for all of them ye were the grumbling imbeciles, or the envious bigots, or the malicious egoists: in spite of you each of them created his works, against you each directed his attacks, and thanks to you each prematurely sank, while his work was still unfinished, broken and bewildered by the stress of the battle. and now ye presume that ye are going to be permitted, tamquam re bene gesta, to praise such men! and with words which leave no one in any doubt as to whom ye have in your minds when ye utter your encomiums, which therefore "spring forth with such hearty warmth" that one must be blind not to see to whom ye are really bowing. even goethe in his day had to cry: "upon my honour, we are in need of a lessing, and woe unto all vain masters and to the whole aesthetic kingdom of heaven, when the young tiger, whose restless strength will be visible in his every distended muscle and his every glance, shall sally forth to seek his prey!" v. how clever it was of my friend to read no further, once he had been enlightened (thanks to that chimerical vision) concerning the straussian lessing and strauss himself. we, however, read on further, and even craved admission of the doorkeeper of the new faith to the sanctum of music. the master threw the door open for us, accompanied us, and began quoting certain names, until, at last, overcome with mistrust, we stood still and looked at him. was it possible that we were the victims of the same hallucination as that to which our friend had been subjected in his dream? the musicians to whom strauss referred seemed to us to be wrongly designated as long as he spoke about them, and we began to think that the talk must certainly be about somebody else, even admitting that it did not relate to incongruous phantoms. when, for instance, he mentioned haydn with that same warmth which made us so suspicious when he praised lessing, and when he posed as the epopt and priest of a mysterious haydn cult; when, in a discussion upon quartette-music, if you please, he even likened haydn to a "good unpretending soup" and beethoven to "sweetmeats" (p. 432); then, to our minds, one thing, and one thing alone, became certain--namely, that his sweetmeat-beethoven is not our beethoven, and his soup-haydn is not our haydn. the master was moreover of the opinion that our orchestra is too good to perform haydn, and that only the most unpretentious amateurs can do justice to that music--a further proof that he was referring to some other artist and some other work, possibly to riehl's music for the home. but whoever can this sweetmeat-beethoven of strauss's be? he is said to have composed nine symphonies, of which the pastoral is "the least remarkable"; we are told that "each time in composing the third, he seemed impelled to exceed his bounds, and depart on an adventurous quest," from which we might infer that we are here concerned with a sort of double monster, half horse and half cavalier. with regard to a certain eroica, this centaur is very hard pressed, because he did not succeed in making it clear "whether it is a question of a conflict on the open field or in the deep heart of man." in the pastoral there is said to be "a furiously raging storm," for which it is "almost too insignificant" to interrupt a dance of country-folk, and which, owing to "its arbitrary connection with a trivial motive," as strauss so adroitly and correctly puts it, renders this symphony "the least remarkable." a more drastic expression appears to have occurred to the master; but he prefers to speak here, as he says, "with becoming modesty." but no, for once our master is wrong; in this case he is really a little too modest. who, indeed, will enlighten us concerning this sweetmeat-beethoven, if not strauss himself--the only person who seems to know anything about him? but, immediately below, a strong judgment is uttered with becoming non-modesty, and precisely in regard to the ninth symphony. it is said, for instance, that this symphony "is naturally the favourite of a prevalent taste, which in art, and music especially, mistakes the grotesque for the genial, and the formless for the sublime" (p. 428). it is true that a critic as severe as gervinus was gave this work a hearty welcome, because it happened to confirm one of his doctrines; but strauss is "far from going to these problematic productions" in search of the merits of his beethoven. "it is a pity," cries our master, with a convulsive sigh, "that one is compelled, by such reservations, to mar one's enjoyment of beethoven, as well as the admiration gladly accorded to him." for our master is a favourite of the graces, and these have informed him that they only accompanied beethoven part of the way, and that he then lost sight of them. "this is a defect," he cries, "but can you believe that it may also appear as an advantage?" "he who is painfully and breathlessly rolling the musical idea along will seem to be moving the weightier one, and thus appear to be the stronger" (pp. 423-24). this is a confession, and not necessarily one concerning beethoven alone, but concerning "the classical prose-writer" himself. he, the celebrated author, is not abandoned by the graces. from the play of airy jests--that is to say, straussian jests-to the heights of solemn earnestness--that is to say, straussian earnestness--they remain stolidly at his elbow. he, the classical prose-writer, slides his burden along playfully and with a light heart, whereas beethoven rolls his painfully and breathlessly. he seems merely to dandle his load; this is indeed an advantage. but would anybody believe that it might equally be a sign of something wanting? in any case, only those could believe this who mistake the grotesque for the genial, and the formless for the sublime--is not that so, you dandling favourite of the graces? we envy no one the edifying moments he may have, either in the stillness of his little private room or in a new heaven specially fitted out for him; but of all possible pleasures of this order, that of strauss's is surely one of the most wonderful, for he is even edified by a little holocaust. he calmly throws the sublimest works of the german nation into the flames, in order to cense his idols with their smoke. suppose, for a moment, that by some accident, the eroica, the pastoral, and the ninth symphony had fallen into the hands of our priest of the graces, and that it had been in his power to suppress such problematic productions, in order to keep the image of the master pure, who doubts but what he would have burned them? and it is precisely in this way that the strausses of our time demean themselves: they only wish to know so much of an artist as is compatible with the service of their rooms; they know only the extremes-censing or burning. to all this they are heartily welcome; the one surprising feature of the whole case is that public opinion, in matters artistic, should be so feeble, vacillating, and corruptible as contentedly to allow these exhibitions of indigent philistinism to go by without raising an objection; yea, that it does not even possess sufficient sense of humour to feel tickled at the sight of an unaesthetic little master's sitting in judgment upon beethoven. as to mozart, what aristotle says of plato ought really to be applied here: "insignificant people ought not to be permitted even to praise him." in this respect, however, all shame has vanished--from the public as well as from the master's mind: he is allowed, not merely to cross himself before the greatest and purest creations of german genius, as though he had perceived something godless and immoral in them, but people actually rejoice over his candid confessions and admission of sins--more particularly as he makes no mention of his own, but only of those which great men are said to have committed. oh, if only our master be in the right! his readers sometimes think, when attacked by a paroxysm of doubt; he himself, however, stands there, smiling and convinced, perorating, condemning, blessing, raising his hat to himself, and is at any minute capable of saying what the duchesse delaforte said to madame de staël, to wit: "my dear, i must confess that i find no one but myself invariably right." vi. a corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a worm is a dreadful thought for every living creature. worms fancy their kingdom of heaven in a fat body; professors of philosophy seek theirs in rummaging among schopenhauer's entrails, and as long as rodents exist, there will exist a heaven for rodents. in this, we have the answer to our first question: how does the believer in the new faith picture his heaven? the straussian philistine harbours in the works of our great poets and musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is destruction, whose admiration is devouring, and whose worship is digesting. now, however, our second question must be answered: how far does the courage lent to its adherents by this new faith extend? even this question would already have been answered, if courage and pretentiousness had been one; for then strauss would not be lacking even in the just and veritable courage of a mameluke. at all events, the "becoming modesty" of which strauss speaks in the above-mentioned passage, where he is referring to beethoven, can only be a stylistic and not a moral manner of speech. strauss has his full share of the temerity to which every successful hero assumes the right: all flowers grow only for him--the conqueror; and he praises the sun because it shines in at his window just at the right time. he does not even spare the venerable old universe in his eulogies--as though it were only now and henceforward sufficiently sanctified by praise to revolve around the central monad david strauss. the universe, he is happy to inform us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron wheels, stamping and hammering ponderously, but: "we do not only find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of soothing oil" (p. 435). the universe, provided it submit to strauss's encomiums, is not likely to overflow with gratitude towards this master of weird metaphors, who was unable to discover better similes in its praise. but what is the oil called which trickles down upon the hammers and stampers? and how would it console a workman who chanced to get one of his limbs caught in the mechanism to know that this oil was trickling over him? passing over this simile as bad, let us turn our attention to another of strauss's artifices, whereby he tries to ascertain how he feels disposed towards the universe; this question of marguerite's, "he loves me--loves me not--loves me?" hanging on his lips the while. now, although strauss is not telling flower-petals or the buttons on his waistcoat, still what he does is not less harmless, despite the fact that it needs perhaps a little more courage. strauss wishes to make certain whether his feeling for the "all" is either paralysed or withered, and he pricks himself; for he knows that one can prick a limb that is either paralysed or withered without causing any pain. as a matter of fact, he does not really prick himself, but selects another more violent method, which he describes thus: "we open schopenhauer, who takes every occasion of slapping our idea in the face" (p. 167). now, as an idea--even that of strauss's concerning the universe--has no face, if there be any face in the question at all it must be that of the idealist, and the procedure may be subdivided into the following separate actions:--strauss, in any case, throws schopenhauer open, whereupon the latter slaps strauss in the face. strauss then reacts religiously; that is to say, he again begins to belabour schopenhauer, to abuse him, to speak of absurdities, blasphemies, dissipations, and even to allege that schopenhauer could not have been in his right senses. result of the dispute: "we demand the same piety for our cosmos that the devout of old demanded for his god"; or, briefly, "he loves me." our favourite of the graces makes his life a hard one, but he is as brave as a mameluke, and fears neither the devil nor schopenhauer. how much "soothing oil" must he use if such incidents are of frequent occurrence! on the other hand, we readily understand strauss's gratitude to this tickling, pricking, and slapping schopenhauer; hence we are not so very much surprised when we find him expressing himself in the following kind way about him: "we need only turn over the leaves of arthur schopenhauer's works (although we shall on many other accounts do well not only to glance over but to study them), etc." (p. 166). now, to whom does this captain of philistines address these words? to him who has clearly never even studied schopenhauer, the latter might well have retorted, "this is an author who does not even deserve to be scanned, much less to be studied." obviously, he gulped schopenhauer down "the wrong way," and this hoarse coughing is merely his attempt to clear his throat. but, in order to fill the measure of his ingenuous encomiums, strauss even arrogates to himself the right of commending old kant: he speaks of the latter's general history of the heavens of the year 1755 as of "a work which has always appeared to me not less important than his later critique of pure reason. if in the latter we admire the depth of insight, the breadth of observation strikes us in the former. if in the latter we can trace the old man's anxiety to secure even a limited possession of knowledge--so it be but on a firm basis--in the former we encounter the mature man, full of the daring of the discoverer and conqueror in the realm of thought." this judgment of strauss's concerning kant did not strike me as being more modest than the one concerning schopenhauer. in the one case, we have the little captain, who is above all anxious to express even the most insignificant opinion with certainty, and in the other we have the famous prose-writer, who, with all the courage of ignorance, exudes his eulogistic secretions over kant. it is almost incredible that strauss availed himself of nothing in kant's critique of pure reason while compiling his testament of modern ideas, and that he knew only how to appeal to the coarsest realistic taste must also be numbered among the more striking characteristics of this new gospel, the which professes to be but the result of the laborious and continuous study of history and science, and therefore tacitly repudiates all connection with philosophy. for the philistine captain and his "we," kantian philosophy does not exist. he does not dream of the fundamental antinomy of idealism and of the highly relative sense of all science and reason. and it is precisely reason that ought to tell him how little it is possible to know of things in themselves. it is true, however, that people of a certain age cannot possibly understand kant, especially when, in their youth, they understood or fancied they understood that "gigantic mind," hegel, as strauss did; and had moreover concerned themselves with schleiermacher, who, according to strauss, "was gifted with perhaps too much acumen." it will sound odd to our author when i tell him that, even now, he stands absolutely dependent upon hegel and schleiermacher, and that his teaching of the cosmos, his way of regarding things sub specie biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now existing in germany, and, above all, his shameless philistine optimism, can only be explained by an appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits, and disorders; for he who has once sickened on hegel and schleiermacher never completely recovers. there is one passage in the confession-book where the incurable optimism referred to above bursts forth with the full joyousness of holiday spirits (pp. 166-67). "if the universe is a thing which had better not have existed," says strauss, "then surely the speculation of the philosopher, as forming part of this universe, is a speculation which had better not have speculated. the pessimist philosopher fails to perceive that he, above all, declares his own thought, which declares the world to be bad, as bad also; but if the thought which declares the world to be bad is a bad thought, then it follows naturally that the world is good. as a rule, optimism may take things too easily. schopenhauer's references to the colossal part which sorrow and evil play in the world are quite in their right place as a counterpoise; but every true philosophy is necessarily optimistic, as otherwise she hews down the branch on which she herself is sitting." if this refutation of schopenhauer is not the same as that to which strauss refers somewhere else as "the refutation loudly and jubilantly acclaimed in higher spheres," then i quite fail to understand the dramatic phraseology used by him elsewhere to strike an opponent. here optimism has for once intentionally simplified her task. but the master-stroke lay in thus pretending that the refutation of schopenhauer was not such a very difficult task after all, and in playfully wielding the burden in such a manner that the three graces attendant on the dandling optimist might constantly be delighted by his methods. the whole purpose of the deed was to demonstrate this one truth, that it is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously; the most vapid sophisms become justified, provided they show that, in regard to a philosophy as "unhealthy and unprofitable" as schopenhauer's, not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable. while perusing such passages, the reader will grasp the full meaning of schopenhauer's solemn utterance to the effect that, where optimism is not merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat brows words and only words are stored, it seemed to him not merely an absurd but a vicious attitude of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards the indescribable sufferings of humanity. when a philosopher like strauss is able to frame it into a system, it becomes more than a vicious attitude of mind--it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for the "i" or for the "we," and can only provoke indignation. who could read the following psychological avowal, for instance, without indignation, seeing that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious gospel of comfort?--"beethoven remarked that he could never have composed a text like figaro or don juan. life had not been so profuse of its snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal so lightly with the foibles of men" (p. 430). in order, however, to adduce the most striking instance of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it suffice, here, to observe that strauss knows no other means of accounting for the terribly serious negative instinct and the movement of ascetic sanctification which characterised the first century of the christian era, than by supposing the existence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself brought about a state of revulsion and disgust. "the persians call it bidamag buden, the germans say 'katzenjammer.'"[9]* [footnote * : remorse for the previous night's excesses.--translator's note.] strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed. as for us, we turn aside for a moment, that we may overcome our loathing. vii. as a matter of fact, our philistine captain is brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble colleagues--the "we," as he calls them. so the asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of katzenjammer? jesus may be described as an enthusiast who nowadays would scarcely have escaped the madhouse, and the story of the resurrection may be termed a "world-wide deception." for once we will allow these views to pass without raising any objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge the amount of courage which our "classical philistine" strauss is capable of. let us first hear his confession: "it is certainly an unpleasant and a thankless task to tell the world those truths which it is least desirous of hearing. it prefers, in fact, to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving and spending after the magnificent fashion of the great, as long as there is anything left; should any person, however, add up the various items of its liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an importunate meddler. and yet this has always been the bent of my moral and intellectual nature." a moral and intellectual nature of this sort might possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still remains to be proved is, whether this courage is natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather acquired and artificial. perhaps strauss only accustomed himself by degrees to the rôle of an importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired the courage of his calling. innate cowardice, which is the philistine's birthright, would not be incompatible with this mode of development, and it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible in the want of logic of those sentences of strauss's which it needed courage to pronounce. they sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air. no aggressive action is performed: aggressive words alone are used, and these he selects from among the most insulting he can find. he moreover exhausts all his accumulated strength and energy in coarse and noisy expression, and when once his utterances have died away he is more of a coward even than he who has always held his tongue. the very shadow of his deeds--his morality--shows us that he is a word-hero, and that he avoids everything which might induce him to transfer his energies from mere verbosity to really serious things. with admirable frankness, he announces that he is no longer a christian, but disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the contentment of any one: he seems to recognise a contradiction in the notion of abolishing one society by instituting another--whereas there is nothing contradictory in it at all. with a certain rude self-satisfaction, he swathes himself in the hirsute garment of our simian genealogists, and extols darwin as one of mankind's greatest benefactors; but our perplexity is great when we find him constructing his ethics quite independently of the question, "what is our conception of the universe?" in this department he had an opportunity of exhibiting native pluck; for he ought to have turned his back on his "we," and have established a moral code for life out of bellum omnium contra omnes and the privileges of the strong. but it is to be feared that such a code could only have emanated from a bold spirit like that of hobbes', and must have taken its root in a love of truth quite different from that which was only able to vent itself in explosive outbursts against parsons, miracles, and the "world-wide humbug" of the resurrection. for, whereas the philistine remained on strauss's side in regard to these explosive outbursts, he would have been against him had he been confronted with a genuine and seriously constructed ethical system, based upon darwin's teaching. says strauss: "i should say that all moral action arises from the individual's acting in consonance with the idea of kind" (p. 274). put quite clearly and comprehensively, this means: "live as a man, and not as an ape or a seal." unfortunately, this imperative is both useless and feeble; for in the class man what a multitude of different types are included--to mention only the patagonian and the master, strauss; and no one would ever dare to say with any right, "live like a patagonian," and "live like the master strauss"! should any one, however, make it his rule to live like a genius--that is to say, like the ideal type of the genus man--and should he perchance at the same time be either a patagonian or strauss himself, what should we then not have to suffer from the importunities of genius-mad eccentrics (concerning whose mushroom growth in germany even lichtenberg had already spoken), who with savage cries would compel us to listen to the confession of their most recent belief! strauss has not yet learned that no "idea" can ever make man better or more moral, and that the preaching of a morality is as easy as the establishment of it is difficult. his business ought rather to have been, to take the phenomena of human goodness, such--for instance--as pity, love, and self-abnegation, which are already to hand, and seriously to explain them and show their relation to his darwinian first principle. but no; he preferred to soar into the imperative, and thus escape the task of explaining. but even in his flight he was irresponsible enough to soar beyond the very first principles of which we speak. "ever remember," says strauss, "that thou art human, not merely a natural production; ever remember that all others are human also, and, with all individual differences, the same as thou, having the same needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum and the substance of morality" (p. 277). but where does this imperative hail from? how can it be intuitive in man, seeing that, according to darwin, man is indeed a creature of nature, and that his ascent to his present stage of development has been conditioned by quite different laws--by the very fact that be was continually forgetting that others were constituted like him and shared the same rights with him; by the very fact that he regarded himself as the stronger, and thus brought about the gradual suppression of weaker types. though strauss is bound to admit that no two creatures have ever been quite alike, and that the ascent of man from the lowest species of animals to the exalted height of the culture--philistine depended upon the law of individual distinctness, he still sees no difficulty in declaring exactly the reverse in his law: "behave thyself as though there were no such things as individual distinctions." where is the strauss-darwin morality here? whither, above all, has the courage gone? in the very next paragraph we find further evidence tending to show us the point at which this courage veers round to its opposite; for strauss continues: "ever remember that thou, and all that thou beholdest within and around thee, all that befalls thee and others, is no disjointed fragment, no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but that, following eternal law, it springs from the one primal source of all life, all reason, and all good: this is the essence of religion" (pp. 277-78). out of that "one primal source," however, all ruin and irrationality, all evil flows as well, and its name, according to strauss, is cosmos. now, how can this cosmos, with all the contradictions and the self-annihilating characteristics which strauss gives it, be worthy of religious veneration and be addressed by the name "god," as strauss addresses it?--"our god does not, indeed, take us into his arms from the outside (here one expects, as an antithesis, a somewhat miraculous process of being "taken into his arms from the inside"), but he unseals the well-springs of consolation within our own bosoms. he shows us that although chance would be an unreasonable ruler, yet necessity, or the enchainment of causes in the world, is reason itself." (a misapprehension of which only the "we" can fail to perceive the folly; because they were brought up in the hegelian worship of reality as the reasonable--that is to say, in the canonisation of success.) "he teaches us to perceive that to demand an exception in the accomplishment of a single natural law would be to demand the destruction of the universe" (pp. 435-36). on the contrary, great master: an honest natural scientist believes in the unconditional rule of natural laws in the world, without, however, taking up any position in regard to the ethical or intellectual value of these laws. wherever neutrality is abandoned in this respect, it is owing to an anthropomorphic attitude of mind which allows reason to exceed its proper bounds. but it is just at the point where the natural scientist resigns that strauss, to put it in his own words, "reacts religiously," and leaves the scientific and scholarly standpoint in order to proceed along less honest lines of his own. without any further warrant, he assumes that all that has happened possesses the highest intellectual value; that it was therefore absolutely reasonably and intentionally so arranged, and that it even contained a revelation of eternal goodness. he therefore has to appeal to a complete cosmodicy, and finds himself at a disadvantage in regard to him who is contented with a theodicy, and who, for instance, regards the whole of man's existence as a punishment for sin or a process of purification. at this stage, and in this embarrassing position, strauss even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis--the driest and most palsied ever conceived--and, in reality, but an unconscious parody of one of lessing's sayings. we read on page 255: "and that other saying of lessing's-'if god, holding truth in his right hand, and in his left only the ever-living desire for it, although on condition of perpetual error, left him the choice of the two, he would, considering that truth belongs to god alone, humbly seize his left hand, and beg its contents for himself'-this saying of lessing's has always been accounted one of the most magnificent which he has left us. it has been found to contain the general expression of his restless love of inquiry and activity. the saying has always made a special impression upon me; because, behind its subjective meaning, i still seemed to hear the faint ring of an objective one of infinite import. for does it not contain the best possible answer to the rude speech of schopenhauer, respecting the ill-advised god who had nothing better to do than to transform himself into this miserable world? if, for example, the creator himself had shared lessing's conviction of the superiority of struggle to tranquil possession?" what!--a god who would choose perpetual error, together with a striving after truth, and who would, perhaps, fall humbly at strauss's feet and cry to him,"take thou all truth, it is thine!"? if ever a god and a man were ill-advised, they are this straussian god, whose hobby is to err and to fail, and this straussian man, who must atone for this erring and failing. here, indeed, one hears "a faint ring of infinite import"; here flows strauss's cosmic soothing oil; here one has a notion of the rationale of all becoming and all natural laws. really? is not our universe rather the work of an inferior being, as lichtenberg suggests?--of an inferior being who did not quite understand his business; therefore an experiment, an attempt, upon which work is still proceeding? strauss himself, then, would be compelled to admit that our universe is by no means the theatre of reason, but of error, and that no conformity to law can contain anything consoling, since all laws have been promulgated by an erratic god who even finds pleasure in blundering. it really is a most amusing spectacle to watch strauss as a metaphysical architect, building castles in the air. but for whose benefit is this entertainment given? for the smug and noble "we," that they may not lose conceit with themselves: they may possibly have taken sudden fright, in the midst of the inflexible and pitiless wheel-works of the world-machine, and are tremulously imploring their leader to come to their aid. that is why strauss pours forth the "soothing oil," that is why he leads forth on a leash a god whose passion it is to err; it is for the same reason, too, that he assumes for once the utterly unsuitable rôle of a metaphysical architect. he does all this, because the noble souls already referred to are frightened, and because he is too. and it is here that we reach the limit of his courage, even in the presence of his "we." he does not dare to be honest, and to tell them, for instance: "i have liberated you from a helping and pitiful god: the cosmos is no more than an inflexible machine; beware of its wheels, that they do not crush you." he dare not do this. consequently, he must enlist the help of a witch, and he turns to metaphysics. to the philistine, however, even strauss's metaphysics is preferable to christianity's, and the notion of an erratic god more congenial than that of one who works miracles. for the philistine himself errs, but has never yet performed a miracle. hence his hatred of the genius; for the latter is justly famous for the working of miracles. it is therefore highly instructive to ascertain why strauss, in one passage alone, suddenly takes up the cudgels for genius and the aristocracy of intellect in general. whatever does he do it for? he does it out of fear--fear of the social democrat. he refers to bismarck and moltke, "whose greatness is the less open to controversy as it manifests itself in the domain of tangible external facts. no help for it, therefore; even the most stiff-necked and obdurate of these fellows must condescend to look up a little, if only to get a sight, be it no farther than the knees, of those august figures" (p.327). do you, master metaphysician, perhaps intend to instruct the social democrats in the art of getting kicks? the willingness to bestow them may be met with everywhere, and you are perfectly justified in promising to those who happen to be kicked a sight of those sublime beings as far as the knee. "also in the domain of art and science," strauss continues, "there will never be a dearth of kings whose architectural undertakings will find employment for a multitude of carters." granted; but what if the carters should begin building? it does happen at times, great master, as you know, and then the kings must grin and bear it. as a matter of fact, this union of impudence and weakness, of daring words and cowardly concessions, this cautious deliberation as to which sentences will or will not impress the philistine or smooth him down the right way, this lack of character and power masquerading as character and power, this meagre wisdom in the guise of omniscience,--these are the features in this book which i detest. if i could conceive of young men having patience to read it and to value it, i should sorrowfully renounce all hope for their future. and is this confession of wretched, hopeless, and really despicable philistinism supposed to be the expression of the thousands constituting the "we" of whom strauss speaks, and who are to be the fathers of the coming generation? unto him who would fain help this coming generation to acquire what the present one does not yet possess, namely, a genuine german culture, the prospect is a horrible one. to such a man, the ground seems strewn with ashes, and all stars are obscured; while every withered tree and field laid waste seems to cry to him: barren! forsaken! springtime is no longer possible here! he must feel as young goethe felt when he first peered into the melancholy atheistic twilight of the système de la nature; to him this book seemed so grey, so cimmerian and deadly, that he could only endure its presence with difficulty, and shuddered at it as one shudders at a spectre. viii. we ought now to be sufficiently informed concerning the heaven and the courage of our new believer to be able to turn to the last question: how does he write his books? and of what order are his religious documents? he who can answer this question uprightly and without prejudice will be confronted by yet another serious problem, and that is: how this straussian pocket-oracle of the german philistine was able to pass through six editions? and he will grow more than ever suspicious when he hears that it was actually welcomed as a pocket-oracle, not only in scholastic circles, but even in german universities as well. students are said to have greeted it as a canon for strong intellects, and, from all accounts, the professors raised no objections to this view; while here and there people have declared it to be a religions book for scholars. strauss himself gave out that he did not intend his profession of faith to be merely a reference-book for learned and cultured people; but here let us abide by the fact that it was first and foremost a work appealing to his colleagues, and was ostensibly a mirror in which they were to see their own way of living faithfully reflected. for therein lay the feat. the master feigned to have presented us with a new ideal conception of the universe, and now adulation is being paid him out of every mouth; because each is in a position to suppose that he too regards the universe and life in the same way. thus strauss has seen fulfilled in each of his readers what he only demanded of the future. in this way, the extraordinary success of his book is partly explained: "thus we live and hold on our way in joy," the scholar cries in his book, and delights to see others rejoicing over the announcement. if the reader happen to think differently from the master in regard to darwin or to capital punishment, it is of very little consequence; for he is too conscious throughout of breathing an atmosphere that is familiar to him, and of hearing but the echoes of his own voice and wants. however painfully this unanimity may strike the true friend of german culture, it is his duty to be unrelenting in his explanation of it as a phenomenon, and not to shrink from making this explanation public. we all know the peculiar methods adopted in our own time of cultivating the sciences: we all know them, because they form a part of our lives. and, for this very reason, scarcely anybody seems to ask himself what the result of such a cultivation of the sciences will mean to culture in general, even supposing that everywhere the highest abilities and the most earnest will be available for the promotion of culture. in the heart of the average scientific type (quite irrespective of the examples thereof with which we meet to-day) there lies a pure paradox: he behaves like the veriest idler of independent means, to whom life is not a dreadful and serious business, but a sound piece of property, settled upon him for all eternity; and it seems to him justifiable to spend his whole life in answering questions which, after all is said and done, can only be of interest to that person who believes in eternal life as an absolute certainty. the heir of but a few hours, he sees himself encompassed by yawning abysses, terrible to behold; and every step he takes should recall the questions, wherefore? whither? and whence? to his mind. but his soul rather warms to his work, and, be this the counting of a floweret's petals or the breaking of stones by the roadside, he spends his whole fund of interest, pleasure, strength, and aspirations upon it. this paradox--the scientific man--has lately dashed ahead at such a frantic speed in germany, that one would almost think the scientific world were a factory, in which every minute wasted meant a fine. to-day the man of science works as arduously as the fourth or slave caste: his study has ceased to be an occupation, it is a necessity; he looks neither to the right nor to the left, but rushes through all things--even through the serious matters which life bears in its train--with that semi-listlessness and repulsive need of rest so characteristic of the exhausted labourer. this is also his attitude towards culture. he behaves as if life to him were not only otium but sine dignitate: even in his sleep he does not throw off the yoke, but like an emancipated slave still dreams of his misery, his forced haste and his floggings. our scholars can scarcely be distinguished--and, even then, not to their advantage--from agricultural labourers, who in order to increase a small patrimony, assiduously strive, day and night, to cultivate their fields, drive their ploughs, and urge on their oxen. now, pascal suggests that men only endeavour to work hard at their business and sciences with the view of escaping those questions of greatest import which every moment of loneliness or leisure presses upon them--the questions relating to the wherefore, the whence, and the whither of life. curiously enough, our scholars never think of the most vital question of all--the wherefore of their work, their haste, and their painful ecstasies. surely their object is not the earning of bread or the acquiring of posts of honour? no, certainly not. but ye take as much pains as the famishing and breadless; and, with that eagerness and lack of discernment which characterises the starving, ye even snatch the dishes from the sideboard of science. if, however, as scientific men, ye proceed with science as the labourers with the tasks which the exigencies of life impose upon them, what will become of a culture which must await the hour of its birth and its salvation in the very midst of all this agitated and breathless running to and fro--this sprawling scientifically? for it no one has time--and yet for what shall science have time if not for culture? answer us here, then, at least: whence, whither, wherefore all science, if it do not lead to culture? belike to barbarity? and in this direction we already see the scholar caste ominously advanced, if we are to believe that such superficial books as this one of strauss's meet the demand of their present degree of culture. for precisely in him do we find that repulsive need of rest and that incidental semi-listless attention to, and coming to terms with, philosophy, culture, and every serious thing on earth. it will be remembered that, at the meetings held by scholars, as soon as each individual has had his say in his own particular department of knowledge, signs of fatigue, of a desire for distraction at any price, of waning memory, and of incoherent experiences of life, begin to be noticeable. while listening to strauss discussing any worldly question, be it marriage, the war, or capital punishment, we are startled by his complete lack of anything like first-hand experience, or of any original thought on human nature. all his judgments are so redolent of books, yea even of newspapers. literary reminiscences do duty for genuine ideas and views, and the assumption of a moderate and grandfatherly tone take the place of wisdom and mature thought. how perfectly in keeping all this is with the fulsome spirit animating the holders of the highest places in german science in large cities! how thoroughly this spirit must appeal to that other! for it is precisely in those quarters that culture is in the saddest plight; it is precisely there that its fresh growth is made impossible--so boisterous are the preparations made by science, so sheepishly are favourite subjects of knowledge allowed to oust questions of much greater import. what kind of lantern would be needed here, in order to find men capable of a complete surrender to genius, and of an intimate knowledge of its depths--men possessed of sufficient courage and strength to exorcise the demons that have forsaken our age? viewed from the outside, such quarters certainly do appear to possess the whole pomp of culture; with their imposing apparatus they resemble great arsenals fitted with huge guns and other machinery of war; we see preparations in progress and the most strenuous activity, as though the heavens themselves were to be stormed, and truth were to be drawn out of the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest machines are the most unwieldy. genuine culture therefore leaves such places as these religiously alone, for its best instincts warn it that in their midst it has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear. for the only kind of culture with which the inflamed eye and obtuse brain of the scholar working-classes concern themselves is of that philistine order of which strauss has announced the gospel. if we consider for a moment the fundamental causes underlying the sympathy which binds the learned working-classes to culture-philistinism, we shall discover the road leading to strauss the writer, who has been acknowledged classical, and tihence to our last and principal theme. to begin with, that culture has contentment written in its every feature, and will allow of no important changes being introduced into the present state of german education. it is above all convinced of the originality of all german educational institutions, more particularly the public schools and universities; it does not cease recommending these to foreigners, and never doubts that if the germans have become the most cultivated and discriminating people on earth, it is owing to such institutions. culture-philistinism believes in itself, consequently it also believes in the methods and means at its disposal. secondly, however, it leaves the highest judgment concerning all questions of taste and culture to the scholar, and even regards itself as the ever-increasing compendium of scholarly opinions regarding art, literature, and philosophy. its first care is to urge the scholar to express his opinions; these it proceeds to mix, dilute, and systematise, and then it administers them to the german people in the form of a bottle of medicine. what conies to life outside this circle is either not heard or attended at all, or if heard, is heeded half-heartedly; until, at last, a voice (it does not matter whose, provided it belong to some one who is strictly typical of the scholar tribe) is heard to issue from the temple in which traditional infallibility of taste is said to reside; and from that time forward public opinion has one conviction more, which it echoes and re-echoes hundreds and hundreds of times. as a matter of fact, though, the aesthetic infallibility of any utterance emanating from the temple is the more doubtful, seeing that the lack of taste, thought, and artistic feeling in any scholar can be taken for granted, unless it has previously been proved that, in his particular case, the reverse is true. and only a few can prove this. for how many who have had a share in the breathless and unending scurry of modern science have preserved that quiet and courageous gaze of the struggling man of culture--if they ever possessed it--that gaze which condemns even the scurry we speak of as a barbarous state of affairs? that is why these few are forced to live in an almost perpetual contradiction. what could they do against the uniform belief of the thousands who have enlisted public opinion in their cause, and who mutually defend each other in this belief? what purpose can it serve when one individual openly declares war against strauss, seeing that a crowd have decided in his favour, and that the masses led by this crowd have learned to ask six consecutive times for the master's philistine sleeping-mixture? if, without further ado, we here assumed that the straussian confession-book had triumphed over public opinion and had been acclaimed and welcomed as conqueror, its author might call our attention to the fact that the multitudinous criticisms of his work in the various public organs are not of an altogether unanimous or even favourable character, and that he therefore felt it incumbent upon him to defend himself against some of the more malicious, impudent, and provoking of these newspaper pugilists by means of a postscript. how can there be a public opinion concerning my book, he cries to us, if every journalist is to regard me as an outlaw, and to mishandle me as much as he likes? this contradiction is easily explained, as soon as one considers the two aspects of the straussian book--the theological and the literary, and it is only the latter that has anything to do with german culture. thanks to its theological colouring, it stands beyond the pale of our german culture, and provokes the animosity of the various theological groups--yea, even of every individual german, in so far as he is a theological sectarian from birth, and only invents his own peculiar private belief in order to be able to dissent from every other form of belief. but when the question arises of talking about strauss the writer, pray listen to what the theological sectarians have to say about him. as soon as his literary side comes under notice, all theological objections immediately subside, and the dictum comes plain and clear, as if from the lips of one congregation: in spite of it all, he is still a classical writer! everybody--even the most bigoted, orthodox churchman--pays the writer the most gratifying compliments, while there is always a word or two thrown in as a tribute to his almost lessingesque language, his delicacy of touch, or the beauty and accuracy of his aesthetic views. as a book, therefore, the straussian performance appears to meet all the demands of an ideal example of its kind. the theological opponents, despite the fact that their voices were the loudest of all, nevertheless constitute but an infinitesimal portion of the great public; and even with regard to them, strauss still maintains that he is right when he says: "compared with my thousands of readers, a few dozen public cavillers form but an insignificant minority, and they can hardly prove that they are their faithful interpreters. it was obviously in the nature of things that opposition should be clamorous and assent tacit." thus, apart from the angry bitterness which strauss's profession of faith may have provoked here and there, even the most fanatical of his opponents, to whom his voice seems to rise out of an abyss, like the voice of a beast, are agreed as to his merits as a writer; and that is why the treatment which strauss has received at the hands of the literary lackeys of the theological groups proves nothing against our contention that culture-philistinism celebrated its triumph in this book. it must be admitted that the average educated philistine is a degree less honest than strauss, or is at least more reserved in his public utterances. but this fact only tends to increase his admiration for honesty in another. at home, or in the company of his equals, he may applaud with wild enthusiasm, but takes care not to put on paper how entirely strauss's words are in harmony with his own innermost feelings. for, as we have already maintained, our culture-philistine is somewhat of a coward, even in his strongest sympathies; hence strauss, who can boast of a trifle more courage than he, becomes his leader, notwithstanding the fact that even straussian pluck has its very definite limits. if he overstepped these limits, as schopenhauer does in almost every sentence, he would then forfeit his position at the head of the philistines, and everybody would flee from him as precipitately as they are now following in his wake. he who would regard this artful if not sagacious moderation and this mediocre valour as an aristotelian virtue, would certainly be wrong; for the valour in question is not the golden mean between two faults, but between a virtue and a fault--and in this mean, between virtue and fault, all philistine qualities are to be found. ix. "in spite of it all, he is still a classical writer." well, let us see! perhaps we may now be allowed to discuss strauss the stylist and master of language; but in the first place let us inquire whether, as a literary man, he is equal to the task of building his house, and whether he really understands the architecture of a book. from this inquiry we shall be able to conclude whether he is a respectable, thoughtful, and experienced author; and even should we be forced to answer "no" to these questions, he may still, as a last shift, take refuge in his fame as a classical prose-writer. this last-mentioned talent alone, it is true, would not suffice to class him with the classical authors, but at most with the classical improvisers and virtuosos of style, who, however, in regard to power of expression and the whole planning and framing of the work, reveal the awkward hand and the embarrassed eye of the bungler. we therefore put the question, whether strauss really possesses the artistic strength necessary for the purpose of presenting us with a thing that is a whole, totum ponere? as a rule, it ought to be possible to tell from the first rough sketch of a work whether the author conceived the thing as a whole, and whether, in view of this original conception, he has discovered the correct way of proceeding with his task and of fixing its proportions. should this most important part of the problem be solved, and should the framework of the building have been given its most favourable proportions, even then there remains enough to be done: how many smaller faults have to be corrected, how many gaps require filling in! here and there a temporary partition or floor was found to answer the requirements; everywhere dust and fragments litter the ground, and no matter where we look, we see the signs of work done and work still to be done. the house, as a whole, is still uninhabitable and gloomy, its walls are bare, and the wind blows in through the open windows. now, whether this remaining, necessary, and very irksome work has been satisfactorily accomplished by strauss does not concern us at present; our question is, whether the building itself has been conceived as a whole, and whether its proportions are good? the reverse of this, of course, would be a compilation of fragments--a method generally adopted by scholars. they rely upon it that these fragments are related among themselves, and thus confound the logical and the artistic relation between them. now, the relation between the four questions which provide the chapter-headings of strauss's book cannot be called a logical one. are we still christians? have we still a religion? what is our conception of the universe? what is our rule of life? and it is by no means contended that the relation is illogical simply because the third question has nothing to do with the second, nor the fourth with the third, nor all three with the first. the natural scientist who puts the third question, for instance, shows his unsullied love of truth by the simple fact that he tacitly passes over the second. and with regard to the subject of the fourth chapter--marriage, republicanism, and capital punishment--strauss himself seems to have been aware that they could only have been muddled and obscured by being associated with the darwinian theory expounded in the third chapter; for he carefully avoids all reference to this theory when discussing them. but the question, "are we still christians?" destroys the freedom of the philosophical standpoint at one stroke, by lending it an unpleasant theological colouring. moreover, in this matter, he quite forgot that the majority of men to-day are not christians at all, but buddhists. why should one, without further ceremony, immediately think of christianity at the sound of the words "old faith"? is this a sign that strauss has never ceased to be a christian theologian, and that he has therefore never learned to be a philosopher? for we find still greater cause for surprise in the fact that he quite fails to distinguish between belief and knowledge, and continually mentions his "new belief" and the still newer science in one breath. or is "new belief" merely an ironical concession to ordinary parlance? this almost seems to be the case; for here and there he actually allows "new belief" and "newer science" to be interchangeable terms, as for instance on page ii, where he asks on which side, whether on that of the ancient orthodoxy or of modern science, "exist more of the obscurities and insufficiencies unavoidable in human speculation." moreover, according to the scheme laid down in the introduction, his desire is to disclose those proofs upon which the modern view of life is based; but he derives all these proofs from science, and in this respect assumes far more the attitude of a scientist than of a believer. at bottom, therefore, the religion is not a new belief, but, being of a piece with modern science, it has nothing to do with religion at all. if strauss, however, persists in his claims to be religious, the grounds for these claims must be beyond the pale of recent science. only the smallest portion of the straussian book--that is to say, but a few isolated pages--refer to what strauss in all justice might call a belief, namely, that feeling for the "all" for which he demands the piety that the old believer demanded for his god. on the pages in question, however, he cannot claim to be altogether scientific; but if only he could lay claim to being a little stronger, more natural, more outspoken, more pious, we should be content. indeed, what perhaps strikes us most forcibly about him is the multitude of artificial procedures of which he avails himself before he ultimately gets the feeling that he still possesses a belief and a religion; he reaches it by means of stings and blows, as we have already seen. how indigently and feebly this emergency-belief presents itself to us! we shiver at the sight of it. although strauss, in the plan laid down in his introduction, promises to compare the two faiths, the old and the new, and to show that the latter will answer the same purpose as the former, even he begins to feel, in the end, that he has promised too much. for the question whether the new belief answers the same purpose as the old, or is better or worse, is disposed of incidentally, so to speak, and with uncomfortable haste, in two or three pages (p. 436 et seq.-), and is actually bolstered up by the following subterfuge: "he who cannot help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our standpoint" (p. 436). how differently, and with what intensity of conviction, did the ancient stoic believe in the all and the rationality of the all! and, viewed in this light, how does strauss's claim to originality appear? but, as we have already observed, it would be a matter of indifference to us whether it were new, old, original, or imitated, so that it were only more powerful, more healthy, and more natural. even strauss himself leaves this double-distilled emergency-belief to take care of itself as often as he can do so, in order to protect himself and us from danger, and to present his recently acquired biological knowledge to his "we" with a clear conscience. the more embarrassed he may happen to be when he speaks of faith, the rounder and fuller his mouth becomes when he quotes the greatest benefactor to modern men-darwin. then he not only exacts belief for the new messiah, but also for himself--the new apostle. for instance, while discussing one of the most intricate questions in natural history, he declares with true ancient pride: "i shall be told that i am here speaking of things about which i understand nothing. very well; but others will come who will understand them, and who will also have understood me" (p. 241). according to this, it would almost seem as though the famous "we" were not only in duty bound to believe in the "all," but also in the naturalist strauss; in this case we can only hope that in order to acquire the feeling for this last belief, other processes are requisite than the painful and cruel ones demanded by the first belief. or is it perhaps sufficient in this case that the subject of belief himself be tormented and stabbed with the view of bringing the believers to that "religious reaction" which is the distinguishing sign of the "new faith." what merit should we then discover in the piety of those whom strauss calls "we"? otherwise, it is almost to be feared that modern men will pass on in pursuit of their business without troubling themselves overmuch concerning the new furniture of faith offered them by the apostle: just as they have done heretofore, without the doctrine of the rationality of the all. the whole of modern biological and historical research has nothing to do with the straussian belief in the all, and the fact that the modern philistine does not require the belief is proved by the description of his life given by strauss in the chapter,"what is our rule of life?" he is therefore quite right in doubting whether the coach to which his esteemed readers have been obliged to trust themselves "with him, fulfils every requirement." it certainly does not; for the modern man makes more rapid progress when he does not take his place in the straussian coach, or rather, he got ahead much more quickly long before the straussian coach ever existed. now, if it be true that the famous "minority" which is "not to be overlooked," and of which, and in whose name, strauss speaks, "attaches great importance to consistency," it must be just as dissatisfied with strauss the coachbuilder as we are with strauss the logician. let us, however, drop the question of the logician. perhaps, from the artistic point of view, the book really is an example of a. well-conceived plan, and does, after all, answer to the requirements of the laws of beauty, despite the fact that it fails to meet with the demands of a well-conducted argument. and now, having shown that he is neither a scientist nor a strictly correct and systematic scholar, for the first time we approach the question: is strauss a capable writer? perhaps the task he set himself was not so much to scare people away from the old faith as to captivate them by a picturesque and graceful description of what life would be with the new. if he regarded scholars and educated men as his most probable audience, experience ought certainly to have told him that whereas one can shoot such men down with the heavy guns of scientific proof, but cannot make them surrender, they may be got to capitulate all the more quickly before "lightly equipped" measures of seduction. "lightly equipped," and "intentionally so," thus strauss himself speaks of his own book. nor do his public eulogisers refrain from using the same expression in reference to the work, as the following passage, quoted from one of the least remarkable among them, and in which the same expression is merely paraphrased, will go to prove:-"the discourse flows on with delightful harmony: wherever it directs its criticism against old ideas it wields the art of demonstration, almost playfully; and it is with some spirit that it prepares the new ideas it brings so enticingly, and presents them to the simple as well as to the fastidious taste. the arrangement of such diverse and conflicting material is well thought out for every portion of it required to be touched upon, without being made too prominent; at times the transitions leading from one subject to another are artistically managed, and one hardly knows what to admire most--the skill with which unpleasant questions are shelved, or the discretion with which they are hushed up." the spirit of such eulogies, as the above clearly shows, is not quite so subtle in regard to judging of what an author is able to do as in regard to what he wishes. what strauss wishes, however, is best revealed by his own emphatic and not quite harmless commendation of voltaire's charms, in whose service he might have learned precisely those "lightly equipped" arts of which his admirer speaks--granting, of course, that virtue may be acquired and a pedagogue can ever be a dancer. who could help having a suspicion or two, when reading the following passage, for instance, in which strauss says of voltaire, "as a philosopher [he] is certainly not original, but in the main a mere exponent of english investigations: in this respect, however, he shows himself to be completely master of his subject, which he presents with incomparable skill, in all possible lights and from all possible sides, and is able withal to meet the demands of thoroughness, without, however, being over-severe in his method"? now, all the negative traits mentioned in this passage might be applied to strauss. no one would contend, i suppose, that strauss is original, or that he is over-severe in his method; but the question is whether we can regard him as "master of his subject," and grant him "incomparable skill"? the confession to the effect that the treatise was intentionally "lightly equipped" leads us to think that it at least aimed at incomparable skill. it was not the dream of our architect to build a temple, nor yet a house, but a sort of summer-pavilion, surrounded by everything that the art of gardening can provide. yea, it even seems as if that mysterious feeling for the all were only calculated to produce an aesthetic effect, to be, so to speak, a view of an irrational element, such as the sea, looked at from the most charming and rational of terraces. the walk through the first chapters-that is to say, through the theological catacombs with all their gloominess and their involved and baroque embellishments--was also no more than an aesthetic expedient in order to throw into greater relief the purity, clearness, and common sense of the chapter "what is our conception of the universe?" for, immediately after that walk in the gloaming and that peep into the wilderness of irrationalism, we step into a hall with a skylight to it. soberly and limpidly it welcomes us: its mural decorations consist of astronomical charts and mathematical figures; it is filled with scientific apparatus, and its cupboards contain skeletons, stuffed apes, and anatomical specimens. but now, really rejoicing for the first time, we direct our steps into the innermost chamber of bliss belonging to our pavilion-dwellers; there we find them with their wives, children, and newspapers, occupied in the commonplace discussion of politics; we listen for a moment to their conversation on marriage, universal suffrage, capital punishment, and workmen's strikes, and we can scarcely believe it to be possible that the rosary of public opinions can be told off so quickly. at length an attempt is made to convince us of the classical taste of the inmates. a moment's halt in the library, and the music-room suffices to show us what we had expected all along, namely, that the best books lay on the shelves, and that the most famous musical compositions were in the music-cabinets. some one actually played something to us, and even if it were haydn's music, haydn could not be blamed because it sounded like riehl's music for the home. meanwhile the host had found occasion to announce to us his complete agreement with lessing and goethe, although with the latter only up to the second part of faust. at last our pavilion-owner began to praise himself, and assured us that he who could not be happy under his roof was beyond help and could not be ripe for his standpoint, whereupon he offered us his coach, but with the polite reservation that he could not assert that it would fulfil every requirement, and that, owing to the stones on his road having been newly laid down, we were not to mind if we were very much jolted. our epicurean garden-god then took leave of us with the incomparable skill which he praised in voltaire. who could now persist in doubting the existence of this incomparable skill? the complete master of his subject is revealed; the lightly equipped artist-gardener is exposed, and still we hear the voice of the classical author saying, "as a writer i shall for once cease to be a philistine: i will not be one; i refuse to be one! but a voltaire--the german voltaire--or at least the french lessing." with this we have betrayed a secret. our master does not always know which he prefers to be--voltaire or lessing; but on no account will he be a philistine. at a pinch he would not object to being both lessing and voltaire--that the word might be fulfilled that is written, "he had no character, but when he wished to appear as if he had, he assumed one." x. if we have understood strauss the confessor correctly, he must be a genuine philistine, with a narrow, parched soul and scholarly and common-place needs; albeit no one would be more indignant at the title than david strauss the writer. he would be quite happy to be regarded as mischievous, bold, malicious, daring; but his ideal of bliss would consist in finding himself compared with either lessing or voltaire--because these men were undoubtedly anything but philistines. in striving after this state of bliss, he often seems to waver between two alternatives--either to mimic the brave and dialectical petulance of lessing, or to affect the manner of the faun-like and free-spirited man of antiquity that voltaire was. when taking up his pen to write, he seems to be continually posing for his portrait; and whereas at times his features are drawn to look like lessing's, anon they are made to assume the voltairean mould. while reading his praise of voltaire's manner, we almost seem to see him abjuring the consciences of his contemporaries for not having learned long ago what the modern voltaire had to offer them. "even his excellences are wonderfully uniform," he says: "simple naturalness, transparent clearness, vivacious mobility, seductive charm. warmth and emphasis are also not wanting where they are needed, and voltaire's innermost nature always revolted against stiltedness and affectation; while, on the other hand, if at times wantonness or passion descend to an unpleasantly low level, the fault does not rest so much with the stylist as with the man." according to this, strauss seems only too well aware of the importance of simplicity in style; it is ever the sign of genius, which alone has the privilege to express itself naturally and guilelessly. when, therefore, an author selects a simple mode of expression, this is no sign whatever of vulgar ambition; for although many are aware of what such an author would fain be taken for, they are yet kind enough to take him precisely for that. the genial writer, however, not only reveals his true nature in the plain and unmistakable form of his utterance, but his super-abundant strength actually dallies with the material he treats, even when it is dangerous and difficult. nobody treads stiffly along unknown paths, especially when these are broken throughout their course by thousands of crevices and furrows; but the genius speeds nimbly over them, and, leaping with grace and daring, scorns the wistful and timorous step of caution. even strauss knows that the problems he prances over are dreadfully serious, and have ever been regarded as such by the philosophers who have grappled with them; yet he calls his book lightly equipped! but of this dreadfulness and of the usual dark nature of our meditations when considering such questions as the worth of existence and the duties of man, we entirely cease to be conscious when the genial master plays his antics before us, "lightly equipped, and intentionally so." yes, even more lightly equipped than his rousseau, of whom he tells us it was said that he stripped himself below and adorned himself on top, whereas goethe did precisely the reverse. perfectly guileless geniuses do not, it appears, adorn themselves at all; possibly the words "lightly equipped" may simply be a euphemism for "naked." the few who happen to have seen the goddess of truth declare that she is naked, and perhaps, in the minds of those who have never seen her, but who implicitly believe those few, nakedness or light equipment is actually a proof, or at least a feature, of truthi even this vulgar superstition turns to the advantage of the author's ambition. some one sees something naked, and he exclaims: "what if this were the truth!" whereupon he grows more solemn than is his wont. by this means, however, the author scores a tremendous advantage; for he compels his reader to approach him with greater solemnity than another and perhaps more heavily equipped writer. this is unquestionably the best way to become a classical author; hence strauss himself is able to tell us: "i even enjoy the unsought honour of being, in the opinion of many, a classical writer of prose. "he has therefore achieved his aim. strauss the genius goes gadding about the streets in the garb of lightly equipped goddesses as a classic, while strauss the philistine, to use an original expression of this genius's, must, at all costs, be "declared to be on the decline," or "irrevocably dismissed." but, alas! in spite of all declarations of decline and dismissal, the philistine still returns, and all too frequently. those features, contorted to resemble lessing and voltaire, must relax from time to time to resume their old and original shape. the mask of genius falls from them too often, and the master's expression is never more sour and his movements never stiffer than when he has just attempted to take the leap, or to glance with the fiery eye, of a genius. precisely owing to the fact that he is too lightly equipped for our zone, he runs the risk of catching cold more often and more severely than another. it may seem a terrible hardship to him that every one should notice this; but if he wishes to be cured, the following diagnosis of his case ought to be publicly presented to him:-once upon a time there lived a strauss, a brave, severe, and stoutly equipped scholar, with whom we sympathised as wholly as with all those in germany who seek to serve truth with earnestness and energy, and to rule within the limits of their powers. he, however, who is now publicly famous as david strauss, is another person. the theologians may be to blame for this metamorphosis; but, at any rate, his present toying with the mask of genius inspires us with as much hatred and scorn as his former earnestness commanded respect and sympathy. when, for instance, he tells us, "it would also argue ingratitude towards my genius if i were not to rejoice that to the faculty of an incisive, analytical criticism was added the innocent pleasure in artistic production," it may astonish him to hear that, in spite of this self-praise, there are still men who maintain exactly the reverse, and who say, not only that he has never possessed the gift of artistic production, but that the "innocent" pleasure he mentions is of all things the least innocent, seeing that it succeeded in gradually undermining and ultimately destroying a nature as strongly and deeply scholarly and critical as strauss's--in fact, the real straussian genius. in a moment of unlimited frankness, strauss himself indeed adds: "merck was always in my thoughts, calling out, 'don't produce such child's play again; others can do that too!'" that was the voice of the real straussian genius, which also asked him what the worth of his newest, innocent, and lightly equipped modern philistine's testament was. others can do that too! and many could do it better. and even they who could have done it best, i.e. those thinkers who are more widely endowed than strauss, could still only have made nonsense of it. i take it that you are now beginning to understand the value i set on strauss the writer. you are beginning to realise that i regard him as a mummer who would parade as an artless genius and classical writer. when lichtenberg said, "a simple manner of writing is to be recommended, if only in view of the fact that no honest man trims and twists his expressions," he was very far from wishing to imply that a simple style is a proof of literary integrity. i, for my part, only wish that strauss the writer had been more upright, for then he would have written more becomingly and have been less famous. or, if he would be a mummer at all costs, how much more would he not have pleased me if he had been a better mummer--one more able to ape the guileless genius and classical author! for it yet remains to be said that strauss was not only an inferior actor but a very worthless stylist as well. xi. of course, the blame attaching to strauss for being a bad writer is greatly mitigated by the fact that it is extremely difficult in germany to become even a passable or moderately good writer, and that it is more the exception than not, to be a really good one. in this respect the natural soil is wanting, as are also artistic values and the proper method of treating and cultivating oratory. this latter accomplishment, as the various branches of it, i.e. drawing-room, ecclesiastical and parliamentary parlance, show, has not yet reached the level of a national style; indeed, it has not yet shown even a tendency to attain to a style at all, and all forms of language in germany do not yet seem to have passed a certain experimental stage. in view of these facts, the writer of to-day, to some extent, lacks an authoritative standard, and he is in some measure excused if, in the matter of language, he attempts to go ahead of his own accord. as to the probable result which the present dilapidated condition of the german language will bring about, schopenhauer, perhaps, has spoken most forcibly. "if the existing state of affairs continues," he says, "in the year 1900 german classics will cease to be understood, for the simple reason that no other language will be known, save the trumpery jargon of the noble present, the chief characteristic of which is impotence." and, in truth, if one turn to the latest periodicals, one will find german philologists and grammarians already giving expression to the view that our classics can no longer serve us as examples of style, owing to the fact that they constantly use words, modes of speech, and syntactic arrangements which are fast dropping out of currency. hence the need of collecting specimens of the finest prose that has been produced by our best modern writers, and of offering them as examples to be followed, after the style of sander's pocket dictionary of bad language. in this book, that repulsive monster of style gutzkow appears as a classic, and, according to its injunctions, we seem to be called upon to accustom ourselves to quite a new and wondrous crowd of classical authors, among which the first, or one of the first, is david strauss: he whom we cannot describe more aptly than we have already--that is to say, as a worthless stylist. now, the notion which the culture-philistine has of a classic and standard author speaks eloquently for his pseudo-culture--he who only shows his strength by opposing a really artistic and severe style, and who, thanks to the persistence of his opposition, finally arrives at a certain uniformity of expression, which again almost appears to possess unity of genuine style. in view, therefore, of the right which is granted to every one to experiment with the language, how is it possible at all for individual authors to discover a generally agreeable tone? what is so generally interesting in them? in the first place, a negative quality--the total lack of offensiveness: but every really productive thing is offensive. the greater part of a german's daily reading matter is undoubtedly sought either in the pages of newspapers, periodicals, or reviews. the language of these journals gradually stamps itself on his brain, by means of its steady drip, drip, drip of similar phrases and similar words. and, since he generally devotes to reading those hours of the day during which his exhausted brain is in any case not inclined to offer resistance, his ear for his native tongue so slowly but surely accustoms itself to this everyday german that it ultimately cannot endure its absence without pain. but the manufacturers of these newspapers are, by virtue of their trade, most thoroughly inured to the effluvia of this journalistic jargon; they have literally lost all taste, and their palate is rather gratified than not by the most corrupt and arbitrary innovations. hence the tutti unisono with which, despite the general lethargy and sickliness, every fresh solecism is greeted; it is with such impudent corruptions of the language that her hirelings are avenged against her for the incredible boredom she imposes ever more and more upon them. i remember having read "an appeal to the german nation," by berthold auerbach, in which every sentence was un-german, distorted and false, and which, as a whole, resembled a soulless mosaic of words cemented together with international syntax. as to the disgracefully slipshod german with which edward devrient solemnised the death of mendelssohn, i do not even wish to do more than refer to it. a grammatical error--and this is the most extraordinary feature of the case--does not therefore seem an offence in any sense to our philistine, but a most delightful restorative in the barren wilderness of everyday german. he still, however, considers all really productive things to be offensive. the wholly bombastic, distorted, and threadbare syntax of the modern standard author--yea, even his ludicrous neologisms--are not only tolerated, but placed to his credit as the spicy element in his works. but woe to the stylist with character, who seeks as earnestly and perseveringly to avoid the trite phrases of everyday parlance, as the "yester-night monster blooms of modern ink-flingers," as schopenhauer says! when platitudes, hackneyed, feeble, and vulgar phrases are the rule, and the bad and the corrupt become refreshing exceptions, then all that is strong, distinguished, and beautiful perforce acquires an evil odour. from which it follows that, in germany, the well-known experience which befell the normally built traveller in the land of hunchbacks is constantly being repeated. it will be remembered that he was so shamefully insulted there, owing to his quaint figure and lack of dorsal convexity, that a priest at last had to harangue the people on his behalf as follows: "my brethren, rather pity this poor stranger, and present thank-offerings unto the gods, that ye are blessed with such attractive gibbosities." if any one attempted to compose a positive grammar out of the international german style of to-day, and wished to trace the unwritten and unspoken laws followed by every one, he would get the most extraordinary notions of style and rhetoric. he would meet with laws which are probably nothing more than reminiscences of bygone schooldays, vestiges of impositions for latin prose, and results perhaps of choice readings from french novelists, over whose incredible crudeness every decently educated frenchman would have the right to laugh. but no conscientious native of germany seems to have given a thought to these extraordinary notions under the yoke of which almost every german lives and writes. as an example of what i say, we may find an injunction to the effect that a metaphor or a simile must be introduced from time to time, and that it must be new; but, since to the mind of the shallow-pated writer newness and modernity are identical, he proceeds forthwith to rack his brain for metaphors in the technical vocabularies of the railway, the telegraph, the steamship, and the stock exchange, and is proudly convinced that such metaphors must be new because they are modern. in strauss's confession-book we find liberal tribute paid to modern metaphor. he treats us to a simile, covering a page and a half, drawn from modern road-improvement work; a few pages farther back he likens the world to a machine, with its wheels, stampers, hammers, and "soothing oil" (p. 432); "a repast that begins with champagne" (p. 384); "kant is a cold-water cure" (p. 309); "the swiss constitution is to that of england as a watermill is to a steam-engine, as a waltz-tune or a song to a fugue or symphony" (p. 301); "in every appeal, the sequence of procedure must be observed. now the mean tribunal between the individual and humanity is the nation" (p. 165); "if we would know whether there be still any life in an organism which appears dead to us, we are wont to test it by a powerful, even painful stimulus, as for example a stab" (p. 161); "the religious domain in the human soul resembles the domain of the red indian in america" (p. 160); "virtuosos in piety, in convents"(p. 107); "and place the sum-total of the foregoing in round numbers under the account" (p. 205); "darwin's theory resembles a railway track that is just marked out... where the flags are fluttering joyfully in the breeze." in this really highly modern way, strauss has met the philistine injunction to the effect that a new simile must be introduced from time to time. another rhetorical rule is also very widespread, namely, that didactic passages should be composed in long periods, and should be drawn out into lengthy abstractions, while all persuasive passages should consist of short sentences followed by striking contrasts. on page 154 in strauss's book we find a standard example of the didactic and scholarly style--a passage blown out after the genuine schleiermacher manner, and made to stumble along at a true tortoise pace: "the reason why, in the earlier stages of religion, there appear many instead of this single whereon, a plurality of gods instead of the one, is explained in this deduction of religion, from the fact that the various forces of nature, or relations of life, which inspire man with the sentiment of unqualified dependence, still act upon him in the commencement with the full force of their distinctive characteristics; that he has not as yet become conscious how, in regard to his unmitigated dependence upon them, there is no distinction between them, and that therefore the whereon of this dependence, or the being to which it conducts in the last instance, can only be one." on pages 7 and 8 we find an example of the other kind of style, that of the short sentences containing that affected liveliness which so excited certain readers that they cannot mention strauss any more without coupling his name with lessing's. "i am well aware that what i propose to delineate in the following pages is known to multitudes as well as to myself, to some even much better. a few have already spoken out on the subject. am i therefore to keep silence? i think not. for do we not all supply each other's deficiencies? if another is better informed as regards some things, i may perhaps be so as regards others; while yet others are known and viewed by me in a different light. out with it, then! let my colours be displayed that it may be seen whether they are genuine or not.'" it is true that strauss's style generally maintains a happy medium between this sort of merry quick-march and the other funereal and indolent pace; but between two vices one does not invariably find a virtue; more often rather only weakness, helpless paralysis, and impotence. as a matter of fact, i was very disappointed when i glanced through strauss's book in search of fine and witty passages; for, not having found anything praiseworthy in the confessor, i had actually set out with the express purpose of meeting here and there with at least some opportunities of praising strauss the writer. i sought and sought, but my purpose remained unfulfilled. meanwhile, however, another duty seemed to press itself strongly on my mind--that of enumerating the solecisms, the strained metaphors, the obscure abbreviations, the instances of bad taste, and the distortions which i encountered; and these were of such a nature that i dare do no more than select a few examples of them from among a collection which is too bulky to be given in full. by means of these examples i may succeed in showing what it is that inspires, in the hearts of modern germans, such faith in this great and seductive stylist strauss: i refer to his eccentricities of expression, which, in the barren waste and dryness of his whole book, jump out at one, not perhaps as pleasant but as painfully stimulating, surprises. when perusing such passages, we are at least assured, to use a straussian metaphor, that we are not quite dead, but still respond to the test of a stab. for the rest of the book is entirely lacking in offensiveness --that quality which alone, as we have seen, is productive, and which our classical author has himself reckoned among the positive virtues. when the educated masses meet with exaggerated dulness and dryness, when they are in the presence of really vapid commonplaces, they now seem to believe that such things are the signs of health; and in this respect the words of the author of the dialogus de oratoribus are very much to the point: "illam ipsam quam jactant sanitatem non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur." that is why they so unanimously hate every firmitas, because it bears testimony to a kind of health quite different from theirs; hence their one wish to throw suspicion upon all austerity and terseness, upon all fiery and energetic movement, and upon every full and delicate play of muscles. they have conspired to twist nature and the names of things completely round, and for the future to speak of health only there where we see weakness, and to speak of illness and excitability where for our part we see genuine vigour. from which it follows that david strauss is to them a classical author. if only this dulness were of a severely logical order! but simplicity and austerity in thought are precisely what these weaklings have lost, and in their hands even our language has become illogically tangled. as a proof of this, let any one try to translate strauss's style into latin: in the case of kant, be it remembered, this is possible, while with schopenhauer it even becomes an agreeable exercise. the reason why this test fails with strauss's german is not owing to the fact that it is more teutonic than theirs, but because his is distorted and illogical, whereas theirs is lofty and simple. moreover, he who knows how the ancients exerted themselves in order to learn to write and speak correctly, and how the moderns omit to do so, must feel, as schopenhauer says, a positive relief when he can turn from a german book like the one under our notice, to dive into those other works, those ancient works which seem to him still to be written in a new language. "for in these books," says schopenhauer, "i find a regular and fixed language which, throughout, faithfully follows the laws of grammar and orthography, so that i can give up my thoughts completely to their matter; whereas in german i am constantly being disturbed by the author's impudence and his continual attempts to establish his own orthographical freaks and absurd ideas-the swaggering foolery of which disgusts me. it is really a painful sight to see a fine old language, possessed of classical literature, being botched by asses and ignoramuses!" thus schopenhauer's holy anger cries out to us, and you cannot say that you have not been warned. he who turns a deaf ear to such warnings, and who absolutely refuses to relinquish his faith in strauss the classical author, can only be given this last word of advice--to imitate his hero. in any case, try it at your own risk; but you will repent it, not only in your style but in your head, that it may be fulfilled which was spoken by the indian prophet, saying, "he who gnaweth a cow's horn gnaweth in vain and shorteneth his life; for he grindeth away his teeth, yet his belly is empty." xii. by way of concluding, we shall proceed to give our classical prose-writer the promised examples of his style which we have collected. schopenhauer would probably have classed the whole lot as "new documents serving to swell the trumpery jargon of the present day"; for david strauss may be comforted to hear (if what follows can be regarded as a comfort at all) that everybody now writes as he does; some, of course, worse, and that among the blind the one-eyed is king. indeed, we allow him too much when we grant him one eye; but we do this willingly, because strauss does not write so badly as the most infamous of all corrupters of german--the hegelians and their crippled offspring. strauss at least wishes to extricate himself from the mire, and he is already partly out of it; still, he is very far from being on dry land, and he still shows signs of having stammered hegel's prose in youth. in those days, possibly, something was sprained in him, some muscle must have been overstrained. his ear, perhaps, like that of a boy brought up amid the beating of drums, grew dull, and became incapable of detecting those artistically subtle and yet mighty laws of sound, under the guidance of which every writer is content to remain who has been strictly trained in the study of good models. but in this way, as a stylist, he has lost his most valuable possessions, and stands condemned to remain reclining, his life long, on the dangerous and barren shifting sand of newspaper style--that is, if he do not wish to fall back into the hegelian mire. nevertheless, he has succeeded in making himself famous for a couple of hours in our time, and perhaps in another couple of hours people will remember that he was once famous; then, however, night will come, and with her oblivion; and already at this moment, while we are entering his sins against style in the black book, the sable mantle of twilight is falling upon his fame. for he who has sinned against the german language has desecrated the mystery of all our germanity. throughout all the confusion and the changes of races and of customs, the german language alone, as though possessed of some supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has wrought that of the spirit of germany. she alone holds the warrant for this spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands of the modern world. "but di meliora! avaunt, ye pachyderms, avaunt! this is the german language, by means of which men express themselves, and in which great poets have sung and great thinkers have written. hands off!" [10]* [footnote * : translator's note.--nietzsche here proceeds to quote those passages he has culled from the old and the new faith with which he undertakes to substantiate all he has said relative to strauss's style; as, however, these passages, with his comments upon them, lose most of their point when rendered into english, it was thought best to omit them altogether.] to put it in plain words, what we have seen have been feet of clay, and what appeared to be of the colour of healthy flesh was only applied paint. of course, culture-philistinism in germany will be very angry when it hears its one living god referred to as a series of painted idols. he, however, who dares to overthrow its idols will not shrink, despite all indignation, from telling it to its face that it has forgotten how to distinguish between the quick and the dead, the genuine and the counterfeit, the original and the imitation, between a god and a host of idols; that it has completely lost the healthy and manly instinct for what is real and right. it alone deserves to be destroyed; and already the manifestations of its power are sinking; already are its purple honours falling from it; but when the purple falls, its royal wearer soon follows. here i come to the end of my confession of faith. this is the confession of an individual; and what can such an one do against a whole world, even supposing his voice were heard everywhere! in order for the last time to use a precious straussism, his judgment only possesses "that amount of subjective truth which is compatible with a complete lack of objective demonstration"--is not that so, my dear friends? meanwhile, be of good cheer. for the time being let the matter rest at this "amount which is compatible with a complete lack"! for the time being! that is to say, for as long as that is held to be out of season which in reality is always in season, and is now more than ever pressing; i refer to...speaking the truth.[11]* [footnote * : translator's note.--all quotations from the old faith and the new which appear in the above translation have either been taken bodily out of mathilde blind's translation (asher and co., 1873), or are adaptations from that translation.] _______ richard wagner in bayreuth. i. for an event to be great, two things must be united--the lofty sentiment of those who accomplish it, and the lofty sentiment of those who witness it. no event is great in itself, even though it be the disappearance of whole constellations, the destruction of several nations, the establishment of vast empires, or the prosecution of wars at the cost of enormous forces: over things of this sort the breath of history blows as if they were flocks of wool. but it often happens, too, that a man of might strikes a blow which falls without effect upon a stubborn stone; a short, sharp report is heard, and all is over. history is able to record little or nothing of such abortive efforts. hence the anxiety which every one must feel who, observing the approach of an event, wonders whether those about to witness it will be worthy of it. this reciprocity between an act and its reception is always taken into account when anything great or small is to be accomplished; and he who would give anything away must see to it that he find recipients who will do justice to the meaning of his gift. this is why even the work of a great man is not necessarily great when it is short, abortive, or fruitless; for at the moment when he performed it he must have failed to perceive that it was really necessary; he must have been careless in his aim, and he cannot have chosen and fixed upon the time with sufficient caution. chance thus became his master; for there is a very intimate relation between greatness and the instinct which discerns the proper moment at which to act. we therefore leave it to those who doubt wagner's power of discerning the proper time for action, to be concerned and anxious as to whether what is now taking place in bayreuth is really opportune and necessary. to us who are more confident, it is clear that he believes as strongly in the greatness of his feat as in the greatness of feeling in those who are to witness it. be their number great or small, therefore, all those who inspire this faith in wagner should feel extremely honoured; for that it was not inspired by everybody, or by the whole age, or even by the whole german people, as they are now constituted, he himself told us in his dedicatory address of the 22nd of may 1872, and not one amongst us could, with any show of conviction, assure him of the contrary. "i had only you to turn to," he said, "when i sought those who i thought would be in sympathy with my plans,-you who are the most personal friends of my own particular art, my work and activity: only you could i invite to help me in my work, that it might be presented pure and whole to those who manifest a genuine interest in my art, despite the fact that it has hitherto made its appeal to them only in a disfigured and adulterated form." it is certain that in bayreuth even the spectator is a spectacle worth seeing. if the spirit of some observant sage were to return, after the absence of a century, and were to compare the most remarkable movements in the present world of culture, he would find much to interest him there. like one swimming in a lake, who encounters a current of warm water issuing from a hot spring, in bayreuth he would certainly feel as though he had suddenly plunged into a more temperate element, and would tell himself that this must rise out of a distant and deeper source: the surrounding mass of water, which at all events is more common in origin, does not account for it. in this way, all those who assist at the bayreuth festival will seem like men out of season; their raison-d'etre and the forces which would seem to account for them are elsewhere, and their home is not in the present age. i realise ever more clearly that the scholar, in so far as he is entirely the man of his own day, can only be accessible to all that wagner does and thinks by means of parody,--and since everything is parodied nowadays, he will even get the event of bayreuth reproduced for him, through the very un-magic lanterns of our facetious art-critics. and one ought to be thankful if they stop at parody; for by means of it a spirit of aloofness and animosity finds a vent which might otherwise hit upon a less desirable mode of expression. now, the observant sage already mentioned could not remain blind to this unusual sharpness and tension of contrasts. they who hold by gradual development as a kind of moral law must be somewhat shocked at the sight of one who, in the course of a single lifetime, succeeds in producing something absolutely new. being dawdlers themselves, and insisting upon slowness as a principle, they are very naturally vexed by one who strides rapidly ahead, and they wonder how on earth he does it. no omens, no periods of transition, and no concessions preceded the enterprise at bayreuth; no one except wagner knew either the goal or the long road that was to lead to it. in the realm of art it signifies, so to speak, the first circumnavigation of the world, and by this voyage not only was there discovered an apparently new art, but art itself. in view of this, all modern arts, as arts of luxury which have degenerated through having been insulated, have become almost worthless. and the same applies to the nebulous and inconsistent reminiscences of a genuine art, which we as modern europeans derive from the greeks; let them rest in peace, unless they are now able to shine of their own accord in the light of a new interpretation. the last hour has come for a good many things; this new art is a clairvoyante that sees ruin approaching--not for art alone. her warning voice must strike the whole of our prevailing civilisation with terror the instant the laughter which its parodies have provoked subsides. let it laugh and enjoy itself for yet a while longer! and as for us, the disciples of this revived art, we shall have time and inclination for thoughtfulness, deep thoughtfulness. all the talk and noise about art which has been made by civilisation hitherto must seem like shameless obtrusiveness; everything makes silence a duty with us--the quinquennial silence of the pythagoreans. which of us has not soiled his hands and heart in the disgusting idolatry of modern culture? which of us can exist without the waters of purification? who does not hear the voice which cries, "be silent and cleansed"? be silent and cleansed! only the merit of being included among those who give ear to this voice will grant even us the lofty look necessary to view the event at bayreuth; and only upon this look depends the great future of the event. when on that dismal and cloudy day in may 1872, after the foundation stone had been laid on the height of bayreuth, amid torrents of rain, and while wagner was driving back to the town with a small party of us, he was exceptionally silent, and there was that indescribable look in his eyes as of one who has turned his gaze deeply inwards. the day happened to be the first of his sixtieth year, and his whole past now appeared as but a long preparation for this great moment. it is almost a recognised fact that in times of exceptional danger, or at all decisive and culminating points in their lives, men see the remotest and most recent events of their career with singular vividness, and in one rapid inward glance obtain a sort of panorama of a whole span of years in which every event is faithfully depicted. what, for instance, must alexander the great have seen in that instant when he caused asia and europe to be drunk out of the same goblet? but what went through wagner's mind on that day--how he became what he is, and what he will be--we only can imagine who are nearest to him, and can follow him, up to a certain point, in his self-examination; but through his eyes alone is it possible for us to understand his grand work, and by the help of this understanding vouch for its fruitfulness. ii. it were strange if what a man did best and most liked to do could not be traced in the general outline of his life, and in the case of those who are remarkably endowed there is all the more reason for supposing that their life will present not only the counterpart of their character, as in the case of every one else, but that it will present above all the counterpart of their intellect and their most individual tastes. the life of the epic poet will have a dash of the epos in it--as from all accounts was the case with goethe, whom the germans very wrongly regarded only as a lyrist--and the life of the dramatist will probably be dramatic. the dramatic element in wagner's development cannot be ignored, from the time when his ruling passion became self-conscious and took possession of his whole being. from that time forward there is an end to all groping, straying, and sprouting of offshoots, and over his most tortuous deviations and excursions, over the often eccentric disposition of his plans, a single law and will are seen to rule, in which we have the explanation of his actions, however strange this explanation may sometimes appear. there was, however, an ante-dramatic period in wagner's life--his childhood and youth-which it is impossible to approach without discovering innumerable problems. at this period there seems to be no promise yet of himself, and what one might now, in a retrospect, regard as a pledge for his future greatness, amounts to no more than a juxtaposition of traits which inspire more dismay than hope; a restless and excitable spirit, nervously eager to undertake a hundred things at the same time, passionately fond of almost morbidly exalted states of mind, and ready at any moment to veer completely round from calm and profound meditation to a state of violence and uproar. in his case there were no hereditary or family influences at work to constrain him to the sedulous study of one particular art. painting, versifying, acting, and music were just as much within his reach as the learning and the career of a scholar; and the superficial inquirer into this stage of his life might even conclude that he was born to be a dilettante. the small world within the bounds of which he grew up was not of the kind we should choose to be the home of an artist. he ran the constant risk of becoming infected by that dangerously dissipated attitude of mind in which a person will taste of everything, as also by that condition of slackness resulting from the fragmentary knowledge of all things, which is so characteristic of university towns. his feelings were easily roused and but indifferently satisfied; wherever the boy turned he found himself surrounded by a wonderful and would-be learned activity, to which the garish theatres presented a ridiculous contrast, and the entrancing strains of music a perplexing one. now, to the observer who sees things relatively, it must seem strange that the modern man who happens to be gifted with exceptional talent should as a child and a youth so seldom be blessed with the quality of ingenuousness and of simple individuality, that he is so little able to have these qualities at all. as a matter of fact, men of rare talent, like goethe and wagner, much more often attain to ingenuousness in manhood than during the more tender years of childhood and youth. and this is especially so with the artist, who, being born with a more than usual capacity for imitating, succumbs to the morbid multiformity of modern life as to a virulent disease of infancy. as a child he will more closely resemble an old man. the wonderfully accurate and original picture of youth which wagner gives us in the siegfried of the nibelungen ring could only have been conceived by a man, and by one who had discovered his youthfulness but late in life. wagner's maturity, like his adolesence, was also late in making its appearance, and he is thus, in this respect alone, the very reverse of the precocious type. the appearance of his moral and intellectual strength was the prelude to the drama of his soul. and how different it then became! his nature seems to have been simplified at one terrible stroke, and divided against itself into two instincts or spheres. from its innermost depths there gushes forth a passionate will which, like a rapid mountain torrent, endeavours to make its way through all paths, ravines, and crevices, in search of light and power. only a force completely free and pure was strong enough to guide this will to all that is good and beneficial. had it been combined with a narrow intelligence, a will with such a tyrannical and boundless desire might have become fatal; in any case, an exit into the open had to be found for it as quickly as possible, whereby it could rush into pure air and sunshine. lofty aspirations, which continually meet with failure, ultimately turn to evil. the inadequacy of means for obtaining success may, in certain circumstances, be the result of an inexorable fate, and not necessarily of a lack of strength; but he who under such circumstances cannot abandon his aspirations, despite the inadequacy of his means, will only become embittered, and consequently irritable and intolerant. he may possibly seek the cause of his failure in other people; he may even, in a fit of passion, hold the whole world guilty; or he may turn defiantly down secret byways and secluded lanes, or resort to violence. in this way, noble natures, on their road to the most high, may turn savage. even among those who seek but their own personal moral purity, among monks and anchorites, men are to be found who, undermined and devoured by failure, have become barbarous and hopelessly morbid. there was a spirit full of love and calm belief, full of goodness and infinite tenderness, hostile to all violence and self-deterioration, and abhorring the sight of a soul in bondage. and it was this spirit which manifested itself to wagner. it hovered over him as a consoling angel, it covered him with its wings, and showed him the true path. at this stage we bring the other side of wagner's nature into view: but how shall we describe this other side? the characters an artist creates are not himself, but the succession of these characters, to which it is clear he is greatly attached, must at all events reveal something of his nature. now try and recall rienzi, the flying dutchman and senta, tannhauser and elizabeth, lohengrin and elsa, tristan and marke, hans sachs, woden and brunhilda,--all these characters are correlated by a secret current of ennobling and broadening morality which flows through them and becomes ever purer and clearer as it progresses. and at this point we enter with respectful reserve into the presence of the most hidden development in wagner's own soul. in what other artist do we meet with the like of this, in the same proportion? schiller's characters, from the robbers to wallenstein and tell, do indeed pursue an ennobling course, and likewise reveal something of their author's development; but in wagner the standard is higher and the distance covered is much greater. in the nibelungen ring, for instance, where brunhilda is awakened by siegfried, i perceive the most moral music i have ever heard. here wagner attains to such a high level of sacred feeling that our mind unconsciously wanders to the glistening ice-and snow-peaks of the alps, to find a likeness there;-so pure, isolated, inaccessible, chaste, and bathed in love-beams does nature here display herself, that clouds and tempests--yea, and even the sublime itself--seem to lie beneath her. now, looking down from this height upon tannhauser and the flying dutchman, we begin to perceive how the man in wagner was evolved: how restlessly and darkly he began; how tempestuously he strove to gratify his desires, to acquire power and to taste those rapturous delights from which he often fled in disgust; how he wished to throw off a yoke, to forget, to be negative, and to renounce everything. the whole torrent plunged, now into this valley, now into that, and flooded the most secluded chinks and crannies. in the night of these semi-subterranean convulsions a star appeared and glowed high above him with melancholy vehemence; as soon as he recognised it, he named it fidelity--unselfish fidelity. why did this star seem to him the brightest and purest of all? what secret meaning had the word "fidelity" to his whole being? for he has graven its image and problems upon all his thoughts and compositions. his works contain almost a complete series of the rarest and most beautiful examples of fidelity: that of brother to sister, of friend to friend, of servant to master; of elizabeth to tannhauser, of senta to the dutchman, of elsa to lohengrin, of isolde, kurvenal, and marke to tristan, of brunhilda to the most secret vows of woden--and many others. it is wagner's most personal and most individual experience, which he reveres like a religious mystery, and which he calls fidelity; he never wearies of breathing it into hundreds of different characters, and of endowing it with the sublimest that in him lies, so overflowing is his gratitude. it is, in short, the recognition of the fact that the two sides of his nature remained faithful to each other, that out of free and unselfish love, the creative, ingenuous, and brilliant side kept loyally abreast of the dark, the intractable, and the tyrannical side. iii. the relation of the two constituent forces to each other, and the yielding of the one to the other, was the great requisite by which alone he could remain wholly and truly himself. at the same time, this was the only thing he could not control, and over which he could only keep a watch, while the temptations to infidelity and its threatening dangers beset him more and more. the uncertainty derived therefrom is an overflowing source of suffering for those in process of development. each of his instincts made constant efforts to attain to unmeasured heights, and each of the capacities he possessed for enjoying life seemed to long to tear itself away from its companions in order to seek satisfaction alone; the greater their exuberance the more terrific was the tumult, and the more bitter the competition between them. in addition, accident and life fired the desire for power and splendour in him; but he was more often tormented by the cruel necessity of having to live at all, while all around him lay obstacles and snares. how is it possible for any one to remain faithful here, to be completely steadfast? this doubt often depressed him, and he expresses it, as an artist expressed his doubt, in artistic forms. elizabeth, for instance, can only suffer, pray, and die; she saves the fickle and intemperate man by her loyalty, though not for this life. in the path of every true artist, whose lot is cast in these modern days, despair and danger are strewn. he has many means whereby he can attain to honour and might; peace and plenty persistently offer themselves to him, but only in that form recognised by the modern man, which to the straightforward artist is no better than choke-damp. in this temptation, and in the act of resisting it, lie the dangers that threaten him--dangers arising from his disgust at the means modernity offers him of acquiring pleasure and esteem, and from the indignation provoked by the selfish ease of modern society. imagine wagner's filling an official position, as for instance that of bandmaster at public and court theatres, both of which positions he has held: think how he, a serious artist, must have struggled in order to enforce seriousness in those very places which, to meet the demands of modern conventions, are designed with almost systematic frivolity to appeal only to the frivolous. think how he must have partially succeeded, though only to fail on the whole. how constantly disgust must have been at his heels despite his repeated attempts to flee it, how he failed to find the haven to which he might have repaired, and how he had ever to return to the bohemians and outlaws of our society, as one of them. if he himself broke loose from any post or position, he rarely found a better one in its stead, while more than once distress was all that his unrest brought him. thus wagner changed his associates, his dwelling-place and country, and when we come to comprehend the nature of the circles into which he gravitated, we can hardly realise how he was able to tolerate them for any length of time. the greater half of his past seems to be shrouded in heavy mist; for a long time he appears to have had no general hopes, but only hopes for the morrow, and thus, although he reposed no faith in the future, he was not driven to despair. he must have felt like a nocturnal traveller, broken with fatigue, exasperated from want of sleep, and tramping wearily along beneath a heavy burden, who, far from fearing the sudden approach of death, rather longs for it as something exquisitely charming. his burden, the road and the night--all would disappear! the thought was a temptation to him. again and again, buoyed up by his temporary hopes, he plunged anew into the turmoil of life, and left all apparatus behind him. but his method of doing this, his lack of moderation in the doing, betrayed what a feeble hold his hopes had upon him; how they were only stimulants to which he had recourse in an extremity. the conflict between his aspirations and his partial or total inability to realise them, tormented him like a thorn in the flesh. infuriated by constant privations, his imagination lapsed into the dissipated, whenever the state of want was momentarily relieved. life grew ever more and more complicated for him; but the means and artifices that he discovered in his art as a dramatist became evermore resourceful and daring. albeit, these were little more than palpable dramatic makeshifts and expedients, which deceived, and were invented, only for the moment. in a flash such means occurred to his mind and were used up. examined closely and without prepossession, wagner's life, to recall one of schopenhauer's expressions, might be said to consist largely of comedy, not to mention burlesque. and what the artist's feelings must have been, conscious as he was, during whole periods of his life, of this undignified element in it,--he who more than any one else, perhaps, breathed freely only in sublime and more than sublime spheres,-the thinker alone can form any idea. in the midst of this mode of life, a detailed description of which is necessary in order to inspire the amount of pity, awe, and admiration which are its due, he developed a talent for acquiring knowledge, which even in a german--a son of the nation learned above all others--was really extraordinary. and with this talent yet another danger threatened wagner--a danger more formidable than that involved in a life which was apparently without either a stay or a rule, borne hither and thither by disturbing illusions. from a novice trying his strength, wagner became a thorough master of music and of the theatre, as also a prolific inventor in the preliminary technical conditions for the execution of art. no one will any longer deny him the glory of having given us the supreme model for lofty artistic execution on a large scale. but he became more than this, and in order so to develop, he, no less than any one else in like circumstances, had to reach the highest degree of culture by virtue of his studies. and wonderfully he achieved this end! it is delightful to follow his progress. from all sides material seemed to come unto him and into him, and the larger and heavier the resulting structure became, the more rigid was the arch of the ruling and ordering thought supporting it. and yet access to the sciences and arts has seldom been made more difficult for any man than for wagner; so much so that he had almost to break his own road through to them. the reviver of the simple drama, the discoverer of the position due to art in true human society, the poetic interpreter of bygone views of life, the philosopher, the historian, the aesthete and the critic, the master of languages, the mythologist and the myth poet, who was the first to include all these wonderful and beautiful products of primitive times in a single ring, upon which he engraved the runic characters of his thoughts-what a wealth of knowledge must wagner have accumulated and commanded, in order to have become all that! and yet this mass of material was just as powerless to impede the action of his will as a matter of detail--however attractive--was to draw his purpose from its path. for the exceptional character of such conduct to be appreciated fully, it should be compared with that of goethe,-he who, as a student and as a sage, resembled nothing so much as a huge river-basin, which does not pour all its water into the sea, but spends as much of it on its way there, and at its various twists and turns, as it ultimately disgorges at its mouth. true, a nature like goethe's not only has, but also engenders, more pleasure than any other; there is more mildness and noble profligacy in it; whereas the tenor and tempo of wagner's power at times provoke both fear and flight. but let him fear who will, we shall only be the more courageous, in that we shall be permitted to come face to face with a hero who, in regard to modern culture, "has never learned the meaning of fear." but neither has he learned to look for repose in history and philosophy, nor to derive those subtle influences from their study which tend to paralyse action or to soften a man unduly. neither the creative nor the militant artist in him was ever diverted from his purpose by learning and culture. the moment his constructive powers direct him, history becomes yielding clay in his hands. his attitude towards it then differs from that of every scholar, and more nearly resembles the relation of the ancient greek to his myths; that is to say, his subject is something he may fashion, and about which he may write verses. he will naturally do this with love and a certain becoming reverence, but with the sovereign right of the creator notwithstanding. and precisely because history is more supple and more variable than a dream to him, he can invest the most individual case with the characteristics of a whole age, and thus attain to a vividness of narrative of which historians are quite incapable. in what work of art, of any kind, has the body and soul of the middle ages ever been so thoroughly depicted as in lohengrin? and will not the meistersingers continue to acquaint men, even in the remotest ages to come, with the nature of germany's soul? will they not do more than acquaint men of it? will they not represent its very ripest fruit--the fruit of that spirit which ever wishes to reform and not to overthrow, and which, despite the broad couch of comfort on which it lies, has not forgotten how to endure the noblest discomfort when a worthy and novel deed has to be accomplished? and it is just to this kind of discomfort that wagner always felt himself drawn by his study of history and philosophy: in them he not only found arms and coats of mail, but what he felt in their presence above all was the inspiring breath which is wafted from the graves of all great fighters, sufferers, and thinkers. nothing distinguishes a man more from the general pattern of the age than the use he makes of history and philosophy. according to present views, the former seems to have been allotted the duty of giving modern man breathing-time, in the midst of his panting and strenuous scurry towards his goal, so that he may, for a space, imagine he has slipped his leash. what montaigne was as an individual amid the turmoil of the reformation--that is to say, a creature inwardly coming to peace with himself, serenely secluded in himself and taking breath, as his best reader, shakespeare, understood him, --this is what history is to the modern spirit today. the fact that the germans, for a whole century, have devoted themselves more particularly to the study of history, only tends to prove that they are the stemming, retarding, and becalming force in the activity of modern society--a circumstance which some, of course, will place to their credit. on the whole, however, it is a dangerous symptom when the mind of a nation turns with preference to the study of the past. it is a sign of flagging strength, of decline and degeneration; it denotes that its people are perilously near to falling victims to the first fever that may happen to be rife --the political fever among others. now, in the history of modern thought, our scholars are an example of this condition of weakness as opposed to all reformative and revolutionary activity. the mission they have chosen is not of the noblest; they have rather been content to secure smug happiness for their kind, and little more. every independent and manly step leaves them halting in the background, although it by no means outstrips history. for the latter is possessed of vastly different powers, which only natures like wagner have any notion of; but it requires to be written in a much more earnest and severe spirit, by much more vigorous students, and with much less optimism than has been the case hitherto. in fact, it requires to be treated quite differently from the way german scholars have treated it until now. in all their works there is a continual desire to embellish, to submit and to be content, while the course of events invariably seems to have their approbation. it is rather the exception for one of them to imply that he is satisfied only because things might have turned out worse; for most of them believe, almost as a matter of course, that everything has been for the best simply because it has only happened once. were history not always a disguised christian theodicy, were it written with more justice and fervent feeling, it would be the very last thing on earth to be made to serve the purpose it now serves, namely, that of an opiate against everything subversive and novel. and philosophy is in the same plight: all that the majority demand of it is, that it may teach them to understand approximate facts--very approximate facts--in order that they may then become adapted to them. and even its noblest exponents press its soporific and comforting powers so strongly to the fore, that all lovers of sleep and of loafing must think that their aim and the aim of philosophy are one. for my part, the most important question philosophy has to decide seems to be, how far things have acquired an unalterable stamp and form, and, once this question has been answered, i think it the duty of philosophy unhesitatingly and courageously to proceed with the task of improving that part of the world which has been recognised as still susceptible to change. but genuine philosophers do, as a matter of fact, teach this doctrine themselves, inasmuch as they work at endeavouring to alter the very changeable views of men, and do not keep their opinions to themselves. genuine disciples of genuine philosophies also teach this doctrine; for, like wagner, they understand the art of deriving a more decisive and inflexible will from their master's teaching, rather than an opiate or a sleeping draught. wagner is most philosophical where he is most powerfully active and heroic. it was as a philosopher that he went, not only through the fire of various philosophical systems without fear, but also through the vapours of science and scholarship, while remaining ever true to his highest self. and it was this highest self which exacted from his versatile spirit works as complete as his were, which bade him suffer and learn, that he might accomplish such works. iv. the history of the development of culture since the time of the greeks is short enough, when we take into consideration the actual ground it covers, and ignore the periods during which man stood still, went backwards, hesitated or strayed. the hellenising of the world--and to make this possible, the orientalising of hellenism--that double mission of alexander the great, still remains the most important event: the old question whether a foreign civilisation may be transplanted is still the problem that the peoples of modern times are vainly endeavouring to solve. the rhythmic play of those two factors against each other is the force that has determined the course of history heretofore. thus christianity appears, for instance, as a product of oriental antiquity, which was thought out and pursued to its ultimate conclusions by men, with almost intemperate thoroughness. as its influence began to decay, the power of hellenic culture was revived, and we are now experiencing phenomena so strange that they would hang in the air as unsolved problems, if it were not possible, by spanning an enormous gulf of time, to show their relation to analogous phenomena in hellenistic culture. thus, between kant and the eleatics, schopenhauer and empedocles, aeschylus and wagner, there is so much relationship, so many things in common, that one is vividly impressed with the very relative nature of all notions of time. it would even seem as if a whole diversity of things were really all of a piece, and that time is only a cloud which makes it hard for our eyes to perceive the oneness of them. in the history of the exact sciences we are perhaps most impressed by the close bond uniting us with the days of alexander and ancient greece. the pendulum of history seems merely to have swung back to that point from which it started when it plunged forth into unknown and mysterious distance. the picture represented by our own times is by no means a new one: to the student of history it must always seem as though he were merely in the presence of an old familiar face, the features of which he recognises. in our time the spirit of greek culture is scattered broadcast. while forces of all kinds are pressing one upon the other, and the fruits of modern art and science are offering themselves as a means of exchange, the pale outline of hellenism is beginning to dawn faintly in the distance. the earth which, up to the present, has been more than adequately orientalised, begins to yearn once more for hellenism. he who wishes to help her in this respect will certainly need to be gifted for speedy action and to have wings on his heels, in order to synthetise the multitudinous and still undiscovered facts of science and the many conflicting divisions of talent so as to reconnoitre and rule the whole enormous field. it is now necessary that a generation of anti-alexanders should arise, endowed with the supreme strength necessary for gathering up, binding together, and joining the individual threads of the fabric, so as to prevent their being scattered to the four winds. the object is not to cut the gordian knot of greek culture after the manner adopted by alexander, and then to leave its frayed ends fluttering in all directions; it is rather to bind it after it has been loosed. that is our task to-day. in the person of wagner i recognise one of these anti-alexanders: he rivets and locks together all that is isolated, weak, or in any way defective; if i may be allowed to use a medical expression, he has an astringent power. and in this respect he is one of the greatest civilising forces of his age. he dominates art, religion, and folklore, yet he is the reverse of a polyhistor or of a mere collecting and classifying spirit; for he constructs with the collected material, and breathes life into it, and is a simplifier of the universe. we must not be led away from this idea by comparing the general mission which his genius imposed upon him with the much narrower and more immediate one which we are at present in the habit of associating with the name of wagner. he is expected to effect a reform in the theatre world; but even supposing he should succeed in doing this, what would then have been done towards the accomplishment of that higher, more distant mission? but even with this lesser theatrical reform, modern man would also be altered and reformed; for everything is so intimately related in this world, that he who removes even so small a thing as a rivet from the framework shatters and destroys the whole edifice. and what we here assert, with perhaps seeming exaggeration, of wagner's activity would hold equally good of any other genuine reform. it is quite impossible to reinstate the art of drama in its purest and highest form without effecting changes everywhere in the customs of the people, in the state, in education, and in social intercourse. when love and justice have become powerful in one department of life, namely in art, they must, in accordance with the law of their inner being, spread their influence around them, and can no more return to the stiff stillness of their former pupal condition. in order even to realise how far the attitude of the arts towards life is a sign of their decline, and how far our theatres are a disgrace to those who build and visit them, everything must be learnt over again, and that which is usual and commonplace should be regarded as something unusual and complicated. an extraordinary lack of clear judgment, a badly-concealed lust of pleasure, of entertainment at any cost, learned scruples, assumed airs of importance, and trifling with the seriousness of art on the part of those who represent it; brutality of appetite and money-grubbing on the part of promoters; the empty-mindedness and thoughtlessness of society, which only thinks of the people in so far as these serve or thwart its purpose, and which attends theatres and concerts without giving a thought to its duties,--all these things constitute the stifling and deleterious atmosphere of our modern art conditions: when, however, people like our men of culture have grown accustomed to it, they imagine that it is a condition of their healthy existence, and would immediately feel unwell if, for any reason, they were compelled to dispense with it for a while. in point of fact, there is but one speedy way of convincing oneself of the vulgarity, weirdness, and confusion of our theatrical institutions, and that is to compare them with those which once flourished in ancient greece. if we knew nothing about the greeks, it would perhaps be impossible to assail our present conditions at all, and objections made on the large scale conceived for the first time by wagner would have been regarded as the dreams of people who could only be at home in outlandish places. "for men as we now find them," people would have retorted, "art of this modern kind answers the purpose and is fitting-and men have never been different." but they have been very different, and even now there are men who are far from satisfied with the existing state of affairs--the fact of bayreuth alone demonstrates this point. here you will find prepared and initiated spectators, and the emotion of men conscious of being at the very zenith of their happiness, who concentrate their whole being on that happiness in order to strengthen themselves for a higher and more far-reaching purpose. here you will find the most noble self-abnegation on the part of the artist, and the finest of all spectacles --that of a triumphant creator of works which are in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic triumphs. does it not seem almost like a fairy tale, to be able to come face to face with such a personality? must not they who take any part whatsoever, active or passive, in the proceedings at bayreuth, already feel altered and rejuvenated, and ready to introduce reforms and to effect renovations in other spheres of life? has not a haven been found for all wanderers on high and desert seas, and has not peace settled over the face of the waters? must not he who leaves these spheres of ruling profundity and loneliness for the very differently ordered world with its plains and lower levels, cry continually like isolde: "oh, how could i bear it? how can i still bear it?" and should he be unable to endure his joy and his sorrow, or to keep them egotistically to himself, he will avail himself from that time forward of every opportunity of making them known to all. "where are they who are suffering under the yoke of modern institutions?" he will inquire. "where are my natural allies, with whom i may struggle against the ever waxing and ever more oppressive pretensions of modern erudition? for at present, at least, we have but one enemy--at present!--and it is that band of aesthetes, to whom the word bayreuth means the completest rout--they have taken no share in the arrangements, they were rather indignant at the whole movement, or else availed themselves effectively of the deaf-ear policy, which has now become the trusty weapon of all very superior opposition. but this proves that their animosity and knavery were ineffectual in destroying wagner's spirit or in hindering the accomplishment of his plans; it proves even more, for it betrays their weakness and the fact that all those who are at present in possession of power will not be able to withstand many more attacks. the time is at hand for those who would conquer and triumph; the vastest empires lie at their mercy, a note of interrogation hangs to the name of all present possessors of power, so far as possession may be said to exist in this respect. thus educational institutions are said to be decaying, and everywhere individuals are to be found who have secretly deserted them. if only it were possible to invite those to open rebellion and public utterances, who even now are thoroughly dissatisfied with the state of affairs in this quarter! if only it were possible to deprive them of their faint heart and lukewarmness! i am convinced that the whole spirit of modern culture would receive its deadliest blow if the tacit support which these natures give it could in any way be cancelled. among scholars, only those would remain loyal to the old order of things who had been infected with the political mania or who were literary hacks in any form whatever. the repulsive organisation which derives its strength from the violence and injustice upon which it relies--that is to say, from the state and society--and which sees its advantage in making the latter ever more evil and unscrupulous,--this structure which without such support would be something feeble and effete, only needs to be despised in order to perish. he who is struggling to spread justice and love among mankind must regard this organisation as the least significant of the obstacles in his way; for he will only encounter his real opponents once he has successfully stormed and conquered modern culture, which is nothing more than their outworks. for us, bayreuth is the consecration of the dawn of the combat. no greater injustice could be done to us than to suppose that we are concerned with art alone, as though it were merely a means of healing or stupefying us, which we make use of in order to rid our consciousness of all the misery that still remains in our midst. in the image of this tragic art work at bayreuth, we see, rather, the struggle of individuals against everything which seems to oppose them with invincible necessity, with power, law, tradition, conduct, and the whole order of things established. individuals cannot choose a better life than that of holding themselves ready to sacrifice themselves and to die in their fight for love and justice. the gaze which the mysterious eye of tragedy vouchsafes us neither lulls nor paralyses. nevertheless, it demands silence of us as long as it keeps us in view; for art does not serve the purposes of war, but is merely with us to improve our hours of respite, before and during the course of the contest,--to improve those few moments when, looking back, yet dreaming of the future, we seem to understand the symbolical, and are carried away into a refreshing reverie when fatigue overtakes us. day and battle dawn together, the sacred shadows vanish, and art is once more far away from us; but the comfort she dispenses is with men from the earliest hour of day, and never leaves them. wherever he turns, the individual realises only too clearly his own shortcomings, his insufficiency and his incompetence; what courage would he have left were he not previously rendered impersonal by this consecration! the greatest of all torments harassing him, the conflicting beliefs and opinions among men, the unreliability of these beliefs and opinions, and the unequal character of men's abilities--all these things make him hanker after art. we cannot be happy so long as everything about us suffers and causes suffering; we cannot be moral so long as the course of human events is determined by violence, treachery, and injustice; we cannot even be wise, so long as the whole of mankind does not compete for wisdom, and does not lead the individual to the most sober and reasonable form of life and knowledge. how, then, would it be possible to endure this feeling of threefold insufficiency if one were not able to recognise something sublime and valuable in one's struggles, strivings, and defeats, if one did not learn from tragedy how to delight in the rhythm of the great passions, and in their victim? art is certainly no teacher or educator of practical conduct: the artist is never in this sense an instructor or adviser; the things after which a tragic hero strives are not necessarily worth striving after. as in a dream so in art, the valuation of things only holds good while we are under its spell. what we, for the time being, regard as so worthy of effort, and what makes us sympathise with the tragic hero when he prefers death to renouncing the object of his desire, this can seldom retain the same value and energy when transferred to everyday life: that is why art is the business of the man who is recreating himself. the strife it reveals to us is a simplification of life's struggle; its problems are abbreviations of the infinitely complicated phenomena of man's actions and volitions. but from this very fact--that it is the reflection, so to speak, of a simpler world, a more rapid solution of the riddle of life--art derives its greatness and indispensability. no one who suffers from life can do without this reflection, just as no one can exist without sleep. the more difficult the science of natural laws becomes, the more fervently we yearn for the image of this simplification, if only for an instant; and the greater becomes the tension between each man's general knowledge of things and his moral and spiritual faculties. art is with us to prevent the bow from snapping. the individual must be consecrated to something impersonal--that is the aim of tragedy: he must forget the terrible anxiety which death and time tend to create in him; for at any moment of his life, at any fraction of time in the whole of his span of years, something sacred may cross his path which will amply compensate him for all his struggles and privations. this means having a sense for the tragic. and if all mankind must perish some day--and who could question this! --it has been given its highest aim for the future, namely, to increase and to live in such unity that it may confront its final extermination as a whole, with one spirit-with a common sense of the tragic: in this one aim all the ennobling influences of man lie locked; its complete repudiation by humanity would be the saddest blow which the soul of the philanthropist could receive. that is how i feel in the matter! there is but one hope and guarantee for the future of man, and that is that his sense for the tragic may not die out. if he ever completely lost it, an agonised cry, the like of which has never been heard, would have to be raised all over the world; for there is no more blessed joy than that which consists in knowing what we know--how tragic thought was born again on earth. for this joy is thoroughly impersonal and general: it is the wild rejoicing of humanity, anent the hidden relationship and progress of all that is human. v. wagner concentrated upon life, past and present, the light of an intelligence strong enough to embrace the most distant regions in its rays. that is why he is a simplifier of the universe; for the simplification of the universe is only possible to him whose eye has been able to master the immensity and wildness of an apparent chaos, and to relate and unite those things which before had lain hopelessly asunder. wagner did this by discovering a connection between two objects which seemed to exist apart from each other as though in separate spheres--that between music and life, and similarly between music and the drama. not that he invented or was the first to create this relationship, for they must always have existed and have been noticeable to all; but, as is usually the case with a great problem, it is like a precious stone which thousands stumble over before one finally picks it up. wagner asked himself the meaning of the fact that an art such as music should have become so very important a feature of the lives of modern men. it is not necessary to think meanly of life in order to suspect a riddle behind this question. on the contrary, when all the great forces of existence are duly considered, and struggling life is regarded as striving mightily after conscious freedom and independence of thought, only then does music seem to be a riddle in this world. should one not answer: music could not have been born in our time? what then does its presence amongst us signify? an accident? a single great artist might certainly be an accident, but the appearance of a whole group of them, such as the history of modern music has to show, a group only once before equalled on earth, that is to say in the time of the greeks,--a circumstance of this sort leads one to think that perhaps necessity rather than accident is at the root of the whole phenomenon. the meaning of this necessity is the riddle which wagner answers. he was the first to recognise an evil which is as widespread as civilisation itself among men; language is everywhere diseased, and the burden of this terrible disease weighs heavily upon the whole of man's development. inasmuch as language has retreated ever more and more from its true province--the expression of strong feelings, which it was once able to convey in all their simplicity--and has always had to strain after the practically impossible achievement of communicating the reverse of feeling, that is to say thought, its strength has become so exhausted by this excessive extension of its duties during the comparatively short period of modern civilisation, that it is no longer able to perform even that function which alone justifies its existence, to wit, the assisting of those who suffer, in communicating with each other concerning the sorrows of existence. man can no longer make his misery known unto others by means of language; hence he cannot really express himself any longer. and under these conditions, which are only vaguely felt at present, language has gradually become a force in itself which with spectral arms coerces and drives humanity where it least wants to go. as soon as they would fain understand one another and unite for a common cause, the craziness of general concepts, and even of the ring of modern words, lays hold of them. the result of this inability to communicate with one another is that every product of their co-operative action bears the stamp of discord, not only because it fails to meet their real needs, but because of the very emptiness of those all-powerful words and notions already mentioned. to the misery already at hand, man thus adds the curse of convention--that is to say, the agreement between words and actions without an agreement between the feelings. just as, during the decline of every art, a point is reached when the morbid accumulation of its means and forms attains to such tyrannical proportions that it oppresses the tender souls of artists and converts these into slaves, so now, in the period of the decline of language, men have become the slaves of words. under this yoke no one is able to show himself as he is, or to express himself artlessly, while only few are able to preserve their individuality in their fight against a culture which thinks to manifest its success, not by the fact that it approaches definite sensations and desires with the view of educating them, but by the fact that it involves the individual in the snare of "definite notions," and teaches him to think correctly: as if there were any value in making a correctly thinking and reasoning being out of man, before one has succeeded in making him a creature that feels correctly. if now the strains of our german masters' music burst upon a mass of mankind sick to this extent, what is really the meaning of these strains? only correct feeling, the enemy of all convention, of all artificial estrangement and misunderstandings between man and man: this music signifies a return to nature, and at the same time a purification and remodelling of it; for the need of such a return took shape in the souls of the most loving of men, and, through their art, nature transformed into love makes its voice heard. let us regard this as one of wagner's answers to the question, what does music mean in our time? for he has a second. the relation between music and life is not merely that existing between one kind of language and another; it is, besides, the relation between the perfect world of sound and that of sight. regarded merely as a spectacle, and compared with other and earlier manifestations of human life, the existence of modern man is characterised by indescribable indigence and exhaustion, despite the unspeakable garishness at which only the superficial observer rejoices. if one examines a little more closely the impression which this vehement and kaleidoscopic play of colours makes upon one, does not the whole seem to blaze with the shimmer and sparkle of innumerable little stones borrowed from former civilisations? is not everything one sees merely a complex of inharmonious bombast, aped gesticulations, arrogant superficiality?--a ragged suit of motley for the naked and the shivering? a seeming dance of joy enjoined upon a sufferer? airs of overbearing pride assumed by one who is sick to the backbone? and the whole moving with such rapidity and confusion that it is disguised and masked-sordid impotence, devouring dissension, assiduous ennui, dishonest distress! the appearance of present-day humanity is all appearance, and nothing else: in what he now represents man himself has become obscured and concealed; and the vestiges of the creative faculty in art, which still cling to such countries as france and italy, are all concentrated upon this one task of concealing. wherever form is still in demand in society, conversation, literary style, or the relations between governments, men have unconsciously grown to believe that it is adequately met by a kind of agreeable dissimulation, quite the reverse of genuine form conceived as a necessary relation between the proportions of a figure, having no concern whatever with the notions "agreeable" or "disagreeable," simply because it is necessary and not optional. but even where form is not openly exacted by civilised people, there is no greater evidence of this requisite relation of proportions; a striving after the agreeable dissimulation, already referred to, is on the contrary noticeable, though it is never so successful even if it be more eager than in the first instance. how far this dissimulation is agreeable at times, and why it must please everybody to see how modern men at least endeavour to dissemble, every one is in a position to judge, according to, the extent to which he himself may happen to be modern. "only galley slaves know each other," says tasso, "and if we mistake others, it is only out of courtesy, and with the hope that they, in their turn, should mistake us." now, in this world of forms and intentional misunderstandings, what purpose is served by the appearance of souls overflowing with music? they pursue the course of grand and unrestrained rhythm with noble candour--with a passion more than personal; they glow with the mighty and peaceful fire of music, which wells up to the light of day from their unexhausted depths--and all this to what purpose? by means of these souls music gives expression to the longing that it feels for the company of its natural ally, gymnastics--that is to say, its necessary form in the order of visible phenomena. in its search and craving for this ally, it becomes the arbiter of the whole visible world and the world of mere lying appearance of the present day. this is wagner's second answer to the question, what is the meaning of music in our times? "help me," he cries to all who have ears to hear, "help me to discover that culture of which my music, as the rediscovered language of correct feeling, seems to foretell the existence. bear in mind that the soul of music now wishes to acquire a body, that, by means of you all, it would find its way to visibleness in movements, deeds, institutions, and customs!" there are some men who understand this summons, and their number will increase; they have also understood, for the first time, what it means to found the state upon music. it is something that the ancient hellenes not only understood but actually insisted upon; and these enlightened creatures would just as soon have sentenced the modern state to death as modern men now condemn the church. the road to such a new though not unprecedented goal would lead to this: that we should be compelled to acknowledge where the worst faults of our educational system lie, and why it has failed hitherto to elevate us out of barbarity: in reality, it lacks the stirring and creative soul of music; its requirements and arrangements are moreover the product of a period in which the music, to which we seem to attach so much importance, had not yet been born. our education is the most antiquated factor of our present conditions, and it is so more precisely in regard to the one new educational force by which it makes men of to-day in advance of those of bygone centuries, or by which it would make them in advance of their remote ancestors, provided only they did not persist so rashly in hurrying forward in meek response to the scourge of the moment. through not having allowed the soul of music to lodge within them, they have no notion of gymnastics in the greek and wagnerian sense; and that is why their creative artists are condemned to despair, as long as they wish to dispense with music as a guide in a new world of visible phenomena. talent may develop as much as may be desired: it either comes too late or too soon, and at all events out of season; for it is in the main superfluous and abortive, just as even the most perfect and the highest products of earlier times which serve modern artists as models are superfluous and abortive, and add not a stone to the edifice already begun. if their innermost consciousness can perceive no new forms, but only the old ones belonging to the past, they may certainly achieve something for history, but not for life; for they are already dead before having expired. he, however, who feels genuine and fruitful life in him, which at present can only be described by the one term "music," could he allow himself to be deceived for one moment into nursing solid hopes by this something which exhausts all its energy in producing figures, forms, and styles? he stands above all such vanities, and as little expects to meet with artistic wonders outside his ideal world of sound as with great writers bred on our effete and discoloured language. rather than lend an ear to illusive consolations, he prefers to turn his unsatisfied gaze stoically upon our modern world, and if his heart be not warm enough to feel pity, let it at least feel bitterness and hate! it were better for him to show anger and scorn than to take cover in spurious contentment or steadily to drug himself, as our "friends of art" are wont to do. but if he can do more than condemn and despise, if he is capable of loving, sympathising, and assisting in the general work of construction, he must still condemn, notwithstanding, in order to prepare the road for his willing soul. in order that music may one day exhort many men to greater piety and make them privy to her highest aims, an end must first be made to the whole of the pleasure-seeking relations which men now enjoy with such a sacred art. behind all our artistic pastimes-theatres, museums, concerts, and the like--that aforementioned "friend of art" is to be found, and he it is who must be suppressed: the favour he now finds at the hands of the state must be changed into oppression; public opinion, which lays such particular stress upon the training of this love of art, must be routed by better judgment. meanwhile we must reckon the declared enemy of art as our best and most useful ally; for the object of his animosity is precisely art as understood by the "friend of art,"--he knows of no other kind! let him be allowed to call our "friend of art" to account for the nonsensical waste of money occasioned by the building of his theatres and public monuments, the engagement of his celebrated singers and actors, and the support of his utterly useless schools of art and picture-galleries--to say nothing of all the energy, time, and money which every family squanders in pretended "artistic interests." neither hunger nor satiety is to be noticed here, but a dead-and-alive game is played--with the semblance of each, a game invented by the idle desire to produce an effect and to deceive others. or, worse still, art is taken more or less seriously, and then it is itself expected to provoke a kind of hunger and craving, and to fulfil its mission in this artificially induced excitement. it is as if people were afraid of sinking beneath the weight of their loathing and dulness, and invoked every conceivable evil spirit to scare them and drive them about like wild cattle. men hanker after pain, anger, hate, the flush of passion, sudden flight, and breathless suspense, and they appeal to the artist as the conjurer of this demoniacal host. in the spiritual economy of our cultured classes art has become a spurious or ignominious and undignified need--a nonentity or a something evil. the superior and more uncommon artist must be in the throes of a bewildering nightmare in order to be blind to all this, and like a ghost, diffidently and in a quavering voice, he goes on repeating beautiful words which he declares descend to him from higher spheres, but whose sound he can hear only very indistinctly. the artist who happens to be moulded according to the modern pattern, however, regards the dreamy gropings and hesitating speech of his nobler colleague with contempt, and leads forth the whole brawling mob of assembled passions on a leash in order to let them loose upon modern men as he may think fit. for these modern creatures wish rather to be hunted down, wounded, and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves in solitary calm. alone with oneself!--this thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear. when i watch the throngs that move and linger about the streets of a very populous town, and notice no other expression in their faces than one of hunted stupor, i can never help commenting to myself upon the misery of their condition. for them all, art exists only that they may be still more wretched, torpid, insensible, or even more flurried and covetous. for incorrect feeling governs and drills them unremittingly, and does not even give them time to become aware of their misery. should they wish to speak, convention whispers their cue to them, and this makes them forget what they originally intended to say; should they desire to understand one another, their comprehension is maimed as though by a spell: they declare that to be their joy which in reality is but their doom, and they proceed to collaborate in wilfully bringing about their own damnation. thus they have become transformed into perfectly and absolutely different creatures, and reduced to the state of abject slaves of incorrect feeling. vi. i shall only give two instances showing how utterly the sentiment of our time has been perverted, and how completely unconscious the present age is of this perversion. formerly financiers were looked down upon with honest scorn, even though they were recognised as needful; for it was generally admitted that every society must have its viscera. now, however, they are the ruling power in the soul of modern humanity, for they constitute the most covetous portion thereof. in former times people were warned especially against taking the day or the moment too seriously: the nil admirari was recommended and the care of things eternal. now there is but one kind of seriousness left in the modern mind, and it is limited to the news brought by the newspaper and the telegraph. improve each shining hour, turn it to some account and judge it as quickly as possible!--one would think modern men had but one virtue left--presence of mind. unfortunately, it much more closely resembles the omnipresence of disgusting and insatiable cupidity, and spying inquisitiveness become universal. for the question is whether mind is present at all to-day;--but we shall leave this problem for future judges to solve; they, at least, are bound to pass modern men through a sieve. but that this age is vulgar, even we can see now, and it is so because it reveres precisely what nobler ages contemned. if, therefore, it loots all the treasures of bygone wit and wisdom, and struts about in this richest of rich garments, it only proves its sinister consciousness of its own vulgarity in so doing; for it does not don this garb for warmth, but merely in order to mystify its surroundings. the desire to dissemble and to conceal himself seems stronger than the need of protection from the cold in modern man. thus scholars and philosophers of the age do not have recourse to indian and greek wisdom in order to become wise and peaceful: the only purpose of their work seems to be to earn them a fictitious reputation for learning in their own time. the naturalists endeavour to classify the animal outbreaks of violence, ruse and revenge, in the present relations between nations and individual men, as immutable laws of nature. historians are anxiously engaged in proving that every age has its own particular right and special conditions,-with the view of preparing the groundwork of an apology for the day that is to come, when our generation will be called to judgment. the science of government, of race, of commerce, and of jurisprudence, all have that preparatorily apologetic character now; yea, it even seems as though the small amount of intellect which still remains active to-day, and is not used up by the great mechanism of gain and power, has as its sole task the defending--and excusing of the present against what accusers? one asks, surprised. against its own bad conscience. and at this point we plainly discern the task assigned to modern art--that of stupefying or intoxicating, of lulling to sleep or bewildering. by hook or by crook to make conscience unconscious! to assist the modern soul over the sensation of guilt, not to lead it back to innocence! and this for the space of moments only! to defend men against themselves, that their inmost heart may be silenced, that they may turn a deaf ear to its voice! the souls of those few who really feel the utter ignominy of this mission and its terrible humiliation of art, must be filled to the brim with sorrow and pity, but also with a new and overpowering yearning. he who would fain emancipate art, and reinstall its sanctity, now desecrated, must first have freed himself from all contact with modern souls; only as an innocent being himself can he hope to discover the innocence of art, for he must be ready to perform the stupendous tasks of self-purification and self-consecration. if he succeeded, if he were ever able to address men from out his enfranchised soul and by means of his emancipated art, he would then find himself exposed to the greatest of dangers and involved in the most appalling of struggles. man would prefer to tear him and his art to pieces, rather than acknowledge that he must die of shame in presence of them. it is just possible that the emancipation of art is the only ray of hope illuminating the future, an event intended only for a few isolated souls, while the many remain satisfied to gaze into the flickering and smoking flame of their art and can endure to do so. for they do not want to be enlightened, but dazzled. they rather hate light --more particularly when it is thrown on themselves. that is why they evade the new messenger of light; but he follows them--the love which gave him birth compels him to follow them and to reduce them to submission. "ye must go through my mysteries," he cries to them; "ye need to be purified and shaken by them. dare to submit to this for your own salvation, and abandon the gloomily lighted corner of life and nature which alone seems familiar to you. i lead you into a kingdom which is also real, and when i lead you out of my cell into your daylight, ye will be able to judge which life is more real, which, in fact, is day and which night. nature is much richer, more powerful, more blessed and more terrible below the surface; ye cannot divine this from the way in which ye live. o that ye yourselves could learn to become natural again, and then suffer yourselves to be transformed through nature, and into her, by the charm of my ardour and love!" it is the voice of wagner's art which thus appeals to men. and that we, the children of a wretched age, should be the first to hear it, shows how deserving of pity this age must be: it shows, moreover, that real music is of a piece with fate and primitive law; for it is quite impossible to attribute its presence amongst us precisely at the present time to empty and meaningless chance. had wagner been an accident, he would certainly have been crushed by the superior strength of the other elements in the midst of which he was placed, out in the coming of wagner there seems to have been a necessity which both justifies it and makes it glorious. observed from its earliest beginnings, the development of his art constitutes a most magnificent spectacle, and--even though it was attended with great suffering--reason, law, and intention mark its course throughout. under the charm of such a spectacle the observer will be led to take pleasure even in this painful development itself, and will regard it as fortunate. he will see how everything necessarily contributes to the welfare and benefit of talent and a nature foreordained, however severe the trials may be through which it may have to pass. he will realise how every danger gives it more heart, and every triumph more prudence; how it partakes of poison and sorrow and thrives upon them. the mockery and perversity of the surrounding world only goad and spur it on the more. should it happen to go astray, it but returns from its wanderings and exile loaded with the most precious spoil; should it chance to slumber, "it does but recoup its strength." it tempers the body itself and makes it tougher; it does not consume life, however long it lives; it rules over man like a pinioned passion, and allows him to fly just in the nick of time, when his foot has grown weary in the sand or has been lacerated by the stones on his way. it can do nought else but impart; every one must share in its work, and it is no stinted giver. when it is repulsed it is but more prodigal in its gifts; ill used by those it favours, it does but reward them with the richest treasures it possesses,--and, according to the oldest and most recent experience, its favoured ones have never been quite worthy of its gifts. that is why the nature foreordained, through which music expresses itself to this world of appearance, is one of the most mysterious things under the sun--an abyss in which strength and goodness lie united, a bridge between self and non-self. who would undertake to name the object of its existence with any certainty?--even supposing the sort of purpose which it would be likely to have could be divined at all. but a most blessed foreboding leads one to ask whether it is possible for the grandest things to exist for the purpose of the meanest, the greatest talent for the benefit of the smallest, the loftiest virtue and holiness for the sake of the defective and faulty? should real music make itself heard, because mankind of all creatures least deserves to hear it, though it perhaps need it most? if one ponder over the transcendental and wonderful character of this possibility, and turn from these considerations to look back on life, a light will then be seen to ascend, however dark and misty it may have seemed a moment before. vii. it is quite impossible otherwise: the observer who is confronted with a nature such as wagner's must, willy-nilly, turn his eyes from time to time upon himself, upon his insignificance and frailty, and ask himself, what concern is this of thine? why, pray, art thou there at all? maybe he will find no answer to these questions, in which case he will remain estranged and confounded, face to face with his own personality. let it then suffice him that he has experienced this feeling; let the fact that he has felt strange and embarrassed in the presence of his own soul be the answer to his question for it is precisely by virtue of this feeling that he shows the most powerful manifestation of life in wagner--the very kernel of his strength--that demoniacal magnetism and gift of imparting oneself to others, which is peculiar to his nature, and by which it not only conveys itself to other beings, but also absorbs other beings into itself; thus attaining to its greatness by giving and by taking. as the observer is apparently subject to wagner's exuberant and prodigally generous nature, he partakes of its strength, and thereby becomes formidable through him and to him. and every one who critically examines himself knows that a certain mysterious antagonism is necessary to the process of mutual study. should his art lead us to experience all that falls to the lot of a soul engaged upon a journey, i.e. feeling sympathy with others and sharing their fate, and seeing the world through hundreds of different eyes, we are then able, from such a distance, and under such strange influences, to contemplate him, once we have lived his life. we then feel with the utmost certainty that in wagner the whole visible world desires to be spiritualised, absorbed, and lost in the world of sounds. in wagner, too, the world of sounds seeks to manifest itself as a phenomenon for the sight; it seeks, as it were, to incarnate itself. his art always leads him into two distinct directions, from the world of the play of sound to the mysterious and yet related world of visible things, and vice versa. he is continually forced--and the observer with him--to re-translate the visible into spiritual and primeval life, and likewise to perceive the most hidden interstices of the soul as something concrete and to lend it a visible body. this constitutes the nature of the dithyrambic dramatist, if the meaning given to the term includes also the actor, the poet, and the musician; a conception necessarily borrowed from æschylus and the contemporary greek artists--the only perfect examples of the dithyrambic dramatist before wagner. if attempts have been made to trace the most wonderful developments to inner obstacles or deficiencies, if, for instance, in goethe's case, poetry was merely the refuge of a foiled talent for painting; if one may speak of schiller's dramas as of vulgar eloquence directed into uncommon channels; if wagner himself tries to account for the development of music among the germans by showing that, inasmuch as they are devoid of the entrancing stimulus of a natural gift for singing, they were compelled to take up instrumental music with the same profound seriousness as that with which their reformers took up christianity,--if, on the same principle, it were sought to associate wagner's development with an inner barrier of the same kind, it would then be necessary to recognise in him a primitive dramatic talent, which had to renounce all possibility of satisfying its needs by the quickest and most methods, and which found its salvation and its means of expression in drawing all arts to it for one great dramatic display. but then one would also have to assume that the most powerful musician, owing to his despair at having to appeal to people who were either only semi-musical or not musical at all, violently opened a road for himself to the other arts, in order to acquire that capacity for diversely communicating himself to others, by which he compelled them to understand him, by which he compelled the masses to understand him. however the development of the born dramatist may be pictured, in his ultimate expression he is a being free from all inner barriers and voids: the real, emancipated artist cannot help himself, he must think in the spirit of all the arts at once, as the mediator and intercessor between apparently separated spheres, the one who reinstalls the unity and wholeness of the artistic faculty, which cannot be divined or reasoned out, but can only be revealed by deeds themselves. but he in whose presence this deed is performed will be overcome by its gruesome and seductive charm: in a flash he will be confronted with a power which cancels both resistance and reason, and makes every detail of life appear irrational and incomprehensible. carried away from himself, he seems to be suspended in a mysterious fiery element; he ceases to understand himself, the standard of everything has fallen from his hands; everything stereotyped and fixed begins to totter; every object seems to acquire a strange colour and to tell us its tale by means of new symbols;--one would need to be a plato in order to discover, amid this confusion of delight and fear, how he accomplishes the feat, and to say to the dramatist: "should a man come into our midst who possessed sufficient knowledge to simulate or imitate anything, we would honour him as something wonderful and holy; we would even anoint him and adorn his brow with a sacred diadem; but we would urge him to leave our circle for another, notwithstanding." it may be that a member of the platonic community would have been able to chasten himself to such conduct: we, however, who live in a very different community, long for, and earnestly desire, the charmer to come to us, although we may fear him already,--and we only desire his presence in order that our society and the mischievous reason and might of which it is the incarnation may be confuted. a state of human civilisation, of human society, morality, order, and general organisation which would be able to dispense with the services of an imitative artist or mimic, is not perhaps so utterly inconceivable; but this perhaps is probably the most daring that has ever been posited, and is equivalent to the gravest expression of doubt. the only man who ought to be at liberty to speak of such a possibility is he who could beget, and have the presentiment of, the highest phase of all that is to come, and who then, like faust, would either be obliged to turn blind, or be permitted to become so. for we have no right to this blindness; whereas plato, after he had cast that one glance into the ideal hellenic, had the right to be blind to all hellenism. for this reason, we others are in much greater need of art; because it was in the presence of the realistic that our eyes began to see, and we require the complete dramatist in order that he may relieve us, if only for an hour or so, of the insufferable tension arising from our knowledge of the chasm which lies between our capabilities and the duties we have to perform. with him we ascend to the highest pinnacle of feeling, and only then do we fancy we have returned to nature's unbounded freedom, to the actual realm of liberty. from this point of vantage we can see ourselves and our fellows emerge as something sublime from an immense mirage, and we see the deep meaning in our struggles, in our victories and defeats; we begin to find pleasure in the rhythm of passion and in its victim in the hero's every footfall we distinguish the hollow echo of death, and in its proximity we realise the greatest charm of life: thus transformed into tragic men, we return again to life with comfort in our souls. we are conscious of a new feeling of security, as if we had found a road leading out of the greatest dangers, excesses, and ecstasies, back to the limited and the familiar: there where our relations with our fellows seem to partake of a superior benevolence, and are at all events more noble than they were. for here, everything seemingly serious and needful, which appears to lead to a definite goal, resembles only detached fragments when compared with the path we ourselves have trodden, even in our dreams,-detached fragments of that complete and grand experience whereof we cannot even think without a thrill. yes, we shall even fall into danger and be tempted to take life too easily, simply because in art we were in such deadly earnest concerning it, as wagner says somewhere anent certain incidents in his own life. for if we who are but the spectators and not the creators of this display of dithyrambic dramatic art, can almost imagine a dream to be more real than the actual experiences of our wakeful hours, how much more keenly must the creator realise this contrast! there he stands amid all the clamorous appeals and importunities of the day, and of the necessities of life; in the midst of society and state--and as what does he stand there? maybe he is the only wakeful one, the only being really and truly conscious, among a host of confused and tormented sleepers, among a multitude of deluded and suffering people. he may even feel like a victim of chronic insomnia, and fancy himself obliged to bring his clear, sleepless, and conscious life into touch with somnambulists and ghostly well-intentioned creatures. thus everything that others regard as commonplace strikes him as weird, and he is tempted to meet the whole phenomenon with haughty mockery. but how peculiarly this feeling is crossed, when another force happens to join his quivering pride, the craving of the heights for the depths, the affectionate yearning for earth, for happiness and for fellowship--then, when he thinks of all he misses as a hermit-creator, he feels as though he ought to descend to the earth like a god, and bear all that is weak, human, and lost, "in fiery arms up to heaven," so as to obtain love and no longer worship only, and to be able to lose himself completely in his love. but it is just this contradiction which is the miraculous fact in the soul of the dithyrambic dramatist, and if his nature can be understood at all, surely it must be here. for his creative moments in art occur when the antagonism between his feelings is at its height and when his proud astonishment and wonder at the world combine with the ardent desire to approach that same world as a lover. the glances he then bends towards the earth are always rays of sunlight which "draw up water," form mist, and gather storm-clouds. clear-sighted and prudent, loving and unselfish at the same time, his glance is projected downwards; and all things that are illumined by this double ray of light, nature conjures to discharge their strength, to reveal their most hidden secret, and this through bashfulness. it is more than a mere figure of speech to say that he surprised nature with that glance, that he caught her naked; that is why she would conceal her shame by seeming precisely the reverse. what has hitherto been invisible, the inner life, seeks its salvation in the region of the visible; what has hitherto been only visible, repairs to the dark ocean of sound: thus nature, in trying to conceal herself, unveils the character of her contradictions. in a dance, wild, rhythmic and gliding, and with ecstatic movements, the born dramatist makes known something of what is going on within him, of what is taking place in nature: the dithyrambic quality of his movements speaks just as eloquently of quivering comprehension and of powerful penetration as of the approach of love and self-renunciation. intoxicated speech follows the course of this rhythm; melody resounds coupled with speech, and in its turn melody projects its sparks into the realm of images and ideas. a dream-apparition, like and unlike the image of nature and her wooer, hovers forward; it condenses into more human shapes; it spreads out in response to its heroically triumphant will, and to a most delicious collapse and cessation of will:--thus tragedy is born; thus life is presented with its grandest knowledge-that of tragic thought; thus, at last, the greatest charmer and benefactor among mortals--the dithyrambic dramatist--is evolved. viii. wagner's actual life--that is to say, the gradual evolution of the dithyrambic dramatist in him-was at the same time an uninterrupted struggle with himself, a struggle which never ceased until his evolution was complete. his fight with the opposing world was grim and ghastly, only because it was this same world--this alluring enemy--which he heard speaking out of his own heart, and because he nourished a violent demon in his breast--the demon of resistance. when the ruling idea of his life gained ascendancy over his mind--the idea that drama is, of all arts, the one that can exercise the greatest amount of influence over the world--it aroused the most active emotions in his whole being. it gave him no very clear or luminous decision, at first, as to what was to be done and desired in the future; for the idea then appeared merely as a form of temptation--that is to say, as the expression of his gloomy, selfish, and insatiable will, eager for power and glory. influence--the greatest amount of influence--how? over whom?--these were henceforward the questions and problems which did not cease to engage his head and his heart. he wished to conquer and triumph as no other artist had ever done before, and, if possible, to reach that height of tyrannical omnipotence at one stroke for which all his instincts secretly craved. with a jealous and cautious eye, he took stock of everything successful, and examined with special care all that upon which this influence might be brought to bear. with the magic sight of the dramatist, which scans souls as easily as the most familiar book, he scrutinised the nature of the spectator and the listener, and although he was often perturbed by the discoveries he made, he very quickly found means wherewith he could enthral them. these means were ever within his reach: everything that moved him deeply he desired and could also produce; at every stage in his career he understood just as much of his predecessors as he himself was able to create, and he never doubted that he would be able to do what they had done. in this respect his nature is perhaps more presumptuous even than goethe's, despite the fact that the latter said of himself: "i always thought i had mastered everything; and even had i been crowned king, i should have regarded the honour as thoroughly deserved." wagner's ability. his taste and his aspirations--all of which have ever been as closely related as key to lock--grew and attained to freedom together; but there was a time when it was not so. what did he care about the feeble but noble and egotistically lonely feeling which that friend of art fosters, who, blessed with a literary and aesthetic education, takes his stand far from the common mob! but those violent spiritual tempests which are created by the crowd when under the influence of certain climactic passages of dramatic song, that sudden bewildering ecstasy of the emotions, thoroughly honest and selfless--they were but echoes of his own experiences and sensations, and filled him with glowing hope for the greatest possible power and effect. thus he recognised grand opera as the means whereby he might express his ruling thoughts; towards it his passions impelled him; his eyes turned in the direction of its home. the larger portion of his life, his most daring wanderings, and his plans, studies, sojourns, and acquaintances are only to be explained by an appeal to these passions and the opposition of the outside world, which the poor, restless, passionately ingenuous german artist had to face. another artist than he knew better how to become master of this calling, and now that it has gradually become known by means of what ingenious artifices of all kinds meyerbeer succeeded in preparing and achieving every one of his great successes, and how scrupulously the sequence of "effects" was taken into account in the opera itself, people will begin to understand how bitterly wagner was mortified when his eyes were opened to the tricks of the metier which were indispensable to a great public success. i doubt whether there has ever been another great artist in history who began his career with such extraordinary illusions and who so unsuspectingly and sincerely fell in with the most revolting form of artistic trickery. and yet the way in which he proceeded partook of greatness and was therefore extraordinarily fruitful. for when he perceived his error, despair made him understand the meaning of modern success, of the modern public, and the whole prevaricating spirit of modern art. and while becoming the critic of "effect," indications of his own purification began to quiver through him. it seems as if from that time forward the spirit of music spoke to him with an unprecedented spiritual charm. as though he had just risen from a long illness and had for the first time gone into the open, he scarcely trusted his hand and his eye, and seemed to grope along his way. thus it was an almost delightful surprise to him to find that he was still a musician and an artist, and perhaps then only for the first time. every subsequent stage in wagner's development may be distinguished thus, that the two fundamental powers of his nature drew ever more closely together: the aversion of the one to the other lessened, the higher self no longer condescended to serve its more violent and baser brother; it loved him and felt compelled to serve him. the tenderest and purest thing is ultimately--that is to say, at the highest stage of its evolution-always associated with the mightiest; the storming instincts pursue their course as before, but along different roads, in the direction of the higher self; and this in its turn descends to earth and finds its likeness in everything earthly. if it were possible, on this principle, to speak of the final aims and unravelments of that evolution, and to remain intelligible, it might also be possible to discover the graphic terms with which to describe the long interval preceding that last development; but i doubt whether the first achievement is possible at all, and do not therefore attempt the second. the limits of the interval separating the preceding and the subsequent ages will be described historically in two sentences: wagner was the revolutionist of society; wagner recognised the only artistic element that ever existed hitherto--the poetry of the people. the ruling idea which in a new form and mightier than it had ever been, obsessed wagner, after he had overcome his share of despair and repentance, led him to both conclusions. influence, the greatest possible amount of influence to be exercised by means of the stage! --but over whom? he shuddered when he thought of those whom he had, until then, sought to influence. his experience led him to realise the utterly ignoble position which art and the artist adorn; how a callous and hard-hearted community that calls itself the good, but which is really the evil, reckons art and the artist among its slavish retinue, and keeps them both in order to minister to its need of deception. modern art is a luxury; he saw this, and understood that it must stand or fall with the luxurious society of which it forms but a part. this society had but one idea, to use its power as hard-heartedly and as craftily as possible in order to render the impotent--the people--ever more and more serviceable, base and unpopular, and to rear the modern workman out of them. it also robbed them of the greatest and purest things which their deepest needs led them to create, and through which they meekly expressed the genuine and unique art within their soul: their myths, songs, dances, and their discoveries in the department of language, in order to distil therefrom a voluptuous antidote against the fatigue and boredom of its existence-modern art. how this society came into being, how it learned to draw new strength for itself from the seemingly antagonistic spheres of power, and how, for instance, decaying christianity allowed itself to be used, under the cover of half measures and subterfuges, as a shield against the masses and as a support of this society and its possessions, and finally how science and men of learning pliantly consented to become its drudges--all this wagner traced through the ages, only to be convulsed with loathing at the end of his researches. through his compassion for the people, he became a revolutionist. from that time forward he loved them and longed for them, as he longed for his art; for, alas! in them alone, in this fast disappearing, scarcely recognisable body, artificially held aloof, he now saw the only spectators and listeners worthy and fit for the power of his masterpieces, as he pictured them. thus his thoughts concentrated themselves upon the question, how do the people come into being? how are they resuscitated? he always found but one answer: if a large number of people were afflicted with the sorrow that afflicted him, that number would constitute the people, he said to himself. and where the same sorrow leads to the same impulses and desires, similar satisfaction would necessarily be sought, and the same pleasure found in this satisfaction. if he inquired into what it was that most consoled him and revived his spirits in his sorrow, what it was that succeeded best in counteracting his affliction, it was with joyful certainty that he discovered this force only in music and myth, the latter of which he had already recognised as the people's creation and their language of distress. it seemed to him that the origin of music must be similar, though perhaps more mysterious. in both of these elements he steeped and healed his soul; they constituted his most urgent need:--in this way he was able to ascertain how like his sorrow was to that of the people, when they came into being, and how they must arise anew if many wagners are going to appear. what part did myth and music play in modern society, wherever they had not been actually sacrificed to it? they shared very much the same fate, a fact which only tends to prove their close relationship: myth had been sadly debased and usurped by idle tales and stories; completely divested of its earnest and sacred virility, it was transformed into the plaything and pleasing bauble of children and women of the afflicted people. music had kept itself alive among the poor, the simple, and the isolated; the german musician had not succeeded in adapting himself to the luxurious traffic of the arts; he himself had become a fairy tale full of monsters and mysteries, full of the most touching omens and auguries--a helpless questioner, something bewitched and in need of rescue. here the artist distinctly heard the command that concerned him alone--to recast myth and make it virile, to break the spell lying over music and to make music speak: he felt his strength for drama liberated at one stroke, and the foundation of his sway established over the hitherto undiscovered province lying between myth and music. his new masterpiece, which included all the most powerful, effective, and entrancing forces that he knew, he now laid before men with this great and painfully cutting question: "where are ye all who suffer and think as i do? where is that number of souls that i wish to see become a people, that ye may share the same joys and comforts with me? in your joy ye will reveal your misery to me." these were his questions in tannhauser and lohengrin, in these operas he looked about him for his equals --the anchorite yearned for the number. but what were his feelings withal? nobody answered him. nobody had understood his question. not that everybody remained silent: on the contrary, answers were given to thousands of questions which he had never put; people gossipped about the new masterpieces as though they had only been composed for the express purpose of supplying subjects for conversation. the whole mania of aesthetic scribbling and small talk overtook the germans like a pestilence, and ith that lack of modesty which characterises both german scholars and german journalists, people began measuring, and generally meddling with, these masterpieces, as well as with the person of the artist. wagner tried to help the comprehension of his question by writing about it; but this only led to fresh confusion and more uproar, --for a musician who writes and thinks was, at that time, a thing unknown. the cry arose: "he is a theorist who wishes to remould art with his far-fetched notions--stone him!" wagner was stunned: his question was not understood, his need not felt; his masterpieces seemed a message addressed only to the deaf and blind; his people-an hallucination. he staggered and vacillated. the feasibility of a complete upheaval of all things then suggested itself to him, and he no longer shrank from the thought: possibly, beyond this revolution and dissolution, there might be a chance of a new hope; on the other hand, there might not. but, in any case, would not complete annihilation be better than the wretched existing state of affairs? not very long afterwards, he was a political exile in dire distress. and then only, with this terrible change in his environment and in his soul, there begins that period of the great man's life over which as a golden reflection there is stretched the splendour of highest mastery. now at last the genius of dithyrambic drama doffs its last disguise. he is isolated; the age seems empty to him; he ceases to hope; and his all-embracing glance descend once more into the deep, and finds the bottom, there he sees suffering in the nature of things, and henceforward, having become more impersonal, he accepts his portion of sorrow more calmly. the desire for great power which was but the inheritance of earlier conditions is now directed wholly into the channel of creative art; through his art he now speaks only to himself, and no longer to a public or to a people, and strives to lend this intimate conversation all the distinction and other qualities in keeping with such a mighty dialogue. during the preceding period things had been different with his art; then he had concerned himself, too, albeit with refinement and subtlety, with immediate effects: that artistic production was also meant as a question, and it ought to have called forth an immediate reply. and how often did wagner not try to make his meaning clearer to those he questioned! in view of their inexperience in having questions put to them, he tried to meet them half way and to conform with older artistic notions and means of expression. when he feared that arguments couched in his own terms would only meet with failure, he had tried to persuade and to put his question in a language half strange to himself though familiar to his listeners. now there was nothing to induce him to continue this indulgence: all he desired now was to come to terms with himself, to think of the nature of the world in dramatic actions, and to philosophise in music; what desires he still possessed turned in the direction of the latest philosophical views. he who is worthy of knowing what took place in him at that time or what questions were thrashed out in the darkest holy of holies in his soul--and not many are worthy of knowing all this--must hear, observe, and experience tristan and isolde, the real opus metaphysicum of all art, a work upon which rests the broken look of a dying man with his insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death, far away from life which throws a horribly spectral morning light, sharply, upon all that is evil, delusive, and sundering: moreover, a drama austere in the severity of its form, overpowering in its simple grandeur, and in harmony with the secret of which it treats--lying dead in the midst of life, being one in two. and yet there is something still more wonderful than this work, and that is the artist himself, the man who, shortly after he had accomplished it, was able to create a picture of life so full of clashing colours as the meistersingers of nurnberg, and who in both of these compositions seems merely to have refreshed and equipped himself for the task of completing at his ease that gigantic edifice in four parts which he had long ago planned and begun--the ultimate result of all his meditations and poetical flights for over twenty years, his bayreuth masterpiece, the ring of the nibelung! he who marvels at the rapid succession of the two operas, tristan and the meistersingers, has failed to understand one important side of the life and nature of all great germans: he does not know the peculiar soil out of which that essentially german gaiety, which characterised luther, beethoven, and wagner, can grow, the gaiety which other nations quite fail to understand and which even seems to be missing in the germans of to-day--that clear golden and thoroughly fermented mixture of simplicity, deeply discriminating love, observation, and roguishness which wagner has dispensed, as the most precious of drinks, to all those who have suffered deeply through life, but who nevertheless return to it with the smile of convalescents. and, as he also turned upon the world the eyes of one reconciled, he was more filled with rage and disgust than with sorrow, and more prone to renounce the love of power than to shrink in awe from it. as he thus silently furthered his greatest work and gradually laid score upon score, something happened which caused him to stop and listen: friends were coming, a kind of subterranean movement of many souls approached with a message for him--it was still far from being the people that constituted this movement and which wished to bear him news, but it may have been the nucleus and first living source of a really human community which would reach perfection in some age still remote. for the present they only brought him the warrant that his great work could be entrusted to the care and charge of faithful men, men who would watch and be worthy to watch over this most magnificent of all legacies to posterity. in the love of friends his outlook began to glow with brighter colours; his noblest care--the care that his work should be accomplished and should find a refuge before the evening of his life--was not his only preoccupation. something occurred which he could only understand as a symbol: it was as much as a new comfort and a new token of happiness to him. a great german war caused him to open his eyes, and he observed that those very germans whom he considered so thoroughly degenerate and so inferior to the high standard of real teutonism, of which he had formed an ideal both from self-knowledge and the conscientious study of other great germans in history; he observed that those very germans were, in the midst of terrible circumstances, exhibiting two virtues of the highest order--simple bravery and prudence; and with his heart bounding with delight he conceived the hope that he might not be the last german, and that some day a greater power would perhaps stand by his works than that devoted yet meagre one consisting of his little band of friends--a power able to guard it during that long period preceding its future glory, as the masterpiece of this future. perhaps it was not possible to steel this belief permanently against doubt, more particularly when it sought to rise to hopes of immediate results: suffice it that he derived a tremendous spur from his environment, which constantly reminded him of a lofty duty ever to be fulfilled. his work would not have been complete had he handed it to the world only in the form of silent manuscript. he must make known to the world what it could not guess in regard to his productions, what was his alone to reveal--the new style for the execution and presentation of his works, so that he might set that example which nobody else could set, and thus establish a tradition of style, not on paper, not by means of signs, but through impressions made upon the very souls of men. this duty had become all the more pressing with him, seeing that precisely in regard to the style of their execution his other works had meanwhile succumbed to the most insufferable and absurd of fates: they were famous and admired, yet no one manifested the slightest sign of indignation when they were mishandled. for, strange to say, whereas he renounced ever more and more the hope of success among his contemporaries, owing to his all too thorough knowledge of them, and disclaimed all desire for power, both "success" and "power" came to him, or at least everybody told him so. it was in vain that he made repeated attempts to expose, with the utmost clearness, how worthless and humiliating such successes were to him: people were so unused to seeing an artist able to differentiate at all between the effects of his works that even his most solemn protests were never entirely trusted. once he had perceived the relationship existing between our system of theatres and their success, and the men of his time, his soul ceased to be attracted by the stage at all. he had no further concern with aesthetic ecstasies and the exultation of excited crowds, and he must even have felt angry to see his art being gulped down indiscriminately by the yawning abyss of boredom and the insatiable love of distraction. how flat and pointless every effect proved under these circumstances-more especially as it was much more a case of having to minister to one quite insatiable than of cloying the hunger of a starving man-wagner began to perceive from the following repeated experience: everybody, even the performers and promoters, regarded his art as nothing more nor less than any other kind of stage-music, and quite in keeping with the repulsive style of traditional opera; thanks to the efforts of cultivated conductors, his works were even cut and hacked about, until, after they had been bereft of all their spirit, they were held to be nearer the professional singer's plane. but when people tried to follow wagner's instructions to the letter, they proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were not incapable of representing the midnight riot in the second act of the meistersingers by a group of ballet-dancers. they seemed to do all this, however, in perfectly good faith--without the smallest evil intention. wagner's devoted efforts to show, by means of his own example, the correct and complete way of performing his works, and his attempts at training individual singers in the new style, were foiled time after time, owing only to the thoughtlessness and iron tradition that ruled all around him. moreover, he was always induced to concern himself with that class of theatricals which he most thoroughly loathed. had not even goethe, m his time, once grown tired of attending the rehearsals of his iphigenia? "i suffer unspeakably," he explained, "when i have to tumble about wlth these spectres, which never seem to act as they should." meanwhile wagner's "success" in the kind of drama which he most disliked steadily increased; so much so, indeed, that the largest theatres began to subsist almost entirely upon the receipts which wagner's art, in the guise of operas, brought into them. this growing passion on the part of the theatre-going public bewildered even some of wagner's friends; but this man who had endured so much, had still to endure the bitterest pain of all--he had to see his friends intoxicated with his "successes" and "triumphs" everywhere where his highest ideal was openly belied and shattered. it seemed almost as though a people otherwise earnest and reflecting had decided to maintain an attitude of systematic levity only towards its most serious artist, and to make him the privileged recipient of all the vulgarity, thoughtlessness, clumsiness, and malice of which the german nature is capable. when, therefore, during the german war, a current of greater magnanimity and freedom seemed to run through every one, wagner remembered the duty to which he had pledged himself, namely, to rescue his greatest work from those successes and affronts which were so largely due to misunderstandings, and to present it in his most personal rhythm as an example for all times. thus he conceived the idea of bayreuth. in the wake of that current of better feeling already referred to, he expected to notice an enhanced sense of duty even among those with whom he wished to entrust his most precious possession. out of this two-fold duty, that event took shape which, like a glow of strange sunlight, will illumine the few years that lie behind and before us, and was designed to bless that distant and problematic future which to our time and to the men of our time can be little more than a riddle or a horror, but which to the fevv who are allowed to assist in its realisation is a foretaste of coming joy, a foretaste of love in a higher sphere, through which they know themselves to be blessed, blessing and fruitful, far beyond their span of years; and which to wagner himself is but a cloud of distress, care, meditation, and grief, a fresh passionate outbreak of antagonistic elements, but all bathed in the starlight of selfless fidelity, and changed by this light into indescribable joy. it scarcely need be said that it is the breath of tragedy that fills the lungs of the world. and every one whose innermost soul has a presentiment of this, every one unto whom the yoke of tragic deception concerning the aim of life, the distortion and shattering of intentions, renunciation and purification through love, are not unknown things, must be conscious of a vague reminiscence of wagner's own heroic life, in the masterpieces with which the great man now presents us. we shall feel as though siegfried from some place far away were relating his deeds to us: the most blissful of touching recollections are always draped in the deep mourning of waning summer, when all nature lies still in the sable twilight. ix. all those to whom the thought of wagner's development as a man may have caused pain will find it both restful and healing to reflect upon what he was as an artist, and to observe how his ability and daring attained to such a high degree of independence. if art mean only the faculty of communicating to others what one has oneself experienced, and if every work of art confutes itself which does not succeed in making itself understood, then wagner's greatness as an artist would certainly lie in the almost demoniacal power of his nature to communicate with others, to express itself in all languages at once, and to make known its most intimate and personal experience with the greatest amount of distinctness possible. his appearance in the history of art resembles nothing so much as a volcanic eruption of the united artistic faculties of nature herself, after mankind had grown to regard the practice of a special art as a necessary rule. it is therefore a somewhat moot point whether he ought to be classified as a poet, a painter, or a musician, even using each these words in its widest sense, or whether a new word ought not to be invented in order to describe him. wagner's poetic ability is shown by his thinking in visible and actual facts, and not in ideas; that is to say, he thinks mythically, as the people have always done. no particular thought lies at the bottom of a myth, as the children of an artificial ulture would have us believe; but it is in itself a thought: it conveys an idea of the world, but through the medium of a chain of events, actions, and pains. the ring of the nihelung is a huge system of thought without the usual abstractness of the latter. it were perhaps possible for a philosopher to present us with its exact equivalent in pure thought, and to purge it of all pictures drawn from life, and of all living actions, in which case we should be in possession of the same thing portrayed in two completely different forms--the one for the people, and the other for the very reverse of the people; that is to say, men of theory. but wagner makes no appeal to this last class, for the man of theory can know as little of poetry or myth as the deaf man can know of music; both of them being conscious only of movements which seem meaningless to them. it is impossible to appreciate either one of these completely different forms from the standpoint of the other: as long as the poet's spell is upon one, one thinks with him just as though one were merely a feeling, seeing, and hearing creature; the conclusions thus reached are merely the result of the association of the phenomena one sees, and are therefore not logical but actual causalities. if, therefore, the heroes and gods of mythical dramas, as understood by wagner, were to express themselves plainly in words, there would be a danger (inasmuch as the language of words might tend to awaken the theoretical side in us) of our finding ourselves transported from the world of myth to the world of ideas, and the result would be not only that we should fail to understand with greater ease, but that we should probably not understand at all. wagner thus forced language back to a more primeval stage in its development a stage at which it was almost free of the abstract element, and was still poetry, imagery, and feeling; the fearlessness with which wagner undertook this formidable mission shows how imperatively he was led by the spirit of poetry, as one who must follow whithersoever his phantom leader may direct him. every word in these dramas ought to allow of being sung, and gods and heroes should make them their own--that was the task which wagner set his literary faculty. any other person in like circumstances would have given up all hope; for our language seems almost too old and decrepit to allow of one's exacting what wagner exacted from it; and yet, when he smote the rock, he brought forth an abundant flow. precisely owing to the fact that he loved his language and exacted a great deal from it, wagner suffered more than any other german through its decay and enfeeblement, from its manifold losses and mutilations of form, from its unwieldy particles and clumsy construction, and from its unmusical auxiliary verbs. all these are things which have entered the language through sin and depravity. on the other hand, he was exceedingly proud to record the number of primitive and vigorous factors still extant in the current speech; and in the tonic strength of its roots he recognised quite a wonderful affinity and relation to real music, a quality which distinguished it from the highly volved and artificially rhetorical latin languages. wagner's poetry is eloquent of his affection for the german language, and there is a heartiness and candour in his treatment of it which are scarcely to be met with in any other german writer, save perhaps goethe. forcibleness of diction, daring brevity, power and variety in rhythm, a remarkable wealth of strong and striking words, simplicity in construction, an almost unique inventive faculty in regard to fluctuations of feeling and presentiment, and therewithal a perfectly pure and overflowing stream of colloquialisms--these are the qualities that have to be enumerated, and even then the greatest and most wonderful of all is omitted. whoever reads two such poems as tristan and the meistersingers consecutively will be just as astonished and doubtful in regard to the language as to the music; for he will wonder how it could have been possible for a creative spirit to dominate so perfectly two worlds as different in form, colour, and arrangement, as in soul. this is the most wonderful achievement of wagner's talent; for the ability to give every work its own linguistic stamp and to find a fresh body and a new sound for every thought is a task which only the great master can successfully accomplish. where this rarest of all powers manifests itself, adverse criticism can be but petty and fruitless which confines itself to attacks upon certain excesses and eccentricities in the treatment, or upon the more frequent obscurities of expression and ambiguity of thought. moreover, what seemed to electrify and scandalise those who were most bitter in their criticism was not so much the language as the spirit of the wagnerian operas--that is to say, his whole manner of feeling and suffering. it were well to wait until these very critics have acquired another spirit themselves; they will then also speak a different tongue, and, by that time, it seems to me things will go better with the german language than they do at present. in the first place, however, no one who studies wagner the poet and word-painter should forget that none of his dramas were meant to be read, and that it would therefore be unjust to judge them from the same standpoint as the spoken drama. the latter plays upon the feelings by means of words and ideas, and in this respect it is under the dominion of the laws of rhetoric. but in real life passion is seldom eloquent: in spoken drama it perforce must be, in order to be able to express itself at all. when, however, the language of a people is already in a state of decay and deterioration, the word-dramatist is tempted to impart an undue proportion of new colour and form both to his medium and to his thoughts; he would elevate the language in order to make it a vehicle capable of conveying lofty feelings, and by so doing he runs the risk of becoming abstruse. by means of sublime phrases and conceits he likewise tries to invest passion with some nobility, and thereby runs yet another risk, that of appearing false and artificial. for in real life passions do not speak in sentences, and the poetical element often draws suspicion upon their genuineness when it departs too palpably from reality. now wagner, who was the first to detect the essential feeling in spoken drama, presents every dramatic action threefold: in a word, in a gesture, and in a sound. for, as a matter of fact, music succeeds in conveying the deepest emotions of the dramatic performers direct to the spectators, and while these see the evidence of the actors' states of soul in their bearing and movements, a third though more feeble confirmation of these states, translated into conscious will, quickly follows in the form of the spoken word. all these effects fulfil their purpose simultaneously, without disturbing one another in the least, and urge the spectator to a completely new understanding and sympathy, just as if his senses had suddenly grown more spiritual and his spirit more sensual, and as if everything which seeks an outlet in him, and which makes him thirst for knowledge, were free and joyful in exultant perception. because every essential factor in a wagnerian drama is conveyed to the spectator with the utmost clearness, illumined and permeated throughout by music as by an internal flame, their author can dispense with the expedients usually employed by the writer of the spoken play in order to lend light and warmth to the action. the whole of the dramatist's stock in trade could be more simple, and the architect's sense of rhythm could once more dare to manifest itself in the general proportions of the edifice; for there was no more need of "the deliberate confusion and involved variety of tyles, whereby the ordinary playwright strove in the interests of his work to produce that feeling of wonder and thrilling suspense which he ultimately enhanced to one of delighted amazement. the impression of ideal distance and height was no more to be induced by means of tricks and artifices. language withdrew itself from the length and breadth of rhetoric into the strong confines of the speech of the feelings, and although the actor spoke much less about all he did and felt in the performance, his innermost sentiments, which the ordinary playwright had hitherto ignored for fear of being undramatic, was now able to drive the spectators to passionate sympathy, while the accompanying language of gestures could be restricted to the most delicate modulations. now, when passions are rendered in song, they require rather more time than when conveyed by speech; music prolongs, so to speak, the duration of the feeling, from which it follows, as a rule, that the actor who is also a singer must overcome the extremely unplastic animation from which spoken drama suffers. he feels himself incited all the more to a certain nobility of bearing, because music envelopes his feelings in a purer atmosphere, and thus brings them closer to beauty. the extraordinary tasks which wagner set his actors and singers will provoke rivalry between them for ages to come, in the personification of each of his heroes with the greatest possible amount of clearness, perfection, and fidelity, according to that perfect incorporation already typified by the music of drama. following this leader, the eye of the plastic artist will ultimately behold the marvels of another visible world, which, previous to him, was seen for the first time only by the creator of such works as the ring of the nibelung --that creator of highest rank, who, like aeschylus, points the way to a coming art. must not jealousy awaken the greatest talent, if the plastic artist ever compares the effect of his productions with that of wagnerian music, in which there is so much pure and sunny happiness that he who hears it feels as though all previous music had been but an alien, faltering, and constrained language; as though in the past it had been but a thing to sport with in the presence of those who were not deserving of serious treatment, or a thing with which to train and instruct those who were not even deserving of play? in the case of this earlier kind of music, the joy we always experience while listening to wagner's compositions is ours only for a short space of time, and it would then seem as though it were overtaken by certain rare moments of forgetfulness, during which it appears to be communing with its inner self and directing its eyes upwards, like raphael's cecilia, away from the listeners and from all those who demand distraction, happiness, or instruction from it. in general it may be said of wagner the musician, that he endowed everything in nature which hitherto had had no wish to speak with the power of speech: he refuses to admit that anything must be dumb, and, resorting to the dawn, the forest, the mist, the cliffs, the hills, the thrill of night and the moonlight, he observes a desire common to them all--they too wish to sing their own melody. if the philosopher says it is will that struggles for existence in animate and inanimate nature, the musician adds: and this will wherever it manifests itself, yearns for a melodious existence. before wagner's time, music for the most part moved in narrow limits: it concerned itself with the permanent states of man, or with what the greeks call ethos. and only with beethoven did it begin to find the language of pathos, of passionate will, and of the dramatic occurrences in the souls of men. formerly, what people desired was to interpret a mood, a stolid, merry, reverential, or penitential state of mind, by means of music; the object was, by means of a certain striking uniformity of treatment and the prolonged duration of this uniformity, to compel the listener to grasp the meaning of the music and to impose its mood upon him. to all such interpretations of mood or atmosphere, distinct and particular forms of treatment were necessary: others were established by convention. the question of length was left to the discretion of the musician, whose aim was not only to put the listener into a certain mood, but also to avoid rendering that mood monotonous by unduly protracting it. a further stage was reached when the interpretations of contrasted moods were made to follow one upon the other, and the charm of light and shade was discovered; and yet another step was made when the same piece of music was allowed to contain a contrast of the ethos--for instance, the contest between a male and a female theme. all these, however, are crude and primitive stages in the development of music. the fear of passion suggested the first rule, and the fear of monotony the second; all depth of feeling and any excess thereof were regarded as "unethical." once, however, the art of the ethos had repeatedly been made to ring all the changes on the moods and situations which convention had decreed as suitable, despite the most astounding resourcefulness on the part of its masters, its powers were exhausted. beethoven was the first to make music speak a new language--till then forbidden--the language of passion; but as his art was based upon the laws and conventions of the ethos, and had to attempt to justify itself in regard to them, his artistic development was beset with peculiar difficulties and obscurities. an inner dramatic factor--and every passion pursues a dramatic course--struggled to obtain a new form, but the traditional scheme of "mood music" stood in its way, and protested--almost after the manner in which morality opposes innovations and immorality. it almost seemed, therefore, as if beethoven had set himself the contradictory task of expressing pathos in the terms of the ethos. this view does not, however, apply to beethoven's latest and greatest works; for he really did succeed in discovering a novel method of expressing the grand and vaulting arch of passion. he merely selected certain portions of its curve; imparted these with the utmost clearness to his listeners, and then left it to them to divine its whole span. viewed superficially, the new form seemed rather like an aggregation of several musical compositions, of which every one appeared to represent a sustained situation, but was in reality but a momentary stage in the dramatic course of a passion. the listener might think that he was hearing the old "mood" music over again, except that he failed to grasp the relation of the various parts to one another, and these no longer conformed with the canon of the law. even among minor musicians, there flourished a certain contempt for the rule which enjoined harmony in the general construction of a composition and the sequence of the parts in their works still remained arbitrary. then, owing to a misunderstanding, the discovery of the majestic treatment of passion led back to the use of the single movement with an optional setting, and the tension between the parts thus ceased completely. that is why the symphony, as beethoven understood it, is such a wonderfully obscure production, more especially when, here and there, it makes faltering attempts at rendering beethoven's pathos. the means ill befit the intention, and the intention is, on the whole, not sufficiently clear to the listener, because it was never really clear, even in the mind of the composer. but the very injunction that something definite must be imparted, and that this must be done as distinctly as possible, becomes ever more and more essential, the higher, more difficult, and more exacting the class of work happens to be. that is why all wagner's efforts were concentrated upon the one object of discovering those means which best served the purpose of distinctness, and to this end it was above all necessary for him to emancipate himself from all the prejudices and claims of the old "mood" music, and to give his compositions--the musical interpretations of feelings and passion--a perfectly unequivocal mode of expression. if we now turn to what he has achieved, we see that his services to music are practically equal in rank to those which that sculptor-inventor rendered to sculpture who introduced "sculpture in the round." all previous music seems stiff and uncertain when compared with wagner's, just as though it were ashamed and did not wish to be inspected from all sides. with the most consummate skill and precision, wagner avails himself of every degree and colour in the realm of feeling; without the slightest hesitation or fear of its escaping him, he seizes upon the most delicate, rarest, and mildest emotion, and holds it fast, as though it had hardened at his touch, despite the fact that it may seem like the frailest butterfly to every one else. his music is never vague or dreamy; everything that is allowed to speak through it, whether it be of man or of nature, has a strictly individual passion; storm and fire acquire the ruling power of a personal will in his hands. over all the clamouring characters and the clash of their passions, over the whole torrent of contrasts, an almighty and symphonic understanding hovers with perfect serenity, and continually produces concord out of war. taken as a whole, wagner's music is a reflex of the world as it was understood by the great ephesian poet--that is to say, a harmony resulting from strife, as the union of justice and enmity. i admire the ability which could describe the grand line of universal passion out of a confusion of passions which all seem to be striking out in different directions: the fact that this was a possible achievement i find demonstrated in every individual act of a wagnerian drama, which describes the individual history of various characters side by side with a general history of the whole company. even at the very beginning we know we are watching a host of cross currents dominated by one great violent stream; and though at first this stream moves unsteadily over hidden reefs, and the torrent seems to be torn asunder as if it were travelling towards different points, gradually we perceive the central and general movement growing stronger and more rapid, the convulsive fury of the contending waters is converted into one broad, steady, and terrible flow in the direction of an unknown goal; and suddenly, at the end, the whole flood in all its breadth plunges into the depths, rejoicing demoniacally over the abyss and all its uproar. wagner is never more himself than when he is overwhelmed with difficulties and can exercise power on a large scale with all the joy of a lawgiver. to bring restless and contending masses into simple rhythmic movement, and to exercise one will over a bewildering host of claims and desires--these are the tasks for which he feels he was born, and in the performance of which he finds freedom. and he never loses his breath withal, nor does he ever reach his goal panting. he strove just as persistently to impose the severest laws upon himself as to lighten the burden of others in this respect. life and art weigh heavily upon him when he cannot play wit their most difficult questions. if one considers the relation between the melody of song and that of speech, one will perceive how he sought to adopt as his natural model the pitch, strength, and tempo of the passionate man's voice in order to transform it into art; and if one further considers the task of introducing this singing passion into the general symphonic order of music, one gets some idea of the stupendous difficulties he had to overcome. in this behalf, his inventiveness in small things as in great, his omniscience and industry are such, that at the sight of one of wagner's scores one is almost led to believe that no real work or effort had ever existed before his time. it seems almost as if he too could have said, in regard to the hardships of art, that the real virtue of the dramatist lies in self-renunciation. but he would probably have added, there is but one kind of hardship-that of the artist who is not yet free: virtue and goodness are trivial accomplishments. viewing him generally as an artist, and calling to mind a more famous type, we see that wagner is not at all unlike demosthenes: in him also we have the terrible earnestness of purpose and that strong prehensile mind which always obtains a complete grasp of a thing; in him, too, we have the hand's quick clutch and the grip as of iron. like demosthenes, he conceals his art or compels one to forget it by the peremptory way he calls attention to the subject he treats; and yet, like his great predecessor, he is the last and greatest of a whole line of artist-minds, and therefore has more to conceal than his forerunners: his art acts like nature, like nature recovered and restored. unlike all previous musicians, there is nothing bombastic about him; for the former did not mind playing at times with their art, and making an exhibition of their virtuosity. one associates wagner's art neither with interest nor with diversion, nor with wagner himself and art in general. all one is conscious of is of the great necessity of it all. no one will ever be able to appreciate what severity evenness of will, and self-control the artist required during his development, in order, at his zenith, to be able to do the necessary thing joyfully and freely. let it suffice if we can appreciate how, in some respects, his music, with a certain cruelty towards itself, determines to subserve the course of the drama, which is as unrelenting as fate, whereas in reality his art was ever thirsting for a free ramble in the open and over the wilderness. x. an artist who has this empire over himself subjugates all other artists, even though he may not particularly desire to do so. for him alone there lies no danger or stemming-force in those he has subjugated--his friends and his adherents; whereas the weaker natures who learn to rely on their friends pay for this reliance by forfeiting their independence. it is very wonderful to observe how carefully, throughout his life, wagner avoided anything in the nature of heading a party, notwithstanding the fact that at the close of every phase in his career a circle of adherents formed, presumably with the view of holding him fast to his latest development he always succeeded, however, in wringing himself free from them, and never allowed himself to be bound; for not only was the ground he covered too vast for one alone to keep abreast of him with any ease, but his way was so exceptionally steep that the most devoted would have lost his breath. at almost every stage in wagner's progress his friends would have liked to preach to him, and his enemies would fain have done so too--but for other reasons. had the purity of his artist's nature been one degree less decided than it was, he would have attained much earlier than he actually did to the leading position in the artistic and musical world of his time. true, he has reached this now, but in a much higher sense, seeing that every performance to be witnessed in any department of art makes its obeisance, so to speak, before the judgment-stool of his genius and of his artistic temperament. he has overcome the most refractory of his contemporaries; there is not one gifted musician among them but in his innermost heart would willingly listen to him, and find wagner's compositions more worth listening to than his own and all other musical productions taken together. many who wish, by hook or by crook, to make their mark, even wrestle with wagner's secret charm, and unconsciously throw in their lot with the older masters, preferring to ascribe their "independence" to schubert or handel rather than to wagner. but in vain! thanks to their very efforts in contending against the dictates of their own consciences, they become ever meaner and smaller artists; they ruin their own natures by forcing themselves to tolerate undesirable allies and friends and in spite of all these sacrifices, they still find perhaps in their dreams, that their ear turns attentively to wagner. these adversaries are to be pitied: they imagine they lose a great deal when they lose themselves, but here they are mistaken. albeit it is obviously all one to wagner whether musicians compose in his style, or whether they compose at all, he even does his utmost to dissipate the belief that a school of composers should now necessarily follow in his wake; though, in so far as he exercises a direct influence upon musicians, he does indeed try to instruct them concerning the art of grand execution. in his opinion, the evolution of art seems to have reached that stage when the honest endeavour to become an able and masterly exponent or interpreter is ever so much more worth talking about than the longing to be a creator at all costs. for, at the present stage of art, universal creating has this fatal result, that inasmuch as it encourages a much larger output, it tends to exhaust the means and artifices of genius by everyday use, and thus to reduce the real grandeur of its effect. even that which is good in art is superfluous and detrimental when it proceeds from the imitation of what is best. wagnerian ends and means are of one piece: to perceive this, all that is required is honesty in art matters, and it would be dishonest to adopt his means in order to apply them to other and less significant ends. if, therefore, wagner declines to live on amid a multitude of creative musicians, he is only the more desirous of imposing upon all men of talent the new duty of joining him in seeking the law of style for dramatic performances. he deeply feels the need of establishing a traditional style for his art, by means of which his work may continue to live from one age to another in a pure form, until it reaches that future which its creator ordained for it. wagner is impelled by an undaunted longing to make known everything relating to that foundation of a style, mentioned above, and, accordingly, everything relating to the continuance of his art. to make his work--as schopenhauer would say-a sacred depository and the real fruit of his life, as well as the inheritance of mankind, and to store it for the benefit of a posterity better able to appreciate it,--these were the supreme objects of his life, and for these he bore that crown of thorns which, one day, will shoot forth leaves of bay. like the insect which, in its last form, concentrates all its energies upon the one object of finding a safe depository for its eggs and of ensuring the future welfare of its posthumous brood,--then only to die content, so wagner strove with equal determination to find a place of security for his works. this subject, which took precedence of all others with him, constantly incited him to new discoveries; and these he sought ever more and more at the spring of his demoniacal gift of communicability, the more distinctly he saw himself in conflict with an age that was both perverse and unwilling to lend him its ear. gradually however, even this same age began to mark his indefatigable efforts, to respond to his subtle advances, and to turn its ear to him. whenever a small or a great opportunity arose, however far away, which suggested to wagner a means wherewith to explain his thoughts, he availed himself of it: he thought his thoughts anew into every fresh set of circumstances, and would make them speak out of the most paltry bodily form. whenever a soul only half capable of comprehending him opened itself to him, he never failed to implant his seed in it. he saw hope in things which caused the average dispassionate observer merely to shrug his shoulders; and he erred again and again, only so as to be able to carry his point against that same observer. just as the sage, in reality, mixes with living men only for the purpose of increasing his store of knowledge, so the artist would almost seem to be unable to associate with his contemporaries at all, unless they be such as can help him towards making his work eternal. he cannot be loved otherwise than with the love of this eternity, and thus he is conscious only of one kind of hatred directed at him, the hatred which would demolish the bridges bearing his art into the future. the pupils wagner educated for his own purpose, the individual musicians and actors whom he advised and whose ear he corrected and improved, the small and large orchestras he led, the towns which witnessed him earnestly fulfilling the duties of ws calling, the princes and ladies who half boastfully and half lovingly participated in the framing of his plans, the various european countries to which he temporarily belonged as the judge and evil conscience of their arts,--everything gradually became the echo of his thought and of his indefatigable efforts to attain to fruitfulness in the future. although this echo often sounded so discordant as to confuse him, still the tremendous power of his voice repeatedly crying out into the world must in the end call forth reverberations, and it will soon be impossible to be deaf to him or to misunderstand him. it is this reflected sound which even now causes the art-institutions of modern men to shake: every time the breath of his spirit blew into these coverts, all that was overripe or withered fell to the ground; but the general increase of scepticism in all directions speaks more eloquently than all this trembling. nobody any longer dares to predict where wagner's influence may not unexpectedly break out. he is quite unable to divorce the salvation of art from any other salvation or damnation: wherever modern life conceals a danger, he, with the discriminating eye of mistrust, perceives a danger threatening art. in his imagination he pulls the edifice of modern civilisation to pieces, and allows nothing rotten, no unsound timber-work to escape: if in the process he should happen to encounter weather-tight walls or anything like solid foundations, he immediately casts about for means wherewith he can convert them into bulwarks and shelters for his art. he lives like a fugitive, whose will is not to preserve his own life, but to keep a secret-like an unhappy woman who does not wish to save her own soul, but that of the child lying in her lap: in short, he lives like sieglinde, "for the sake of love." for life must indeed be full of pain and shame to one who can find neither rest nor shelter in this world, and who must nevertheless appeal to it, exact things from it, contemn it, and still be unable to dispense with the thing contemned, --this really constitutes the wretchedness of the artist of the future, who, unlike the philosopher, cannot prosecute his work alone in the seclusion of a study, but who requires human souls as messengers to this future, public institutions as a guarantee of it, and, as it were, bridges between now and hereafter. his art may not, like the philosopher's, be put aboard the boat of written documents: art needs capable men, not letters and notes, to transmit it. over whole periods in wagner's life rings a murmur of distress--his distress at not being able to meet with these capable interpreters before whom he longed to execute examples of his work, instead of being confined to written symbols; before whom he yearned to practise his art, instead of showing a pallid reflection of it to those who read books, and who, generally speaking, therefore are not artists. in wagner the man of letters we see the struggle of a brave fighter, whose right hand has, as it were, been lopped off, and who has continued the contest with his left. in his writings he is always the sufferer, because a temporary and insuperable destiny deprives him of his own and the correct way of conveying his thoughts--that is to say, in the form of apocalyptic and triumphant examples. his writings contain nothing canonical or severe: the canons are to be found in his works as a whole. their literary side represents his attempts to understand the instinct which urged him to create his works and to get a glimpse of himself through them. if he succeeded in transforming his instincts into terms of knowledge, it was always with the hope that the reverse process might take place in the souls of his readers--it was with this intention that he wrote. should it ultimately be proved that, in so doing, wagner attempted the impossible, he would still only share the lot of all those who have meditated deeply on art; and even so he would be ahead of most of them in this, namely, that the strongest instinct for all arts harboured in him. i know of no written aesthetics that give more light than those of wagner; all that can possibly be learnt concerning the origin of a work of art is to be found in them. he is one of the very great, who appeared amongst us a witness, and who is continually improving his testimony and making it ever clearer and freer; even when he stumbles as a scientist, sparks rise from the ground. such tracts as "beethoven," "concerning the art of conducting," "concerning actors and singers," "state and religion," silence all contradiction, and, like sacred reliquaries, impose upon all who approach them a calm, earnest, and reverential regard. others, more particularly the earlier ones, including "opera and drama," excite and agitate one; their rhythm is so uneven that, as prose they are bewildering. their dialectics is constantly interrupted, and their course is more retarded than accelerated by outbursts of feeling; a certain reluctance on the part of the writer seems to hang over them like a pall, just as though the artist were somewhat ashamed of speculative discussions. what the reader who is only imperfectly initiated will probably find most oppressive is the general tone of authoritative dignity which is peculiar to wagner, and which is very difficult to describe: it always strikes me as though wagner were continually addressing enemies; for the style of all these tracts more resembles that of the spoken than of the written language, hence they will seem much more intelligible if heard read aloud, in the presence of his enemies, with whom he cannot be on familiar terms, and towards whom he must therefore show some reserve and aloofness, the entrancing passion of his feelings, however, constantly pierces this intentional disguise, and then the stilted and heavy periods, swollen with accessary words, vanish, and his pen dashes off sentences, and even whole pages, which belong to the best in german prose. but even admitting that while he wrote such passages he was addressing friends, and that the shadow of his enemies had been removed for a while, all the friends and enemies that wagner, as a man of letters, has, possess one factor in common, which differentiates them fundamentally from the "people" for whom he worked as an artist. owing to the refining and fruitless nature of their education, they are quite devoid of the essential traits of the national character, and he who would appeal to them must speak in a way which is not of the people--that is to say, after the manner of our best prose-writers and wagner himself; though that he did violence to himself in writing thus is evident. but the strength of that almost maternal instinct of prudence in him, which is ready to make any sacrifice, rather tends to reinstall him among the scholars and men of learning, to whom as a creator he always longed to bid farewell. he submits to the language of culture and all the laws governing its use, though he was the first to recognise its profound insufficiency as a means of communication. for if there is anything that distinguishes his art from every other art of modern times, it is that it no longer speaks the language of any particular caste, and refuses to admit the distinctions "literate" and "illiterate." it thus stands as a contrast to every culture of the renaissance, which to this day still bathes us modern men in its light and shade. inasmuch as wagner's art bears us, from time to time, beyond itself, we are enabled to get a general view of its uniform character: we see goethe and leopardi as the last great stragglers of the italian philologist-poets, faust as the incarnation of a most unpopular problem, in the form of a man of theory thirsting for life; even goethe's song is an imitation of the song of the people rather than a standard set before them to which they are expected to attain, and the poet knew very well how truly he spoke when he seriously assured his adherents: "my compositions cannot become popular; he who hopes and strives to make them so is mistaken." that an art could arise which would be so clear and warm as to flood the base and the poor in spirit with its light, as well as to melt the haughtiness of the learned--such a phenomenon had to be experienced though it could not be guessed. but even in the mind of him who experiences it to-day it must upset all preconceived notions concerning education and culture; to such an one the veil will seem to have been rent in twain that conceals a future in which no highest good or highest joys exist that are not the common property of all. the odium attaching to the word "common" will then be abolished. if presentiment venture thus into the remote future, the discerning eye of all will recognise the dreadful social insanity of our present age, and will no longer blind itself to the dangers besetting an art which seems to have roots only in the remote and distant future, and which allows its burgeoning branches to spread before our gaze when it has not yet revealed the ground from which it draws its sap. how can we protect this homeless art through the ages until that remote future is reached? how can we so dam the flood of a revolution seemingly inevitable everywhere, that the blessed prospect and guarantee of a better future--of a freer human life--shall not also be washed away with all that is destined to perish and deserves to perish? he who asks himself this question shares wagner's care: he will feel himself impelled with wagner to seek those established powers that have the goodwill to protect the noblest passions of man during the period of earthquakes and upheavals. in this sense alone wagner questions the learned through his writings, whether they intend storing his legacy to them--the precious ring of his art--among their other treasures. and even the wonderful confidence which he reposes in the german mind and the aims of german politics seems to me to arise from the fact that he grants the people of the reformation that strength, mildness, and bravery which is necessary in order to divert "the torrent of revolution into the tranquil river-bed of a calmly flowing stream of humanity": and i could almost believe that this and only this is what he meant to express by means of the symbol of his imperial march. as a rule, though, the generous impulses of the creative artist and the extent of his philanthropy are too great for his gaze to be confined within the limits of a single nation. his thoughts, like those of every good and great german, are more than german, and the language of his art does not appeal to particular races but to mankind in general. but to the men of the future. this is the belief that is proper to him; this is his torment and his distinction. no artist, of what past soever, has yet received such a remarkable portion of genius; no one, save him, has ever been obliged to mix this bitterest of ingredients with the drink of nectar to which enthusiasm helped him. it is not as one might expect, the misunderstood and mishandled artist, the fugitive of his age, who adopted this faith in self-defence: success or failure at the hands of his contemporaries was unable either to create or to destroy it whether it glorified or reviled him, he did not belong to this generation: that was the conclusion to which his instincts led him. and the possibility of any generation's ever belonging to him is something which he who disbelieves in wagner can never be made to admit. but even this unbeliever may at least ask, what kind of generation it will be in which wagner will recognise his "people," and in which he will see the type of all those who suffer a common distress, and who wish to escape from it by means of an art common to them all. schiller was certainly more hopeful and sanguine; he did not ask what a future must be like if the instinct of the artist that predicts it prove true; his command to every artist was rather-soar aloft in daring flight out of sight of thine own years! in thy mirror, gleaming bright, glimpse of distant dawn appears. xi. may blessed reason preserve us from ever thinking that mankind will at any time discover a final and ideal order of things, and that happiness will then and ever after beam down upon us uniformly, like the rays of the sun in the tropics. wagner has nothing to do with such a hope; he is no utopian. if he was unable to dispense with the belief in a future, it only meant that he observed certain properties in modern men which he did not hold to be essential to their nature, and which did not seem to him to form any necessary part of their constitution; in fact, which were changeable and transient; and that precisely owing to these properties art would find no home among them, and he himself had to be the precursor and prophet of another epoch. no golden age, no cloudless sky will fall to the portion of those future generations, which his instinct led him to expect, and whose approximate characteristics may be gleaned from the cryptic characters of his art, in so far as it is possible to draw conclusions concerning the nature of any pain from the kind of relief it seeks. nor will superhuman goodness and justice stretch like an everlasting rainbow over this future land. belike this coming generation will, on the whole, seem more evil than the present one--for in good as in evil it will be more straightforward. it is even possible, if its soul were ever able to speak out in full and unembarrassed tones, that it might convulse and terrify us, as though the voice of some hitherto concealed and evil spirit had suddenly cried out in our midst. or how do the following propositions strike our ears?--that passion is better than stocism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness, even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying to observe traditional morality; that the free man is just as able to be good as evil, but that the unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss; finally, that all who wish to be free must become so through themselves, and that freedom falls to nobody's lot as a gift from heaven. however harsh and strange these propositions may sound, they are nevertheless reverberations from that future world, which is verily in need of art, and which expects genuine pleasure from its presence; they are the language of nature--reinstated even in mankind; they stand for what i have already termed correct feeling as opposed to the incorrect feeling that reigns to-day. but real relief or salvation exists only for nature not for that which is contrary to nature or which arises out of incorrect feeling. when all that is unnatural becomes self-conscious, it desires but one thing--nonentity; the natural thing, on the other hand, yearns to be transfigured through love: the former would fain not be, the latter would fain be otherwise. let him who has understood this recall, in the stillness of his soul, the simple themes of wagner's art, in order to be able to ask himself whether it were nature or nature's opposite which sought by means of them to achieve the aims just described. the desperate vagabond finds deliverance from his distress in the compassionate love of a woman who would rather die than be unfaithful to him: the theme of the flying dutchman. the sweet-heart, renouncing all personal happiness, owing to a divine transformation of love into charity, becomes a saint, and saves the soul of her loved one: the theme of tannhauser. the sublimest and highest thing descends a suppliant among men, and will not be questioned whence it came; when, however, the fatal question is put, it sorrowfully returns to its higher life: the theme of lohengrin. the loving soul of a wife, and the people besides, joyfully welcome the new benevolent genius, although the retainers of tradition and custom reject and revile him: the theme of the meistersingers. of two lovers, that do not know they are loved, who believe rather that they are deeply wounded and contemned, each demands of the other that he or she should drink a cup of deadly poison, to all intents and purposes as an expiation of the insult; in reality, however, as the result of an impulse which neither of them understands: through death they wish to escape all possibility of separation or deceit. the supposed approach of death loosens their fettered souls and allows them a short moment of thrilling happiness, just as though they had actually escaped from the present, from illusions and from life: the theme of tristan and isolde. in the ring of the nibelung the tragic hero is a god whose heart yearns for power, and who, since he travels along all roads in search of it, finally binds himself to too many undertakings, loses his freedom, and is ultimately cursed by the curse inseparable from power. he becomes aware of his loss of freedom owing to the fact that he no longer has the means to take possession of the golden ring--that symbol of all earthly power, and also of the greatest dangers to himself as long as it lies in the hands of his enemies. the fear of the end and the twilight of all gods overcomes him, as also the despair at being able only to await the end without opposing it. he is in need of the free and fearless man who, without his advice or assistance--even in a struggle against gods--can accomplish single-handed what is denied to the powers of a god. he fails to see him, and just as a new hope finds shape within him, he must obey the conditions to which he is bound: with his own hand he must murder the thing he most loves, and purest pity must be punished by his sorrow. then he begins to loathe power, which bears evil and bondage in its lap; his will is broken, and he himself begins to hanker for the end that threatens him from afar off. at this juncture something happens which had long been the subject of his most ardent desire: the free and fearless man appears, he rises in opposition to everything accepted and established, his parents atone for having been united by a tie which was antagonistic to the order of nature and usage; they perish, but siegfried survives. and at the sight of his magnificent development and bloom, the loathing leaves otan's soul, and he follows the hero's history with the eye of fatherly love and anxiety. how he forges his sword, kills the dragon, gets possession of the ring, escapes the craftiest ruse, awakens brunhilda; how the curse abiding in the ring gradually overtakes him; how, faithful in faithfulness, he wounds the thing he most loves, out of love; becomes enveloped in the shadow and cloud of guilt, and, rising out of it more brilliantly than the sun, ultimately goes down, firing the whole heavens with his burning glow and purging the world of the curse,--all this is seen by the god whose sovereign spear was broken in the contest with the freest man, and who lost his power through him, rejoicing greatly over his own defeat: full of sympathy for the triumph and pain of his victor, his eye burning with aching joy looks back upon the last events; he has become free through love, free from himself. and now ask yourselves, ye generation of to-day, was all this composed for you? have ye the courage to point up to the stars of the whole of this heavenly dome of beauty and goodness and to say, this is our life, that wagner has transferred to a place beneath the stars? where are the men among you who are able to interpret the divine image of wotan in the light of their own lives, and who can become ever greater while, like him, ye retreat? who among you would renounce power, knowing and having learned that power is evil? where are they who like brunhilda abandon their knowledge to love, and finally rob their lives of the highest wisdom, "afflicted love, deepest sorrow, opened my eyes"? and where are the free and fearless, developing and blossoming in innocent egoism? and where are the siegfrieds, among you? he who questions thus and does so in vain, will find himself compelled to look around him for signs of the future; and should his eye, on reaching an unknown distance, espy just that "people" which his own generation can read out of the signs contained in wagnerian art, he will then also understand what wagner will mean to this people--something that he cannot be to all of us, namely, not the prophet of the future, as perhaps he would fain appear to us, but the interpreter and clarifier of the past. beyond good and evil by friedrich nietzsche translated by helen zimmern transcriber's note about this e-text edition: the following is a reprint of the helen zimmern translation from german into english of "beyond good and evil," as published in the complete works of friedrich nietzsche (1909-1913). some adaptations from the original text were made to format it into an e-text. italics in the original book are capitalized in this e-text, except for most foreign language phrases that were italicized. original footnotes are put in brackets "[]" at the points where they are cited in the text. some spellings were altered. "to-day" and "to-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." table of contents preface beyond good and evil chapter i: prejudices of philosophers chapter ii: the free spirit chapter iii: the religious mood chapter iv: apophthegms and interludes chapter v: the natural history of morals chapter vi: we scholars chapter vii: our virtues chapter viii: peoples and countries chapter ix: what is noble? from the heights (poem translated by l.a. magnus) preface supposing that truth is a woman--what then? is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? certainly she has never allowed herself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands with sad and discouraged mien--if, indeed, it stands at all! for there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground--nay more, that it is at its last gasp. but to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood what has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popular superstition of immemorial time (such as the soul-superstition, which, in the form of subjectand ego-superstition, has not yet ceased doing mischief): perhaps some play upon words, a deception on the part of grammar, or an audacious generalization of very restricted, very personal, very human--all-too-human facts. the philosophy of the dogmatists, it is to be hoped, was only a promise for thousands of years afterwards, as was astrology in still earlier times, in the service of which probably more labour, gold, acuteness, and patience have been spent than on any actual science hitherto: we owe to it, and to its "super-terrestrial" pretensions in asia and egypt, the grand style of architecture. it seems that in order to inscribe themselves upon the heart of humanity with everlasting claims, all great things have first to wander about the earth as enormous and awe-inspiring caricatures: dogmatic philosophy has been a caricature of this kind--for instance, the vedanta doctrine in asia, and platonism in europe. let us not be ungrateful to it, although it must certainly be confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error--namely, plato's invention of pure spirit and the good in itself. but now when it has been surmounted, when europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier--sleep, we, whose duty is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. it amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the perspective--the fundamental condition--of life, to speak of spirit and the good as plato spoke of them; indeed one might ask, as a physician: "how did such a malady attack that finest product of antiquity, plato? had the wicked socrates really corrupted him? was socrates after all a corrupter of youths, and deserved his hemlock?" but the struggle against plato, or--to speak plainer, and for the "people"--the struggle against the ecclesiastical oppression of millenniums of christianity (for christianity is platonism for the "people"), produced in europe a magnificent tension of soul, such as had not existed anywhere previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals. as a matter of fact, the european feels this tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment--which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (the germans invented gunpowder--all credit to them! but they again made things square--they invented printing.) but we, who are neither jesuits, nor democrats, nor even sufficiently germans, we good europeans, and free, very free spirits--we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all the tension of its bow! and perhaps also the arrow, the duty, and, who knows? the goal to aim at.... sils maria upper engadine, june, 1885. chapter i. prejudices of philosophers 1. the will to truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! what strange, perplexing, questionable questions! it is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? that this sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves? who is it really that puts questions to us here? what really is this "will to truth" in us? in fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this will--until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. we inquired about the value of this will. granted that we want the truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance? the problem of the value of truth presented itself before us--or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? which of us is the oedipus here? which the sphinx? it would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. and could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and risk raising it? for there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk. 2. "how could anything originate out of its opposite? for example, truth out of error? or the will to truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of their own--in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. but rather in the lap of being, in the intransitory, in the concealed god, in the 'thing-in-itself--there must be their source, and nowhere else!"--this mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this "belief" of theirs, they exert themselves for their "knowledge," for something that is in the end solemnly christened "the truth." the fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in antitheses of values. it never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, "de omnibus dubitandum." for it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below--"frog perspectives," as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. in spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. it might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things--perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. perhaps! but who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous "perhapses"! for that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent--philosophers of the dangerous "perhaps" in every sense of the term. and to speak in all seriousness, i see such new philosophers beginning to appear. 3. having kept a sharp eye on philosophers, and having read between their lines long enough, i now say to myself that the greater part of conscious thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions, and it is so even in the case of philosophical thinking; one has here to learn anew, as one learned anew about heredity and "innateness." as little as the act of birth comes into consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, just as little is "being-conscious" opposed to the instinctive in any decisive sense; the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts, and forced into definite channels. and behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, there are valuations, or to speak more plainly, physiological demands, for the maintenance of a definite mode of life for example, that the certain is worth more than the uncertain, that illusion is less valuable than "truth" such valuations, in spite of their regulative importance for us, might notwithstanding be only superficial valuations, special kinds of _niaiserie_, such as may be necessary for the maintenance of beings such as ourselves. supposing, in effect, that man is not just the "measure of things." 4. the falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. the question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live--that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. 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. 5. that which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are--how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,--but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. they all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of "inspiration"), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or "suggestion," which is generally their heart's desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. they are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub "truths,"--and very far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. the spectacle of the tartuffery of old kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"--makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask--in fact, the "love of his wisdom," to translate the term fairly and squarely--in order thereby to strike terror at once into the heart of the assailant who should dare to cast a glance on that invincible maiden, that pallas athene:--how much of personal timidity and vulnerability does this masquerade of a sickly recluse betray! 6. it has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of--namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: "what morality do they (or does he) aim at?" accordingly, i do not believe that an "impulse to knowledge" is the father of philosophy; but that another impulse, here as elsewhere, has only made use of knowledge (and mistaken knowledge!) as an instrument. but whoever considers the fundamental impulses of man with a view to determining how far they may have here acted as inspiring genii (or as demons and cobolds), will find that they have all practiced philosophy at one time or another, and that each one of them would have been only too glad to look upon itself as the ultimate end of existence and the legitimate lord over all the other impulses. for every impulse is imperious, and as such, attempts to philosophize. to be sure, in the case of scholars, in the case of really scientific men, it may be otherwise--"better," if you will; there there may really be such a thing as an "impulse to knowledge," some kind of small, independent clock-work, which, when well wound up, works away industriously to that end, without the rest of the scholarly impulses taking any material part therein. the actual "interests" of the scholar, therefore, are generally in quite another direction--in the family, perhaps, or in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterised by becoming this or that. in the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, his morality furnishes a decided and decisive testimony as to who he is,--that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other. 7. how malicious philosophers can be! i know of nothing more stinging than the joke epicurus took the liberty of making on plato and the platonists; he called them dionysiokolakes. in its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies "flatterers of dionysius"--consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, it is as much as to say, "they are all actors, there is nothing genuine about them" (for dionysiokolax was a popular name for an actor). and the latter is really the malignant reproach that epicurus cast upon plato: he was annoyed by the grandiose manner, the mise en scene style of which plato and his scholars were masters--of which epicurus was not a master! he, the old school-teacher of samos, who sat concealed in his little garden at athens, and wrote three hundred books, perhaps out of rage and ambitious envy of plato, who knows! greece took a hundred years to find out who the garden-god epicurus really was. did she ever find out? 8. there is a point in every philosophy at which the "conviction" of the philosopher appears on the scene; or, to put it in the words of an ancient mystery: adventavit asinus, pulcher et fortissimus. 9. you desire to live "according to nature"? oh, you noble stoics, what fraud of words! imagine to yourselves a being like nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power--how could you live in accordance with such indifference? to live--is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this nature? is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? and granted that your imperative, "living according to nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do differently? why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? in reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! in your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to nature, to nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be nature "according to the stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of stoicism! with all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see nature falsely, that is to say, stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise--and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--stoicism is self-tyranny--nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the stoic a part of nature?... but this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. it always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual will to power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima. 10. the eagerness and subtlety, i should even say craftiness, with which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at present throughout europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and he who hears only a "will to truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. in rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a will to truth--a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an uncertain something. but that is nihilism, and the sign of a despairing, mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a virtue may display. it seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. in that they side against appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal soul," perhaps "the old god," in short, ideas by which they could live better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by "modern ideas"? there is distrust of these modern ideas in this mode of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety and scorn, which can no longer endure the bric-a-brac of ideas of the most varied origin, such as so-called positivism at present throws on the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. therein it seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels them from modern reality, is unrefuted... what do their retrograde by-paths concern us! the main thing about them is not that they wish to go "back," but that they wish to get away therefrom. a little more strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be off--and not back! 11. it seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from the actual influence which kant exercised on german philosophy, and especially to ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself. kant was first and foremost proud of his table of categories; with it in his hand he said: "this is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." let us only understand this "could be"! he was proud of having discovered a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori. granting that he deceived himself in this matter; the development and rapid flourishing of german philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride, and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something--at all events "new faculties"--of which to be still prouder!--but let us reflect for a moment--it is high time to do so. "how are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" kant asks himself--and what is really his answer? "by means of a means (faculty)"--but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly, and with such display of german profundity and verbal flourishes, that one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in such an answer. people were beside themselves with delight over this new faculty, and the jubilation reached its climax when kant further discovered a moral faculty in man--for at that time germans were still moral, not yet dabbling in the "politics of hard fact." then came the honeymoon of german philosophy. all the young theologians of the tubingen institution went immediately into the groves--all seeking for "faculties." and what did they not find--in that innocent, rich, and still youthful period of the german spirit, to which romanticism, the malicious fairy, piped and sang, when one could not yet distinguish between "finding" and "inventing"! above all a faculty for the "transcendental"; schelling christened it, intellectual intuition, and thereby gratified the most earnest longings of the naturally pious-inclined germans. one can do no greater wrong to the whole of this exuberant and eccentric movement (which was really youthfulness, notwithstanding that it disguised itself so boldly, in hoary and senile conceptions), than to take it seriously, or even treat it with moral indignation. enough, however--the world grew older, and the dream vanished. a time came when people rubbed their foreheads, and they still rub them today. people had been dreaming, and first and foremost--old kant. "by means of a means (faculty)"--he had said, or at least meant to say. but, is that--an answer? an explanation? or is it not rather merely a repetition of the question? how does opium induce sleep? "by means of a means (faculty)," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in moliere, quia est in eo virtus dormitiva, cujus est natura sensus assoupire. but such replies belong to the realm of comedy, and it is high time to replace the kantian question, "how are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" by another question, "why is belief in such judgments necessary?"--in effect, it is high time that we should understand that such judgments must be believed to be true, for the sake of the preservation of creatures like ourselves; though they still might naturally be false judgments! or, more plainly spoken, and roughly and readily--synthetic judgments a priori should not "be possible" at all; we have no right to them; in our mouths they are nothing but false judgments. only, of course, the belief in their truth is necessary, as plausible belief and ocular evidence belonging to the perspective view of life. and finally, to call to mind the enormous influence which "german philosophy"--i hope you understand its right to inverted commas (goosefeet)?--has exercised throughout the whole of europe, there is no doubt that a certain virtus dormitiva had a share in it; thanks to german philosophy, it was a delight to the noble idlers, the virtuous, the mystics, the artiste, the three-fourths christians, and the political obscurantists of all nations, to find an antidote to the still overwhelming sensualism which overflowed from the last century into this, in short--"sensus assoupire."... 12. as regards materialistic atomism, it is one of the best-refuted theories that have been advanced, and in europe there is now perhaps no one in the learned world so unscholarly as to attach serious signification to it, except for convenient everyday use (as an abbreviation of the means of expression)--thanks chiefly to the pole boscovich: he and the pole copernicus have hitherto been the greatest and most successful opponents of ocular evidence. for while copernicus has persuaded us to believe, contrary to all the senses, that the earth does not stand fast, boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in the last thing that "stood fast" of the earth--the belief in "substance," in "matter," in the earth-residuum, and particle-atom: it is the greatest triumph over the senses that has hitherto been gained on earth. one must, however, go still further, and also declare war, relentless war to the knife, against the "atomistic requirements" which still lead a dangerous after-life in places where no one suspects them, like the more celebrated "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which christianity has taught best and longest, the soul-atomism. let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses--as happens frequently to the clumsiness of naturalists, who can hardly touch on the soul without immediately losing it. but the way is open for new acceptations and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as "mortal soul," and "soul of subjective multiplicity," and "soul as social structure of the instincts and passions," want henceforth to have legitimate rights in science. in that the new psychologist is about to put an end to the superstitions which have hitherto flourished with almost tropical luxuriance around the idea of the soul, he is really, as it were, thrusting himself into a new desert and a new distrust--it is possible that the older psychologists had a merrier and more comfortable time of it; eventually, however, he finds that precisely thereby he is also condemned to invent--and, who knows? perhaps to discover the new. 13. 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. in short, here, as everywhere else, let us beware of superfluous teleological principles!--one of which is the instinct of self-preservation (we owe it to spinoza's inconsistency). it is thus, in effect, that method ordains, which must be essentially economy of principles. 14. it is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according to us, if i may say so!) and not a world-explanation; but in so far as it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation. it has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and convincingly upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. what is clear, what is "explained"? only that which can be seen and felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. obversely, however, the charm of the platonic mode of thought, which was an aristocratic mode, consisted precisely in resistance to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the mob of the senses, as plato said. in this overcoming of the world, and interpreting of the world in the manner of plato, there was an enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise the darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers, with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder. "where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative different from the platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, who have nothing but rough work to perform. 15. to study physiology with a clear conscience, one must insist on the fact that the sense-organs are not phenomena in the sense of the idealistic philosophy; as such they certainly could not be causes! sensualism, therefore, at least as regulative hypothesis, if not as heuristic principle. what? and others say even that the external world is the work of our organs? but then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! but then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! it seems to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum, if the conception causa sui is something fundamentally absurd. consequently, the external world is not the work of our organs--? 16. there are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate certainties"; for instance, "i think," or as the superstition of schopenhauer puts it, "i will"; as though cognition here got hold of its object purely and simply as "the thing in itself," without any falsification taking place either on the part of the subject or the object. i would repeat it, however, a hundred times, that "immediate certainty," as well as "absolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involve a contradictio in adjecto; we really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words! the people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: "when i analyze 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."--in place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions of the intellect, to wit: "whence did i get the notion of 'thinking'? why do i believe in cause and effect? what gives me the right to speak of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego' as cause of thought?" he who ventures to answer these metaphysical questions at once by an appeal to a sort of intuitive perception, like the person who says, "i think, and know that this, at least, is true, actual, and certain"--will encounter a smile and two notes of interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "sir," the philosopher will perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you are not mistaken, but why should it be the truth?" 17. with regard to the superstitions of logicians, i shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds--namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes, and not when "i" wish; so that it is a perversion of the facts of the case to say that the subject "i" is the condition of the predicate "think." one thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old "ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." after all, one has even gone too far with this "one thinks"--even the "one" contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. one infers here according to the usual grammatical formula--"to think is an activity; every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... it was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides the operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and out of which it operates--the atom. more rigorous minds, however, learnt at last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view, to get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego" has refined itself). 18. it is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. it seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it. 19. philosophers are accustomed to speak of the will as though it were the best-known thing in the world; indeed, schopenhauer has given us to understand that the will alone is really known to us, absolutely and completely known, without deduction or addition. but it again and again seems to me that in this case schopenhauer also only did what philosophers are in the habit of doing--he seems to have adopted a popular prejudice and exaggerated it. willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only in name--and it is precisely in a name that popular prejudice lurks, which has got the mastery over the inadequate precautions of philosophers in all ages. so let us for once be more cautious, let us be "unphilosophical": let us say that in all willing there is firstly a plurality of sensations, namely, the sensation of the condition "away from which we go," the sensation of the condition "towards which we go," the sensation of this "from" and "towards" itself, and then besides, an accompanying muscular sensation, which, even without our putting in motion "arms and legs," commences its action by force of habit, directly we "will" anything. therefore, just as sensations (and indeed many kinds of sensations) are to be recognized as ingredients of the will, so, in the second place, thinking is also to be recognized; in every act of the will there is a ruling thought;--and let us not imagine it possible to sever this thought from the "willing," as if the will would then remain over! in the third place, the will is not only a complex of sensation and thinking, but it is above all an emotion, and in fact the emotion of the command. that which is termed "freedom of the will" is essentially the emotion of supremacy in respect to him who must obey: "i am free, 'he' must obey"--this consciousness is inherent in every will; and equally so the straining of the attention, the straight look which fixes itself exclusively on one thing, the unconditional judgment that "this and nothing else is necessary now," the inward certainty that obedience will be rendered--and whatever else pertains to the position of the commander. a man who wills commands something within himself which renders obedience, or which he believes renders obedience. but now let us notice what is the strangest thing about the will,--this affair so extremely complex, for which the people have only one name. inasmuch as in the given circumstances we are at the same time the commanding and the obeying parties, and as the obeying party we know the sensations of constraint, impulsion, pressure, resistance, and motion, which usually commence immediately after the act of will; inasmuch as, on the other hand, we are accustomed to disregard this duality, and to deceive ourselves about it by means of the synthetic term "i": a whole series of erroneous conclusions, and consequently of false judgments about the will itself, has become attached to the act of willing--to such a degree that he who wills believes firmly that willing suffices for action. since in the majority of cases there has only been exercise of will when the effect of the command--consequently obedience, and therefore action--was to be expected, the appearance has translated itself into the sentiment, as if there were a necessity of effect; in a word, he who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success. "freedom of will"--that is the expression for the complex state of delight of the person exercising volition, who commands and at the same time identifies himself with the executor of the order--who, as such, enjoys also the triumph over obstacles, but thinks within himself that it was really his own will that overcame them. in this way the person exercising volition adds the feelings of delight of his successful executive instruments, the useful "underwills" or under-souls--indeed, our body is but a social structure composed of many souls--to his feelings of delight as commander. l'effet c'est moi. what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy commonwealth, namely, that the governing class identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth. in all willing it is absolutely a question of commanding and obeying, on the basis, as already said, of a social structure composed of many "souls", on which account a philosopher should claim the right to include willing-as-such within the sphere of morals--regarded as the doctrine of the relations of supremacy under which the phenomenon of "life" manifests itself. 20. that the separate philosophical ideas are not anything optional or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other, that, however suddenly and arbitrarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they nevertheless belong just as much to a system as the collective members of the fauna of a continent--is betrayed in the end by the circumstance: how unfailingly the most diverse philosophers always fill in again a definite fundamental scheme of possible philosophies. under an invisible spell, they always revolve once more in the same orbit, however independent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels them in definite order the one after the other--to wit, the innate methodology and relationship of their ideas. their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order. the wonderful family resemblance of all indian, greek, and german philosophizing is easily enough explained. in fact, where there is affinity of language, owing to the common philosophy of grammar--i mean owing to the unconscious domination and guidance of similar grammatical functions--it cannot but be that everything is prepared at the outset for a similar development and succession of philosophical systems, just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation. it is highly probable that philosophers within the domain of the ural-altaic languages (where the conception of the subject is least developed) look otherwise "into the world," and will be found on paths of thought different from those of the indo-germans and mussulmans, the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial conditions.--so much by way of rejecting locke's superficiality with regard to the origin of ideas. 21. the causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. the desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve god, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui, and, with more than munchausen daring, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the slough of nothingness. if any one should find out in this manner the crass stupidity of the celebrated conception of "free will" and put it out of his head altogether, i beg of him to carry his "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will": i mean "non-free will," which is tantamount to a misuse of cause and effect. one should not wrongly materialise "cause" and "effect," as the natural philosophers do (and whoever like them naturalize in thinking at present), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure conceptions, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding,--not for explanation. in "being-in-itself" there is nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does not follow the cause, there "law" does not obtain. it is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as "being-in-itself," with things, we act once more as we have always acted--mythologically. the "non-free will" is mythology; in real life it is only a question of strong and weak wills.--it is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every "causal-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings--the person betrays himself. and in general, if i have observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personal right to their merits, at any price (the vain races belong to this class); others on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to get out of the business, no matter how. the latter, when they write books, are in the habit at present of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialistic sympathy is their favourite disguise. and as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as "la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is its "good taste." 22. let me be pardoned, as an old philologist who cannot desist from the mischief of putting his finger on bad modes of interpretation, but "nature's conformity to law," of which you physicists talk so proudly, as though--why, it exists only owing to your interpretation and bad "philology." it is no matter of fact, no "text," but rather just a naively humanitarian adjustment and perversion of meaning, with which you make abundant concessions to the democratic instincts of the modern soul! "everywhere equality before the law--nature is not different in that respect, nor better than we": a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic--likewise a second and more refined atheism--is once more disguised. "ni dieu, ni maitre"--that, also, is what you want; and therefore "cheers for natural law!"--is it not so? but, as has been said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along, who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, could read out of the same "nature," and with regard to the same phenomena, just the tyrannically inconsiderate and relentless enforcement of the claims of power--an interpreter who should so place the unexceptionalness and unconditionalness of all "will to power" before your eyes, that almost every word, and the word "tyranny" itself, would eventually seem unsuitable, or like a weakening and softening metaphor--as being too human; and who should, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about this world as you do, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable" course, not, however, because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely lacking, and every power effects its ultimate consequences every moment. granted that this also is only interpretation--and you will be eager enough to make this objection?--well, so much the better. 23. all psychology hitherto has run aground on moral prejudices and timidities, it has not dared to launch out into the depths. in so far as it is allowable to recognize in that which has hitherto been written, evidence of that which has hitherto been kept silent, it seems as if nobody had yet harboured the notion of psychology as the morphology and development-doctrine of the will to power, as i conceive of it. the power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most intellectual world, the world apparently most indifferent and unprejudiced, and has obviously operated in an injurious, obstructive, blinding, and distorting manner. a proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious antagonism in the heart of the investigator, it has "the heart" against it even a doctrine of the reciprocal conditionalness of the "good" and the "bad" impulses, causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still strong and manly conscience--still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from bad ones. if, however, a person should regard even the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and imperiousness as life-conditioning emotions, as factors which must be present, fundamentally and essentially, in the general economy of life (which must, therefore, be further developed if life is to be further developed), he will suffer from such a view of things as from sea-sickness. and yet this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous knowledge, and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why every one should keep away from it who can do so! on the other hand, if one has once drifted hither with one's bark, well! very good! now let us set our teeth firmly! let us open our eyes and keep our hand fast on the helm! we sail away right over morality, we crush out, we destroy perhaps the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage thither--but what do we matter. never yet did a profounder world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers, and the psychologist who thus "makes a sacrifice"--it is not the sacrifizio dell' intelletto, on the contrary!--will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall once more be recognized as the queen of the sciences, for whose service and equipment the other sciences exist. for psychology is once more the path to the fundamental problems. chapter ii. the free spirit 24. o sancta simplicitas! in what strange simplification and falsification man lives! one can never cease wondering when once one has got eyes for beholding this marvel! how we have made everything around us clear and free and easy and simple! how we have been able to give our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences!--how from the beginning, we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety--in order to enjoy life! and only on this solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will, the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! not as its opposite, but--as its refinement! it is to be hoped, indeed, that language, here as elsewhere, will not get over its awkwardness, and that it will continue to talk of opposites where there are only degrees and many refinements of gradation; it is equally to be hoped that the incarnated tartuffery of morals, which now belongs to our unconquerable "flesh and blood," will turn the words round in the mouths of us discerning ones. here and there we understand it, and laugh at the way in which precisely the best knowledge seeks most to retain us in this simplified, thoroughly artificial, suitably imagined, and suitably falsified world: at the way in which, whether it will or not, it loves error, because, as living itself, it loves life! 25. after such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would fain be heard; it appeals to the most serious minds. take care, ye philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! of suffering "for the truth's sake"! even in your own defense! it spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card as protectors of truth upon earth--as though "the truth" were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, messrs loafers and cobweb-spinners of the spirit! finally, ye know sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if ye just carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn pantomime and trumping games before accusers and law-courts! rather go out of the way! flee into concealment! and have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! and pray, don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work! and have people around you who are as a garden--or as music on the waters at eventide, when already the day becomes a memory. choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right still to remain good in any sense whatsoever! how poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force! how personal does a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! these pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones--also the compulsory recluses, the spinozas or giordano brunos--always become in the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-brewers (just lay bare the foundation of spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. the martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a "martyr," into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case--merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real tragedy is at an end, supposing that every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin. 26. every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is free from the crowd, the many, the majority--where he may forget "men who are the rule," as their exception;--exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. whoever, in intercourse with men, does not occasionally glisten in all the green and grey colours of distress, owing to disgust, satiety, sympathy, gloominess, and solitariness, is assuredly not a man of elevated tastes; supposing, however, that he does not voluntarily take all this burden and disgust upon himself, that he persistently avoids it, and remains, as i said, quietly and proudly hidden in his citadel, one thing is then certain: he was not made, he was not predestined for knowledge. for as such, he would one day have to say to himself: "the devil take my good taste! but 'the rule' is more interesting than the exception--than myself, the exception!" and he would go down, and above all, he would go "inside." the long and serious study of the average man--and consequently much disguise, self-overcoming, familiarity, and bad intercourse (all intercourse is bad intercourse except with one's equals):--that constitutes a necessary part of the life-history of every philosopher; perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part. if he is fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task; i mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like before witnesses--sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty; and the higher man must open his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. there are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust--namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the abbe galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century--he was far profounder than voltaire, and consequently also, a good deal more silent. it happens more frequently, as has been hinted, that a scientific head is placed on an ape's body, a fine exceptional understanding in a base soul, an occurrence by no means rare, especially among doctors and moral physiologists. and whenever anyone speaks without bitterness, or rather quite innocently, of man as a belly with two requirements, and a head with one; whenever any one sees, seeks, and wants to see only hunger, sexual instinct, and vanity as the real and only motives of human actions; in short, when any one speaks "badly"--and not even "ill"--of man, then ought the lover of knowledge to hearken attentively and diligently; he ought, in general, to have an open ear wherever there is talk without indignation. for the indignant man, and he who perpetually tears and lacerates himself with his own teeth (or, in place of himself, the world, god, or society), may indeed, morally speaking, stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr, but in every other sense he is the more ordinary, more indifferent, and less instructive case. and no one is such a liar as the indignant man. 27. it is difficult to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati [footnote: like the river ganges: presto.] among those only who think and live otherwise--namely, kurmagati [footnote: like the tortoise: lento.], or at best "froglike," mandeikagati [footnote: like the frog: staccato.] (i do everything to be "difficultly understood" myself!)--and one should be heartily grateful for the good will to some refinement of interpretation. as regards "the good friends," however, who are always too easy-going, and think that as friends they have a right to ease, one does well at the very first to grant them a play-ground and romping-place for misunderstanding--one can thus laugh still; or get rid of them altogether, these good friends--and laugh then also! 28. what is most difficult to render from one language into another is the tempo of its style, which has its basis in the character of the race, or to speak more physiologically, in the average tempo of the assimilation of its nutriment. there are honestly meant translations, which, as involuntary vulgarizations, are almost falsifications of the original, merely because its lively and merry tempo (which overleaps and obviates all dangers in word and expression) could not also be rendered. a german is almost incapacitated for presto in his language; consequently also, as may be reasonably inferred, for many of the most delightful and daring nuances of free, free-spirited thought. and just as the buffoon and satyr are foreign to him in body and conscience, so aristophanes and petronius are untranslatable for him. everything ponderous, viscous, and pompously clumsy, all long-winded and wearying species of style, are developed in profuse variety among germans--pardon me for stating the fact that even goethe's prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, as a reflection of the "good old time" to which it belongs, and as an expression of german taste at a time when there was still a "german taste," which was a rococo-taste in moribus et artibus. lessing is an exception, owing to his histrionic nature, which understood much, and was versed in many things; he who was not the translator of bayle to no purpose, who took refuge willingly in the shadow of diderot and voltaire, and still more willingly among the roman comedy-writers--lessing loved also free-spiritism in the tempo, and flight out of germany. but how could the german language, even in the prose of lessing, imitate the tempo of machiavelli, who in his "principe" makes us breathe the dry, fine air of florence, and cannot help presenting the most serious events in a boisterous allegrissimo, perhaps not without a malicious artistic sense of the contrast he ventures to present--long, heavy, difficult, dangerous thoughts, and a tempo of the gallop, and of the best, wantonest humour? finally, who would venture on a german translation of petronius, who, more than any great musician hitherto, was a master of presto in invention, ideas, and words? what matter in the end about the swamps of the sick, evil world, or of the "ancient world," when like him, one has the feet of a wind, the rush, the breath, the emancipating scorn of a wind, which makes everything healthy, by making everything run! and with regard to aristophanes--that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose sake one pardons all hellenism for having existed, provided one has understood in its full profundity all that there requires pardon and transfiguration; there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on plato's secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no "bible," nor anything egyptian, pythagorean, or platonic--but a book of aristophanes. how could even plato have endured life--a greek life which he repudiated--without an aristophanes! 29. it is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a 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. he enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. and he cannot any longer go back! he cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men! 30. our deepest insights must--and should--appear as follies, and under certain circumstances as crimes, when they come unauthorizedly to the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them. the exoteric and the esoteric, as they were formerly distinguished by philosophers--among the indians, as among the greeks, persians, and mussulmans, in short, wherever people believed in gradations of rank and not in equality and equal rights--are not so much in contradistinction to one another in respect to the exoteric class, standing without, and viewing, estimating, measuring, and judging from the outside, and not from the inside; the more essential distinction is that the class in question views things from below upwards--while the esoteric class views things from above downwards. there are heights of the soul from which tragedy itself no longer appears to operate tragically; and if all the woe in the world were taken together, who would dare to decide whether the sight of it would necessarily seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe?... that which serves the higher class of men for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely different and lower order of human beings. 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. there are books which have an inverse value for the soul and the health according as the inferior soul and the lower vitality, or the higher and more powerful, make use of them. in the former case they are dangerous, disturbing, unsettling books, in the latter case they are herald-calls which summon the bravest to their bravery. 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. 31. in our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of nuance, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with yea and nay. everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. the angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive. later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself--still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatiently it tears itself, how it revenges itself for its long self-blinding, as though it had been a voluntary blindness! in this transition one punishes oneself by distrust of one's sentiments; one tortures one's enthusiasm with doubt, one feels even the good conscience to be a danger, as if it were the self-concealment and lassitude of a more refined uprightness; and above all, one espouses upon principle the cause against "youth."--a decade later, and one comprehends that all this was also still--youth! 32. throughout the longest period of human history--one calls it the prehistoric period--the value or non-value of an action was inferred from its consequences; the action in itself was not taken into consideration, any more than its origin; but pretty much as in china at present, where the distinction or disgrace of a child redounds to its parents, the retro-operating power of success or failure was what induced men to think well or ill of an action. let us call this period the pre-moral period of mankind; the imperative, "know thyself!" was then still unknown.--in the last ten thousand years, on the other hand, on certain large portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far, that one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin, decide with regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an important refinement of vision and of criterion, the unconscious effect of the supremacy of aristocratic values and of the belief in "origin," the mark of a period which may be designated in the narrower sense as the moral one: the first attempt at self-knowledge is thereby made. instead of the consequences, the origin--what an inversion of perspective! and assuredly an inversion effected only after long struggle and wavering! to be sure, an ominous new superstition, a peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite sense possible, as origin out of an intention; people were agreed in the belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention. the intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action: under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the present day.--is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousness and acuteness in man--is it not possible that we may be standing on the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished negatively as ultra-moral: nowadays when, at least among us immoralists, the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely in that which is not intentional, and that all its intentionalness, all that is seen, sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or skin--which, like every skin, betrays something, but conceals still more? in short, we believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom, which first requires an explanation--a sign, moreover, which has too many interpretations, and consequently hardly any meaning in itself alone: that morality, in the sense in which it has been understood hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps a prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something which must be surmounted. the surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the self-mounting of morality--let that be the name for the long-secret labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright, and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones of the soul. 33. it cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must be mercilessly called to account, and brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics of "disinterested contemplation," under which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good conscience. there is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments "for others" and "not for myself," for one not needing to be doubly distrustful here, and for one asking promptly: "are they not perhaps--deceptions?"--that they please--him who has them, and him who enjoys their fruit, and also the mere spectator--that is still no argument in their favour, but just calls for caution. let us therefore be cautious! 34. at whatever standpoint of philosophy one may place oneself nowadays, seen from every position, the erroneousness of the world in which we think we live is the surest and most certain thing our eyes can light upon: we find proof after proof thereof, which would fain allure us into surmises concerning a deceptive principle in the "nature of things." he, however, who makes thinking itself, and consequently "the spirit," responsible for the falseness of the world--an honourable exit, which every conscious or unconscious advocatus dei avails himself of--he who regards this world, including space, time, form, and movement, as falsely deduced, would have at least good reason in the end to become distrustful also of all thinking; has it not hitherto been playing upon us the worst of scurvy tricks? and what guarantee would it give that it would not continue to do what it has always been doing? in all seriousness, the innocence of thinkers has something touching and respect-inspiring in it, which even nowadays permits them to wait upon consciousness with the request that it will give them honest answers: for example, whether it be "real" or not, and why it keeps the outer world so resolutely at a distance, and other questions of the same description. the belief in "immediate certainties" is a moral naivete which does honour to us philosophers; but--we have now to cease being "merely moral" men! apart from morality, such belief is a folly which does little honour to us! if in middle-class life an ever-ready distrust is regarded as the sign of a "bad character," and consequently as an imprudence, here among us, beyond the middle-class world and its yeas and nays, what should prevent our being imprudent and saying: the philosopher has at length a right to "bad character," as the being who has hitherto been most befooled on earth--he is now under obligation to distrustfulness, to the wickedest squinting out of every abyss of suspicion.--forgive me the joke of this gloomy grimace and turn of expression; for i myself have long ago learned to think and estimate differently with regard to deceiving and being deceived, and i keep at least a couple of pokes in the ribs ready for the blind rage with which philosophers struggle against being deceived. why not? it is nothing more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than semblance; it is, in fact, the worst proved supposition in the world. so much must be conceded: there could have been no life at all except upon the basis of perspective estimates and semblances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and stupidity of many philosophers, one wished to do away altogether with the "seeming world"--well, granted that you could do that,--at least nothing of your "truth" would thereby remain! indeed, what is it that forces us in general to the supposition that there is an essential opposition of "true" and "false"? is it not enough to suppose degrees of seemingness, and as it were lighter and darker shades and tones of semblance--different valeurs, as the painters say? why might not the world which concerns us--be a fiction? and to any one who suggested: "but to a fiction belongs an originator?"--might it not be bluntly replied: why? may not this "belong" also belong to the fiction? is it not at length permitted to be a little ironical towards the subject, just as towards the predicate and object? might not the philosopher elevate himself above faith in grammar? all respect to governesses, but is it not time that philosophy should renounce governess-faith? 35. o voltaire! o humanity! o idiocy! there is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the search for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely--"il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"--i wager he finds nothing! 36. supposing that nothing else is "given" as real but our world of desires and passions, that we cannot sink or rise to any other "reality" but just that of our impulses--for thinking is only a relation of these impulses to one another:--are we not permitted to make the attempt and to ask the question whether this which is "given" does not suffice, by means of our counterparts, for the understanding even of the so-called mechanical (or "material") world? i do not mean as an illusion, a "semblance," a "representation" (in the berkeleyan and schopenhauerian sense), but as possessing the same degree of reality as our emotions themselves--as a more primitive form of the world of emotions, in which everything still lies locked in a mighty unity, which afterwards branches off and develops itself in organic processes (naturally also, refines and debilitates)--as a kind of instinctive life in which all organic functions, including self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change of matter, are still synthetically united with one another--as a primary form of life?--in the end, it is not only permitted to make this attempt, it is commanded by the conscience of logical method. not to assume several kinds of causality, so long as the attempt to get along with a single one has not been pushed to its furthest extent (to absurdity, if i may be allowed to say so): that is a morality of method which one may not repudiate nowadays--it follows "from its definition," as mathematicians say. the question is ultimately whether we really recognize the will as operating, whether we believe in the causality of the will; if we do so--and fundamentally our belief in this is just our belief in causality itself--we must make the attempt to posit hypothetically the causality of the will as the only causality. "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 recognized--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 succeeded 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. 37. "what? does not that mean in popular language: god is disproved, but not the devil?"--on the contrary! on the contrary, my friends! and who the devil also compels you to speak popularly! 38. as happened finally in all the enlightenment of modern times with the french revolution (that terrible farce, quite superfluous when judged close at hand, into which, however, the noble and visionary spectators of all europe have interpreted from a distance their own indignation and enthusiasm so long and passionately, until the text has disappeared under the interpretation), so a noble posterity might once more misunderstand the whole of the past, and perhaps only thereby make its aspect endurable.--or rather, has not this already happened? have not we ourselves been--that "noble posterity"? and, in so far as we now comprehend this, is it not--thereby already past? 39. nobody will very readily regard a doctrine as true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous--excepting, perhaps, the amiable "idealists," who are enthusiastic about the good, true, and beautiful, and let all kinds of motley, coarse, and good-natured desirabilities swim about promiscuously in their pond. 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. but there is no doubt that for the discovery of certain portions of truth the wicked and unfortunate are more favourably situated and have a greater likelihood of success; not to speak of the wicked who are happy--a species about whom moralists are silent. perhaps severity and craft are more favourable conditions for the development of strong, independent spirits and philosophers than the gentle, refined, yielding good-nature, and habit of taking things easily, which are prized, and rightly prized in a learned man. presupposing always, to begin with, that the term "philosopher" be not confined to the philosopher who writes books, or even introduces his philosophy into books!--stendhal furnishes a last feature of the portrait of the free-spirited philosopher, which for the sake of german taste i will not omit to underline--for it is opposed to german taste. "pour etre bon philosophe," says this last great psychologist, "il faut etre sec, clair, sans illusion. un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractere requis pour faire des decouvertes en philosophie, c'est-a-dire pour voir clair dans ce qui est." 40. 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? a question worth asking!--it would be strange if some mystic has not already ventured on the same kind of thing. there are proceedings of such a delicate nature that it is well to overwhelm them with coarseness and make them unrecognizable; there are actions of love and of an extravagant magnanimity after which nothing can be wiser than to take a stick and thrash the witness soundly: one thereby obscures his recollection. many a one is able to obscure and abuse his own memory, in order at least to have vengeance on this sole party in the secret: shame is inventive. they are not the worst things of which one is most ashamed: there is not only deceit behind a mask--there is so much goodness in craft. i could imagine that a man with something costly and fragile to conceal, would roll through life clumsily and rotundly like an old, green, heavily-hooped wine-cask: the refinement of his shame requiring it to be so. a man who has depths in his shame meets his destiny and his delicate decisions upon paths which few ever reach, and with regard to the existence of which his nearest and most intimate friends may be ignorant; his mortal danger conceals itself from their eyes, and equally so his regained security. such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, desires and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there--and that it is well to be so. every profound spirit needs a mask; nay, more, around every profound spirit there continually grows a mask, owing to the constantly false, that is to say, superficial interpretation of every word he utters, every step he takes, every sign of life he manifests. 41. one must subject oneself to one's own tests that one is destined for independence and command, and do so at the right time. one must not avoid one's tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge. not to cleave to any person, be it even the dearest--every person is a prison and also a recess. not to cleave to a fatherland, be it even the most suffering and necessitous--it is even less difficult to detach one's heart from a victorious fatherland. not to cleave to a sympathy, be it even for higher men, into whose peculiar torture and helplessness chance has given us an insight. not to cleave to a science, though it tempt one with the most valuable discoveries, apparently specially reserved for us. not to cleave to one's own liberation, to the voluptuous distance and remoteness of the bird, which always flies further aloft in order always to see more under it--the danger of the flier. not to cleave to our own virtues, nor become as a whole a victim to any of our specialties, to our "hospitality" for instance, which is the danger of dangers for highly developed and wealthy souls, who deal prodigally, almost indifferently with themselves, and push the virtue of liberality so far that it becomes a vice. one must know how to conserve oneself--the best test of independence. 42. a new order of philosophers is appearing; i shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. as far as i understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be understood--for it is their nature to wish to remain something of a puzzle--these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as "tempters." this name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it be preferred, a temptation. 43. will they be new friends of "truth," these coming philosophers? very probably, for all philosophers hitherto have loved their truths. but assuredly they will not be dogmatists. it must be contrary to their pride, and also contrary to their taste, that their truth should still be truth for every one--that which has hitherto been the secret wish and ultimate purpose of all dogmatic efforts. "my opinion is my opinion: another person has not easily a right to it"--such a philosopher of the future will say, perhaps. 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. 44. need i say expressly after all this that they will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future--as certainly also they will not be merely free spirits, but something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, which does not wish to be misunderstood and mistaken? but while i say this, i feel under obligation almost as much to them as to ourselves (we free spirits who are their heralds and forerunners), to sweep away from ourselves altogether a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding, which, like a fog, has too long made the conception of "free spirit" obscure. in every country of europe, and the same in america, there is at present something which makes an abuse of this name a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt--not to mention that in respect to the new philosophers who are appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. 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! what they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "equality of rights" and "sympathy with all sufferers"--and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be done away with. we opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye and conscience to the question how and where the plant "man" has hitherto grown most vigorously, believe that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions, that for this end the dangerousness of his situation had to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling power (his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety and daring under long oppression and compulsion, and his will to life had to be increased to the unconditioned will to power--we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry 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--we do not even say enough when we only say this much, and in any case we find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at the other extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability, as their antipodes perhaps? what wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly the most communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray in every respect what a spirit can free itself from, and where perhaps it will then be driven? and as to the import of the dangerous formula, "beyond good and evil," with which we at least avoid confusion, we are something else than "libres-penseurs," "liben pensatori" "free-thinkers," and whatever these honest advocates of "modern ideas" like to call themselves. having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the god, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows--and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude--such kind of men are we, we free spirits! and perhaps ye are also something of the same kind, ye coming ones? ye new philosophers? chapter iii. the religious mood 45. the human soul and its limits, the range of man's inner experiences hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences, the entire history of the soul up to the present time, and its still unexhausted possibilities: this is the preordained hunting-domain for a born psychologist and lover of a "big hunt". but how often must he say despairingly to himself: "a single individual! alas, only a single individual! and this great forest, this virgin forest!" so he would like to have some hundreds of hunting assistants, and fine trained hounds, that he could send into the history of the human soul, to drive his game together. in vain: again and again he experiences, profoundly and bitterly, how difficult it is to find assistants and dogs for all the things that directly excite his curiosity. the evil of sending scholars into new and dangerous hunting-domains, where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every sense are required, is that they are no longer serviceable just when the "big hunt," and also the great danger commences,--it is precisely then that they lose their keen eye and nose. in order, for instance, to divine and determine what sort of history the problem of knowledge and conscience has hitherto had in the souls of homines religiosi, a person would perhaps himself have to possess as profound, as bruised, as immense an experience as the intellectual conscience of pascal; and then he would still require that wide-spread heaven of clear, wicked spirituality, which, from above, would be able to oversee, arrange, and effectively formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.--but who could do me this service! and who would have time to wait for such servants!--they evidently appear too rarely, they are so improbable at all times! eventually one must do everything oneself in order to know something; which means that one has much to do!--but a curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable of vices--pardon me! i mean to say that the love of truth has its reward in heaven, and already upon earth. 46. faith, such as early christianity desired, and not infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly free-spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education in tolerance which the imperium romanum gave--this faith is not that sincere, austere slave-faith by which perhaps a luther or a cromwell, or some other northern barbarian of the spirit remained attached to his god and christianity, it is much rather the faith of pascal, which resembles in a terrible manner a continuous suicide of reason--a tough, long-lived, worm-like reason, which is not to be slain at once and with a single blow. 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. there is cruelty and religious phoenicianism in this faith, which is adapted to a tender, many-sided, and very fastidious conscience, it takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is indescribably painful, that all the past and all the habits of such a spirit resist the absurdissimum, in the form of which "faith" comes to it. modern men, with their obtuseness as regards all christian nomenclature, have no longer the sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to an antique taste by the paradox of the formula, "god on the cross". hitherto there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a transvaluation of all ancient values--it was the orient, the profound orient, it was the oriental slave who thus took revenge on rome and its noble, light-minded toleration, on the roman "catholicism" of non-faith, and it was always not the faith, but the freedom from the faith, the half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which made the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against them. "enlightenment" causes revolt, for the slave desires the unconditioned, he understands nothing but the tyrannous, even in morals, he loves as he hates, without nuance, to the very depths, to the point of pain, to the point of sickness--his many hidden sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste which seems to deny suffering. the skepticism with regard to suffering, fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality, was not the least of the causes, also, of the last great slave-insurrection which began with the french revolution. 47. wherever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth so far, we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as to regimen: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence--but without its being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or if any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. this latter doubt is justified by the fact that one of the most regular symptoms among savage as well as among civilized peoples is the most sudden and excessive sensuality, which then with equal suddenness transforms into penitential paroxysms, world-renunciation, and will-renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as disguised epilepsy? but nowhere is it more obligatory to put aside explanations around no other type has there grown such a mass of absurdity and superstition, no other type seems to have been more interesting to men and even to philosophers--perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent here, to learn caution, or, better still, to look away, to go away--yet in the background of the most recent philosophy, that of schopenhauer, we find almost as the problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the religious crisis and awakening. how is the negation of will possible? how is the saint possible?--that seems to have been the very question with which schopenhauer made a start and became a philosopher. and thus it was a genuine schopenhauerian consequence, that his most convinced adherent (perhaps also his last, as far as germany is concerned), namely, richard wagner, should bring his own life-work to an end just here, and should finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the stage as kundry, type vecu, and as it loved and lived, at the very time that the mad-doctors in almost all european countries had an opportunity to study the type close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis--or as i call it, "the religious mood"--made its latest epidemical outbreak and display as the "salvation army"--if it be a question, however, as to what has been so extremely interesting to men of all sorts in all ages, and even to philosophers, in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly the appearance of the miraculous therein--namely, the immediate succession of opposites, of states of the soul regarded as morally antithetical: it was believed here to be self-evident that a "bad man" was all at once turned into a "saint," a good man. the hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at this point, is it not possible it may have happened principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because it believed in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read, and interpreted these oppositions into the text and facts of the case? what? "miracle" only an error of interpretation? a lack of philology? 48. it seems that the latin races are far more deeply attached to their catholicism than we northerners are to christianity generally, and that consequently unbelief in catholic countries means something quite different from what it does among protestants--namely, a sort of revolt against the spirit of the race, while with us it is rather a return to the spirit (or non-spirit) of the race. we northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races, even as regards our talents for religion--we have poor talents for it. one may make an exception in the case of the celts, who have theretofore furnished also the best soil for christian infection in the north: the christian ideal blossomed forth in france as much as ever the pale sun of the north would allow it. how strangely pious for our taste are still these later french skeptics, whenever there is any celtic blood in their origin! how catholic, how un-german does auguste comte's sociology seem to us, with the roman logic of its instincts! how jesuitical, that amiable and shrewd cicerone of port royal, sainte-beuve, in spite of all his hostility to jesuits! and even ernest renan: how inaccessible to us northerners does the language of such a renan appear, in whom every instant the merest touch of religious thrill throws his refined voluptuous and comfortably couching soul off its balance! let us repeat after him these fine sentences--and what wickedness and haughtiness is immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but harder souls, that is to say, in our more german souls!--"disons donc hardiment que la religion est un produit de l'homme normal, que l'homme est le plus dans le vrai quant il est le plus religieux et le plus assure d'une destinee infinie.... c'est quand il est bon qu'il veut que la virtu corresponde a un order eternal, c'est quand il contemple les choses d'une maniere desinteressee qu'il trouve la mort revoltante et absurde. comment ne pas supposer que c'est dans ces moments-la, que l'homme voit le mieux?"... these sentences are so extremely antipodal to my ears and habits of thought, that in my first impulse of rage on finding them, i wrote on the margin, "la niaiserie religieuse par excellence!"--until in my later rage i even took a fancy to them, these sentences with their truth absolutely inverted! it is so nice and such a distinction to have one's own antipodes! 49. that which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient greeks is the irrestrainable stream of gratitude which it pours forth--it is a very superior kind of man who takes such an attitude towards nature and life.--later on, when the populace got the upper hand in greece, fear became rampant also in religion; and christianity was preparing itself. 50. the passion for god: there are churlish, honest-hearted, and importunate kinds of it, like that of luther--the whole of protestantism lacks the southern delicatezza. there is an oriental exaltation of the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favoured or elevated slave, as in the case of st. augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner, all nobility in bearing and desires. there is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a unio mystica et physica, as in the case of madame de guyon. in many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl's or youth's puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition. the church has frequently canonized the woman in such a case. 51. 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 of will, in which they recognized their own strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint. in addition to this, the contemplation of the saint suggested to them a suspicion: such an enormity of self-negation and anti-naturalness will not have been coveted for nothing--they have said, inquiringly. there is perhaps a reason for it, some very great danger, about which the ascetic might wish to be more accurately informed through his secret interlocutors and visitors? in a word, 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. they had to question him. 52. in the jewish "old testament," the book of divine justice, there are men, things, and sayings on such an immense scale, that greek and indian literature has nothing to compare with it. one stands with fear and reverence before those stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and one has sad thoughts about old asia and its little out-pushed peninsula europe, which would like, by all means, to figure before asia as the "progress of mankind." to be sure, he who is himself only a slender, tame house-animal, and knows only the wants of a house-animal (like our cultured people of today, including the christians of "cultured" christianity), need neither be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins--the taste for the old testament is a touchstone with respect to "great" and "small": perhaps he will find that the new testament, the book of grace, still appeals more to his heart (there is much of the odour of the genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). to have bound up this new testament (a kind of rococo of taste in every respect) along with the old testament into one book, as the "bible," as "the book in itself," is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the spirit" which literary europe has upon its conscience. 53. why atheism nowadays? "the father" in god is thoroughly refuted; equally so "the judge," "the rewarder." also his "free will": he does not hear--and even if he did, he would not know how to help. the worst is that he seems incapable of communicating himself clearly; is he uncertain?--this is what i have made out (by questioning and listening at a variety of conversations) to be the cause of the decline of european theism; it appears to me that though the religious instinct is in vigorous growth,--it rejects the theistic satisfaction with profound distrust. 54. what does all modern philosophy mainly do? since descartes--and indeed more in defiance of him than on the basis of his procedure--an attentat has been made on the part of all philosophers on the old conception of the soul, under the guise of a criticism of the subject and predicate conception--that is to say, an attentat on the fundamental presupposition of christian doctrine. modern philosophy, as epistemological skepticism, is secretly or openly anti-christian, although (for keener ears, be it said) by no means anti-religious. formerly, in effect, one believed in "the soul" as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, "i" is the condition, "think" is the predicate and is conditioned--to think is an activity for which one must suppose a subject as cause. the attempt was then made, with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if one could not get out of this net,--to see if the opposite was not perhaps true: "think" the condition, and "i" the conditioned; "i," therefore, only a synthesis which has been made by thinking itself. kant really wished to prove that, starting from the subject, the subject could not be proved--nor the object either: the possibility of an apparent existence of the subject, and therefore of "the soul," may not always have been strange to him,--the thought which once had an immense power on earth as the vedanta philosophy. 55. there is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rounds; but three of these are the most important. once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their god, and perhaps just those they loved the best--to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the emperor tiberius in the mithra-grotto on the island of capri, that most terrible of all roman anachronisms. then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed to their god the strongest instincts they possessed, their "nature"; this festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and "anti-natural" fanatics. finally, what still remained to be sacrificed? was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness and justice? was it not necessary to sacrifice god himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? to sacrifice god for nothingness--this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we all know something thereof already. 56. whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-christian, half-german narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of schopenhauer's philosophy; whoever, with an asiatic and super-asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought--beyond good and evil, and no longer like buddha and schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of morality,--whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again as it was and is, for all eternity, insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play; and not only the play, but actually to him who requires the play--and makes it necessary; because he always requires himself anew--and makes himself necessary.--what? and this would not be--circulus vitiosus deus? 57. the distance, and as it were the space around man, grows with the strength of his intellectual vision and insight: his world becomes profounder; new stars, new enigmas, and notions are ever coming into view. perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye has exercised its acuteness and profundity has just been an occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for children and childish minds. 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;--and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then be necessary once more for "the old man"--always childish enough, an eternal child! 58. has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness for the "coming of god"), i mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is dishonouring--that it vulgarizes body and soul--is not quite unfamiliar? and that consequently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and prepares for "unbelief" more than anything else? among these, for instance, who are at present living apart from religion in germany, i find "free-thinkers" of diversified species and origin, but above all a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world with a kind of dull astonishment. they feel themselves already fully occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their pleasures, not to mention the "fatherland," and the newspapers, and their "family duties"; it seems that they have no time whatever left for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a question of a new business or a new pleasure--for it is impossible, they say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil their tempers. they are by no means enemies of religious customs; should certain circumstances, state affairs perhaps, require their participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many things are done--with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without much curiosity or discomfort;--they live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a for or against in such matters. among those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of german protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious scholars, and the entire university personnel (with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). on the part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of how much good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a german scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole profession (and as i have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of spirit which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong to the church. it is only with the help of history (not through his own personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one step nearer to that which still maintains itself as church or as piety; perhaps even the contrary. the practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.--every age has its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete--adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and above which he himself has developed--he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of "modern ideas"! 59. whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. it is their preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and false. here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration of "pure forms" in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be doubted that whoever has need of the cult of the superficial to that extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive beneath it. perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying to falsify its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and deified,--one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as their highest rank. it is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which divines that truth might be attained too soon, before man has become strong enough, hard enough, artist enough.... piety, the "life in god," regarded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of the fear of truth, as artist-adoration and artist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at any price. perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer offends. 60. to love mankind for god's sake--this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. that love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an additional folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a higher inclination--whoever first perceived and "experienced" this, however his tongue may have stammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone astray in the finest fashion! 61. the philosopher, as we free spirits understand him--as the man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general development of mankind,--will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions. 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. 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 resistance in the exercise of authority--as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common, betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. and in the case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government (over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of managing grosser affairs, and for securing immunity from the unavoidable filth of all political agitation. the brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. with the help of a religious organization, they secured to themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher and super-regal mission. at the same time religion gives inducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future ruling and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which, through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in self-control are on the increase. to them religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and of solitude. asceticism and puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upwards 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. religion, together with the religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect endurable to them, it operates upon them as the epicurean philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner, almost turning suffering to account, and in the end even hallowing and vindicating it. there is perhaps nothing so admirable in christianity and buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live--this very difficulty being necessary. 62. to be sure--to make also the bad counter-reckoning against such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers--the cost is always excessive and terrible when religions do not operate as an educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and paramountly, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means along with other means. among men, as among all other animals, there is a surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception; and in view of the fact that man is the animal not yet properly adapted to his environment, the rare exception. but worse still. the higher the type a man represents, the greater is the improbability that he will succeed; the accidental, the law of irrationality in the general constitution of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse, and difficult to determine. what, then, is the attitude of the two greatest religions above-mentioned to the surplus of failures in life? they endeavour to preserve and keep alive whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the religions for sufferers, they take the part of these upon principle; they are always in favour of those who suffer from life as from a disease, and they would fain treat every other experience of life as false and impossible. however highly we may esteem this indulgent and preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has applied, and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of man), the hitherto paramount religions--to give a general appreciation of them--are among the principal causes which have kept the type of "man" upon a lower level--they have preserved too much that which should have perished. one has to thank them for invaluable services; and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all that the "spiritual men" of christianity have done for europe hitherto! but when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to the oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless, and when they had allured from society into convents and spiritual penitentiaries the broken-hearted and distracted: what else had they to do in order to work systematically in that fashion, and with a good conscience, for the preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, in deed and in truth, to work for the deterioration of the european race? to reverse all estimates of value--that is what they had to do! and to shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and imperious--all instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful type of "man"--into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction; forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into hatred of the earth and earthly things--that is the task the church imposed on itself, and was obliged to impose, until, according to its standard of value, "unworldliness," "unsensuousness," and "higher man" fused into one sentiment. if one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and refined comedy of european christianity with the derisive and impartial eye of an epicurean god, i should think one would never cease marvelling and laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a sublime abortion of man? he, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer epicurean) and with some divine hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the european christian (pascal, for instance), would he not have to cry aloud with rage, pity, and horror: "oh, you bunglers, presumptuous pitiful bunglers, what have you done! was that a work for your hands? how you have hacked and botched my finest stone! what have you presumed to do!"--i should say that christianity has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. men, not great enough, nor hard enough, to be entitled as artists to take part in fashioning man; men, not sufficiently strong and far-sighted to allow, with sublime self-constraint, the obvious law of the thousandfold failures and perishings to prevail; men, not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man:--such men, with their "equality before god," have hitherto swayed the destiny of europe; until at last a dwarfed, almost ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obliging, sickly, mediocre, the european of the present day. chapter iv. apophthegms and interludes 63. he who is a thorough teacher takes things seriously--and even himself--only in relation to his pupils. 64. "knowledge for its own sake"--that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more. 65. the charm of knowledge would be small, were it not so much shame has to be overcome on the way to it. 65a. we are most dishonourable towards our god: he is not permitted to sin. 66. the tendency of a person to allow himself to be degraded, robbed, deceived, and exploited might be the diffidence of a god among men. 67. love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. love to god also! 68. "i did that," says my memory. "i could not have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. eventually--the memory yields. 69. one has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the hand that--kills with leniency. 70. if a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs. 71. the sage as astronomer.--so long as thou feelest the stars as an "above thee," thou lackest the eye of the discerning one. 72. it is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men. 73. he who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. 73a. many a peacock hides his tail from every eye--and calls it his pride. 74. a man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity. 75. the degree and nature of a man's sensuality extends to the highest altitudes of his spirit. 76. under peaceful conditions the militant man attacks himself. 77. with his principles a man seeks either to dominate, or justify, or honour, or reproach, or conceal his habits: two men with the same principles probably seek fundamentally different ends therewith. 78. he who despises himself, nevertheless esteems himself thereby, as a despiser. 79. a soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up. 80. a thing that is explained ceases to concern us--what did the god mean who gave the advice, "know thyself!" did it perhaps imply "cease to be concerned about thyself! become objective!"--and socrates?--and the "scientific man"? 81. it is terrible to die of thirst at sea. is it necessary that you should so salt your truth that it will no longer--quench thirst? 82. "sympathy for all"--would be harshness and tyranny for thee, my good neighbour. 83. instinct--when the house is on fire one forgets even the dinner--yes, but one recovers it from among the ashes. 84. woman learns how to hate in proportion as she--forgets how to charm. 85. the same emotions are in man and woman, but in different tempo, on that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other. 86. in the background of all their personal vanity, women themselves have still their impersonal scorn--for "woman". 87. fettered heart, free spirit--when one firmly fetters one's heart and keeps it prisoner, one can allow one's spirit many liberties: i said this once before but people do not believe it when i say so, unless they know it already. 88. one begins to distrust very clever persons when they become embarrassed. 89. dreadful experiences raise the question whether he who experiences them is not something dreadful also. 90. heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy--by hatred and love. 91. so cold, so icy, that one burns one's finger at the touch of him! every hand that lays hold of him shrinks back!--and for that very reason many think him red-hot. 92. who has not, at one time or another--sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name? 93. in affability there is no hatred of men, but precisely on that account a great deal too much contempt of men. 94. the maturity of man--that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play. 95. 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. 96. one should part from life as ulysses parted from nausicaa--blessing it rather than in love with it. 97. what? a great man? i always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal. 98. when one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while it bites. 99. the disappointed one speaks--"i listened for the echo and i heard only praise." 100. we all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are, we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows. 101. a discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of god. 102. discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with regard to the beloved. "what! she is modest enough to love even you? or stupid enough? or--or---" 103. the danger in happiness.--"everything now turns out best for me, i now love every fate:--who would like to be my fate?" 104. not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the christians of today--burning us. 105. the pia fraus is still more repugnant to the taste (the "piety") of the free spirit (the "pious man of knowledge") than the impia fraus. hence the profound lack of judgment, in comparison with the church, characteristic of the type "free spirit"--as its non-freedom. 106. by means of music the very passions enjoy themselves. 107. a sign of strong character, when once the resolution has been taken, to shut the ear even to the best counter-arguments. occasionally, therefore, a will to stupidity. 108. there is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. 109. the criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it. 110. the advocates of a criminal are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of the doer. 111. our vanity is most difficult to wound just when our pride has been wounded. 112. to him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them. 113. "you want to prepossess him in your favour? then you must be embarrassed before him." 114. the immense expectation with regard to sexual love, and the coyness in this expectation, spoils all the perspectives of women at the outset. 115. where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman's play is mediocre. 116. the great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us. 117. the will to overcome an emotion, is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other, emotions. 118. there is an innocence of admiration: it is possessed by him to whom it has not yet occurred that he himself may be admired some day. 119. our loathing of dirt may be so great as to prevent our cleaning ourselves--"justifying" ourselves. 120. sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily torn up. 121. it is a curious thing that god learned greek when he wished to turn author--and that he did not learn it better. 122. to rejoice on account of praise is in many cases merely politeness of heart--and the very opposite of vanity of spirit. 123. even concubinage has been corrupted--by marriage. 124. he who exults at the stake, does not triumph over pain, but because of the fact that he does not feel pain where he expected it. a parable. 125. when we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us. 126. a nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men.--yes, and then to get round them. 127. in the eyes of all true women science is hostile to the sense of shame. they feel as if one wished to peep under their skin with it--or worse still! under their dress and finery. 128. the more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more must you allure the senses to it. 129. the devil has the most extensive perspectives for god; on that account he keeps so far away from him:--the devil, in effect, as the oldest friend of knowledge. 130. what a person is begins to betray itself when his talent decreases,--when he ceases to show what he can do. talent is also an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment. 131. the sexes deceive themselves about each other: the reason is that in reality they honour and love only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more agreeably). thus man wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is essentially unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have assumed the peaceable demeanour. 132. one is punished best for one's virtues. 133. he who cannot find the way to his ideal, lives more frivolously and shamelessly than the man without an ideal. 134. from the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. 135. pharisaism is not a deterioration of the good man; a considerable part of it is rather an essential condition of being good. 136. the one seeks an accoucheur for his thoughts, the other seeks some one whom he can assist: a good conversation thus originates. 137. in intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man. 138. we do the same when awake as when dreaming: we only invent and imagine him with whom we have intercourse--and forget it immediately. 139. in revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man. 140. advice as a riddle.--"if the band is not to break, bite it first--secure to make!" 141. the belly is the reason why man does not so readily take himself for a god. 142. the chastest utterance i ever heard: "dans le veritable amour c'est l'ame qui enveloppe le corps." 143. 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. 144. 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." 145. comparing man and woman generally, one may say that woman would not have the genius for adornment, if she had not the instinct for the secondary role. 146. he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. and if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. 147. from old florentine novels--moreover, from life: buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone.--sacchetti, nov. 86. 148. to seduce their neighbour to a favourable opinion, and afterwards to believe implicitly in this opinion of their neighbour--who can do this conjuring trick so well as women? 149. that which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal. 150. around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around god everything becomes--what? perhaps a "world"? 151. it is not enough to possess a talent: one must also have your permission to possess it;--eh, my friends? 152. "where there is the tree of knowledge, there is always paradise": so say the most ancient and the most modern serpents. 153. what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. 154. objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 155. the sense of the tragic increases and declines with sensuousness. 156. insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule. 157. the thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night. 158. not only our reason, but also our conscience, truckles to our strongest impulse--the tyrant in us. 159. one must repay good and ill; but why just to the person who did us good or ill? 160. one no longer loves one's knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it. 161. poets act shamelessly towards their experiences: they exploit them. 162. "our fellow-creature is not our neighbour, but our neighbour's neighbour":--so thinks every nation. 163. love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover--his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character. 164. jesus said to his jews: "the law was for servants;--love god as i love him, as his son! what have we sons of god to do with morals!" 165. in sight of every party.--a shepherd has always need of a bell-wether--or he has himself to be a wether occasionally. 166. one may indeed lie with the mouth; but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth. 167. to vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame--and something precious. 168. christianity gave eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to vice. 169. to talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself. 170. in praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame. 171. pity has an almost ludicrous effect on a man of knowledge, like tender hands on a cyclops. 172. one occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual. 173. one does not hate as long as one disesteems, but only when one esteems equal or superior. 174. ye utilitarians--ye, too, love the utile only as a vehicle for your inclinations,--ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable! 175. one loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired. 176. the vanity of others is only counter to our taste when it is counter to our vanity. 177. with regard to what "truthfulness" is, perhaps nobody has ever been sufficiently truthful. 178. one does not believe in the follies of clever men: what a forfeiture of the rights of man! 179. the consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed." 180. there is an innocence in lying which is the sign of good faith in a cause. 181. it is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed. 182. the familiarity of superiors embitters one, because it may not be returned. 183. "i am affected, not because you have deceived me, but because i can no longer believe in you." 184. there is a haughtiness of kindness which has the appearance of wickedness. 185. "i dislike him."--why?--"i am not a match for him."--did any one ever answer so? chapter v. the natural history of morals 186. the moral sentiment in europe at present is perhaps as subtle, belated, diverse, sensitive, and refined, as the "science of morals" belonging thereto is recent, initial, awkward, and coarse-fingered:--an interesting contrast, which sometimes becomes incarnate and obvious in the very person of a moralist. indeed, the expression, "science of morals" is, in respect to what is designated thereby, far too presumptuous and counter to good taste,--which is always a foretaste of more modest expressions. one ought to avow with the utmost fairness what is still necessary here for a long time, what is alone proper for the present: namely, the collection of material, the comprehensive survey and classification of an immense domain of delicate sentiments of worth, and distinctions of worth, which live, grow, propagate, and perish--and perhaps attempts to give a clear idea of the recurring and more common forms of these living crystallizations--as preparation for a theory of types of morality. to be sure, people have not hitherto been so modest. all the philosophers, with a pedantic and ridiculous seriousness, demanded of themselves something very much higher, more pretentious, and ceremonious, when they concerned themselves with morality as a science: they wanted to give a basic to morality--and every philosopher hitherto has believed that he has given it a basis; morality itself, however, has been regarded as something "given." how far from their awkward pride was the seemingly insignificant problem--left in dust and decay--of a description of forms of morality, notwithstanding that the finest hands and senses could hardly be fine enough for it! it was precisely owing to moral philosophers' knowing the moral facts imperfectly, in an arbitrary epitome, or an accidental abridgement--perhaps as the morality of their environment, their position, their church, their zeitgeist, their climate and zone--it was precisely because they were badly instructed with regard to nations, eras, and past ages, and were by no means eager to know about these matters, that they did not even come in sight of the real problems of morals--problems which only disclose themselves by a comparison of many kinds of morality. in every "science of morals" hitherto, strange as it may sound, the problem of morality itself has been omitted: there has been no suspicion that there was anything problematic there! that which philosophers called "giving a basis to morality," and endeavoured to realize, has, when seen in a right light, proved merely a learned form of good faith in prevailing morality, a new means of its expression, consequently just a matter-of-fact within the sphere of a definite morality, yea, in its ultimate motive, a sort of denial that it is lawful for this morality to be called in question--and in any case the reverse of the testing, analyzing, doubting, and vivisecting of this very faith. hear, for instance, with what innocence--almost worthy of honour--schopenhauer represents his own task, and draw your conclusions concerning the scientificness of a "science" whose latest master still talks in the strain of children and old wives: "the principle," he says (page 136 of the grundprobleme der ethik), [footnote: pages 54-55 of schopenhauer's basis of morality, translated by arthur b. bullock, m.a. (1903).] "the axiom about the purport of which all moralists are practically agreed: neminem laede, immo omnes quantum potes juva--is really the proposition which all moral teachers strive to establish, ... the real basis of ethics which has been sought, like the philosopher's stone, for centuries."--the difficulty of establishing the proposition referred to may indeed be great--it is well known that schopenhauer also was unsuccessful in his efforts; and whoever has thoroughly realized how absurdly false and sentimental this proposition is, in a world whose essence is will to power, may be reminded that schopenhauer, although a pessimist, actually--played the flute... daily after dinner: one may read about the matter in his biography. a question by the way: a pessimist, a repudiator of god and of the world, who makes a halt at morality--who assents to morality, and plays the flute to laede-neminem morals, what? is that really--a pessimist? 187. apart from the value of such assertions as "there is a categorical imperative in us," one can always ask: what does such an assertion indicate about him who makes it? there are systems of morals which are meant to justify their author in the eyes of other people; other systems of morals are meant to tranquilize him, and make him self-satisfied; with other systems he wants to crucify and humble himself, with others he wishes to take revenge, with others to conceal himself, with others to glorify himself and gave superiority and distinction,--this system of morals helps its author to forget, that system makes him, or something of him, forgotten, many a moralist would like to exercise power and creative arbitrariness over mankind, many another, perhaps, kant especially, gives us to understand by his morals that "what is estimable in me, is that i know how to obey--and with you it shall not be otherwise than with me!" in short, systems of morals are only a sign-language of the emotions. 188. in contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against "nature" and also against "reason", that is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful what is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. in order to understand stoicism, or port royal, or puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom--the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm. how much trouble have the poets and orators of every nation given themselves!--not excepting some of the prose writers of today, in whose ear dwells an inexorable conscientiousness--"for the sake of a folly," as utilitarian bunglers say, and thereby deem themselves wise--"from submission to arbitrary laws," as the anarchists say, and thereby fancy themselves "free," even free-spirited. the singular fact remains, however, that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is "nature" and "natural"--and not laisser-aller! every artist knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his "most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"--and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it). the essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is, apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. the long bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable to aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened according to a christian scheme, and in every occurrence to rediscover and justify the christian god:--all this violence, arbitrariness, severity, dreadfulness, and unreasonableness, has proved itself the disciplinary means whereby the european spirit has attained its strength, its remorseless curiosity and subtle mobility; granted also that much irrecoverable strength and spirit had to be stifled, suffocated, and spoilt in the process (for here, as everywhere, "nature" shows herself as she is, in all her extravagant and indifferent magnificence, which is shocking, but nevertheless noble). that for centuries european thinkers only thought in order to prove something--nowadays, on the contrary, we are suspicious of every thinker who "wishes to prove something"--that it was always settled beforehand what was to be the result of their strictest thinking, as it was perhaps in the asiatic astrology of former times, or as it is still at the present day in the innocent, christian-moral explanation of immediate personal events "for the glory of god," or "for the good of the soul":--this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has educated the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual education and discipline. one may look at every system of morals in this light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller, the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for immediate duties--it teaches the narrowing of perspectives, and thus, in a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development. "thou must obey some one, and for a long time; otherwise thou wilt come to grief, and lose all respect for thyself"--this seems to me to be the moral imperative of nature, which is certainly neither "categorical," as old kant wished (consequently the "otherwise"), nor does it address itself to the individual (what does nature care for the individual!), but to nations, races, ages, and ranks; above all, however, to the animal "man" generally, to mankind. 189. industrious races find it a great hardship to be idle: it was a master stroke of english instinct to hallow and begloom sunday to such an extent that the englishman unconsciously hankers for his week--and work-day again:--as a kind of cleverly devised, cleverly intercalated fast, such as is also frequently found in the ancient world (although, as is appropriate in southern nations, not precisely with respect to work). many kinds of fasts are necessary; and wherever powerful influences and habits prevail, legislators have to see that intercalary days are appointed, on which such impulses are fettered, and learn to hunger anew. viewed from a higher standpoint, whole generations and epochs, when they show themselves infected with any moral fanaticism, seem like those intercalated periods of restraint and fasting, during which an impulse learns to humble and submit itself--at the same time also to purify and sharpen itself; certain philosophical sects likewise admit of a similar interpretation (for instance, the stoa, in the midst of hellenic culture, with the atmosphere rank and overcharged with aphrodisiacal odours).--here also is a hint for the explanation of the paradox, why it was precisely in the most christian period of european history, and in general only under the pressure of christian sentiments, that the sexual impulse sublimated into love (amour-passion). 190. there is something in the morality of plato which does not really belong to plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might say, in spite of him: namely, socratism, for which he himself was too noble. "no one desires to injure himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly. the evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. the evil man, therefore, is only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily make him--good."--this mode of reasoning savours of the populace, who perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically judge that "it is stupid to do wrong"; while they accept "good" as identical with "useful and pleasant," without further thought. as regards every system of utilitarianism, one may at once assume that it has the same origin, and follow the scent: one will seldom err.--plato did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them--he, the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire socrates out of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications--namely, in all his own disguises and multiplicities. in jest, and in homeric language as well, what is the platonic socrates, if not--[greek words inserted here.] 191. the old theological problem of "faith" and "knowledge," or more plainly, of instinct and reason--the question whether, in respect to the valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to a "why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility--it is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of socrates, and had divided men's minds long before christianity. socrates himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent--that of a surpassing dialectician--took first the side of reason; and, in fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the noble athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions? in the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "but why"--he said to himself--"should one on that account separate oneself from the instincts! one must set them right, and the reason also--one must follow the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them with good arguments." this was the real falseness of that great and mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment.--plato, more innocent in such matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at the expenditure of all his strength--the greatest strength a philosopher had ever expended--that reason and instinct lead spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "god"; and since plato, all theologians and philosophers have followed the same path--which means that in matters of morality, instinct (or as christians call it, "faith," or as i call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. unless one should make an exception in the case of descartes, the father of rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the revolution), who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and descartes was superficial. 192. whoever has followed the history of a single science, finds in its development a clue to the understanding of the oldest and commonest processes of all "knowledge and cognizance": there, as here, the premature hypotheses, the fictions, the good stupid will to "belief," and the lack of distrust and patience are first developed--our senses learn late, and never learn completely, to be subtle, reliable, and cautious organs of knowledge. our eyes find it easier on a given occasion to produce a picture already often produced, than to seize upon the divergence and novelty of an impression: the latter requires more force, more "morality." it is difficult and painful for the ear to listen to anything new; we hear strange music badly. when we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant--it was thus, for example, that the germans modified the spoken word arcubalista into armbrust (cross-bow). our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the "simplest" processes of sensation, the emotions dominate--such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.--as little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page--he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random, and "guesses" the probably appropriate sense to them--just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree. even in the midst of the most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate any event, except as "inventors" thereof. all this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have been--accustomed to lying. or, to express it more politely and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly--one is much more of an artist than one is aware of.--in an animated conversation, i often see the face of the person with whom i am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which i believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the strength of my visual faculty--the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes must therefore be imagined by me. probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all. 193. quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit: but also contrariwise. what we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything "actually" experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our dreams. supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards" without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending or lowering--without trouble!--how could the man with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! how could he fail--to long differently for happiness? "flight," such as is described by poets, must, when compared with his own "flying," be far too earthly, muscular, violent, far too "troublesome" for him. 194. the difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things--in their regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable things:--it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and possessing a desirable thing. as regards a woman, for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the "questionableness," the mere apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has or would like to have--only then does he look upon her as "possessed." a third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. one man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of cagliostro and catalina suitable for his purpose. another, with a more refined thirst for possession, says to himself: "one may not deceive where one desires to possess"--he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: "i must, therefore, make myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!" among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be helped, as though, for instance, he should "merit" help, seek just their help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help. with these conceits, they take control of the needy as a property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a desire for property. one finds them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled in their charity. parents involuntarily make something like themselves out of their children--they call that "education"; no mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has borne is thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to his own ideas and notions of worth. indeed, in former times fathers deemed it right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly born (as among the ancient germans). and like the father, so also do the teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. the consequence is... 195. 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. 196. it is to be inferred that there are countless dark bodies near the sun--such as we shall never see. among ourselves, this is an allegory; and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed. 197. the beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, caesar 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, or even an innate "hell" in them--as almost all moralists have done hitherto. does it not seem that there is a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? and that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and self-torture? and why? in favour of the "temperate zones"? in favour of the temperate men? the "moral"? the mediocre?--this for the chapter: "morals as timidity." 198. all the systems of morals which address themselves 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, insofar 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 generalize where generalization is not authorized; 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." that is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from being "science," much less "wisdom"; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity--whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the stoics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of spinoza, the destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of god, and of mankind for god's sake--for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that...; or, finally, even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by hafis and goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it "no longer has much danger."--this also for the chapter: "morals as timidity." 199. inasmuch as in all ages, as long as mankind has existed, there have also been human herds (family alliances, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a great number who obey in proportion to the small number who command--in view, therefore, of the fact that obedience has been most practiced 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 which gives the command "thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally refrain from something", in short, "thou shalt". this need tries to satisfy itself and to fill its form with a content, according to its strength, impatience, and eagerness, it at once seizes as an omnivorous appetite with little selection, and accepts whatever is shouted into its ear by all sorts of commanders--parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, or public opinion. the extraordinary limitation of human development, the hesitation, protractedness, frequent retrogression, and turning thereof, is attributable to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is transmitted best, and at the cost of the art of command. if one imagine this instinct increasing to its greatest extent, commanders and independent individuals will finally be lacking altogether, or they will suffer inwardly from a bad conscience, and will have to impose a deception on themselves in the first place in order to be able to command just as if they also were only obeying. this condition of things actually exists in europe at present--i call it the moral hypocrisy of the commanding class. they know no other way of protecting themselves from their bad conscience than by playing the role of executors of older and higher orders (of predecessors, of the constitution, of justice, of the law, or of god himself), or they even justify themselves by maxims from the current opinions of the herd, as "first servants of their people," or "instruments of the public weal". on the other hand, the gregarious european man nowadays assumes an air as if he were the only kind of man that is allowable, he glorifies his qualities, such as public spirit, kindness, deference, industry, temperance, modesty, indulgence, sympathy, by virtue of which he is gentle, endurable, and useful to the herd, as the peculiarly human virtues. in cases, however, where it is believed that the leader and bell-wether cannot be dispensed with, attempt after attempt is made nowadays to replace commanders by the summing together of clever gregarious men all representative constitutions, for example, are of this origin. in spite of all, what a blessing, what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious europeans--of this fact the effect of the appearance of napoleon was the last great proof 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. 200. the man of an age of dissolution which mixes the races with one another, who has the inheritance of a diversified descent in his body--that is to say, contrary, and often not only contrary, instincts and standards of value, which struggle with one another and are seldom at peace--such a man of late culture and broken lights, will, on an average, be a weak man. his fundamental desire is that the war which is in him should come to an end; happiness appears to him in the character of a soothing medicine and mode of thought (for instance, epicurean or christian); it is above all things the happiness of repose, of undisturbedness, of repletion, of final unity--it is the "sabbath of sabbaths," to use the expression of the holy rhetorician, st. augustine, who was himself such a man.--should, however, the contrariety and conflict in such natures operate as an additional incentive and stimulus to life--and if, on the other hand, in addition to their powerful and irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are alcibiades and caesar (with whom i should like to associate the first of europeans according to my taste, the hohenstaufen, frederick the second), and among artists, perhaps leonardo da vinci. they appear precisely in the same periods when that weaker type, with its longing for repose, comes to the front; the two types are complementary to each other, and spring from the same causes. 201. 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." granted even that there is already a little constant exercise of consideration, sympathy, fairness, gentleness, and mutual assistance, granted that even in this condition of society all those instincts are already active which are latterly distinguished by honourable names as "virtues," and eventually almost coincide with the conception "morality": in that period they do not as yet belong to the domain of moral valuations--they are still ultra-moral. a sympathetic action, for instance, is neither called good nor bad, moral nor immoral, in the best period of the romans; and should it be praised, a sort of resentful disdain is compatible with this praise, even at the best, directly the sympathetic action is compared with one which contributes to the welfare of the whole, to the res publica. after all, "love to our neighbour" is always a secondary matter, partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fear of our neighbour. after the fabric of society seems on the whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this fear of our neighbour which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation. certain strong and dangerous instincts, such as the love of enterprise, foolhardiness, revengefulness, astuteness, rapacity, and love of power, which up till then had not only to be honoured from the point of view of general utility--under other names, of course, than those here given--but had to be fostered and cultivated (because they were perpetually required in the common danger against the common enemies), are now felt in their dangerousness to be doubly strong--when the outlets for them are lacking--and are gradually branded as immoral and given over to calumny. the contrary instincts and inclinations now attain to moral honour, the gregarious instinct gradually draws its conclusions. how much or how little dangerousness to the community or to equality is contained in an opinion, a condition, an emotion, a disposition, or an endowment--that is now the moral perspective, here again fear is the mother of morals. it is by the loftiest and strongest instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious conscience, that the self-reliance of the community is destroyed, its belief in itself, its backbone, as it were, breaks, consequently these very instincts will be most branded and defamed. the lofty independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangers, 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-equalizing disposition, the mediocrity of desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. finally, under very peaceful circumstances, there is always less opportunity and necessity for training the feelings to severity and rigour, and now every form of severity, even in justice, begins to disturb the conscience, a lofty and rigorous nobleness and self-responsibility almost offends, and awakens distrust, "the lamb," and still more "the sheep," wins respect. there is a point of diseased mellowness and effeminacy in the history of society, at which society itself takes the part of him who injures it, the part of the criminal, and does so, in fact, seriously and honestly. to punish, appears to it to be somehow unfair--it is certain that the idea of "punishment" and "the obligation to punish" are then painful and alarming to people. "is it not sufficient if the criminal be rendered harmless? why should we still punish? punishment itself is terrible!"--with these questions gregarious morality, the morality of fear, draws its ultimate conclusion. if one could at all do away with danger, the cause of fear, one would have done away with this morality at the same time, it would no longer be necessary, it would not consider itself any longer necessary!--whoever examines the conscience of the present-day european, will always elicit the same imperative from its thousand moral folds and hidden recesses, the imperative of the timidity of the herd "we wish that some time or other there may be nothing more to fear!" some time or other--the will and the way thereto is nowadays called "progress" all over europe. 202. let us at once say again what we have already said a hundred times, for people's ears nowadays are unwilling to hear such truths--our truths. we know well enough how offensive it sounds when any one plainly, and without metaphor, counts man among the animals, but it will be accounted to us almost a crime, that it is precisely in respect to men of "modern ideas" that we have constantly applied the terms "herd," "herd-instincts," and such like expressions. what avail is it? we cannot do otherwise, for it is precisely here that our new insight is. we have found that in all the principal moral judgments, europe has become unanimous, including likewise the countries where european influence prevails in europe people evidently know what socrates thought he did not know, and what the famous serpent of old once promised to teach--they "know" today what is good and evil. it must then sound hard and be distasteful to the ear, when we always insist that that which here thinks it knows, that which here glorifies itself with praise and blame, and calls itself good, is the instinct of the herding human animal, the instinct which has come and is ever coming more and more to the front, to preponderance and supremacy over other instincts, according to the increasing physiological approximation and resemblance of which it is the symptom. morality in europe at present is herding-animal morality, and therefore, as we understand the matter, only one kind of human morality, beside which, before which, and after which many other moralities, and above all higher moralities, are or should be possible. against such a "possibility," against such a "should be," however, this morality defends itself with all its strength, it says obstinately and inexorably "i am morality itself and nothing else is morality!" indeed, with the help of a religion which has humoured and flattered the sublimest desires of the herding-animal, things have reached such a point that we always find a more visible expression of this morality even in political and social arrangements: the democratic movement is the inheritance of the christian movement. that its tempo, however, is much too slow and sleepy for the more impatient ones, for those who are sick and distracted by the herding-instinct, is indicated by the increasingly furious howling, and always less disguised teeth-gnashing of the anarchist dogs, who are now roving through the highways of european culture. apparently in opposition to the peacefully industrious democrats and revolution-ideologues, and still more so to the awkward philosophasters and fraternity-visionaries who call themselves socialists and want a "free society," those are really at one with them all in their thorough and instinctive hostility to every form of society other than that of the autonomous herd (to the extent even of repudiating the notions "master" and "servant"--ni dieu ni maitre, says a socialist formula); at one in their tenacious opposition to every special claim, every special right and privilege (this means ultimately opposition to every right, for when all are equal, no one needs "rights" any longer); at one in their distrust of punitive justice (as though it were a violation of the weak, unfair to the necessary consequences of all former society); but equally at one in their religion of sympathy, in their compassion for all that feels, lives, and suffers (down to the very animals, up even to "god"--the extravagance of "sympathy for god" belongs to a democratic age); altogether at one in the cry and impatience of their sympathy, in their deadly hatred of suffering generally, in their almost feminine incapacity for witnessing it or allowing it; at one in their involuntary beglooming and heart-softening, under the spell of which europe seems to be threatened with a new buddhism; at one in their belief in the morality of mutual sympathy, as though it were morality in itself, the climax, the attained climax of mankind, the sole hope of the future, the consolation of the present, the great discharge from all the obligations of the past; altogether at one in their belief in the community as the deliverer, in the herd, and therefore in "themselves." 203. we, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, 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 man 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 philosopher and commander 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. the image of such leaders hovers before our eyes:--is it lawful for me to say it aloud, ye free spirits? the conditions which one would partly have to create and partly utilize for their genesis; the presumptive methods and tests by virtue of which a soul should grow up to such an elevation and power as to feel a constraint to these tasks; a transvaluation of values, under the new pressure and hammer of which a conscience should be steeled and a heart transformed into brass, so as to bear the weight of such responsibility; and on the other hand the necessity for such leaders, the dreadful danger that they might be lacking, or miscarry and degenerate:--these are our real anxieties and glooms, ye know it well, ye free spirits! these are the heavy distant thoughts and storms which sweep across the heaven of our life. there are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger of "man" himself deteriorating, he who like us has recognized the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in respect to the future of mankind--a game in which neither the hand, nor even a "finger of god" has participated!--he who divines the fate that is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of "modern ideas," and still more under the whole of christo-european morality--suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. he sees at a glance all that could still be made out of man through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions and new paths:--he knows still better from his painfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible. the universal degeneracy of mankind to the level of the "man of the future"--as idealized 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 brutalizing 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! chapter vi. we scholars 204. at the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that which it has always been--namely, resolutely montrer ses plaies, according to balzac--i would venture to protest against an improper and injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations of science and philosophy. i mean to say that one must have the right out of one's own experience--experience, as it seems to me, always implies unfortunate experience?--to treat of such an important question of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or against science like women and artists ("ah! this dreadful science!" sigh their instinct and their shame, "it always finds things out!"). the declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime--which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise smells sweet. here also the instinct of the populace cries, "freedom from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am i saying! to play the philosopher on its own account. my memory--the memory of a scientific man, if you please!--teems with the naivetes of insolence which i have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters, who are both the one and the other by profession). on one occasion it was the specialist and the jack horner who instinctively stood on the defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of otium and refined luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. on another occasion it was the colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of refuted systems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does nobody any good". at another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily extended to disregard of philosophy generally. in fine, i found most frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars, the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (such seems to me, for instance, the after-effect of schopenhauer on the most modern germany: by his unintelligent rage against hegel, he has succeeded in severing the whole of the last generation of germans from its connection with german culture, which culture, all things considered, has been an elevation and a divining refinement of the historical sense, but precisely at this point schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive, and un-german to the extent of ingeniousness.) on the whole, speaking generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the doors to the instinct of the populace. let it but be acknowledged to what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the world of heraclitus, plato, empedocles, and whatever else all the royal and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what justice an honest man of science may feel himself of a better family and origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down below--in germany, for instance, the two lions of berlin, the anarchist eugen duhring and the amalgamist eduard von hartmann. it is especially the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves "realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists, that is very evident! all of them are persons who have been vanquished and brought back again under the dominion of science, who at one time or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the "more" and its responsibility--and who now, creditably, rancorously, and vindictively, represent in word and deed, disbelief in the master-task and supremacy of philosophy after all, how could it be otherwise? science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity philosophy reduced to a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously denies itself the right to enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something that awakens pity. how could such a philosophy--rule! 205. the dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit could still come to maturity. the extent and towering structure of the sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach himself somewhere and "specialize" so that he will no longer attain to his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, and his despection. or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no longer of much importance. it is perhaps just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost his self-respect no longer commands, no longer leads, unless he should aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical cagliostro and spiritual rat-catcher--in short, a misleader. this is in the last instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of conscience. to double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a yea or nay, not concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life--he learns unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying) experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. in fact, the philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and god-intoxicated man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives "wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anything more than "prudently and apart." wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a bad game; but the genuine philosopher--does it not seem so to us, my friends?--lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all, imprudently, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts and temptations of life--he risks himself constantly, he plays this bad game. 206. in relation to the genius, that is to say, a being who either engenders or produces--both words understood in their fullest sense--the man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two principal functions of man. to both, of course, to the scholar and to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of indemnification--in these cases one emphasizes the respectability--and yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture of vexation. let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man? firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require--for instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration (which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability), the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and usefulness, with which the inward distrust which lies at the bottom of the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and again to be overcome. the learned man, as is appropriate, has also maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations he cannot attain. he is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go, but does not flow; and precisely before the man of the great current he stands all the colder and more reserved--his eye is then like a smooth and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. the worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the jesuitism of mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of the exceptional man, and endeavours to break--or still better, to relax--every bent bow to relax, of course, with consideration, and naturally with an indulgent hand--to relax with confiding sympathy that is the real art of jesuitism, which has always understood how to introduce itself as the religion of sympathy. 207. however gratefully one may welcome the objective spirit--and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity and its confounded ipsisimosity!--in the end, however, one must learn caution even with regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been celebrated, as if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation and glorification--as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school, which has also in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honours to "disinterested knowledge" the objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the ideal man of learning in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist, but his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful he is only an instrument, we may say, he is a mirror--he is no "purpose in himself" the objective man is in truth a mirror accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such desires only as knowing or "reflecting" implies--he waits until something comes, and then expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding-past of spiritual beings may not be lost on his surface and film whatever "personality" he still possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener, disturbing, so much has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and events he calls up the recollection of "himself" with an effort, and not infrequently wrongly, he readily confounds himself with other persons, he makes mistakes with regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society--indeed, he sets himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain! his thoughts already rove away to the more general case, and tomorrow he knows as little as he knew yesterday how to help himself he does not now take himself seriously and devote time to himself he is serene, not from lack of trouble, but from lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble the habitual complaisance with respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he receives everything that comes his way, his habit of inconsiderate good-nature, of dangerous indifference as to yea and nay: alas! there are enough of cases in which he has to atone for these virtues of his!--and as man generally, he becomes far too easily the caput mortuum of such virtues. should one wish love or hatred from him--i mean love and hatred as god, woman, and animal understand them--he will do what he can, and furnish what he can. but one must not be surprised if it should not be much--if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile, questionable, and deteriorated. his love is constrained, his hatred is artificial, and rather un tour de force, a slight ostentation and exaggeration. he is only genuine so far as he can be objective; only in his serene totality is he still "nature" and "natural." his mirroring and eternally self-polishing soul no longer knows how to affirm, no longer how to deny; he does not command; neither does he destroy. "je ne meprise presque rien"--he says, with leibniz: let us not overlook nor undervalue the presque! neither is he a model man; he does not go in advance of any one, nor after, either; he places himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of either good or evil. if he has been so long confounded with the philosopher, with the caesarian trainer and dictator of civilization, he has had far too much honour, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked--he is an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave, but nothing in himself--presque rien! the objective man is an instrument, a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and mirroring apparatus, which is to be taken care of and respected; but he is no goal, not outgoing nor upgoing, no complementary man in whom the rest of existence justifies itself, no termination--and still less a commencement, an engendering, or primary cause, nothing hardy, powerful, self-centred, that wants to be master; but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, movable potter's-form, that must wait for some kind of content and frame to "shape" itself thereto--for the most part a man without frame and content, a "selfless" man. consequently, also, nothing for women, in parenthesi. 208. when a philosopher nowadays makes known that he is not a skeptic--i hope that has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit?--people all hear it impatiently; they regard him on that account with some apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions... indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. with his repudiation of skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered russian nihiline, a pessimism bonae voluntatis, that not only denies, means denial, but--dreadful thought! practises denial. against this kind of "good-will"--a will to the veritable, actual negation of life--there is, as is generally acknowledged nowadays, no better soporific and sedative than skepticism, the mild, pleasing, lulling poppy of skepticism; and hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day as an antidote to the "spirit," and its underground noises. "are not our ears already full of bad sounds?" say the skeptics, as lovers of repose, and almost as a kind of safety police; "this subterranean nay is terrible! be still, ye pessimistic moles!" the skeptic, in effect, that delicate creature, is far too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled so as to start at every nay, and even at that sharp, decided yea, and feels something like a bite thereby. yea! and nay!--they seem to him opposed to morality; he loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue by a noble aloofness, while perhaps he says with montaigne: "what do i know?" or with socrates: "i know that i know nothing." or: "here i do not trust myself, no door is open to me." or: "even if the door were open, why should i enter immediately?" or: "what is the use of any hasty hypotheses? it might quite well be in good taste to make no hypotheses at all. are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once what is crooked? to stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? is there not time enough for that? has not the time leisure? oh, ye demons, can ye not at all wait? the uncertain also has its charms, the sphinx, too, is a circe, and circe, too, was a philosopher."--thus does a skeptic console himself; and in truth he needs some consolation. for skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises whenever races or classes which have been long separated, decisively and suddenly blend with one another. in the new generation, which has inherited as it were different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet, derangement, doubt, and tentativeness; the best powers operate restrictively, the very virtues prevent each other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast, and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and soul. that, however, which is most diseased and degenerated in such nondescripts is the will; they are no longer familiar with independence of decision, or the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing--they are doubtful of the "freedom of the will" even in their dreams our present-day europe, the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical blending of classes, and consequently of races, is therefore skeptical in all its heights and depths, sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch, sometimes with gloomy aspect, like a cloud over-charged with interrogative signs--and often sick unto death of its will! paralysis of will, where do we not find this cripple sitting nowadays! and yet how bedecked oftentimes' how seductively ornamented! there are the finest gala dresses and disguises for this disease, and that, for instance, most of what places itself nowadays in the show-cases as "objectiveness," "the scientific spirit," "l'art pour l'art," and "pure voluntary knowledge," is only decked-out skepticism and paralysis of will--i am ready to answer for this diagnosis of the european disease--the disease of the will is diffused unequally over europe, it is worst and most varied where civilization has longest prevailed, it decreases according as "the barbarian" still--or again--asserts his claims under the loose drapery of western culture it is therefore in the france of today, as can be readily disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most infirm, and france, which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of its spirit into something charming and seductive, now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over europe, by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism the power to will and to persist, moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat stronger in germany, and again in the north of germany it is stronger than in central germany, it is considerably stronger in england, spain, and corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter--not to mention italy, which is too young yet to know what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that immense middle empire where europe as it were flows back to asia--namely, in russia there the power to will has been long stored up and accumulated, there the will--uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative--waits threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our physicists) perhaps not only indian wars and complications in asia would be necessary to free europe from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast i do not say this as one who desires it, in my heart i should rather prefer the contrary--i mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of russia, that europe would have to make up its mind to become equally threatening--namely, to acquire one will, by means of a new caste to rule over the continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close. the time for petty politics is past; the next century will bring the struggle for the dominion of the world--the compulsion to great politics. 209. as to how far the new warlike age on which we europeans have evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of another and stronger kind of skepticism, i should like to express myself preliminarily merely by a parable, which the lovers of german history will already understand. that unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers (who, as king of prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical genius--and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of german), the problematic, crazy father of frederick the great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew what was then lacking in germany, the want of which was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form--his ill-will to the young frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound instinct. men were lacking; and he suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own son was not man enough. there, however, he deceived himself; but who would not have deceived himself in his place? he saw his son lapsed to atheism, to the esprit, to the pleasant frivolity of clever frenchmen--he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the spider skepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a broken will that no longer commands, is no longer able to command. meanwhile, however, there grew up in his son that new kind of harder and more dangerous skepticism--who knows to what extent it was encouraged just by his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned to solitude?--the skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to the genius for war and conquest, and made its first entrance into germany in the person of the great frederick. this skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe, but it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. it is the german form of skepticism, which, as a continued fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept europe for a considerable time under the dominion of the german spirit and its critical and historical distrust owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of the great german philologists and historical critics (who, rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of destruction and dissolution), a new conception of the german spirit gradually established itself--in spite of all romanticism in music and philosophy--in which the leaning towards masculine skepticism was decidedly prominent whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized north pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies. there may be good grounds for it when warm-blooded and superficial humanitarians cross themselves before this spirit, cet esprit fataliste, ironique, mephistophelique, as michelet calls it, not without a shudder. but if one would realize how characteristic is this fear of the "man" in the german spirit which awakened europe out of its "dogmatic slumber," let us call to mind the former conception which had to be overcome by this new one--and that it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare, with unbridled presumption, to recommend the germans to the interest of europe as gentle, good-hearted, weak-willed, and poetical fools. finally, let us only understand profoundly enough napoleon's astonishment when he saw goethe it reveals what had been regarded for centuries as the "german spirit" "voila un homme!"--that was as much as to say "but this is a man! and i only expected to see a german!" 210. supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be skeptics 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. by the name with which i ventured to baptize them, i have already expressly emphasized their attempting and their love of attempting is this because, as critics in body and soul, they will love to make use of experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more dangerous sense? in their passion for knowledge, will they have to go further in daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can approve of?--there is no doubt these coming ones will be least able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from the skeptic i mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious employment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for self-responsibility, indeed, they will avow among themselves a delight in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty, which knows how to handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds they will be sterner (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) than humane people may desire, 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 work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" 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 hearts, 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 among 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!" though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the positivists of france and germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste of kant: let us call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of the philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they are far from being philosophers themselves! even the great chinaman of konigsberg was only a great critic. 211. i insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philosophical workers, and in general scientific men, with philosophers--that precisely here one should strictly give "each his own," and not give those far too much, these far too little. it may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself should have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants, the scientific workers of philosophy, remain standing, and must remain standing he himself must perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist, and historian, and besides, poet, and collector, and traveler, and riddle-reader, and moralist, and seer, and "free spirit," and almost everything, in order to traverse the whole range of human values and estimations, and that he may be able with a variety of eyes and consciences to look from a height to any distance, from a depth up to any height, from a nook into any expanse. but all these are only preliminary conditions for his task; this task itself demands something else--it requires him to create values. the philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of kant and hegel, have to fix and formalize some great existing body of valuations--that is to say, former determinations of value, creations of value, which have become prevalent, and are for a time called "truths"--whether in the domain of the logical, the political (moral), or the artistic. it is for these investigators to make whatever has happened and been esteemed hitherto, conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything long, even "time" itself, and to subjugate the entire past: an immense and wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride, all tenacious will, can surely find satisfaction. the real philosophers, however, 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 power.--are there at present such philosophers? have there ever been such philosophers? must there not be such philosophers some day? ... 212. it is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man indispensable for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever found himself, and has been obliged to find himself, in contradiction to the day in which he lives; his enemy has always been the ideal of his day. hitherto all those extraordinary furtherers of humanity whom one calls philosophers--who rarely regarded themselves as lovers of wisdom, but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators--have found their mission, their hard, involuntary, imperative mission (in the end, however, the greatness of their mission), in being the bad conscience of their age. in putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very virtues of their age, they have betrayed their own secret; it has been for the sake of a new greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. they have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self-indulgence, and self-neglect, how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality, how much virtue was outlived, they have always said "we must remove hence to where you are least at home" in the face of a world of "modern ideas," which would like to confine every one in a corner, in a "specialty," a philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled to place the greatness of man, the conception of "greatness," precisely in his comprehensiveness and multifariousness, in his all-roundness, he would even determine worth and rank according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear and take upon himself, according to the extent to which a man could stretch his responsibility nowadays the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will, nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness, and capacity for prolonged resolution, must specially be included in the conception of "greatness", with as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly, renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age--such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will, and from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness in the time of socrates, among men only of worn-out instincts, old conservative athenians who let themselves go--"for the sake of happiness," as they said, for the sake of pleasure, as their conduct indicated--and who had continually on their lips the old pompous words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led, irony was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul, the wicked socratic assurance of the old physician and plebeian, who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as into the flesh and heart of the "noble," with a look that said plainly enough "do not dissemble before me! here--we are equal!" at present, on the contrary, 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 super-abundance of will; precisely this shall be called greatness: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full." and to ask once more the question: is greatness possible--nowadays? 213. it is difficult to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught: one must "know" it by experience--or one should have the pride not to know it. the fact that at present people all talk of things of which they cannot have any experience, is true more especially and unfortunately as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters:--the very few know them, are permitted to know them, and all popular ideas about them are false. thus, for instance, the truly philosophical combination of a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and a dialectic rigour and necessity which makes no false step, is unknown to most thinkers and scholars from their own experience, and therefore, should any one speak of it in their presence, it is incredible to them. they conceive of every necessity as troublesome, as a painful compulsory obedience and state of constraint; thinking itself is regarded by them as something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often enough as "worthy of the sweat of the noble"--but not at all as something easy and divine, closely related to dancing and exuberance! "to think" and to take a matter "seriously," "arduously"--that is one and the same thing to them; such only has been their "experience."--artists have here perhaps a finer intuition; they who know only too well that precisely when they no longer do anything "arbitrarily," and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety, of power, of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping, reaches its climax--in short, that necessity and "freedom of will" are then the same thing with them. there is, in fine, a gradation of rank in psychical states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly every one who ventures too near them, without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. of what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as it were into this "holy of holies"--as so often happens nowadays! but coarse feet must never tread upon such carpets: this is provided for in the primary law of things; the doors remain closed to those intruders, though they may dash and break their heads thereon. people have always to be born to a high station, or, more definitely, they have to be bred for it: a person has only a right to philosophy--taking the word in its higher significance--in virtue of his descent; the ancestors, the "blood," decide here also. many generations must have prepared the way for the coming of the philosopher; each of his virtues must have been separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied; not only the bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but above all the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling glance and contemning look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with their duties and virtues, the kindly patronage and defense of whatever is misunderstood and calumniated, be it god or devil, the delight and practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding, the amplitude of will, the lingering eye which rarely admires, rarely looks up, rarely loves.... chapter vii. our virtues 214. our virtues?--it is probable that we, too, have still our virtues, although naturally they are not those sincere and massive virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem and also at a little distance from us. we europeans of the day after tomorrow, we firstlings of the twentieth century--with all our dangerous curiosity, our multifariousness and art of disguising, our mellow and seemingly sweetened cruelty in sense and spirit--we shall presumably, if we must have virtues, have those only which have come to agreement with our most secret and heartfelt inclinations, with our most ardent requirements: well, then, let us look for them in our labyrinths!--where, as we know, so many things lose themselves, so many things get quite lost! and is there anything finer than to search for one's own virtues? is it not almost to believe in one's own virtues? but this "believing in one's own virtues"--is it not practically the same as what was formerly called one's "good conscience," that long, respectable pigtail of an idea, which our grandfathers used to hang behind their heads, and often enough also behind their understandings? it seems, therefore, that however little we may imagine ourselves to be old-fashioned and grandfatherly respectable in other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the worthy grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last europeans with good consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.--ah! if you only knew how soon, so very soon--it will be different! 215. as in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two suns which determine the path of one planet, and in certain cases suns of different colours shine around a single planet, now with red light, now with green, and then simultaneously illumine and flood it with motley colours: so we modern men, owing to the complicated mechanism of our "firmament," are determined by different moralities; our actions shine alternately in different colours, and are seldom unequivocal--and there are often cases, also, in which our actions are motley-coloured. 216. to love one's enemies? i think that has been well learnt: it takes place thousands of times at present on a large and small scale; indeed, at times the higher and sublimer thing takes place:--we learn to despise when we love, and precisely when we love best; all of it, however, unconsciously, without noise, without ostentation, with the shame and secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utterance of the pompous word and the formula of virtue. 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, including the enmity and voltairean bitterness against religion (and all that formerly belonged to freethinker-pantomime). it is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit, to which puritan litanies, moral sermons, and goody-goodness won't chime. 217. let us be careful in dealing with those who attach great importance to being credited with moral tact and subtlety in moral discernment! they never forgive us if they have once made a mistake before us (or even with regard to us)--they inevitably become our instinctive calumniators and detractors, even when they still remain our "friends."--blessed are the forgetful: for they "get the better" even of their blunders. 218. the psychologists of france--and where else are there still psychologists nowadays?--have never yet exhausted their bitter and manifold enjoyment of the betise bourgeoise, just as though... in short, they betray something thereby. flaubert, for instance, the honest citizen of rouen, neither saw, heard, nor tasted anything else in the end; it was his mode of self-torment and refined cruelty. as this is growing wearisome, i would now recommend for a change something else for a pleasure--namely, the unconscious astuteness with which good, fat, honest mediocrity always behaves towards loftier spirits and the tasks they have to perform, the subtle, barbed, jesuitical astuteness, which is a thousand times subtler than the taste and understanding of the middle-class in its best moments--subtler even than the understanding of its victims:--a repeated proof that "instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. in short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in its struggle with the "exception": there you have a spectacle fit for gods and godlike malignity! or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on "good people," on the "homo bonae voluntatis," on yourselves! 219. the practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so, it is also a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature, and finally, it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and becoming subtle--malice spiritualises. they are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to which those who are over-endowed with intellectual goods and privileges, are equal to them, they contend for the "equality of all before god," and almost need the belief in god for this purpose. it is among them that the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. if any one were to say to them "a lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man"--it would make them furious, i shall take care not to say so. i would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the "merely moral" man, after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice, perhaps during a whole series of generations, that lofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualising of justice, and the beneficent severity which knows that it is authorized to maintain gradations of rank in the world, even among things--and not only among men. 220. now that the praise of the "disinterested person" is so popular one must--probably not without some danger--get an idea of what people actually take an interest in, and what are the things generally which fundamentally and profoundly concern ordinary men--including the cultured, even the learned, and perhaps philosophers also, if appearances do not deceive. the fact thereby becomes obvious that the greater part of what interests and charms higher natures, and more refined and fastidious tastes, seems absolutely "uninteresting" to the average man--if, notwithstanding, he perceive devotion to these interests, he calls it desinteresse, and wonders how it is possible to act "disinterestedly." there have been philosophers who could give this popular astonishment a seductive and mystical, other-worldly expression (perhaps because they did not know the higher nature by experience?), instead of stating the naked and candidly reasonable truth that "disinterested" action is very interesting and "interested" action, provided that... "and love?"--what! even an action for love's sake shall be "unegoistic"? but you fools--! "and the praise of the self-sacrificer?"--but 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." but this is a realm of questions and answers in which a more fastidious spirit does not like to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so much when she is obliged to answer. and after all, truth is a woman; one must not use force with her. 221. "it sometimes happens," said a moralistic pedant and trifle-retailer, "that i honour and respect an unselfish man: not, however, because he is unselfish, but because i think he has a right to be useful to another man at his own expense. in short, the question is always who he is, and who the other is. for instance, in a person created and destined for command, self-denial and modest retirement, instead of being virtues, would be the waste of virtues: so it seems to me. every system of unegoistic morality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals to every one, not only sins against good taste, but is also an incentive to sins of omission, an additional seduction under the mask of philanthropy--and precisely a seduction and injury to the higher, rarer, and more privileged types of men. moral systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the gradations of rank; their presumption must be driven home to their conscience--until they thoroughly understand at last that it is immoral to say that 'what is right for one is proper for another.'"--so said my moralistic pedant and bonhomme. did he perhaps deserve to be laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of morals to practise morality? but one should not be too much in the right if one wishes to have the laughers on one's own side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste. 222. wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays--and, if i gather rightly, no other religion is any longer preached--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. it belongs to the overshadowing and uglifying of europe, which has been on the increase for a century (the first symptoms of which are already specified documentarily in a thoughtful letter of galiani to madame d'epinay)--if it is not really the cause thereof! the man of "modern ideas," the conceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself--this is perfectly certain. he suffers, and his vanity wants him only "to suffer with his fellows." 223. the hybrid european--a tolerably ugly plebeian, taken all in all--absolutely requires a costume: he needs history as a storeroom of costumes. to be sure, he notices that none of the costumes fit him properly--he changes and changes. let us look at the nineteenth century with respect to these hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades of style, and also with respect to its moments of desperation on account of "nothing suiting" us. it is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic, or classical, or christian, or florentine, or barocco, or "national," in moribus et artibus: it does not "clothe us"! but the "spirit," especially the "historical spirit," profits even by this desperation: once and again a new sample of the past or of the foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up, and above all studied--we are the first studious age in puncto of "costumes," i mean as concerns morals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions; 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! 224. the historical sense (or the capacity for divining quickly the order of rank of the valuations according to which a people, a community, or an individual has lived, the "divining instinct" for the relationships of these valuations, for the relation of the authority of the valuations to the authority of the operating forces),--this historical sense, which we europeans claim as our specialty, has come to us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-barbarity into which europe has been plunged by the democratic mingling of classes and races--it is only the nineteenth century that has recognized this faculty as its sixth sense. owing to this mingling, the past of every form and mode of life, and of cultures which were formerly closely contiguous and superimposed on one another, flows forth into us "modern souls"; our instincts now run back in all directions, we ourselves are a kind of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit perceives its advantage therein. by means of our semi-barbarity in body and in desire, we have secret access everywhere, such as a noble age never had; we have access above all to the labyrinth of imperfect civilizations, and to every form of semi-barbarity that has at any time existed on earth; and in so far as the most considerable part of human civilization hitherto has just been semi-barbarity, the "historical sense" implies almost the sense and instinct for everything, the taste and tongue for everything: whereby it immediately proves itself to be an ignoble sense. for instance, we enjoy homer once more: it is perhaps our happiest acquisition that we know how to appreciate homer, whom men of distinguished culture (as the french of the seventeenth century, like saint-evremond, who reproached him for his esprit vaste, and even voltaire, the last echo of the century) cannot and could not so easily appropriate--whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy. the very decided yea and nay of their palate, their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating reluctance with regard to everything strange, their horror of the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and in general the averseness of every distinguished and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire, a dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admiration of what is strange: all this determines and disposes them unfavourably even towards the best things of the world which are not their property or could not become their prey--and no faculty is more unintelligible to such men than just this historical sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity. the case is not different with shakespeare, that marvelous spanish-moorish-saxon synthesis of taste, over whom an ancient athenian of the circle of aeschylus would have half-killed himself with laughter or irritation: but we--accept precisely this wild motleyness, this medley of the most delicate, the most coarse, and the most artificial, with a secret confidence and cordiality; we enjoy it as a refinement of art reserved expressly for us, and allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the repulsive fumes and the proximity of the english populace in which shakespeare's art and taste lives, as perhaps on the chiaja of naples, where, with all our senses awake, we go our way, enchanted and voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lower quarters of the town. that as men of the "historical sense" we have our virtues, is not to be disputed:--we are unpretentious, unselfish, modest, brave, habituated to self-control and self-renunciation, very grateful, very patient, very complaisant--but with all this we are perhaps not very "tasteful." let us finally confess it, that what is most difficult for us men of the "historical sense" to grasp, feel, taste, and love, what finds us fundamentally prejudiced and almost hostile, is precisely the perfection and ultimate maturity in every culture and art, the essentially noble in works and men, their moment of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency, the goldenness and coldness which all things show that have perfected themselves. perhaps our great virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast to good taste, at least to the very bad taste; and we can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly, and with compulsion the small, short, and happy godsends and glorifications of human life as they shine here and there: those moments and marvelous experiences when a great power has voluntarily come to a halt before the boundless and infinite,--when a super-abundance of refined delight has been enjoyed by a sudden checking and petrifying, by standing firmly and planting oneself fixedly on still trembling ground. proportionateness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves; our itching is really the itching for the infinite, the immeasurable. like the rider on his forward panting horse, we let the reins fall before the infinite, we modern men, we semi-barbarians--and are only in our highest bliss when we--are in most danger. 225. whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudaemonism, all those modes of thinking which measure the worth of things according to pleasure and pain, that is, according to accompanying circumstances and secondary considerations, are plausible modes of thought and naivetes, which every one conscious of creative powers and an artist's conscience will look down upon with scorn, though not without sympathy. sympathy for you!--to be sure, that is not sympathy as you understand it: it is not sympathy for social "distress," for "society" with its sick and misfortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective who lie on the ground around us; still less is it sympathy for the grumbling, vexed, revolutionary slave-classes who strive after power--they call it "freedom." our sympathy is a loftier and further-sighted sympathy:--we see how man dwarfs himself, how you dwarf him! and there are moments when we view your sympathy with an indescribable anguish, when we resist it,--when we regard your seriousness as more dangerous than any kind of levity. you want, if possible--and there is not a more foolish "if possible"--to do away with suffering; and we?--it really seems that we would rather have it increased and made worse than it has ever been! well-being, as you understand it--is certainly not a goal; it seems to us an end; a condition which at once renders man ludicrous and contemptible--and makes his destruction desirable! 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? the tension of soul in misfortune which communicates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in undergoing, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting misfortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise, spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon the soul--has it not been bestowed through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering? in man creature and creator are united: in man there is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly, chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the spectator, and the seventh day--do ye understand this contrast? and that your sympathy for the "creature in man" applies to that which has to be fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, roasted, annealed, refined--to that which must necessarily suffer, and is meant to suffer? and our sympathy--do ye not understand what our reverse sympathy applies to, when it resists your sympathy as the worst of all pampering and enervation?--so it is sympathy against sympathy!--but to repeat it once more, there are higher problems than the problems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all systems of philosophy which deal only with these are naivetes. 226. we immoralists.--this world with which we are concerned, in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, inaudible world of delicate command and delicate obedience, a world of "almost" in every respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and tender--yes, it is well protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! we are woven into a strong net and garment of duties, and cannot disengage ourselves--precisely here, we are "men of duty," even we! occasionally, it is true, we dance in our "chains" and betwixt our "swords"; it is none the less true that more often we gnash our teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at the secret hardship of our lot. but do what we will, fools and appearances say of us: "these are men without duty,"--we have always fools and appearances against us! 227. honesty, granting that it is the virtue of which we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits--well, we will labour at it with all our perversity and love, and not tire of "perfecting" ourselves in our virtue, which alone remains: may its glance some day overspread like a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this aging civilization with its dull gloomy seriousness! and if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter, easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us remain hard, we latest stoics, and let us send to its help whatever devilry we have in us:--our disgust at the clumsy and undefined, our "nitimur in vetitum," our love of adventure, our sharpened and fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised, intellectual will to power and universal conquest, which rambles and roves avidiously around all the realms of the future--let us go with all our "devils" to the help of our "god"! it is probable that people will misunderstand and mistake us on that account: what does it matter! they will say: "their 'honesty'--that is their devilry, and nothing else!" what does it matter! and even if they were right--have not all gods hitherto been such sanctified, re-baptized devils? and after all, what do we know of ourselves? and what the spirit that leads us wants to be called? (it is a question of names.) and how many spirits we harbour? our honesty, we free spirits--let us be careful lest it become our vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our limitation, our stupidity! every virtue inclines to stupidity, every stupidity to virtue; "stupid to the point of sanctity," they say in russia,--let us be careful lest out of pure honesty we eventually become saints and bores! is not life a hundred times too short for us--to bore ourselves? one would have to believe in eternal life in order to... 228. i hope to be forgiven for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has belonged to the soporific appliances--and that "virtue," in my opinion, has been more injured by the tediousness of its advocates than by anything else; at the same time, however, i would not wish to overlook their general usefulness. 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! but let us not be afraid! things still remain today as they have always been: i see no one in europe who has (or discloses) an idea of the fact that philosophizing concerning morals might be conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring manner--that calamity might be involved therein. observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable english utilitarians: how ponderously and respectably they stalk on, stalk along (a homeric metaphor expresses it better) in the footsteps of bentham, just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of the respectable helvetius! (no, he was not a dangerous man, helvetius, ce senateur pococurante, to use an expression of galiani). no new thought, nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought, not even a proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject: an impossible literature, taking it all in all, unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. in effect, the old english vice called cant, which is moral tartuffism, has insinuated itself also into these moralists (whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives if one must read them), concealed this time under the new form of the scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience, from which a race of former puritans must naturally suffer, in all their scientific tinkering with morals. (is not a moralist the opposite of a puritan? that is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as questionable, as worthy of interrogation, in short, as a problem? is moralizing not-immoral?) in the end, they all want english morality to be recognized as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or the "general utility," or "the happiness of the greatest number,"--no! the happiness of england, will be best served thereby. they would like, by all means, to convince themselves that the striving after english happiness, i mean after comfort and fashion (and in the highest instance, a seat in parliament), is at the same time the true path of virtue; in fact, that in so far as there has been virtue in the world hitherto, it has just consisted in such striving. 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. they are an unassuming and fundamentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as they are tedious, one cannot think highly enough of their utility. one ought even to encourage them, as has been partially attempted in the following rhymes:- hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling, "longer--better," aye revealing, stiffer aye in head and knee; unenraptured, never jesting, mediocre everlasting, sans genie et sans esprit! 229. in these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, there still remains so much fear, so much superstition of the fear, of the "cruel wild beast," the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of these humaner ages--that even obvious truths, as if by the agreement of centuries, have long remained unuttered, because they have the appearance of helping the finally slain wild beast back to life again. i perhaps risk something when i allow such a truth to escape; let others capture it again and give it so much "milk of pious sentiment" [footnote: an expression from schiller's william tell, act iv, scene 3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old corner.--one ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross errors--as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy--may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. almost everything that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritualising and intensifying of cruelty--this is my thesis; the "wild beast" has not been slain at all, it lives, it flourishes, it has only been--transfigured. 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. what the roman enjoys in the arena, the christian in the ecstasies of the cross, the spaniard at the sight of the faggot and stake, or of the bull-fight, the present-day japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the workman of the parisian suburbs who has a homesickness for bloody revolutions, the wagnerienne who, with unhinged will, "undergoes" the performance of "tristan and isolde"--what all these enjoy, and strive with mysterious ardour to drink in, is the philtre of the great circe "cruelty." here, to be sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of others: there is an abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing one's own suffering--and wherever man has allowed himself to be persuaded to self-denial in the religious sense, or to self-mutilation, as among the phoenicians and ascetics, or in general, to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to puritanical repentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscience and to pascal-like sacrifizia dell' intelleto, he is secretly allured and impelled forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty towards himself.--finally, let us consider that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his spirit to perceive against its own inclination, and often enough against the wishes of his heart:--he forces it to say nay, where he would like to affirm, love, and adore; indeed, every instance of taking a thing profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring of the fundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at appearance and superficiality,--even in every desire for knowledge there is a drop of cruelty. 230. perhaps what i have said here about a "fundamental will of the spirit" may not be understood without further details; i may be allowed a word of explanation.--that imperious something which is popularly called "the spirit," wishes to be master internally and externally, and to feel itself master; it has the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling will. its requirements and capacities here, are the same as those assigned by physiologists to everything that lives, grows, and multiplies. the power of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign elements, in every portion of the "outside world." its object thereby is the incorporation of new "experiences," the assortment of new things in the old arrangements--in short, growth; or more properly, the feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power--is its object. this same will has at its service an apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner denial of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance: as that which is all necessary according to the degree of its appropriating power, its "digestive power," to speak figuratively (and in fact "the spirit" resembles a stomach more than anything else). here also belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion that it is not so and so, but is only allowed to pass as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way narrowness and mystery, of the too-near, of the foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, the misshapen, the beautified--an enjoyment of the arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power. finally, in this connection, there is the not unscrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other spirits and dissemble before them--the constant pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, changeable power: the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feeling of security therein--it is precisely by its protean arts that it is best protected and concealed!--counter to this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside--for every outside is a cloak--there operates the sublime tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and insists on taking things profoundly, variously, and thoroughly; as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed to severe discipline and even severe words. he will say: "there is something cruel in the tendency of my spirit": let the virtuous and amiable try to convince him that it is not so! in fact, it would sound nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our "extravagant honesty" were talked about, whispered about, and glorified--we free, very free spirits--and some day perhaps such will actually be our--posthumous glory! meanwhile--for there is plenty of time until then--we should be least inclined to deck ourselves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage; our whole former work has just made us sick of this taste and its sprightly exuberance. they are beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words: honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for knowledge, heroism of the truthful--there is something in them that makes one's heart swell with pride. but we anchorites and marmots have long ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment, frippery, and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity, and that even under such flattering colour and repainting, the terrible original text homo natura must again be recognized. in effect, to translate man back again into nature; to master the many vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate meanings which have hitherto been scratched and daubed over the eternal original text, homo natura; to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand before man as he now, hardened by the discipline of science, stands before the other forms of nature, with fearless oedipus-eyes, and stopped ulysses-ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long: "thou art more! thou art higher! thou hast a different origin!"--this may be a strange and foolish task, but that it is a task, who can deny! why did we choose it, this foolish task? or, to put the question differently: "why knowledge at all?" every one will ask us about this. and thus pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question a hundred times, have not found and cannot find any better answer.... 231. learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not merely "conserve"--as the physiologist knows. but at the bottom of our souls, quite "down below," there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. in each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable "i am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully--he can only follow to the end what is "fixed" about them in himself. occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called "convictions." later on--one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves are--or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody, our spiritual fate, the unteachable in us, quite "down below."--in view of this liberal compliment which i have just paid myself, permission will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter some truths about "woman as she is," provided that it is known at the outset how literally they are merely--my truths. 232. woman wishes to be independent, and therefore she begins to enlighten men about "woman as she is"--this is one of the worst developments of the general uglifying of europe. for what must these clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and self-exposure bring to light! woman has so much cause for shame; in woman there is so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty presumption, unbridledness, and indiscretion concealed--study only woman's behaviour towards children!--which has really been best restrained and dominated hitherto by the fear of man. alas, if ever the "eternally tedious in woman"--she has plenty of it!--is allowed to venture forth! if she begins radically and on principle to unlearn her wisdom and art-of charming, of playing, of frightening away sorrow, of alleviating and taking easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for agreeable desires! female voices are already raised, which, by saint aristophanes! make one afraid:--with medical explicitness it is stated in a threatening manner what woman first and last requires from man. is it not in the very worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be scientific? 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. let us confess it, we men: we honour and love this very art and this very instinct in woman: we who have the hard task, and for our recreation gladly seek the company of beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate follies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity appear almost like follies to us. finally, i ask the question: did a woman herself ever acknowledge profundity in a woman's mind, or justice in a woman's heart? and is it not true that on the whole "woman" has hitherto been most despised by woman herself, and not at all by us?--we men desire that woman should not continue to compromise herself by enlightening us; just as it was man's care and the consideration for woman, when the church decreed: mulier taceat in ecclesia. it was to the benefit of woman when napoleon gave the too eloquent madame de stael to understand: mulier taceat in politicis!--and in my opinion, he is a true friend of woman who calls out to women today: mulier taceat de mulierel. 233. 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 stael, 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. 234. 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: even today matters are very little better. a word to high school girls. 235. there are turns and casts of fancy, there are sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself. among these is the incidental remark of madame de lambert to her son: "mon ami, ne vous permettez jamais que des folies, qui vous feront grand plaisir"--the motherliest and wisest remark, by the way, that was ever addressed to a son. 236. i have no doubt that every noble woman will oppose what dante and goethe believed about woman--the former when he sang, "ella guardava suso, ed io in lei," and the latter when he interpreted it, "the eternally feminine draws us aloft"; for this is just what she believes of the eternally masculine. 237. seven apophthegms for women how the longest ennui flees, when a man comes to our knees! age, alas! and science staid, furnish even weak virtue aid. sombre garb and silence meet: dress for every dame--discreet. whom i thank when in my bliss? god!--and my good tailoress! young, a flower-decked cavern home; old, a dragon thence doth roam. noble title, leg that's fine, man as well: oh, were he mine! speech in brief and sense in mass--slippery for the jenny-ass! 237a. woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which, losing their way, have come down among them from an elevation: as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating--but as something also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away. 238. 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--he must take his stand in this matter upon the immense rationality of asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of asia, as the greeks did formerly; those best heirs and scholars of asia--who, as is well known, with their increasing culture and amplitude of power, from homer to the time of pericles, became gradually stricter towards woman, in short, more oriental. how necessary, how logical, even how humanely desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves! 239. 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; rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would be preferred: in a word, woman is losing modesty. and let us immediately add that she is also losing taste. she is unlearning to fear man: but the woman who "unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most womanly instincts. that woman should venture forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man--or more definitely, the man in man--is no longer either desired or fully developed, is reasonable enough and also intelligible enough; what is more difficult to understand is that precisely thereby--woman deteriorates. this is what is happening nowadays: let us not deceive ourselves about it! 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," insofar 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. to lose the intuition as to the ground upon which she can most surely achieve victory; to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons; to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even "to the book," where formerly she kept herself in control and in refined, artful humility; to neutralize with her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled, fundamentally different ideal in woman, something eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and indignant collection of everything of the nature of servitude and bondage which the position of woman in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-argument, and not rather a condition of every higher culture, of every elevation of culture):--what does all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly instincts, a defeminising? certainly, there are enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman among the learned asses of the masculine sex, who advise woman to defeminize herself in this manner, and to imitate all the stupidities from which "man" in europe, european "manliness," suffers,--who would like to lower woman to "general culture," indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling with politics. here and there they wish even to make women into free spirits and literary workers: as though a woman without piety would not be something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a profound and godless man;--almost everywhere her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid and dangerous kind of music (our latest german music), and she is daily being made more hysterical and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last function, that of bearing robust children. they wish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" strong by culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening--that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his force of will--have always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of napoleon) had just to thank their force of will--and not their schoolmasters--for their power and ascendancy over men. that which inspires respect in woman, and often enough fear also, is her nature, which is more "natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her naivete in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. that which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love, and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it delights--what? and all that is now to be at an end? and the disenchantment of woman is in progress? the tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? oh europe! europe! we know the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening thee! thy old fable might once more become "history"--an immense stupidity might once again overmaster thee and carry thee away! and no god concealed beneath it--no! only an "idea," a "modern idea"! chapter viii. peoples and countries 240. i heard, once again for the first time, richard wagner's overture to the mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of music as still living, in order that it may be understood:--it is an honour to germans that such a pride did not miscalculate! what flavours and forces, what seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! it impresses us at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, and too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it is not infrequently roguish, still oftener rough and coarse--it has fire and courage, and at the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits which ripen too late. it flows broad and full: and suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesitation, like a gap that opens between cause and effect, an oppression that makes us dream, almost a nightmare; but already it broadens and widens anew, the old stream of delight--the most manifold delight,--of old and new happiness; including especially the joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his astonished, happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedients here employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of art which he apparently betrays to us. all in all, however, no beauty, no south, nothing of the delicate southern clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness even, which is also emphasized, as though the artist wished to say to us: "it is part of my intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and witticisms; something german in the best and worst sense of the word, something in the german style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain german potency and super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the raffinements of decadence--which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the german soul, which is at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. this kind of music expresses best what i think of the germans: they belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow--they have as yet no today. 241. we "good europeans," we also have hours when we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views--i have just given an example of it--hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to hours and plays itself out in hours--in a considerable time: some in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed and strength with which they digest and "change their material." indeed, i could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our rapidly moving europe, would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to "good europeanism." and while digressing on this possibility, i happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two old patriots--they were evidently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the louder. "he has as much, and knows as much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one--"he is still innocent. but what does that matter nowadays! it is the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that is massive. and so also in politicis. a statesman who rears up for them a new tower of babel, some monstrosity of empire and power, they call 'great'--what does it matter that we more prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to an action or affair. supposing a statesman were to bring his people into the position of being obliged henceforth to practise 'high politics,' for which they were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would have to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity;--supposing a statesman were to condemn his people generally to 'practise politics,' when they have hitherto had something better to do and think about, and when in the depths of their souls they have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-practising nations;--supposing such a statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of their exoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate their most radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds narrow, and their tastes 'national'--what! a statesman who should do all this, which his people would have to do penance for throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a statesman would be great, would he?"--"undoubtedly!" replied the other old patriot vehemently, "otherwise he could not have done it! it was mad perhaps to wish such a thing! but perhaps everything great has been just as mad at its commencement!"--"misuse of words!" cried his interlocutor, contradictorily--"strong! strong! strong and mad! not great!"--the old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their "truths" in each other's faces, but i, in my happiness and apartness, considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the strong, and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual superficialising of a nation--namely, in the deepening of another. 242. whether we call it "civilization," or "humanising," or "progress," which now distinguishes the european, whether we call it simply, without praise or blame, by the political formula the democratic movement in europe--behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas, an immense physiological process goes on, which is ever extending the process of the assimilation of europeans, their increasing detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and hereditarily, united races originate, their increasing independence of every definite milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself with equal demands on soul and body,--that is to say, the slow emergence of an essentially super-national and nomadic species of man, who possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power of adaptation as his typical distinction. this process of the evolving european, which can be retarded in its tempo by great relapses, but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in vehemence and depth--the still-raging storm and stress of "national sentiment" pertains to it, and also the anarchism which is appearing at present--this process will probably arrive at results on which its naive propagators and panegyrists, the apostles of "modern ideas," would least care to reckon. the same new conditions under which on an average a levelling and mediocrising of man will take place--a useful, industrious, variously serviceable, and clever gregarious man--are in the highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive qualities. for, while the capacity for adaptation, which is every day trying changing conditions, and begins a new work with every generation, almost with every decade, makes the powerfulness of the type impossible; while the collective impression of such future europeans will probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handy workmen who require a master, a commander, as they require their daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense of the term: the strong man will necessarily in individual and exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before--owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. i meant to say that the democratising of europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of tyrants--taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual sense. 243. i hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards the constellation hercules: and i hope that the men on this earth will do like the sun. and we foremost, we good europeans! 244. there was a time when it was customary to call germans "deep" by way of distinction; but now that the most successful type of new germanism is covetous of quite other honours, and perhaps misses "smartness" in all that has depth, it is almost opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did not formerly deceive ourselves with that commendation: in short, whether german depth is not at bottom something different and worse--and something from which, thank god, we are on the point of successfully ridding ourselves. let us try, then, to relearn with regard to german depth; the only thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivisection of the german soul.--the german soul is above all manifold, varied in its source, aggregated and super-imposed, rather than actually built: this is owing to its origin. a german who would embolden himself to assert: "two souls, alas, dwell in my breast," would make a bad guess at the truth, or, more correctly, he would come far short of the truth about the number of souls. as a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-aryan element as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term, the germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they escape definition, and are thereby alone the despair of the french. it is characteristic of the germans that the question: "what is german?" never dies out among them. kotzebue certainly knew his germans well enough: "we are known," they cried jubilantly to him--but sand also thought he knew them. jean paul knew what he was doing when he declared himself incensed at fichte's lying but patriotic flatteries and exaggerations,--but it is probable that goethe thought differently about germans from jean paul, even though he acknowledged him to be right with regard to fichte. it is a question what goethe really thought about the germans?--but about many things around him he never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew how to keep an astute silence--probably he had good reason for it. it is certain that it was not the "wars of independence" that made him look up more joyfully, any more than it was the french revolution,--the event on account of which he reconstructed his "faust," and indeed the whole problem of "man," was the appearance of napoleon. there are words of goethe in which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that which germans take a pride in, he once defined the famous german turn of mind as "indulgence towards its own and others' weaknesses." was he wrong? it is characteristic of germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them. the german soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hiding-places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm of the mysterious, the german is well acquainted with the bypaths to chaos. and as everything loves its symbol, so the german loves the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain, undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is "deep". the german himself does not exist, he is becoming, he is "developing himself". "development" is therefore the essentially german discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas,--a ruling idea, which, together with german beer and german music, is labouring to germanise all europe. foreigners are astonished and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of the german soul propounds to them (riddles which hegel systematised and richard wagner has in the end set to music). "good-natured and spiteful"--such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the case of every other people, is unfortunately only too often justified in germany one has only to live for a while among swabians to know this! the clumsiness of the german scholar and his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the gods have learnt to be afraid. if any one wishes to see the "german soul" demonstrated ad oculos, let him only look at german taste, at german arts and manners what boorish indifference to "taste"! how the noblest and the commonest stand there in juxtaposition! how disorderly and how rich is the whole constitution of this soul! the german drags at his soul, he drags at everything he experiences. he digests his events badly; he never gets "done" with them; and german depth is often only a difficult, hesitating "digestion." and just as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics like what is convenient, so the german loves "frankness" and "honesty"; it is so convenient to be frank and honest!--this confidingness, this complaisance, this showing-the-cards of german honesty, is probably the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the german is up to nowadays: it is his proper mephistophelean art; with this he can "still achieve much"! the german lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty german eyes--and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!--i meant to say that, let "german depth" be what it will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for prussian "smartness," and berlin wit and sand. it is wise for a people to pose, and let itself be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish: it might even be--profound to do so! finally, we should do honour to our name--we are not called the "tiusche volk" (deceptive people) for nothing.... 245. the "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in mozart--how happy are we that his rococo still speaks to us, that his "good company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in the chinese and its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful, and his belief in the south, can still appeal to something left in us! ah, some time or other it will be over with it!--but who can doubt that it will be over still sooner with the intelligence and taste for beethoven! for he was only the last echo of a break and transition in style, and not, like mozart, the last echo of a great european taste which had existed for centuries. beethoven is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is constantly breaking down, and a future over-young soul that is always coming; there is spread over his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope,--the same light in which europe was bathed when it dreamed with rousseau, when it danced round the tree of liberty of the revolution, and finally almost fell down in adoration before napoleon. but how rapidly does this very sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even the apprehension of this sentiment, how strangely does the language of rousseau, schiller, shelley, and byron sound to our ear, in whom collectively the same fate of europe was able to speak, which knew how to sing in beethoven!--whatever german music came afterwards, belongs to romanticism, that is to say, to a movement which, historically considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and more superficial than that great interlude, the transition of europe from rousseau to napoleon, and to the rise of democracy. weber--but what do we care nowadays for "freischutz" and "oberon"! or marschner's "hans heiling" and "vampyre"! or even wagner's "tannhauser"! that is extinct, although not yet forgotten music. this whole music of romanticism, besides, was not noble enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its position anywhere but in the theatre and before the masses; from the beginning it was second-rate music, which was little thought of by genuine musicians. it was different with felix mendelssohn, that halcyon master, who, on account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful episode of german music. but with regard to robert schumann, who took things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the first--he was the last that founded a school,--do we not now regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this very romanticism of schumann's has been surmounted? schumann, fleeing into the "saxon switzerland" of his soul, with a half werther-like, half jean-paul-like nature (assuredly not like beethoven! assuredly not like byron!)--his manfred music is a mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice; schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a petty taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity--doubly dangerous among germans--for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a sort of girl and noli me tangere--this schumann was already merely a german event in music, and no longer a european event, as beethoven had been, as in a still greater degree mozart had been; with schumann german music was threatened with its greatest danger, that of losing the voice for the soul of europe and sinking into a merely national affair. 246. what a torture are books written in german to a reader who has a third ear! how indignantly he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance, which germans call a "book"! and even the german who reads books! how lazily, how reluctantly, how badly he reads! how many germans know, and consider it obligatory to know, that there is art in every good sentence--art which must be divined, if the sentence is to be understood! if there is a misunderstanding about its tempo, for instance, the sentence itself is misunderstood! that one must not be doubtful about the rhythm-determining syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm, that one should lend a fine and patient ear to every staccato and every rubato, that one should divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs, and how delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in the order of their arrangement--who among book-reading germans is complaisant enough to recognize such duties and requirements, and to listen to so much art and intention in language? after all, one just "has no ear for it"; and so the most marked contrasts of style are not heard, and the most delicate artistry is as it were squandered on the deaf.--these were my thoughts when i noticed how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in the art of prose-writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop down hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp cave--he counts on their dull sound and echo; and another who manipulates his language like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp blade, which wishes to bite, hiss, and cut. 247. how little the german style has to do with harmony and with the ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians themselves write badly. the german does not read aloud, he does not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for the time. in antiquity when a man read--which was seldom enough--he read something to himself, and in a loud voice; they were surprised when any one read silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. in a loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, inflections, and variations of key and changes of tempo, in which the ancient public world took delight. the laws of the written style were then the same as those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and larynx; partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. in the ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath. such periods as occur in demosthenes and cicero, swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one breath, were pleasures to the men of antiquity, who knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty in the deliverance of such a period;--we have really no right to the big period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every sense! those ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, consequently connoisseurs, consequently critics--they thus brought their orators to the highest pitch; in the same manner as in the last century, when all italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of melody) reached its elevation. in germany, however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings), there was properly speaking only one kind of public and approximately artistical discourse--that delivered from the pulpit. the preacher was the only one in germany who knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be especially seldom attained by a german, or almost always too late. the masterpiece of german prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: the bible has hitherto been the best german book. compared with luther's bible, almost everything else is merely "literature"--something which has not grown in germany, and therefore has not taken and does not take root in german hearts, as the bible has done. 248. there are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified and brings forth. and similarly, among the gifted nations, there are those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the greeks, for instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the french; and others which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life--like the jews, the romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the germans?--nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force, and consequently empowered "by the grace of god." these two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand each other--like man and woman. 249. every nation has its own "tartuffery," and calls that its virtue.--one does not know--cannot know, the best that is in one. 250. what europe owes to the jews?--many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness--and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our european culture, its evening sky, now glows--perhaps glows out. for this, we artists among the spectators and philosophers, are--grateful to the jews. 251. it must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances--in short, slight attacks of stupidity--pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day germans there is alternately the anti-french folly, the anti-semitic folly, the anti-polish folly, the christian-romantic folly, the wagnerian folly, the teutonic folly, the prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the sybels and treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the german spirit and conscience may be called. may it be forgiven me that i, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me--the first symptom of political infection. about the jews, for instance, listen to the following:--i have never yet met a german who was favourably inclined to the jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-semitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment;--on this point we must not deceive ourselves. that germany has amply sufficient jews, that the german stomach, the german blood, has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of "jew"--as the italian, the frenchman, and the englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:--that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act. "let no more jews come in! and shut the doors, especially towards the east (also towards austria)!"--thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race. the jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices--owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before "modern ideas", they alter only, when they do alter, in the same way that the russian empire makes its conquest--as an empire that has plenty of time and is not of yesterday--namely, according to the principle, "as slowly as possible"! a thinker who has the future of europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives concerning the future, calculate upon the jews, as he will calculate upon the russians, as above all the surest and likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces. that which is at present called a "nation" in europe, and is really rather a res facta than nata (indeed, sometimes confusingly similar to a res ficta et picta), is in every case something evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a race aere perennus, as the jews are such "nations" should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry and hostility! it is certain that the jews, if they desired--or if they were driven to it, as the anti-semites seem to wish--could now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over europe, that they are not working and planning for that end is equally certain. meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering jew",--and one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency, and make advances to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-semitic bawlers out of the country. one should make advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty much as the english nobility do it stands to reason that the more powerful and strongly marked types of new germanism could enter into relation with the jews with the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the prussian border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and intellectuality--sadly lacking in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and obeying--for both of which the country in question has now a classic reputation but here it is expedient to break off my festal discourse and my sprightly teutonomania for i have already reached my serious topic, the "european problem," as i understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for europe. 252. they are not a philosophical race--the english: bacon represents an attack on the philosophical spirit generally, hobbes, hume, and locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. it was against hume that kant uprose and raised himself; it was locke of whom schelling rightly said, "je meprise locke"; in the struggle against the english mechanical stultification of the world, hegel and schopenhauer (along with goethe) were of one accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different directions towards the opposite poles of german thought, and thereby wronged each other as only brothers will do.--what is lacking in england, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head, carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in carlyle--real power of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy. it is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to christianity--they need its discipline for "moralizing" and humanizing. the englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the german--is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the more need of christianity. to finer nostrils, this english christianity itself has still a characteristic english taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote--the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards spiritualization. the english coarseness and rustic demureness is still most satisfactorily disguised by christian pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of methodism (and more recently as the "salvation army"), a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of "humanity" to which they can be elevated: so much may reasonably be admitted. that, however, which offends even in the humanest englishman is his lack of music, to speak figuratively (and also literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in the movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for "music." listen to him speaking; look at the most beautiful englishwoman walking--in no country on earth are there more beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to them singing! but i ask too much... 253. there are truths which are best recognized by mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for them, there are truths which only possess charms and seductive power for mediocre spirits:--one is pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now that the influence of respectable but mediocre englishmen--i may mention darwin, john stuart mill, and herbert spencer--begins to gain the ascendancy in the middle-class region of european taste. indeed, who could doubt that it is a useful thing for such minds to have the ascendancy for a time? it would be an error to consider the highly developed and independently soaring minds as specially qualified for determining and collecting many little common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions, they are rather from the first in no very favourable position towards those who are "the rules." after all, they have more to do than merely to perceive:--in effect, they have to be something new, they have to signify something new, they have to represent new values! the gulf between knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also more mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand style, the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant person;--while on the other hand, for scientific discoveries like those of darwin, a certain narrowness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something english) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them.--finally, let it not be forgotten that the english, with their profound mediocrity, brought about once before a general depression of european intelligence. what is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth century," or "french ideas"--that, consequently, against which the german mind rose up with profound disgust--is of english origin, there is no doubt about it. the french were only the apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and profoundest victims; for owing to the diabolical anglomania of "modern ideas," the ame francais has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief. one must, however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in a determined manner, and defend it against present prejudices and appearances: the european noblesse--of sentiment, taste, and manners, taking the word in every high sense--is the work and invention of france; the european ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas--is england's work and invention. 254. even at present france is still the seat of the most intellectual and refined culture of europe, it is still the high school of taste; but one must know how to find this "france of taste." he who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed:--they may be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in part persons over-indulged, over-refined, such as have the ambition to conceal themselves. they have all something in common: they keep their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois. in fact, a besotted and brutalized france at present sprawls in the foreground--it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-admiration, at the funeral of victor hugo. there is also something else common to them: a predilection to resist intellectual germanizing--and a still greater inability to do so! in this france of intellect, which is also a france of pessimism, schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and more indigenous than he has ever been in germany; not to speak of heinrich heine, who has long ago been re-incarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists of paris; or of hegel, who at present, in the form of taine--the first of living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical influence. as regards richard wagner, however, the more french music learns to adapt itself to the actual needs of the ame moderne, the more will it "wagnerite"; one can safely predict that beforehand,--it is already taking place sufficiently! there are, however, three things which the french can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession, and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority in europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary germanizing and vulgarizing of taste. firstly, the capacity for artistic emotion, for devotion to "form," for which the expression, l'art pour l'art, along with numerous others, has been invented:--such capacity has not been lacking in france for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for the "small number," it has again and again made a sort of chamber music of literature possible, which is sought for in vain elsewhere in europe.--the second thing whereby the french can lay claim to a superiority over europe is their ancient, many-sided, moralistic culture, owing to which one finds on an average, even in the petty romanciers of the newspapers and chance boulevardiers de paris, a psychological sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one has no conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in germany. the germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work requisite thereto, which, as we have said, france has not grudged: those who call the germans "naive" on that account give them commendation for a defect. (as the opposite of the german inexperience and innocence in voluptate psychologica, which is not too remotely associated with the tediousness of german intercourse,--and as the most successful expression of genuine french curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate thrills, henri beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and forerunning man, who, with a napoleonic tempo, traversed his europe, in fact, several centuries of the european soul, as a surveyor and discoverer thereof:--it has required two generations to overtake him one way or other, to divine long afterwards some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured him--this strange epicurean and man of interrogation, the last great psychologist of france).--there is yet a third claim to superiority: in the french character there is a successful half-way synthesis of the north and south, which makes them comprehend many things, and enjoins upon them other things, which an englishman can never comprehend. their temperament, turned alternately to and from the south, in which from time to time the provencal and ligurian blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty of blood--our german infirmity of taste, for the excessive prevalence of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that is to say "high politics," has with great resolution been prescribed (according to a dangerous healing art, which bids me wait and wait, but not yet hope).--there is also still in france a pre-understanding and ready welcome for those rarer and rarely gratified men, who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in any kind of fatherlandism, and know how to love the south when in the north and the north when in the south--the born midlanders, the "good europeans." for them bizet has made music, this latest genius, who has seen a new beauty and seduction,--who has discovered a piece of the south in music. 255. i hold that many precautions should be taken against german music. suppose a person loves the south as i love it--as a great school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous ills, as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence which o'erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself--well, such a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard against german music, because, in injuring his taste anew, it will also injure his health anew. such a southerner, a southerner not by origin but by belief, if he should dream of the future of music, must also dream of it being freed from the influence of the north; and must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and perhaps more perverse and mysterious music, a super-german music, which does not fade, pale, and die away, as all german music does, at the sight of the blue, wanton sea and the mediterranean clearness of sky--a super-european music, which holds its own even in presence of the brown sunsets of the desert, whose soul is akin to the palm-tree, and can be at home and can roam with big, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey... i could imagine a music of which the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of good and evil; only that here and there perhaps some sailor's home-sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, would see the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible moral world fleeing towards it, and would be hospitable enough and profound enough to receive such belated fugitives. 256. owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations of europe, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy--owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs that europe wishes to be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. with all the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way for that new synthesis, and tentatively to anticipate the european of the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to the "fatherlands"--they only rested from themselves when they became "patriots." i think of such men as napoleon, goethe, beethoven, stendhal, heinrich heine, schopenhauer: it must not be taken amiss if i also count richard wagner among them, about whom one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings (geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand themselves), still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with which he is now resisted and opposed in france: the fact remains, nevertheless, that richard wagner and the later french romanticism of the forties, are most closely and intimately related to one another. they are akin, fundamentally akin, in all the heights and depths of their requirements; it is europe, the one europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, outwards and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither? into a new light? towards a new sun? but who would attempt to express accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech could not express distinctly? it is certain that the same storm and stress tormented them, that they sought in the same manner, these last great seekers! all of them steeped in literature to their eyes and ears--the first artists of universal literary culture--for the most part even themselves writers, poets, intermediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses (wagner, as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet among musicians, as artist generally among actors); all of them fanatics for expression "at any cost"--i specially mention delacroix, the nearest related to wagner; all of them great discoverers in the realm of the sublime, also of the loathsome and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them talented far beyond their genius, out and out virtuosi, with mysterious accesses to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of logic and of the straight line, hankering after the strange, the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory; as men, tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to be incapable of a noble tempo or of a lento in life and action--think of balzac, for instance,--unrestrained workers, almost destroying themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners, ambitious and insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all of them finally shattering and sinking down at the christian cross (and with right and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an anti-christian philosophy?);--on the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their century--and it is the century of the masses--the conception "higher man."... let the german friends of richard wagner advise together as to whether there is anything purely german in the wagnerian art, or whether its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from super-german sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be underrated how indispensable paris was to the development of his type, which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit at the most decisive time--and how the whole style of his proceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in sight of the french socialistic original. on a more subtle comparison it will perhaps be found, to the honour of richard wagner's german nature, that he has acted in everything with more strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-century frenchman could have done--owing to the circumstance that we germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the french;--perhaps even the most remarkable creation of richard wagner is not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible, and inimitable to the whole latter-day latin race: the figure of siegfried, that very free man, who is probably far too free, too hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too anti-catholic for the taste of old and mellow civilized nations. he may even have been a sin against romanticism, this anti-latin siegfried: well, wagner atoned amply for this sin in his old sad days, when--anticipating a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics--he began, with the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at least, the way to rome, if not to walk therein.--that these last words may not be misunderstood, i will call to my aid a few powerful rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what i mean--what i mean counter to the "last wagner" and his parsifal music:---is this our mode?--from german heart came this vexed ululating? from german body, this self-lacerating? is ours this priestly hand-dilation, this incense-fuming exaltation? is ours this faltering, falling, shambling, this quite uncertain ding-dong-dangling? this sly nun-ogling, ave-hour-bell ringing, this wholly false enraptured heaven-o'erspringing?--is this our mode?--think well!--ye still wait for admission--for what ye hear is rome--rome's faith by intuition! chapter ix. what is noble? 257. every elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will 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 difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking 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 of 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 supermoral sense. to be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. let us acknowledge unprejudicedly how every higher civilization hitherto has originated! men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old mellow civilizations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. at the commencement, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical power--they were more complete men (which at every point also implies the same as "more complete beasts"). 258. corruption--as the indication that anarchy threatens to break out among the instincts, and that the foundation of the emotions, called "life," is convulsed--is something radically different according to the organization in which it manifests itself. when, for instance, an aristocracy like that of france at the beginning of the revolution, flung away its privileges with sublime disgust and sacrificed itself to an excess of its moral sentiments, it was corruption:--it was really only the closing act of the corruption which had existed for centuries, by virtue of which that aristocracy had abdicated step by step its lordly prerogatives and lowered itself to a function of royalty (in the end even to its decoration and parade-dress). the essential thing, however, 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: like those sun-seeking climbing plants in java--they are called sipo matador,--which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit their happiness. 259. to refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). as soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: 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;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated will to power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy--not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely will to power. on no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, 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--granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves! 260. 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 civilizations, 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. the distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts. in the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank. the noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself he despises them. let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad" means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable",--the antithesis "good" and "evil" is of a different origin. the cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:--it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful. "we truthful ones"--the nobility in ancient greece called themselves. it is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, "why have sympathetic actions been praised?" 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 recognizes in himself: such morality equals self-glorification. in the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness 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 super-abundance 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. "wotan placed a hard heart in my breast," says an old scandinavian saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud viking. such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the saga therefore adds warningly: "he who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one." the noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in desinteressement, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards "selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart."--it is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. the profound reverence for age and for tradition--all law rests on this double reverence,--the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe almost instinctively in "progress" and the "future," and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas" has complacently betrayed itself thereby. a morality of the ruling class, however, is more 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, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realize, and also to unearth and disclose.--it is otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-morality. supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralize, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with his situation. the slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a skepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything "good" that is there honoured--he would fain persuade himself that the very happiness there is not genuine. on the other hand, those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. 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 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 ascendancy, 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.--hence we can understand without further detail why love as a passion--it is our european specialty--must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom europe owes so much, and almost owes itself. 261. vanity is one of the things which are perhaps most difficult for a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny it, where another kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently. the problem for him is to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of themselves which they themselves do not possess--and consequently also do not "deserve,"--and who yet believe in this good opinion afterwards. this seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable, that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful about it in most cases when it is spoken of. he will say, for instance: "i may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others precisely as i rate it:--that, however, is not vanity (but self-conceit, or, in most cases, that which is called 'humility,' and also 'modesty')." or he will even say: "for many reasons i can delight in the good opinion of others, perhaps because i love and honour them, and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhaps because the good opinion of others, even in cases where i do not share it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness:--all this, however, is not vanity." the man of noble character must first bring it home forcibly to his mind, especially with the aid of history, that, from time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary man was only that which he passed for:--not being at all accustomed to fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than that which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar right of masters to create values). it may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always waiting for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself to it; yet by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to a bad and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the self-appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women learn from their confessors, and which in general the believing christian learns from his church). in fact, conformably to the slow rise of the democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of the masters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well" of themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended; but it has at all times an older, ampler, and more radically ingrained propensity opposed to it--and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this older propensity overmasters the younger. the vain person rejoices over every good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he subjects himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest instinct of subjection which breaks forth in him.--it is "the slave" in the vain man's blood, the remains of the slave's craftiness--and how much of the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance!--which seeks to seduce to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as though he had not called them forth.--and to repeat it again: vanity is an atavism. 262. 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 super-abundant 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). now look at an aristocratic commonwealth, say an ancient greek polis, or venice, as a voluntary or involuntary contrivance for the purpose of rearing human beings; there are there men beside one another, thrown upon their own resources, who want to make their species prevail, chiefly because they must prevail, or else run the terrible danger of being exterminated. the favour, the super-abundance, the protection are there lacking under which variations are fostered; the species needs itself as species, as something which, precisely by virtue of its hardness, its uniformity, and simplicity of structure, can in general prevail and make itself permanent in constant struggle with its neighbours, or with rebellious or rebellion-threatening vassals. the most varied experience teaches it what are the qualities to which it principally owes the fact that it still exists, in spite of all gods and men, and has hitherto been victorious: these qualities it calls virtues, and these virtues alone it develops to maturity. it does so with severity, indeed it desires severity; every aristocratic morality is intolerant in the education of youth, in the control of women, in the marriage customs, in the relations of old and young, in the penal laws (which have an eye only for the degenerating): it counts intolerance itself among the virtues, under the name of "justice." a type with few, but very marked features, a species of severe, warlike, wisely silent, reserved, and reticent men (and as such, with the most delicate sensibility for the charm and nuances of society) is thus established, unaffected by the vicissitudes of generations; the constant struggle with uniform unfavourable conditions is, as already remarked, the cause of a type becoming stable and hard. finally, however, a happy state of things results, the enormous tension is relaxed; there are perhaps no more enemies among the neighbouring peoples, and the means of life, even of the enjoyment of life, are present in superabundance. with one stroke the bond and constraint of the old discipline severs: it is no longer regarded as necessary, as a condition of existence--if it would continue, it can only do so as a form of luxury, as an archaizing taste. variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual and detach himself. at this turning-point of history there manifest themselves, side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive with one another "for sun and light," and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality. it was this morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow in so threatening a manner:--it is now "out of date," it is getting "out of date." the dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the "individual" stands out, and is obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance. nothing but new "whys," nothing but new "hows," no common formulas any longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of spring and autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied corruption. danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions. what will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach? they discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow, except one species of man, the incurably mediocre. the mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves--they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; "be like them! become mediocre!" is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.--but it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love--it will have difficulty in concealing its irony! 263. there is an instinct for rank, which more than anything else is already the sign of a high rank; there is a delight in the nuances of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits. the refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised. he whose task and practice it is to investigate souls, will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will test it by its instinct for reverence. difference engendre haine: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it; while on the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. the way in which, on the whole, the reverence for the bible has hitherto been maintained in europe, is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of manners which europe owes to christianity: books of such profoundness and supreme significance require for their protection an external tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the period of thousands of years which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them. much has been achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are not allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand--it is almost their highest advance towards humanity. on the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modern ideas," nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet there is more relative nobility of taste, and more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demimonde of intellect, the cultured class. 264. it cannot be effaced from a man's soul what his ancestors have preferably and most constantly done: whether they were perhaps diligent economizers attached to a desk and a cash-box, modest and citizen-like in their desires, modest also in their virtues; or whether they were accustomed to commanding from morning till night, fond of rude pleasures and probably of still ruder duties and responsibilities; or whether, finally, at one time or another, they have sacrificed old privileges of birth and possession, in order to live wholly for their faith--for their "god,"--as men of an inexorable and sensitive conscience, which blushes at every compromise. it is quite impossible for a man not to have the qualities and predilections of his parents and ancestors in his constitution, whatever appearances may suggest to the contrary. this is the problem of race. granted that one knows something of the parents, it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child: any kind of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting--the three things which together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times--such must pass over to the child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in deceiving with regard to such heredity.--and what else does education and culture try to do nowadays! in our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, "education" and "culture" must be essentially the art of deceiving--deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul. an educator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils: "be true! be natural! show yourselves as you are!"--even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the furca of horace, naturam expellere: with what results? "plebeianism" usque recurret. [footnote: horace's "epistles," i. x. 24.] 265. at the risk of displeasing innocent ears, 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. the noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something that may have its basis in the primary law of things:--if he sought a designation for it he would say: "it is justice itself." he acknowledges under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect, which he enjoys in intercourse with himself--in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand. it is an additional instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation in intercourse with his equals--every star is a similar egoist; he honours himself in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the essence of all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things. the noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature. the notion of "favour" has, inter pares, neither significance nor good repute; there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude. his egoism hinders him here: in general, he looks "aloft" unwillingly--he looks either forward, horizontally and deliberately, or downwards--he knows that he is on a height. 266. "one can only truly esteem him who does not look out for himself."--goethe to rath schlosser. 267. the chinese have a proverb which mothers even teach their children: "siao-sin" ("make thy heart small"). this is the essentially fundamental tendency in latter-day civilizations. i have no doubt that an ancient greek, also, would first of all remark the self-dwarfing in us europeans of today--in this respect alone we should immediately be "distasteful" to him. 268. what, after all, is ignobleness?--words are vocal symbols for ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of sensations. it is not sufficient to use the same words in order to understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences in common. on this account the people of one nation understand one another better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there originates therefrom an entity that "understands itself"--namely, a nation. in all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more rapidly--the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always unite closer and closer. the greater the danger, the greater is the need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to misunderstand one another in danger--that is what cannot at all be dispensed with in intercourse. also in all loves and friendships one has the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of the other. (the fear of the "eternal misunderstanding": that is the good genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them--and not some schopenhauerian "genius of the species"!) whichever groups of sensations within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of command--these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and determine ultimately its list of desirable things. a man's estimates of value betray something of the structure of his soul, and wherein it sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. supposing now that necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols, it results on the whole that the easy communicability of need, which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and common experiences, must have been the most potent of all the forces which have hitherto operated upon mankind. the more similar, the more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. one must appeal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the gregarious--to the ignoble--! 269. the more a psychologist--a born, an unavoidable psychologist and soul-diviner--turns his attention to the more select cases and individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy: he needs sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. for the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a rule always before one's eyes. the manifold torment of the psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then discovers almost repeatedly throughout all history, this universal inner "desperateness" of higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every sense--may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-destruction--of his "going to ruin" himself. one may perceive in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and incisiveness--from what his "business"--has laid upon his conscience. the fear of his memory is peculiar to him. he is easily silenced by the judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he has perceived--or he even conceals his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. perhaps the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely where he has learnt great sympathy, together with great contempt, the multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt great reverence--reverence for "great men" and marvelous animals, for the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the dignity of mankind, and one's own self, to whom one points the young, and in view of whom one educates them. and who knows but in all great instances hitherto just the same happened: that the multitude worshipped a god, and that the "god" was only a poor sacrificial animal! success has always been the greatest liar--and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer, are disguised in their creations until they are unrecognizable; the "work" of the artist, of the philosopher, only invents him who has created it, is reputed to have created it; the "great men," as they are reverenced, are poor little fictions composed afterwards; in the world of historical values spurious coinage prevails. those great poets, for example, such as byron, musset, poe, leopardi, kleist, gogol (i do not venture to mention much greater names, but i have them in my mind), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, enthusiastic, sensuous, and childish, light-minded and impulsive in their trust and distrust; with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed; often taking revenge with their works for an internal defilement, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too true memory, often lost in the mud and almost in love with it, until they become like the will-o'-the-wisps around the swamps, and pretend to be stars--the people then call them idealists,--often struggling with protracted disgust, with an ever-reappearing phantom of disbelief, which makes them cold, and obliges them to languish for gloria and devour "faith as it is" out of the hands of intoxicated adulators:--what a torment these great artists are and the so-called higher men in general, to him who has once found them out! it is thus conceivable that it is just from woman--who is clairvoyant in the world of suffering, and also unfortunately eager to help and save to an extent far beyond her powers--that they have learnt so readily those outbreaks of boundless devoted sympathy, which the multitude, above all the reverent multitude, do not understand, and overwhelm with prying and self-gratifying interpretations. this sympathizing invariably deceives itself as to its power; 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!--it is possible that under the holy fable and travesty of the life of jesus there is hidden one of the most painful cases of the martyrdom of knowledge about love: the martyrdom of the most innocent and most craving heart, that never had enough of any human love, that demanded love, that demanded inexorably and frantically to be loved and nothing else, with terrible outbursts against those who refused him their love; the story of a poor soul insatiated and insatiable in love, that had to invent hell to send thither those who would not love him--and that at last, enlightened about human love, had to invent a god who is entire love, entire capacity for love--who takes pity on human love, because it is so paltry, so ignorant! he who has such sentiments, he who has such knowledge about love--seeks for death!--but why should one deal with such painful matters? provided, of course, that one is not obliged to do so. 270. the intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply--it almost determines the order of rank how deeply men can suffer--the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he knows more than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and "at home" in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which "you know nothing"!--this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the "initiated," of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. profound suffering makes noble: it separates.--one of the most refined forms of disguise is epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound. they are "gay men" who make use of gaiety, because they are misunderstood on account of it--they wish to be misunderstood. there are "scientific minds" who make use of science, because it gives a gay appearance, and because scientificness leads to the conclusion that a person is superficial--they wish to mislead to a false conclusion. there are free insolent minds which would fain conceal and deny that they are broken, proud, incurable hearts (the cynicism of hamlet--the case of galiani); and occasionally folly itself is the mask of an unfortunate over-assured knowledge.--from which it follows that it is the part of a more refined humanity to have reverence "for the mask," and not to make use of psychology and curiosity in the wrong place. 271. that which separates two men most profoundly is a different sense and grade of purity. what does it matter about all their honesty and reciprocal usefulness, what does it matter about all their mutual good-will: the fact still remains--they "cannot smell each other!" the highest instinct for purity places him who is affected with it in the most extraordinary and dangerous isolation, as a saint: for it is just holiness--the highest spiritualization of the instinct in question. any kind of cognizance of an indescribable excess in the joy of the bath, any kind of ardour or thirst which perpetually impels the soul out of night into the morning, and out of gloom, out of "affliction" into clearness, brightness, depth, and refinement:--just as much as such a tendency distinguishes--it is a noble tendency--it also separates.--the pity of the saint is pity for the filth of the human, all-too-human. and there are grades and heights where pity itself is regarded by him as impurity, as filth. 272. 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. 273. a man who 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. his peculiar lofty bounty to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and dominates. impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to that time--for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the end, as every means does--spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it. 274. the problem of those who wait.--happy chances are necessary, and many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or "break forth," as one might say--at the right moment. on an average it does not happen; and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they wait in vain. occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late--the chance which gives "permission" to take action--when their best youth, and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many a one, just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "it is too late," he has said to himself--and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.--in the domain of genius, may not the "raphael without hands" (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception, but the rule?--perhaps genius is by no means so rare: but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in order to tyrannize over the [greek inserted here], "the right time"--in order to take chance by the forelock! 275. he who does not wish to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground--and thereby betrays himself. 276. in all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul: the dangers of the latter must be greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its existence.--in a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so in man.-277. it is too bad! always the old story! when a man has finished building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something which he ought absolutely to have known before he--began to build. the eternal, fatal "too late!" the melancholia of everything completed--! 278.--wanderer, who art thou? i see thee follow thy path without scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has returned to the light insatiated out of every depth--what did it seek down there?--with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps: who art thou? what hast thou done? rest thee here: this place has hospitality for every one--refresh thyself! and whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases thee? what will serve to refresh thee? only name it, whatever i have i offer thee! "to refresh me? to refresh me? oh, thou prying one, what sayest thou! but give me, i pray thee---" what? what? speak out! "another mask! a second mask!" 279. men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy--ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them! 280. "bad! bad! what? does he not--go back?" yes! but you misunderstand him when you complain about it. he goes back like every one who is about to make a great spring. 281.--"will people believe it of me? but i insist that they believe it of me: i have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without delight in 'the subject,' ready to digress from 'myself,' and always without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a contradictio in adjecto even in the idea of 'direct knowledge' which theorists allow themselves:--this matter of fact is almost the most certain thing i know about myself. there must be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anything definite about myself.--is there perhaps some enigma therein? probably; but fortunately nothing for my own teeth.--perhaps it betrays the species to which i belong?--but not to myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me." 282.--"but what has happened to you?"--"i do not know," he said, hesitatingly; "perhaps the harpies have flown over my table."--it sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody--and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself--whither? for what purpose? to famish apart? to suffocate with his memories?--to him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger will always be great--nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so. thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger and thirst--or, should he nevertheless finally "fall to," of sudden nausea.--we have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong; and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to nourish, know the dangerous dyspepsia which originates from a sudden insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates--the after-dinner nausea. 283. 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--otherwise in fact one would praise oneself, which is contrary to good taste:--a self-control, to be sure, which offers excellent opportunity and provocation to constant misunderstanding. to be able to allow oneself this veritable luxury of taste and morality, one must not live among intellectual imbeciles, but rather among men whose misunderstandings and mistakes amuse by their refinement--or one will have to pay dearly for it!--"he praises me, therefore he acknowledges me to be right"--this asinine method of inference spoils half of the life of us recluses, for it brings the asses into our neighbourhood and friendship. 284. to live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond... to have, or not to have, one's emotions, one's for and against, according to choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to seat oneself on them as upon horses, and often as upon asses:--for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire. to conserve one's three hundred foregrounds; also one's black spectacles: for there are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our "motives." and to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness. and to remain master of one's four virtues, courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude. for solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man--"in society"--it must be unavoidably impure. all society makes one somehow, somewhere, or sometime--"commonplace." 285. the greatest events and thoughts--the greatest thoughts, however, are the greatest events--are longest in being comprehended: the generations which are contemporary with them do not experience such events--they live past them. something happens there as in the realm of stars. the light of the furthest stars is longest in reaching man; and before it has arrived man denies--that there are stars there. "how many centuries does a mind require to be understood?"--that is also a standard, one also makes a gradation of rank and an etiquette therewith, such as is necessary for mind and for star. 286. "here is the prospect free, the mind exalted." [footnote: goethe's "faust," part ii, act v. the words of dr. marianus.]--but there is a reverse kind of man, who is also upon a height, and has also a free prospect--but looks downwards. 287. what is noble? what does the word "noble" still mean for us nowadays? how does the noble man betray himself, how is he recognized under this heavy overcast sky of the commencing plebeianism, by which everything is rendered opaque and leaden?--it is not his actions which establish his claim--actions are always ambiguous, always inscrutable; neither is it his "works." one finds nowadays among artists and scholars plenty of those who betray by their works that a profound longing for nobleness impels them; but this very need of nobleness is radically different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and is in fact the eloquent and dangerous sign of the lack thereof. it is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.--the noble soul has reverence for itself.-288. there are men who are unavoidably intellectual, let them turn and twist themselves as they will, and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes--as though the hand were not a betrayer; it always comes out at last that they have something which they hide--namely, intellect. one of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as possible, and of successfully representing oneself to be stupider than one really is--which in everyday life is often as desirable as an umbrella,--is called enthusiasm, including what belongs to it, for instance, virtue. for as galiani said, who was obliged to know it: vertu est enthousiasme. 289. in the writings of a recluse one always hears something of the echo of the wilderness, something of the murmuring tones and timid vigilance of solitude; in his strongest words, even in his cry itself, there sounds a new and more dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. he who has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave--it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine--his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by. the recluse does not believe that a philosopher--supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse--ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?--indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher can have "ultimate and actual" opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every "foundation." every philosophy is a foreground philosophy--this is a recluse's verdict: "there is something arbitrary in the fact that the philosopher came to a stand here, took a retrospect, and looked around; that he here laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper--there is also something suspicious in it." every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a lurking-place, every word is also a mask. 290. every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood. the latter perhaps wounds his vanity; but the former wounds his heart, his sympathy, which always says: "ah, why would you also have as hard a time of it as i have?" 291. man, a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable animal, uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity, rather than by his strength, has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his soul as something simple; and the whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by virtue of which generally enjoyment at the sight of the soul becomes possible. from this point of view there is perhaps much more in the conception of "art" than is generally believed. 292. a philosopher: that is a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, and dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if they came from the outside, from above and below, as a species of events and lightning-flashes peculiar to him; who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a portentous man, around whom there is always rumbling and mumbling and gaping and something uncanny going on. a philosopher: alas, a being who often runs away from himself, is often afraid of himself--but whose curiosity always makes him "come to himself" again. 293. a man who says: "i like that, i take it for my own, and mean to guard and protect it from every one"; 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! but of what account is the sympathy of those who suffer! or of those even who preach sympathy! there is nowadays, throughout almost the whole of europe, a sickly irritability and sensitiveness towards pain, and also a repulsive irrestrainableness in complaining, an effeminizing, which, with the aid of religion and philosophical nonsense, seeks to deck itself out as something superior--there is a regular cult of suffering. the unmanliness of that which is called "sympathy" by such groups of visionaries, is always, i believe, the first thing that strikes the eye.--one must resolutely and radically taboo this latest form of bad taste; and finally i wish people to put the good amulet, "gai saber" ("gay science," in ordinary language), on heart and neck, as a protection against it. 294. the olympian vice.--despite the philosopher who, as a genuine englishman, tried to bring laughter into bad repute in all thinking minds--"laughing is a bad infirmity of human nature, which every thinking mind will strive to overcome" (hobbes),--i would even allow myself to rank philosophers according to the quality of their laughing--up to those who are capable of golden laughter. and supposing that gods also philosophize, which i am strongly inclined to believe, owing to many reasons--i have no doubt that they also know how to laugh thereby in an overman-like and new fashion--and at the expense of all serious things! gods are fond of ridicule: it seems that they cannot refrain from laughter even in holy matters. 295. the genius of the heart, as that great mysterious one possesses it, the tempter-god and born rat-catcher of consciences, whose voice can descend into the nether-world of every soul, who neither speaks a word nor casts a glance in which there may not be some motive or touch of allurement, to whose perfection it pertains that he knows how to appear,--not as he is, but in a guise which acts as an additional constraint on his followers to press ever closer to him, to follow him more cordially and thoroughly;--the genius of the heart, which imposes silence and attention on everything loud and self-conceited, which smoothes rough souls and makes them taste a new longing--to lie placid as a mirror, that the deep heavens may be reflected in them;--the genius of the heart, which teaches the clumsy and too hasty hand to hesitate, and to grasp more delicately; which scents the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under thick dark ice, and is a divining-rod for every grain of gold, long buried and imprisoned in mud and sand; the genius of the heart, from contact with which every one goes away richer; not favoured or surprised, not as though gratified and oppressed by the good things of others; but richer in himself, newer than before, broken up, blown upon, and sounded by a thawing wind; more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more fragile, more bruised, but full of hopes which as yet lack names, full of a new will and current, full of a new ill-will and counter-current... but what am i doing, my friends? of whom am i talking to you? have i forgotten myself so far that i have not even told you his name? unless it be that you have already divined of your own accord who this questionable god and spirit is, that wishes to be praised in such a manner? for, as it happens to every one who from childhood onward has always been on his legs, and in foreign lands, i have also encountered on my path many strange and dangerous spirits; above all, however, and again and again, the one of whom i have just spoken: in fact, no less a personage than the god dionysus, the great equivocator and tempter, to whom, as you know, i once offered in all secrecy and reverence my first-fruits--the last, as it seems to me, who has offered a sacrifice to him, for i have found no one who could understand what i was then doing. in the meantime, however, i have learned much, far too much, about the philosophy of this god, and, as i said, from mouth to mouth--i, the last disciple and initiate of the god dionysus: and perhaps i might at last begin to give you, my friends, as far as i am allowed, a little taste of this philosophy? in a hushed voice, as is but seemly: for it has to do with much that is secret, new, strange, wonderful, and uncanny. the very fact that dionysus is a philosopher, and that therefore gods also philosophize, seems to me a novelty which is not unensnaring, and might perhaps arouse suspicion precisely among philosophers;--among you, my friends, there is less to be said against it, except that it comes too late and not at the right time; for, as it has been disclosed to me, you are loth nowadays to believe in god and gods. it may happen, too, that in the frankness of my story i must go further than is agreeable to the strict usages of your ears? certainly the god in question went further, very much further, in such dialogues, and was always many paces ahead of me... indeed, if it were allowed, i should have to give him, according to human usage, fine ceremonious tides of lustre and merit, i should have to extol his courage as investigator and discoverer, his fearless honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. but such a god does not know what to do with all that respectable trumpery and pomp. "keep that," he would say, "for thyself and those like thee, and whoever else require it! i--have no reason to cover my nakedness!" one suspects that this kind of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame?--he once said: "under certain circumstances i love mankind"--and referred thereby to ariadne, who was present; "in my opinion man is an agreeable, brave, inventive animal, that has not his equal upon earth, he makes his way even through all labyrinths. i like man, and often think how i can still further advance him, and make him stronger, more evil, and more profound."--"stronger, more evil, and more profound?" i asked in horror. "yes," he said again, "stronger, more evil, and more profound; also more beautiful"--and thereby the tempter-god smiled with his halcyon smile, as though he had just paid some charming compliment. one here sees at once that it is not only shame that this divinity lacks;--and in general there are good grounds for supposing that in some things the gods could all of them come to us men for instruction. we men are--more human.-296. alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze and laugh--and now? you have already doffed your novelty, and some of you, i fear, are ready to become truths, so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, so tedious! and was it ever otherwise? what then do we write and paint, we mandarins with chinese brush, we immortalisers of things which lend themselves to writing, what are we alone capable of painting? alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour! alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments! alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves be captured with the hand--with our hand! we immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer, things only which are exhausted and mellow! and it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone i have colours, many colours, perhaps, many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;--but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, you, my old, beloved--evil thoughts! from the heights by f w nietzsche translated by l. a. magnus 1. midday of life! oh, season of delight! my summer's park! uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark- i peer for friends, am ready day and night,- where linger ye, my friends? the time is right! 2. is not the glacier's grey today for you rose-garlanded? the brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread and thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, to spy for you from farthest eagle's view. 3. my table was spread out for you on high- who dwelleth so star-near, so near the grisly pit below?- my realm--what realm hath wider boundary? my honey--who hath sipped its fragrancy? 4. friends, ye are there! woe me,--yet i am not he whom ye seek? ye stare and stop--better your wrath could speak! i am not i? hand, gait, face, changed? and what i am, to you my friends, now am i not? 5. am i an other? strange am i to me? yet from me sprung? a wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung? hindering too oft my own self's potency, wounded and hampered by self-victory? 6. i sought where-so the wind blows keenest. there i learned to dwell where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell, and unlearned man and god and curse and prayer? became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare? 7. ye, my old friends! look! ye turn pale, filled o'er with love and fear! go! yet not in wrath. ye could ne'er live here. here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur, a huntsman must one be, like chamois soar. 8. an evil huntsman was i? see how taut my bow was bent! strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent- woe now! that arrow is with peril fraught, perilous as none.--have yon safe home ye sought! 9. ye go! thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;- strong was thy hope; unto new friends thy portals widely ope, let old ones be. bid memory depart! wast thou young then, now--better young thou art! 10. what linked us once together, one hope's tie- (who now doth con those lines, now fading, love once wrote thereon?)- is like a parchment, which the hand is shy to touch--like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry. 11. oh! friends no more! they are--what name for those?- friends' phantom-flight knocking at my heart's window-pane at night, gazing on me, that speaks "we were" and goes,- oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose! 12. pinings of youth that might not understand! for which i pined, which i deemed changed with me, kin of my kind: but they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned: none but new kith are native of my land! 13. midday of life! my second youth's delight! my summer's park! unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark! i peer for friends!--am ready day and night, for my new friends. come! come! the time is right! 14. this song is done,--the sweet sad cry of rue sang out its end; a wizard wrought it, he the timely friend, the midday-friend,--no, do not ask me who; at midday 'twas, when one became as two. 15. we keep our feast of feasts, sure of our bourne, our aims self-same: the guest of guests, friend zarathustra, came! the world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn, and light and dark were one that wedding-morn. 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. 