The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nietzsche, His Life and Works by Anthony M. Ludovici.

The commission for a book on Nietzsche, to form the latest addition to a series of famous philosophers, is most certainly a sign that the age of adversity, through which the earlier Nietzscheans had to struggle, has at last come to an end. For ten consecutive years they had had no reply whatever to their propaganda, and their publications, loud as some of them were, proved as ineffective as cannon shots fired into the eternity of interplanetary space. Finally, however, when the echo was at last heard, it gave back nothing like the original sound: it was an echo of groans and moans, an echo of roaring disapproval and hissing mockery. Yet the years rolled on and on—and so did the printing-presses—hissing and roaring as much as ever—but at last, their thunders grew tamer and more subdued—the tempest of their fury seemed to die away in the distance—occasionally a slight mutter was still to be heard, but no more flashes and hisses—and suddenly a streak of blue was observed over the horizon, followed by a ray and smile of sunlight—and a soft zephyr of subdued and tentative compliments—and when our Nietzsche edition had begun to appear in its stately volumes we were enabled to receive from our former enemies on both sides of the Atlantic "respectful congratulations."

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

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

And I may claim that I not only know the meteorological conditions of England, but also those of the whole of modern Europe. I know them so well that I have the greatest doubts whether Nietzsche's influence will be strong enough to withstand the terrible hurricane of democracy which in our age is sweeping everything before it, and leaving a level plain in its rear. Nietzsche may have been ever so right, but Truth and Righteousness do not always prevail in this world of ours, indeed, they don't: the bible itself, that otherwise optimistic book, lets this grand secret out once and only once—in the story of Job. The "happy ending" in that book will deceive no realistic observer: it was added to the story, as it is added to modern plays and novels, for the edification and comfort of the audience: the true story of Job was without it, as was the true story of many a brave man, as was the true story of that great pope, who on his deathbed came out with the confession: "Dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exsilio,"[1] a confession which went in the very teeth of his own virtue-rewarding creed with its happy-go-lucky trust in the moral order of the universe.

Nietzsche may have been right, therefore he may be unsuccessful. I myself regard Nietzsche's views on art, religion, psychology, morality, as extremely sound; I think they are proved both by history and by common experience; I even suspect that they could be confirmed by science, if only science would give up looking at the world through the coloured spectacles of democratic prejudice ... but then, it is so difficult to give up this democratic prejudice; for it is by no means simply a political opinion. Democracy, as a political creed, need terrify no one; for political creeds succeed each other like waves of the sea, whose thunder is loud and whose end is froth; but the driving power behind democracy is not a political one, it is religious —it is Christianity. A mighty religion still, a religion which has governed the world for two thousand years, which has influenced all philosophies, all literatures, all laws, all customs up to our own day, till it has finally filtered into our hearts, our blood, our system, and become part and parcel of ourselves without our being aware of it. At the present moment we are all instinctive Christians. Even if this Christian religion has been severely wounded by Nietzsche's criticism—and I believe this to be the case—I beg to suggest that a wounded lion may still have more strength than all the fussy, political, rationalistic, agnostic, nonconformist, Nietzschean and super-Nietzschean mice put together.

It was all the braver, therefore, on Nietzsche's part to assail such a mighty enemy, and to attack him exactly on the spot where attack was most needed, if victory were to be won. Nietzsche clearly recognised that the canons of criticism had until now only been directed against the outer works of that stalwart fortress—at dogmatic, at supernatural, at ecclesiastical Christianity, and that no one had yet dared to aim right at the very heart of the creed— its morality, which, while the shamfighters were at work outside, was being enormously strengthened and consolidated from within. This morality, however, Nietzsche recognised as intimately connected with modern democracy—and behind the rosebush of democracy with its flowery speeches and its fraternity- and liberty-blossoms, Nietzsche clearly saw the dragon of anarchy and dissolution lurking. It was the mortal fear of annihilation and ruin which gave Nietzsche the daring to fulminate against our religion with such imperishable Dithyrambics. He was the first to mean the phrase, "écrasez l'infâme!" which in Voltaire's mouth was only an epigrammatic exclamation. For Nietzsche's great forerunner on the Continent, Wolfgang Goethe, who was also just as well aware how it would all end, was much too prudent a man to lay his innermost heart bare to his enemies, he—the grand old hypocrite of Weimar—gauged the power of the contrary current correctly, and wisely left the open combat against Christianity and democracy to his great colleague—to that man of tragic wit, to Heinrich Heine.

And there were others on the Continent—very few to be sure, and no politician or man of science or woman among them—others who saw the drift of modern ideas: all of them poets. For poets are prophets: their sensitive organisation feels the fall of the glass first, while their pluck and their pride, their duty and their desire to face the storm drive them into the very thick of it. The German poet Hebbel, the French novelist Stendhal, were amongst them. A new Matthew Arnold —the object of my wish for this country—would perhaps like to include another poet, the Frenchman Alfred de Vigny, in whose journal are to be found those awe-inspiring words against democracy: "Alas! it is thou, Democracy, that art the desert! it is thou who hast shrouded and bleached everything beneath thy monticles of sand! Thy tedious flatness has covered everything and levelled all! For ever and ever the valley and the hill supplant each other; and only from time to time a man of courage is seen: he rises like a sand-whirl, makes his ten paces towards the sun, and then falls like powder to the ground. And then nothing more is seen save the eternal plain of endless sand."

Goethe and Hebbel, Stendhal and Heinrich Heine, Alfred de Vigny and Friedrich Nietzsche, all made their ten steps towards the sun and are now sleeping peacefully beneath the dry sands of Christian democracy. Their works are read, to be sure; but alas! how few understand their meaning! I see this and I shudder. And I remember another moment in my life—a moment of perturbation too—a moment in which an idea overcame me, which has been haunting me ever since. I was on a visit to Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche, in her villa high up amongst the hills of Weimar, waiting in the drawing-room for my hostess to enter. It was the first time that I had stood upon the holy ground where Friedrich Nietzsche gave up his heroic soul, and I was naturally impressed; my eyes wandered reverently around the scene, and I suddenly noticed some handwriting on the wall. The handwriting consisted of a powerful letter N which the ingenious builder had engraved profusely upon the oak panels of the room. The N, of course, reminded me of another big N, connected with another big name,—the N which used to be engraved together with the imperial crown and eagle upon the plate and regalia of Napoleon Bonaparte. There was another victim of democracy: the man who, elevated by its revolutionary wave, tried to stifle and subdue the anarchical flood, was swallowed up as ignominiously as its other implacable opponent, the plucky parson's son of the vicarage of Röcken.

The mighty sword in the beginning and the mighty pen at the end of the last century were alike impotent against—Fate. No doubt, I saw in that moment, as though lit up by a flashlight, the fate of Europe clearly before my eyes. A fate—an iron fate. A fate unavoidable for a continent that will have no more guides, no more great men. A fate unavoidable for an age that spills its best blood with the carelessness of ignorance. A fate unavoidable for a people that is driven by its very religion to disobedience and anarchy. And I thought of my own race, which has seen so many fates, so many ages, so many empires decline—and there was I, the eternal Jew, witnessing another catastrophe. And I shuddered, and when my hostess entered I had not yet recovered my breath.

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

Chapter I

Life and Works

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

"And although this is known to both friend and foe, I do not deem it superfluous to utter this testimony aloud at thy tomb. For we know the world; we know the fate of Spinoza! Around Nietzsche's memory, too, posterity may cast shadows! And therefore I close with the words: Peace to thy ashes!"[1]

This view, expressed by Peter Gast, Nietzsche's staunchest friend and disciple, at his master's graveside, in August 1900, may be regarded as typical of the Nietzsche enthusiast's attitude towards his master. On the other hand we have the assurance of Nietzsche's opponents and enemies that nothing could have been more utterly disastrous to modern society, more pernicious, dangerous, and ridiculous than Nietzsche's life-work.

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

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

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

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

Even in his attack on English psychologists, naturalists, and philosophers, in The Genealogy of Morals, what are his charges against them? He says they debase man, voluntarily or involuntarily, by seeking the really operative, really imperative and decisive factor in history precisely where the intellectual pride of man would least wish to find it, i.e. in vis inertiæ, in some blind and accidental mechanism of ideas, in automatic and purely passive adaptation and modification, in the compulsory action of adjustment to environment.

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

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

What was Nietzsche? If we accept his own definition of the philosopher's task on earth, we must place him in the front rank of philosophers. For, according to him, the creation of new values, new principles, new standards, is the philosopher's sole raison d'être; and this he certainly accomplished. If, on the other hand, with all the "school" philosophers, we ask him to show us his system, we shall most surely be disappointed. In this respect, therefore, we may perhaps need to modify our opinion of him.

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

Knowing the high authority with which poets of this order are wont to sneak, it might be supposed that we should approach Nietzsche's innovations in the realm of science with some respect, not in spite of, but precisely owing to, his great poetic genius. Unfortunately to-day this no longer follows. Too thoroughly have we divorced science from emotion and feeling (very wrongly, as even Herbert Spencer and Buckle both declared), and now, wherever we see emotion or a suggestion of passion, we are too apt to purse our lips and stand on our guard.

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

Yet, perhaps, it is we who are wrong in seeing anything strange in the fact that a man with such orthodox antecedents should have developed into a prophet and reformer of Nietzsche's stamp; for we should remember that only a long tradition of discipline and strict conventionality, lasting over a number of generations, is able to rear that will-power and determination which, as the lives of most great men have shown, are the first conditions of all epoch-making movements started by single individuals.

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

Nietzsche's father died in 1849, and in the following year the family removed to Naumburg. There the boy received his early schooling, first at a preparatory school and subsequently at the Gymnasium—the Grammar School—of the town. As a lad, it is said that he was fond of military games, and of sitting alone, and it appears that he would recline for hours at his grandmother Nietzsche's feet, listening to her reminiscences of the great Napoleon. Towards the end of 1858 Mrs. Nietzsche was offered a scholarship for her son, for a term of six years, in the Landes-Schule, Pforta, so famous for the scholars it produced. At Pforta, where the discipline was very severe, the boy followed the regular school course and worked with great industry. His sister tells us that during this period he distinguished himself most in his private studies and artistic efforts, though even in the ordinary work of the school he was decidedly above the average. It was here, too, that he first became acquainted with Wagner's compositions, and a word ought now perhaps to be said in regard to his musical studies.

Music, we know, played anything but a minor rôle in his later life, as his three important essays, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, The Case of Wagner, and Nietzsche contra Wagner, are with us to prove. I fear, however, that it will be impossible to go very deeply into this question here, save at the cost of other still more important matters which have a prior claim to our attention. Let it then suffice to say that, as a boy, Nietzsche's talent had already become so noticeable that for some time the question which agitated the elders in his circle of relatives and friends, among whom were some competent judges, was whether he should not give up all else in order to develop his great gift. In the end, however, it was decided that he should become a scholar, and although he never entirely gave up composing and playing the piano, music never attained to anything beyond the dignity of a serious hobby in his life. In saying this I naturally exclude his critical writings on the subject, which are at once valuable and important.

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

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

His work during these two years, arduous though it was, in no way affected his health, and, despite his short-sight, he tells us that he was then able to endure the greatest strain without the smallest trouble. Being of a robust and energetic nature, however, he was anxious to discover some means of employing his bodily strength, and it was for this reason that, regardless of the interruption in his work, he was enthusiastic at the thought of becoming a soldier.

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

In October 1868, after a serious illness, the student returned to his work at Leipzig, and now that event took place which was perhaps the most triumphant and most decisive in his career. It was Nietzsche's ambition to get His doctor's degree as soon as possible and then to travel. Meanwhile, however, others were busy determining what he should do. Some philological essays which he had written in his student days, and which, owing to their excellence, had been published by the "Rheinisches Museum," had attracted the attention of the educational Board of Bâle. One of the Board communicated with Ritschl concerning Nietzsche, and the reply the learned scholar sent was so favourable that the University of Bâle immediately offered Ritschl's favourite pupil their Professorship of Classical Philology. This was an exceptional honour, and, to crown it, the University of Leipzig quickly granted Nietzsche his doctor's degree without further examination —truly a remarkable occurrence in straitlaced and formal Germany!

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

In July 1870, hostilities opened between France and Prussia. Now, although Nietzsche had been forced to become a naturalised Swiss subject in order to accept his appointment at Bâle, he was loth to remain inactive while his own countrymen fought for the honour of Germany. He could not, however, fight for the Germans without compromising Switzerland's neutrality. He therefore went as a hospital attendant, and in this capacity, after obtaining the necessary leave, he followed his former compatriots to the war. According to Elisabeth Nietzsche, it was this act of devotion which was the cause of all her brother's subsequent ill-health. In Ars-sur-Moselle, while tending the sick and wounded, Nietzsche contracted dysentery from those in his charge. With his constitution undermined by the exertions of the campaign, he fell very seriously ill, and had to be relieved of his duties. Long before he was strong enough to do so, however, he resumed his work at Bâle; and now began that second phase of his life during which he never once recovered the health he had enjoyed before the war.

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

Between 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche, while still at Bâle, published four more essays which, for matter and form, proved to be among the most startling productions that Germany had read since Schopenhauer's prime. Their author called these essays Thoughts out of Season, and his aim in writing them was undoubtedly the regeneration of German culture. The first was an attack on German Philistinism, in the person of David Strauss, the famous theologian of Tübingen, whom Nietzsche dubbed the "Philistine of Culture," and was calculated to check the extreme smugness which had suddenly invaded all departments of thought and activity in Germany as the result of the recent military triumph.

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

In the third, Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche pits his great teacher against all other dry-as-dust philosophers who make for stagnation in philosophy. The fourth, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, contains Nietzsche's last word of praise as a friend of the great German musician. In it we already see signs of his revulsion of feeling; but on the whole it is a panegyric written with love and conviction.

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

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

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

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

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

From this time forward Nietzsche's life was spent in travelling and writing. Venice, Marienbad, Zürich, St. Moritz in the Ober-Engadine, Sils Maria, Tautenberg in Thuringia, Genoa, etc., etc. were among the places at which he stayed, according to the season; and during the year 1880 his health materially improved. In January 1881 he had completed the manuscript of the Dawn of Day, and is said to have been well satisfied with his condition.

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

In September 1882 The Joyful Wisdom was published—a book written during one of the happiest periods of his life. It is a veritable fanfare of trumpets announcing the triumphal entry of its distinguished follower Zarathustra. With it Nietzsche's final philosophical views are already making headway, and it is full of the love of life and energy which permeates the grand philosophical poem which was to come after it.

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

It was about this time that Nietzsche began to take chloral in the hope of overcoming his insomnia; it was now, too, that his sister —the only relative for whom, despite some misunderstandings, he had a real affection—became engaged to a man with whom he was utterly out of sympathy; and all the while negotiations, into which Nietzsche had entered with the Leipzig University for the purpose of securing another professorial chair, were becoming ever more hopeless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In the gradual wane of this enthusiastic lover of life, of this apologist of energy, of this prophet of Superman there is something inexpressibly sad—inexpressibly beautiful and peaceful. His brow is still magnificent—his eyes, the light of which seems to be directed inwards, have an expression which is indefinably and profoundly moving. What is going on within his soul? Nobody can say. It is just possible that he may have preserved a dim recollection of his life as a thinker and a poet."

Chapter II

Nietzsche the Amoralist

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

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

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

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

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

Let us now examine what morality—what "good" and "evil"—means to almost everybody to-day. In the minds of nearly all those people who are neither students nor actual teachers of philosophy, there is a superstition that "good" is a perfectly definite and absolute value, and that "evil" is known unto all. Few seem to doubt that the meaning of these words has been fixed once and for ever. The ordinary European lives, reads, and sleeps, year in, year out, under the delusion that all is quite clear in regard to right and wrong. Such a person is, of course, somewhat abashed when you tell him that a certain people in the East practise infanticide and call it good or that a certain people in the West always separate at meals and eat apart and call this good. He usually gets over the difficulty, however, by saying that they know no better, and when at last he is hard pressed, and is bound to admit that views of good and bad, sometimes the reverse of his own, actually do preserve and unite people in strange lands, he takes refuge in the hope that all differences may one day be broken down and that the problem will thus be solved.

No such facile shelving of the question, however, could satisfy Nietzsche. From the very outset he freed himself from all national and even racial prejudices, and could see no particular reason why the kind of morality now prevailing in Europe, or countries like Europe, must necessarily and ultimately overcome and supplant all others. He therefore attacked the question with a perfectly open mind, and asked himself whether he quite understood the part the terms "good" and "evil" have played in human history.

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

These terms "good" and "evil," he tells us, are merely a means to the acquisition of power. And, indeed, in the very resistance we offer when he attempts to criticise our notions of morality, we tacitly acknowledge that in this morality our strength does actually reside. "No greater power on earth was found by Zarathustra than good and evil"[2] "No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth."[3]

In the last sentence we have seized Nietzsche's clue to the whole question. If you would maintain yourself, you cannot and must not value as your neighbour values. Good and evil, then, are not permanent absolute values; they are transient, relative values, serving an end which can be explained in terms of biology and anthropology.

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

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

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

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

Let us, however, remember that although Nietzsche did undoubtedly take up a position beyond good and evil, in order to free himself temporarily from the gyves of all tradition, still this attitude was no more than a momentary one, and he ultimately became as rigid a moralist as the most exacting could desire. It was a new morality, however, or perhaps a forgotten one, which he ultimately preached, and with the view of preparing the ground for it he was in a measure obliged to destroy old idols. "He who hath to be a creator in good and evil," says Zarathustra, "verily, he hath first to be a destroyer, and to break values to pieces."[4]

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

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

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

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

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

We shall see that Nietzsche did not hesitate to accept this conclusion, and that if for a moment he declared: "No one knoweth yet what is good and what is evil!" the next minute he was asking himself this searching question: "Is our morality—that is to say, the particular table of values which is gradually modifying us—compatible with an ideal worthy of man's inheritance and past?"

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

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

In answering these two inquiries, Nietzsche unfortunately stormed the most formidable strongholds of modern society—Christianity and Democracy; and perhaps this accounts for the fact that his fight was so uneven and so hopeless. The strength of modern Europe, if indeed there be any strength in her, lies precisely on the side of Christianity and Democracy, the grandmother and the mother of what is called "progress," "modernity"; and in assailing these, Nietzsche must have known that he was engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with stony-hearted adversaries unaccustomed to giving quarter and unscrupulous in their methods.

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

But, before going into the reasons of this flat negative, let us first pause to consider the age and the circumstances in which our author wrote and thought.

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

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

He contemplated the work of the destroyers for some time with amused interest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to inquire whether these zealous and well-meaning housebreakers were really doing any lasting good, or whether all their efforts were not perhaps a little misguided. True, they were pulling the embellishments from the walls and were casting the most cherished idols of the Christian Faith into the dust. But the walls themselves, the actual design of the edifice, remained untouched and as strong as ever. A few broken stones, a few complaints from the priestly archæologists who wished to preserve them, and then all the noise subsided! Europe remained as it was before —that is to say, still in possession of a stronghold of Christianity, merely divested of its superfluous ornament.

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

Just as Christian dogma and metaphysics had been rationalised and philosophically proved by the scholars of the Middle Ages, and even as late as Leibnitz; so, now, Christian morality was being presented in a purely philosophical garb by the intellects of Europe. Having relinquished the dogma as no longer tenable, all scholars and men of science were trying with redoubled vigour to bolster up Christian ethics with elaborate text-books and learned treatises. There were some who accepted it all as if it were innate in human nature, and attributed it to a "moral sense"; there were others—good-natured biologists—who were likewise desirous of leaving it whole, and who declared with conviction that it was the natural outcome of the feelings of pleasure and pain; and there were yet others who assumed that it must have been evolved quite automatically out of expediency and non-expediency.

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

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

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

But bold as this step was, it constituted but the first of a series, the next of which was to discover the type which had laid the foundations of the Christian ideal. If it could be proved that these Christian values had been created by a noble species with the object of perpetuating that species, then Christianity would come forth from the inquiry vindicated to the hilt, and fill the damage done to its dogma would not have deterred Nietzsche from standing by it and upholding it to his very last breath. Alas! Things turned out somewhat differently and Nietzsche was not by any means the least pained by the result. Pursuing the inquiry with his usual unflinching and uncompromising honesty, and avoiding no conclusion however unpleasant or fatal, Nietzsche, the scion of a profoundly religions house, the lover of order and tradition, with the blood of generations of earnest believers in his veins, finally found himself compelled to renounce and even to condemn, root and branch, the faith which had been the strength and hope of his forebears.

Before turning to the next chapter, where I shall explain how he came to regard this step as inevitable, it should be said concerning Nietzsche's philosophy in general, that it is essentially and through and through religious and almost prophetic in spirit. No careful reader of his works can doubt that Nietzsche was a deeply religious man. A glance at Thus Spake Zarathustra alone would convince any one of this; while in his constant references to religion throughout his works, as "a step to higher intellectuality,"[5] as "a means to invaluable contentedness,"[6] as "a measure of discipline,"[7] as a powerful social factor,[8] a more substantial confirmation of the fact is to be found.

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

"Verily men have made for themselves all their good and evil. Verily they did not take it: they did not find it: it did not come down as a voice from heaven."[9]

"Behold, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values; the breaker, the law-breaker: he, however, is the creator."[10]

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

"Behold, I teach you Superman: he is that sea; in him your great contempt can sink."[11]

Chapter III

Nietzsche the Moralist

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

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

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

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

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

These are now questions of the utmost importance; because it is precisely now that pessimism, nihilism, and other desperate faiths are beginning to set their note of interrogation to human existence, and to shake our belief even in the desirability of our own survival.

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

In order that we may understand how to set forth upon this inquiry, let us first form a mental image of the two codes as they must have been evolved by their originators.

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

Taking the ruling caste first, it is clear that in their morality, all is good which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for the motive force behind the people who evolved it was simply the will to discharge a plenitude, a superabundance, of spiritual and physical wealth. A consciousness of high tension, of a treasure that would fain give and bestow,—this is the mental attitude of the nobles. The antithesis "good" and "bad" to this first class means the same as "noble" and "despicable." "Bad" in the master morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with "an eye to the main chance," who would forsake everything in order to live.

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

Turning now to the second class, we must bear in mind that it is the product of a community in which the struggle for existence is the prime life-motor. There, inasmuch as oppression, suffering, weariness, and servitude are the general rule, all will be regarded as good that tends to alleviate pain. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, and humility,—these are undoubtedly the virtues we shall here find elevated to the highest places; because they are useful virtues; they make life endurable; they are helpful in the struggle for existence. To this class, all that proceeds from strength, superabundance of spiritual or bodily power, or great health, is looked upon with loathing and mistrust, while that which is awful is the worst and greatest evil. He is good who is amenable, kind, unselfish, meek, and submissive; that is why, in all communities where slave morality is in the ascendant, a "good fellow" always suggests a man in possession of a fair modicum of foolishness and sentimentality.

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

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

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

Nietzsche saw two lines of life: an ascending and a descending line. At the end of the one he pictured an ideal type, robust in mind and body, rich enough in spirit and vigour to make giving and bestowing a necessary condition of its existence; at the end of the other line he already perceived degeneracy, poverty of blood and spirit, and a sufficiently low degree of vitality to make parasitism a biological need.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the first place, Nietzsche discovers that Christianity is not a world-approving faith. The very pivot upon which it revolves seems to be the slandering and depreciating of this world, together with the praise and exaltation of a hypothetical world to come. To his mind it seems to draw odious comparisons between the things of this earth and the blessings of heaven. Finally, it gushes in a very unsportsmanlike manner over an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and disadvantage of a "here," of this earth, of this life, and posits another region—a nether region—for the accommodation of its enemies.[2]

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

"To the pure all things are pure!—I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things are swinish."[3]

Nietzsche's sensitive car caught curious notes in the daily dronings of those around him—notes that made him suspicious of the whole melody of modern life, and still more suspicions of the chorus executing it.

He heard to his astonishment: ... "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, the impotent, the lowly alone are good; only the sufferers, the needy, the sick, the ugly are pious only they are godly; them alone blessedness awaits—but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for aye and evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless; ye will also be, to all eternity, the unblessed, the cursed, and the damned."[4]

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

There was no time for brooding over stray thoughts; there was still much to be seen and hoard. When you want to catch some one napping, you keep your eye eagerly upon him, and turn neither to the right nor to the left. Nietzsche, it must be remembered, was at this stage treading softly towards Europe whom he believed to be "napping."

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

He could see them all fighting and quarrelling, and he was cheered, because he knew that where the great fight for power ceases, the standard of life falls. But some he saw were wounded, others were actually unfit for the battlefield, a large number looked tired and listless, and there were yet others—a goodly multitude—who were resentful at the sight of their superiors and who, like sulky children, dropped their arms in a pet and declared that they would not play any more. And what were all these feeble and less viable mortals doing? They were crying aloud, and making their deepest wishes known. They were elevating their desiderata to the highest places amongst earthly virtues—and driving back the others with words! Nietzsche thought of Reynard the Fox, who, at the very moment that he was about to be hanged, and with the rope already round his neck, succeeded by his dialectical skill in persuading the crowd to release him. For Nietzsche could hear the weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the fight, crying quite distinctly through their lips parched for rest: "Peace is good! Love is good! Love for one's neighbour is good! Ay, and even love for one's enemy is good!"[6]

And some cried: "It is God that avengeth me!" to those who oppressed them, and others said: "The Lord avenge me!"[7]

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

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

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

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

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

"And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are."[8]

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

Their unhappiness, their wretchedness, they called a trial, a gift, a distinction! Not really? Yes indeed! As Nietzsche points out: "They are wretched, no doubt, all these mumblers and underground forgers, though warmly seated together. But they tell us their wretchedness is a selection and distinction from God, that the dogs which are loved most are whipped, that their misery may perhaps also be a preparation, a trial, a schooling; perhaps even more—something which at some time to come will be refuted and paid back with immense interest in gold. No! in happiness. This they call 'blessedness.'"[9]

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

These people who halted at nothing in order to elevate their weaknesses to the highest place among the virtues, and to monopolise goodness on earth—who called that good which was tame and soft and harmless, because they themselves could only survive in litters of cotton wool; who coloured the earth with the darkness that was in their own bodies; —who did not scruple to dub all manly and vital virtues odiously sinful and wicked, and who preferred to set the life of the whole world at stake, rather than acknowledge that it was precisely their own second-rate, third-rate, or even fourth-rate, vitality which was the greatest sin of all; who in one and the same breath preached their utilitarian "universal love" to the powerful, and then sent them to eternal damnation in another world: Nietzsche asks, are these people the supporters of a noble or of a slave morality?

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

In Christian values, Nietzsche read nihilism, decadence, degeneration, and death. They were calculated to favour the multiplication of the least desirable on earth: and, as such, despite his antecedents, and with his one desire, "the elevation of the type man," always before him, he condemned Christian morality from top to bottom. This magnificent attempt on the part of the low, the base, and the worthless, to establish themselves as the most powerful on earth, must be checked at all costs, and with terrible earnestness he exhorts us to alter our values.

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

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

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

"His soil is still rich enough for that purpose. But that soil will one day be too poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon."[10]

Chapter IV

Nietzsche the Evolutionist

"Transvalue your values or perish!" This was the message of the hermit Nietzsche to the people inhabiting the valley into which he had descended. "Transvalue your values!"—that is to say, make them what they once were, noble, life-approving, virile! For two thousand years the roll of the world-wheel had been reversed—Stendhal had said that many years before Nietzsche lived—but it was left to Nietzsche, Stendhal's admirer and pupil, to teach and prove this fact. Stendhal, too, had cried out against the tameness, the lukewarmness, the effeminacy of society; but Nietzsche took up this cry with a voice more brazen than Stendhal's at a time when mankind was in much greater need of it. Stendhal had pointed enthusiastically to the sun and to the passion of the south, and had donned a moral respirator whenever he turned to face the grey and depressing atmosphere of northern ideas and northern tepidness. Nietzsche follows his master's hint with alacrity, but in doing so converts Stendhal's clarion notes into thunder, and the glint of Stendhal's rapier into strokes of lightning.[1]

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

Sleep seemed to be the greatest accomplishment. It had become all important to have a good night's rest, and everything was done to achieve this end. A man no longer asked his heart what it dictated, when he stood irresolute before a daring deed, he simply consulted Morpheus, who warned him that he could not promise him a soft pillow if he did anything that was ever so slightly naughty. In the end, Morpheus would prevail, and thus all Europe was beginning to snore peacefully the whole night through, with marvellous regularity, while manliness rotted and danger dwindled.[2]

Nietzsche protested against this state of affairs:—"What is good? ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little schoolgirls say: To be good is sweet and touching at the same time. Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war? I say unto you: a good war halloweth every cause. War and courage have done greater things than love!"[3]

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a while Nietzsche, too, was an ardent and devoted follower of Schopenhauer. Godlessness was bad enough to endure: but Godlessness in a world of un-pagan and effeminate manhood, was too much for the loving student of classical antiquity, and he turned to Schopenhauer as to one who, he thought, would understand how to steel his heart against life's misery.

But this opiate did not maintain its sway over Nietzsche long. Our poet was of a type too courageous and too vigorous to be able to surrender himself so completely to sorrow and to Buddhistic consolations. Gradually he began to regard the humble and resigned attitude of the pessimist before life's hardships and modernity's greyness as unworthy of a spirited and active man. Slowly it dawned upon him that the root of the evil lay, not in the constitution of the earth, but in man himself, and in man's actual values. If man could be roused to pursue higher ideals; if he could be moved to kill the poisonous snake of ignoble values that had crawled into his throat and choked him while he was in slumber;[5] in fact, if man could surpass himself and regard the reversal of the world's engines, for the last two thousand years, as Stendhal had done—that is to say, as the grossest error and most ridiculous faux pas that had ever been made—then, Nietzsche thought, pessimism and Schopenhauer might go to the deuce, and conscious, sensitive, intellectual, and artistic Europe would once more be able to smile instead of shuddering at the thought of mankind's former qualities.

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

True, God was dead; but that ought only to make man feel more self-reliant, more creative, prouder. Undoubtedly God was dead: but man could now hold himself responsible for himself. He could now seek a goal in manhood, on earth, and one that was at least within the compass of his powers. Long enough had he squinted heavenwards, with the result, that he had neglected his task on earth.[6]

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

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

Nietzsche, always eager for a practical and tangible idea, naturally could not accept these two definitions as expressing anything profound about life at all. Looking into the race of nature, and reading her history from the amoeba with its predatory pseudo-podia, to the lion with its murderous prehensile claws, he defined life practically, uprightly, and bravely, as "appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation, and, at least, putting it mildest, exploitation."[8]

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

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

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

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

The modern biologist says, this "activity" he speaks of has a precise meaning. It connotes "the struggle for existence," or in other words "self-defence." (Again he is looking at life through moral or Christian glasses; because if every thing on earth is done in self-defence, even the devil himself is argued out of existence, and God remains creator of the "good" alone.) Nietzsche replies by denying this flatly. He says that the definition is again inadequate. He warns us not to confound Malthus with nature.[9] He admits that the struggle occurs, but only as an exception. "The general aspect of life is not a state of want or hunger; it is rather a state of opulence, luxuriance, and even absurd prodigality—where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power." —Will to power and not will to live is the motive force of life.

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

"Only where there is life, there is will: though a not will to live, but thus I teach thee—WILL TO POWER."[10]

Is there no aggression without the struggle for existence? Is there no voluptuousness in a position of power for us own sake? Of course there is! And one wonders how these English biologists could ever have been schoolboys without noticing these facts. As Nietzsche points out, however, they are every one of them labouring under the Christian ideal still—in spite of all their upsetting of the first chapter of Genesis, and in spite of all their blasting of the miracles. Put, if life is the supreme aim of all, how is it that many things are valued higher than life by living beings? If the will to live sometimes finds itself overpowered by another will—more particularly in great warriors, great prophets, great artists, and great heroes—what is this mightier force which thus overpowers it? We have heard what Nietzsche calls it—it is the Will to Power.

"Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof."[11]

In spite of everything we have already said, Nietzsche's disagreement with our own biologists may still seem to many but a play upon words. A moment's meditation, however—more particularly over the passage just quoted—will show that it is really much deeper than this. It is one thing to regard an animal as a mere automaton, prowling around to satisfy its hunger, and happy to remain inactive when the sensation of hunger is appeased, and quite another to regard an animal as a battery of accumulated forces which must be discharged at all costs (and for good or evil), with only temporary lapses of purely self-preservative desires and self-preservative actions. All the different consequences of these two views will occur to the thinker in an instant.

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

Nietzsche cannot be persuaded that "mechanical adjustment to ambient conditions," or "adaptation to environment"—both purely passive, meek, and uncreative functions—should be given the importance, as determining factors, which the English and German schools give them. With Samuel Butler, he protests against this "pitchforking of mind and spirit out of the universe," and points imperatively to an inner creative will in living organisms, which ultimately makes environment and natural conditions subservient and subject. In the Genealogy of Morals[12] he makes it quite clear that he would ascribe the greatest importance to a power in the organism itself, to "the highest functionaries in the animal, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative principle," and that even in the matter of the mysterious occurrence of varieties (sports) he would seek for inner causes. Darwin himself threw out only a hint in this direction; that is why it is safe to suppose that, if Nietzsche and Darwin are ever reconciled, it will probably be precisely on this ground. In the Origin of Species, speaking of the causes of variability, Darwin said: "... There are two factors, namely the nature of the organism, and the nature of the conditions. The former seem to be much the more important,[13] for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand, dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be uniform."

Thus differing widely from the orthodox school of evolutionists, Nietzsche nevertheless believed their hypothesis to be sound; but once more he has an objection to raise. Why did they halt where they halted?

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

"The most careful ask to-day: 'How is man preserved?' But Zarathustra asketh as the only and first one: 'How is man surpassed?'[14]

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

And now, again, at the risk of being monotonous, I must point to yet another difference between Nietzsche and the prevailing school of evolutionists. Whereas the latter, in their unscrupulous optimism, believed that out of the chaotic play of blind forces something highly desirable and "good" would ultimately be evolved; whereas they tacitly, though not avowedly, believed that their "fittest" in the struggle for existence would eventually prove to be the best—in fact that we should "muddle through" to perfection somehow, and that something really noble and important would be sure to result from John Brown's contest with Harry Smith for the highest place in an insurance office, for instance; Nietzsche disbelieved from the bottom of his heart in this chance play of blind and meaningless tendencies. He said: Given a degenerate, mean, and base environment and the fittest to survive therein will be the man who is best adapted to degeneracy, meanness, and baseness—therefore the worst kind of man. Given a community of parasites, and it may be that the flattest, the slimiest, and the softest, will be the fittest to survive. Such faith in blind forces Nietzsche regarded merely as the survival of the old Christian belief in the moral order of things, fogged out in scientific apparel to suit modern tastes. He saw plainly, that if man were to be elevated at all, no blind struggle in his present conditions would ever effect that end; for the present conditions themselves make those the fittest to survive in them who are persons of absolutely undesirable gifts and propensities.

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

Nietzsche realised "all that could still be made out of man, through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements"; he knew "how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in mysterious and dangerous crossways, and has launched forth upon the right or the wrong road, impelled merely by a whim, or by a hint from the giant Chance."[16] And now, he was determined that, whether man wished to listen or not, at least he should be told of the ultimate disaster that awaited him, if he continued in his present direction. For, there was yet time!

It is to higher men that Nietzsche really makes his appeal, the leaders and misleaders of the mob. He had no concern with the multitude and they did not need him. The world had seen philosophies enough which had advocated the cause of the "greatest number"—English libraries were stacked with such works. What was required was, to convert those rare men who give the direction—the heads of the various throngs—the vanguard.

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

"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise and from it Superman."[17]

Chapter V

Nietzsche the Sociologist

For Nietzsche, as we are beginning to see, a fitting title is hard to find. Unless we coin new names for things that have not yet been given names, Nietzsche remains without a title among his fellow thinkers. He has been called the "arch-anarchist," which he is not; he has been called the "preacher of brutality," which he is not; he has been called the "egoist," which he is not. But all these titles were conferred upon him by people whose interest it was to reduce him in the public's esteem. If he must be named, however, and we suppose he must, the best title would obviously be that which would distinguish him most exactly from his colleagues. Now, how does Nietzsche stand out from the ranks of almost all other philosophers? By the fact that he was throughout his life an "Advocate of Higher Man." Whereas other philosophers and scholars had always thought they had some divine message to impart in the cause of the "greatest number"; Nietzsche—the typical miner and underminer—believed that his mission was to stand for a neglected minority, for higher men, for the gold in the mass of quartz.

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

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

Let us take a single instance. In The Honey Sacrifice[1] the phrase "Become what thou art," occurs. Now it is obvious that however legitimate this command may be when applied to the highest and best, it becomes dangerous and seditious when applied to each individual of the mass of mankind. And this explains the number of errors that are rife concerning Nietzsche's gospel. Whenever Nietzsche spoke esoterically, his enemies declared that he was pronouncing maxims for the greatest number; whenever he spoke for the greatest number, as he does again and again in his allusions to the mediocre, he was accused of speaking esoterically. How would any other philosophy have fared under such misrepresentation and calumny?

Nietzsche could not believe in equality; for within him justice said "men are not equal!" Those to whom it gives pleasure to think that men are equal, he conjures not to confound pleasure with truth, and, like Professor Huxley, he finds himself obliged to recognise "the natural inequality of men."

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

Ruling, like all other functions which require the great to justify them, has fallen into disrepute, thanks to the incompetent amateurs that have tried their hand at the game. As in the Fine Arts, so in leading and ruling; it is the dilettantes that have broken our faith in human performances. The really great ruler reaches his zenith in dominating an epoch, a party, a nation or the world, to the best advantage of each of these; but it does not follow that the motive power propelling him should necessarily be the conscious pursuit of the best advantage of those he rules,—this is merely a fortuitous circumstance curiously associated with greatness in ruling,—generally speaking, however, his only conscious motive is the gratification of his inordinate will to power.

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

"There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the powerful of the earth are not at the same time the first men. Then everything becometh false and warped and monstrous."[2]

"For, my brethren, the best shall rule: the best will rule! And where the teaching is different, there—the best is lacking."[3]

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

Nietzsche was a profound believer in the value of tradition, in the value of general discipline lasting over long periods. He knew that all that is great and lasting and intensely moving has been the result of the law of castes or of the laws governing the individual members of a caste throughout many generations.[4] This building up of the rare man, of the great man (of the cultivated type in a Darwinian sense) as every scientist is aware, is utterly frustrated by any thing in the way of injudicious and careless cross-breeding (see Darwin on the degeneration of the cultivated types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding), by democratic mésalliances of all kinds, and by the laisser aller which is one of the worst evils of that kind of freedom which tends to prevail when the slaves of a community have succeeded in asserting and expressing their insignificant and miserable little individualities.

Believing all this, Nietzsche could not help but advocate the rearing of a select and aristocratic caste, and in none of his exhortations is he more sincere than when he appeals to higher men to sow the seeds of a nobility for the future.

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

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

"Not whence ye come be your honour in future, but whither ye go!" Your will, and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves,—be that your new honour!"

"Your children's land ye shall love (be this your new nobility), the land undiscovered in the remotest sea! For it I bid you set sail and seek!"[5]

"Every elevation of the type man," says Nietzsche, "has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society—and so will it always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the pathos of distance, such as grows out of the incarnated differences of classes, out of the constant outlooking and downlooking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type 'man,' the continued 'self-surmounting of man,' to use a moral formula in a super-moral sense."[6]

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

It is ridiculous to pretend to treat every one without regard to those natural distinctions which are manifested by superior intellectuality, or exceptional muscular strength, or mediocrity of spiritual and bodily powers, or inferiority of both. He tells us that it is not the legislator, but nature herself, who establishes these broad classes, and to ignore them when forming a society would be just as foolish as to ignore the order of rank among materials and structural principles when building a monument. Though the base of a pyramid does not require to be of the very finest marble, we know it must be both broad and massive. Nietzsche declares that no society has any solidarity which is not founded upon a broad basis of mediocrity. Though the stones get fewer in the layers as we ascend to the top of the pyramid, we know that their gradation is necessary if the highest point is to be readied. Nietzsche believes in the long scale of gradations of rank with the ascending line leading always to the highest—even if he be only a single individual. Though the very uppermost point consists of a single stone, it is around that single stone that the weather will rage most furiously and the sun shine most gorgeously. That single stone will be the first to cleave the heavy shower, and the first, for, to meet the lightning. Nietzsche says: "Life always becomes harder towards the summit,—the cold increases, responsibility increases."[7]

"Saepius ventis agitatur ingens
pinus, et celsae graviore casu
decidunt turres, feriuntque summos
fulgura montes."[8]—HORACE, Carm. II. X.

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

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

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

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

"Not contentedness, but more power; not peace at any price, but warfare; not virtue, but capacity (virtue in the Renaissance style, virtù free from any moralic acid)."[9]

I cannot well close this chapter on Nietzsche's sociological views without touching upon two of the most important elements in modern society, and his treatment of them. I refer to "altruism" and to "pity." I am more particularly anxious to express myself clearly on these two points, inasmuch as I know how many erroneous opinions are current in regard to Nietzsche's attitude towards them. In all gregarious communities, as is well known, altruism and pity have become very potent life-preserving factors, and it would be hard to find in Europe to-day, a city, a town, or a village, in which these two qualities are not considered the most creditable of virtues. Now apart from the fact that this excessive praise of compassion and selflessness is a sign of slave values being in the ascendant, we must bear in mind two things: (1) that under our present system of society, in which cruelties are perpetrated far more brutal than any that could be found in antiquity, a sort of maudlin sentimentality has arisen among the oppressing classes, whereby they attempt to counterbalance their deeds of oppression with lavish acts of charity. This sentimentality is a sign that their conscience is no longer clean for the act of oppressing; because in their heart of hearts they feel themselves unworthy of being at the top: (2) that wherever two or three human beings collect together, a certain modicum of altruism and compassion is a prerequisite of their social unity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!"[10]

The legislator or the leader (and it is to him, remember, that Nietzsche appeals), is often obliged to leave dozens to die by the wayside, and has to do so with a clean conscience. If the march he is organising requires certain sacrifices, he must be ready to make them; the slavish pity, then, which would sacrifice the greater to the less, must have been overcome by him in his own heart., and he must have learnt that hardness which is wider in its sympathies, more presbyopic in its love, and less immediate in its effect. But he alone can feel like this who has something to give to those he leads, i.e. his protection and guidance, his promise of a better land.

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

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

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

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

Egoism in such a man means concentrating certain interests, and not always the least valuable, upon the promotion and enhancement of an undesirable element in society. The egoism of him who is below mediocrity is a form of tyranny which leads to nothing, save, perhaps, a Heaven where the haute volée will consist of the whole scum and dross of humanity. Such egoism leads humanity downwards: it practically says: "I, the bungled and the botched, I the poor in spirit and body, I the mean, despicable and ugly, want my kind to be all-important, paramount and on the top—I the least desirable wish to prevail." But this egoism would mean humanity's ruin, it would mean humanity's suicide and annihilation: it would certainly mean humanity's degradation. When such egoism says: "I will have all," the only decent retort is deafness. When such egoism says: "I have as much right to live and flourish as the well-constituted, the superior in spirit and body, the beautiful and the happy," wisdom replies with a shrill of its shoulders. And when such egoism preaches altruism—then! Then woe to all those who are tempted to practise one virtue more! Woe to humanity! Woe to the whole world!

There is, on the other hand, a form of egoism, which is both virtuous and noble. It is the egoism of him whose multiplication would make the world better, more desirable, happier, healthier, superior in spirit and body. Egoism in such a case is a moral duty; wherever, in such a case, giving, bestowing—altruism in fact—is not compatible with survival, then egoism becomes the highest principle of all, and it is in such circumstances that altruism may become a vice.

"Selfishness," he says, "has as much value as the physiological value of him who possesses it: it may be very valuable or it may be vile and contemptible. Each individual may be looked at with respect to whether he represents an ascending or a descending line of life. When that is determined, we have a canon for determining the value of his selfishness. If he represent the ascent in the line of life, his value is in fact very great—and on account of the collective life which in him makes a further step, the concern about his maintenance, about providing his optimum of conditions, may even be extreme... If he represent descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, or sickening, he has little worth, and the greatest fairness would have him take away as little as possible from the well-constituted. He is then no more than their parasite."[12]

This is all clear enough; but it is quite conceivable that a misunderstanding of it might lead to the most perverted notions of what Nietzsche actually stood for, and when I hear people inveighing against the so-called egoism of his teaching, and declaring it poisonous on that account, I often wonder whether they have really made any attempt at all to comprehend the above passage, and whether there is not perhaps something wrong with language itself, that a thought which to some seems expressed so clearly and unmistakably, should still prove confusing and incomprehensible to others.

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

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

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

"Do I advise you to love your neighbour? leather do I advise you to flee from your neighbour and to love the most remote.

"It is the more remote (your children and your children's children) who pay for your love unto your neighbour.[13]

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

"In your children ye shall make amends for being the children of your fathers: all the past shall ye thus redeem! This new table do I place over you!"[14]

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

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

This is no time for apologetics, or for pleading extenuating circumstances. Even if Nietzsche's doctrines have been presented in a form too undiluted to be inviting, it would scarcely mend matters, now, to beg pardon fur them; and I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. But these questions may be put without any fear of assuming a penitential attitude, and I do not hesitate to put them: Was the promise of Nietzsche's life fulfilled? Did the task he started out with, "the elevation of the type man," receive his best strength, his best endeavours, his sincerest application? However fundamentally we may disagree with his conclusions, were they reached by means of an upright attempt at grappling with the problems? To all of those questions there is but one answer, and that answer clears Nietzsche of all the slander and calumny to which he has been submitted for the last thirty years.

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

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

Already in Biology there are signs that Nietzsche's conclusions are gaining ground. In Art, as I hope to able to show elsewhere, his doctrines are likely to effect a salutary revolution: while, in the departments of history, psychology, jurisprudence and metaphysics, specialists will doubtless arise who will attempt to make innovations under his leadership.

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

"Mine enemies have grown strong," says Zarathustra, "and I have disfigured the face of my teaching, so that my dearest friends have to blush for the gifts I gave them."[1]

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

"Verily a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low lands; and his enemies and everything that spitteth and speweth he counselleth with such advice: Beware of spitting against the wind."[2]

Books Useful to the Student of Nietzsche

Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's, by Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche.
Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche, by Deussen.
Nietzsche, sein Leben und sein Werk, by Raoul Richter.

Bélart, Nietzsche's Ethik.
------ Nietzsche's Metaphysik.
------ Nietzsche und Richard Wagner.
Brandes, G., Menschen und Werke.
Common, Thos., Nietzsche as Critic.
Fouillée, A., Nietzsche et l'Immoralisme.
Gaultier, J., De Kant à Nietzsche.
------ Nietzsche et la Réforme philosophique.
Kennedy, J. M., The Quintessence of Nietzsche.
Lichtenberger, H., La Philosophie de Nietzsche.
Mügge, Nietzsche His Life and Works.
Sera, Leo, On the Tracks of Life.
Tienes, Nietzsche's Stellung zu den Grundfragen der
Ethik genetisch dargestellt.
Tille, A., Von Darwin bis Nietzsche.
Zeitler, J., Nietzsche's Æsthetik.

Thoughts out of Season. 2 vols.
The Birth of Tragedy.
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Beyond Good and Evil.
The Future of our Educational Institutions.
Human, All too Human. Vol. i.
The Will to Power. 2 vols.
The Genealogy of Morals.
The Case against Wagner.
The Joyful Wisdom.
The Dawn of Day.

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