Preface
WHAT NIETZSCHE TAUGHT
By
WILLARD HUNTINGTON WRIGHT
I am writing for a race of men which does not yet exist: for "the lords of the earth." _The Will to Power_
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
1915
TO
H. L. MENCKEN the critic who has given the greatest impetus to the study of Nietzsche in America
CONTENTS
PORTRAIT BUST OF NIETZSCHE BY PROFESSOR KARL DONNDORF, STUTTGART _Frontispiece_
INTRODUCTION I BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH II "HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN," VOLS. I AND II III "THE DAWN OF DAY" IV "THE JOYFUL WISDOM" V "THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA" VI "THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE" VII "BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL" VIII "THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS" IX "THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS" X "THE ANTICHRIST" XI "THE WILL TO POWER," VOL. I XII "THE WILL TO POWER," VOL. II BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
It is no longer possible to ignore the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, or to consider the trend of modern thought without giving the philosopher of the superman a prominent place in the list of thinkers who contributed to the store of present-day knowledge. His powerful and ruthless mind has had an influence on contemporary thought which even now, in the face of all the scholarly books of appreciation he has called forth, one is inclined to underestimate. No philosopher since Kant has left so undeniable an imprint on modern thought. Even Schopenhauer, whose influence coloured the greater part of Europe, made no such widespread impression. Nietzsche has penetrated into both England and America, two countries strangely impervious to rigorous philosophic ideals. Not only in ethics and literature do we find the moulding hand of Nietzsche at work, invigorating and solidifying; but in pedagogics and in art, in politics and religion, the influence of his doctrines is to be encountered. The books and essays in German elucidating his philosophy constitute a miniature library. Nearly as many books and articles have appeared in France, and the list of authors of these appreciations include many of the most noted modern scholars. Spain and Italy, likewise, have contributed works to an inquiry into his teachings; and in England and America numerous volumes dealing with the philosophy of the superman have appeared in recent years. In M. A. Mügge's excellent biography, "Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Work," there is appended a bibliography containing 850 titles, and this list by no means includes all the books and articles devoted to a consideration of this philosopher's doctrines.
In this regard one should note that this interest is not the result of a temporary popularity, such as that which has met the philosophical pieties of Henri Bergson. To the contrary, Nietzsche's renown is gaining ground daily among serious-minded scholars, and his adherents have already reached the dimensions of a small army. But despite this appreciation there is still current an enormous amount of ignorance concerning his teachings. The very manner in which he wrote tended to bring about misunderstandings. Viewed casually and without studious consideration, his books offer many apparent contradictions. His style, always elliptic and aphoristic, lends itself easily to quotation, and because of the startling and revolutionary nature of his utterances, many excerpts from his earlier works were widely circulated through the mediums of magazines and newspapers. These quotations, robbed of their context, very often gave rise to immature and erroneous judgments, with the result that the true meaning of his philosophy was often turned into false channels. Many of his best-known aphorisms have taken on strange and unearthly meanings, and often the reverse of his gospel has gained currency and masqueraded as the original canon.
To a great extent this misunderstanding has been unavoidable. Systematisers, ever eager to bend a philosopher's statements to their own ends, have found in Nietzsche's writings much material which, when carefully isolated, substantiated their own conclusions. On the other hand, the Christian moralists, sensing in Nietzsche a powerful and effective opponent, have attempted to disqualify his ethical system by presenting garbled portions of his attacks on Christianity, omitting all the qualifying passages. It is impossible, however, to understand any of Nietzsche's doctrines unless we consider them in their relation to the whole of his teachings.
Contrary to the general belief, Nietzsche was not simply a destructive critic and a formulator of impossible and romantic concepts. His doctrine of the superman, which seems to be the principal stumbling block in the way of a rationalistic interpretation of his philosophy, is no vague dream unrelated to present humanity. Nor was his chief concern with future generations. Nietzsche devoted his research to immediate conditions and to the origin of those conditions. And--what is of greater importance--he left behind him a very positive and consistent system of ethics--a workable and entirely comprehensible code of conduct to meet present-day needs. This system was not formulated with the precision which no doubt would have attached to it in its final form had he been able to complete the plans he had outlined. Yet there are few points in his code of ethics--and they are of minor importance--which cannot be found, clearly conceived and concisely stated, in the main body of his works. This system of conduct embraces every stage of society; and for the rulers to-day--the people for whom Nietzsche directly voiced his teachings--he outlines a method of outer conduct and a set of inner ideals which meet with every modern condition. His proposed ethical routine is not based on abstract reasoning and speculative conclusions. It is a practical code which has its foundation implanted in the dominating instincts of the organic and inorganic world. It is directly opposed to the prevailing code, and has for its ideal the fulness of life itself--life intensified to the highest degree, life charged with a maximum of beauty, power, enthusiasm, virility, wealth and intoxication. It is the code of strength and courage. Its goal is a race which will possess the hardier virtues of strength, confidence, exuberance and affirmation.
This ideal has been the source of many misunderstandings, and it is the errors which have arisen from the vicious and inept dissemination of his teachings, that I have striven to rectify in the present book. I have hoped to accomplish this by presenting the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy, as far as possible, in his own words. This has not been so difficult a matter. His writings, more than those of any other modern philosopher, offer opportunities for such treatment. There is no point in his entire system not susceptible to brief and clear quotation. Furthermore, his thought developed consistently and logically in straight-away, chronological order, so that at the conclusion of each book we find ourselves just so much further along the route of his thinking. Beginning with "Human, All-Too-Human," his first destructive volume, we can trace the gradual and concise pyramiding of his teachings, down to the last statement of his cardinal doctrine of will as set forth in the notes which comprise the second volume of "The Will to Power." Each one of the intervening books embodies new material: it is a distinct, yet co-ordinated, division in the great structure of his life's work. These books overlap one another in many instances, and develop points raised speculatively in former books, but they organise each other and lead one surely, if at times circuitously, to the crowning doctrines of his thought.
The majority of critics have chosen to systematise Nietzsche's teachings by separating the ideas in his different books, and by drawing together under specific captions (such as "religion," "the state," "education," etc.,) all the scattered material which relates to these different subjects. In many cases they have succeeded in offering a very coherent and consistent résumé of his thought. But Nietzsche's doctrines were inherently opposed to such arbitrary dividing and arranging, because beneath the various sociological points which fell under his consideration, were two or three general motivating principles which unified the whole of his thought. He did not work from modern institutions back to his doctrines; but, by analysing the conditions out of which these institutions grew, he arrived at the conclusions which he afterward used in formulating new methods of operation. It was the change in conditions and needs between ancient and modern times that made him voice the necessity of change between ancient and modern institutions. In other words, his advocacy of new methods for dealing with modern affairs was evolved from his researches into the origin and history of current methods. For instance, his remarks on religion, society, the state, the individual, etc., were the outcome of fundamental postulates which he described and elucidated in terms of human institutions. Therefore an attempt to reach an explanation of the basic doctrines of his philosophy through his _applied_ teachings unconsciously gives rise to the very errors which the serious critics have sought to overcome: this method focuses attention on the _application_ of his doctrines rather than on the doctrines themselves.
Therefore I have taken his writings chronologically, beginning with his first purely philosophical work--"Human, All-Too-Human"--and have set down, in his own words, every important conclusion throughout his entire works. In this way one may follow Nietzsche throughout every step in the development of his teachings--not only in his abstract theories but also in his application of them. There is not a single important point in the entire sweep of his thought not contained in these pages. Naturally I have been unable to give any of the arguments which led to these conclusions. The quotations are in every instance no longer than has been necessary to make clear the idea: for the processes of thought by which these conclusions were reached the reader must go direct to the books from which the excerpts are made. Also I have omitted Nietzsche's brilliant analogies and such desultory critical judgments, literary and artistic, as have no direct bearing on his philosophy; and have contented myself with setting down only those bare, unelaborated utterances which embody the positive points in his thought. By thus letting Nietzsche himself state his doctrines I have attempted to make it impossible for anybody who goes carefully through these pages to misunderstand those points which now seem clouded in error.
In order to facilitate further the research of the student and to make clear certain of the more obscure selections, I have preceded each chapter with a short account of the book and its contents. In these brief essays, I have reviewed the entire contents of each book, set down the circumstances under which it was written, and attempted to weigh its individual importance in relation to the others. Furthermore, I have attempted to state briefly certain of the doctrines which did not permit of entirely self-explanatory quotation. And where Nietzsche indulged in research, such as in tracing the origin of certain motives, or in explaining the steps which led to the acceptance of certain doctrines, I have included in these essays an abridged exposition of his theories. In short, I have embodied in each chapter such critical material as I thought would assist the reader to a clear understanding of each book's contents and relative significance.
This book is frankly for the beginner--for the student who desires a survey of Nietzsche's philosophy before entering upon a closer and more careful study of it. In this respect it is meant also as a guide; and I have given the exact location of every quotation so that the reader may refer at once to the main body of Nietzsche's works and ascertain the premises and syllogisms which underlie the quoted conclusion.
In the opening biographical sketch I have refrained from going into Nietzsche's personality and character, adhering throughout to the external facts of his life. His personality will be found in the racy, vigorous and stimulating utterances I have chosen for quotation, and no comments of mine could add colour to the impression thus received. It is difficult to divorce Nietzsche from his work: the man and his teachings are inseparable. His style, as well as his philosophy, is a direct outgrowth of his personality. This is why his gospel is so personal and intimate a one, and so closely bound up in the instincts of humanity. There are several good biographies of Nietzsche in existence, and a brief account of the best ones in English will be found in the bibliography at the end of this volume.
It must not be thought that this book is intended as a final, or even complete, commentary on Nietzsche's doctrines. It was written and compiled for the purpose of supplying an introductory study, and, with that end in view, I have refrained from all technical or purely philosophical nomenclature. The object throughout has been to stimulate the reader to further study, and if this book does not send the reader sooner or later to the original volumes from which these quotations have been made, I shall feel that I have failed somewhat in my enterprise.
The volumes of Nietzsche's philosophy from which the quotations in this book are taken, comprise the first complete and authorised edition of the works of Nietzsche in English. To the courageous energy of Dr. Oscar Levy do we owe the fact that Nietzsche's entire writings are now obtainable in English. The translations of these books have, in every instance, been made by competent scholars, and each volume is introduced by an illuminating preface. As this edition now stands, it is the most complete and voluminous translation of any foreign philosopher in the English language. The edition is in eighteen volumes, and is published in England by T. N. Foulis, and in America by the Macmillan Company. The volumes and their contents are given below.
I. "The Birth of Tragedy," translated by William A. Haussmann, B.A., Ph.D., with a biographical introduction by the author's sister; a portrait of Nietzsche, and a facsimile of his manuscript.
II. "Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays," translated by Maximilian A. Mügge, Ph.D. Contents: "The Greek State," "The Greek Woman," "On Music and Words," "Homer's Contest," "The Relation of Schopenhauer's Philosophy to a German Culture," "Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks" and "On Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense."
III. "The Future of Our Educational Institutions," translated by J. M. Kennedy. Besides the titular essay, this volume contains "Homer and Classical Philology."
IV. "Thoughts Out of Season," Vol. I., translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Contents: "David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer" and "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth."
V. "Thoughts Out of Season," Vol. II., translated with introduction by Adrian Collins, M.A. Contents: "The Use and Abuse of History" and "Schopenhauer as Educator."
VI. "Human, All-Too-Human," Vol. I., translated by Helen Zimmern, with introduction by J. M. Kennedy.
VII. "Human, All-Too-Human," Vol. IL, translated, with introduction, by Paul V. Cohn, B.A.
VIII. "The Case of Wagner," translated by Anthony M. Ludovici and J. M. Kennedy, with introductions by the translators. Contents: "The Case of Wagner," "Nietzche _contra_ Wagner," "Selected Aphorisms" and "We Philologists."
IX. "The Dawn of Day," translated, with introduction, by J. M. Kennedy.
X. "The Joyful Wisdom," translated, with introduction, by Thomas Common. The poetry which appears in the appendix under the caption of "Songs of Prince Free-As-A-Bird," is translated by Paul V. Cohn and Maude D. Petre.
XI. "Thus Spake Zarathustra," revised introduction by Thomas Common, with introduction by Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche, and commentary by A. M. Ludovici.
XII. "Beyond Good and Evil," translated by Helen Zimmern, with introduction by Thomas Common.
XIII. "The Genealogy of Morals," translated by Horace B. Samuel, M.A., with introductory note. "People and Countries," an added section to this book, is translated by J. M. Kennedy with an editor's note by Dr. Oscar Levy.
XIV. "The Will to Power," Vol. I., translated, with an introduction, by A. M. Ludovici.
XV. "The Will to Power," Vol. IL, translated, with an introduction, by A. M. Ludovici.
XVI. "The Twilight of the Idols," translated, with an introduction, by A. M. Ludovici. Contents: "The Twilight of the Idols," "The Antichrist," "Eternal Recurrence," and "Explanatory Notes to 'Thus Spake Zarathustra.'"
XVII. "Ecce Homo," translated by A. M. Ludovici. Various poetry and epigrams translated by Paul V. Cohn, Herman Scheffauer, Francis Bickley and Dr. G. T. Wrench. In addition this volume contains the music of Nietzsche's "Hymn to Life"--words by Lou Salomé--with an introduction by A. M. Ludovici.
XVIII. "Index to Complete Works," compiled by Robert Guppy, with vocabulary of foreign quotations occurring in the works of Nietzsche translated by Paul V. Cohn, B.A., and an introductory essay, "The Nietzsche Movement in England (A Retrospect--A Confession--A Prospect)," by Dr. Oscar Levy.
There are in the present volume no quotations from Nietzsche's _"Ecce Homo"_ or from the pamphlets dealing with Wagner. The former work is an autobiography which, while it throws light on both Nietzsche's character and his work, is nevertheless outside his purely philosophical writings. And the Wagner documents, though interesting, have little to do with the Nietzschean doctrines, except as showing perhaps the result of their application. I have therefore left them intact for the student who wishes to go more deeply into the philosopher's character than I have here attempted.
W. H. W.
WHAT NIETZSCHE TAUGHT
I
Biographical Sketch
Nietzsche liked to believe that he was of Polish descent. He had a greater admiration for the Poles than for the Germans, and went so far as to instigate an investigation by which he hoped to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not only Polish but was descended from the Polish nobility. His efforts, his sister tells us, were not entirely successful, although some evidence was turned up which pointed to the truth of this theory. Several of the dates in the report, however, did not accurately tally, and since many of Nietzsche's papers containing the results of his genealogical research were lost in Turin after his breakdown, the hypothesis of his Polish descent consequently remains somewhat mythical. Nietzsche's theory was that his great-great-grandfather was a nobleman named Nicki who fled from Poland during the religious wars, as a fugitive under sentence of death, and took with him a young son who afterward changed his name to Nietzsche. There is a romance in this belief which appealed strongly to the philosopher. He saw a genuine grandeur in the fact that his ancestor had become a fugitive for his religious and political opinions. This belief in time became a conviction with him, and in the later years of his life we find him definitely asserting the truth of this family tradition.
The matter, however, one way or the other, is of little consequence, for Nietzsche's mind embodied universal traits: it was uncommonly free from distinctly national characteristics. All the important facts of his life and of his immediate ancestry are known to us. He was born at Röcken, a little village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on October 15, 1844. The day was the anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, and Nietzsche was christened Friedrich Wilhelm in honour of the event. The coincidence was all the more marked by the fact that Nietzsche's father, three years previous, had been tutor to the Altenburg Princesses, in which capacity he had met the sovereign and made so favourable an impression that it was by the royal favour he was living at Röcken. There were two other children in the Nietzsche household--a girl born in 1846, and a son born in 1850. The girl was named Therese Elizabeth Alexandra after the Duke of Altenburg's three daughters who had come under her father's tutorship. Afterward she became the philosopher's closest companion and guardian and his most voluminous biographer. The boy Joseph, named after the Duke of Altenburg himself, did not survive his first year.
The longevity and hardiness which marked the stock of Nietzsche's ancestors does away with the theory, often advanced, that his sickness and final mental breakdown were the outcome of hereditary causes. Out of his eight great-parents only two failed to reach the age of seventy-five, while one reached the age of eighty-six and another did not die until ninety. Both of his grand-fathers attained to the age of seventy, and his maternal grandmother lived until she was past eighty-two. Furthermore, the Nietzsche families for three generations had been very large and in every instance healthy and robust. Nietzsche's grandmother Nietzsche had twelve children, and his grandmother Oehler had eleven children--both families being strong and free from sickness. Nietzsche himself, so his sister tells us in her biography, was strong and healthy from his earliest childhood until maturity. He participated in outdoor sports such as swimming, skating and ball playing, and was characterised by a ruddy complexion which in his school days often called forth remarks concerning his evident splendid health. It seems that only one physical defect marked the whole of his younger life--a myopia inherited from his father. This impediment, though slight at first, became rapidly aggravated by the constant use to which he put his eyes in his sedulous application to study.
Nietzsche, the most terrible and devastating critic of Christianity and its ideals, was the culmination of two long collateral lines of theologians. His grandfather Nietzsche was a man of many scholarly attainments, who, because of his ecclesiastical writings, had received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His second wife, the mother of Nietzsche's father, came from a whole family of pastors by the name of Krause. Her favourite brother was a preacher in the Cathedral at Naumburg; and of the other two one was a Doctor of Divinity and one a country clergyman. The father of Nietzsche's mother was also a pastor by the name of Oehler, and had a parsonage in Pobles. Likewise Nietzsche's father, Karl-Ludwig Nietzsche, was a pastor in the Lutheran church; but he possessed a greater culture than we are wont to associate with the average country clergyman, and was a man looked up to and revered by all those who knew him. In fact, his appointment to the post at Röcken was an expression of appreciation paid his talents by the Prussian King. He was thirty-one years of age and had been married only a year when his son Friedrich was born. Though in perfect health, he was not destined to live more than five years after this event, for in 1848 he fell down a flight of stone stairs, and died after a year's invalidism, as a result of concussion of the brain.
The event cast a decided influence on the Nietzsche household and altered completely its plans. After lingering eight months at the parsonage, the family left Röcken and moved to Naumburg-on-the-Saale, there establishing a new domicile in the home of the pastor's mother. The household was composed of the two children, Friedrich and Elizabeth, their mother, then only twenty-four, their grandmother Nietzsche, and two maiden sisters of the dead father. This establishment was run on strict and puritanical lines. All the women were of strong theological inclinations. One of the maiden aunts, Rosalie, devoted herself to Christian benevolent institutions. The other aunt, Augusta, was not unlike the paternal grandmother--pious and God-fearing and constantly busied with her duties to others. The widowed mother carried on the Christian tradition of the family, and never forgot that she was once the wife of a Lutheran pastor. Daily prayers and Biblical readings were fixed practices. The young Friedrich was the pet of the household, and there were secret hopes held by all that he would grow up in the footsteps of his father and become an honoured and respected light in the church. To the realisation of this hope, all the efforts and influences of the four women were given. Such was the atmosphere in which the early youth of the author of "The Antichrist" was nurtured.
Soon after the family's arrival at Naumburg, Friedrich, then only six years old, was sent to a local Municipal Boys' School, in accordance with the educational theories of his grandmother, who believed in gregarious education for the very young. But she had failed to count upon the unusual character of her grandson, and the attempt to educate him at a municipal institution resulted in failure. His upbringing had made him somewhat priggish and hypersensitive. He was ridiculed by the other boys who taunted him with the epithet of "the little minister." He refused to mingle with the riff-raff which composed the larger part of the pupils, and held himself isolated and aloof. Consequently, before the year was up, he was withdrawn from the school and entered in a private educational institution which prepared the younger students for the Cathedral Grammar School. Here he was in more congenial surroundings. He had for schoolmates two youths whose families were friends of the Nietzsche household--young Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug, who later were to influence his youth. Nietzsche remained at this school for three years.
As a boy Nietzsche was always thoughtful and studious. He was a taciturn child and took long walks in the country alone, preferring solitude to companionship. He was sensitive to a marked degree, polite, solicitous of all about him, and inclined to moodiness. As soon as he could write he started a diary in which he included not only the external events of his life but his thoughts and ideas and opinions. The pages of this diary, partially preserved, make unique and interesting reading. At a very early age he began writing poetry. His verses, though conventional in both theme and metre, reflected a knowledge of contemporary prosody unusual in a boy of his years. He had ample opportunity in his home of hearing good music, and he manifested a great love for it in very early youth. He devoted much time to studying the piano, and not infrequently tried his hand at composing. Later in his life we still find him writing music, and also publishing it. In deportment Nietzsche was a model child. He was thoroughly imbued with the religious atmosphere of his surroundings, and was far more pious than the average youth of his own age. For a long while he gave every indication of fulfilling the ecclesiastical hopes which his family harboured for him. Consequently there was no lack of encouragement on the part of his guardians toward his first literary efforts which reflected the piety of his nature.
After a few years in the Naumburg school, where he distinguished himself as a model student and incidentally impressed the visiting inspectors by his quickness and brilliance in answering test questions, Nietzsche took the entrance examinations for the well-known Landes-Schule at Pforta, an institution then noted for its fostering and promotion of scientific studies. The vacancy at Pforta had been offered Nietzsche's mother by the Rector who had heard rumours concerning the intellectual gifts of the young "Fritz." The examinations were passed successfully, and in October, 1858, after a tearful leave-taking, he entered the Lower Fourth Form. Pforta, at that time, was an institution of considerable eminence, with a tradition attaching to it not unlike that of Eton. It was a hot-bed of academic culture, and the professors were among the most learned in the country. The school had been founded as a monastery in the twelfth century by the Cistercian monks. In the sixteenth century it had fallen under the rule of the Duke Moritz of Saxony, who turned it into a secular educational academy, making way for the advance of the newer ideals.
The life at Pforta in Nietzsche's day was strict, and we learn that the young philosopher chafed somewhat under the stringent discipline. But in time he accustomed himself to the regulations, and it was not long before we find him actively and interestedly participating in the school life. However, new ideas were fomenting. If outwardly he acquiesced to the routine, inwardly he was in a state of revolt. He had already begun to indulge in original thinking, and he felt the lack of freedom in communicating his ideas to others. His only confidante during these days was his sister whom he always saw during the holidays and on brief leaves of absence. His spare moments were devoted to music and literature other than that prescribed by the school curriculum. He resented the fact that one had to think of particular themes at specified times, and no doubt caused his good tutor, Professor Buddensieg, much uneasiness, for, to judge from his diary, he did not keep to himself the resentment he felt toward the enforcement of the irksome and repressive calendar of studies.
This resentment doubtlessly had much to do with the inauguration of a society which was called the Germania Club. Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug, Nietzsche's former school companions at Naumburg, were participants in its formation; and on the highest ledge of the watch tower, overlooking the Saale valley, its object was discussed and its inception dedicated and solemnised with a bottle of red wine. This society, while bearing many of the ear-marks of mere youthful enthusiasm, formed an important turning point in Nietzsche's life. It acted, at a psychological moment, as a safety-valve for the heretical ideas and aspirations which, up to that time, he had confided only to his sister and his diary. The purpose of the club can best be stated in Nietzsche's own words: "We resolved to found a kind of small club which would consist of ourselves and a few friends, and the object of which would be to provide us with a stable and binding organisation, directing and adding interest to our creative impulses in art and literature; or to put it more plainly, each of us would be pledged to present an original piece of work to the club once a month, either a poem, a treatise, an architectural design, or a musical composition, upon which each of the others, in a friendly spirit, would have to pass free and unrestricted criticism. We thus hoped by means of mutual correction to be able both to stimulate and to chasten our creative impulses." It was during one of his lectures before this group of youthful individualists that Nietzsche first expressed his true views on Christianity--views, which, could they have been overheard by his devoted family, would have brought sorrow to their pious hearts. The list of Nietzsche's contributions to this synod numbered thirty-four, and included musical compositions, poems, political orations and various literary works.
Nietzsche remained at Pforta until 1864. He had been confirmed at Easter, 1861, and to all outward manifestations retained his religious principles. His final report states that "he showed an active and lively interest in the Christian doctrine." In religion he was given the grade of "excellent." During his later years at Pforta he manifested an interest in the works of Emerson and Shakespeare and especially in the Greek and Latin authors. His dislike for mathematics increased steadily, and his love for Sophocles, Æschylus, Plato and the Greek lyricists "grew by leaps and bounds." His final paper--the departing thesis which was compulsory for all graduating students--was a Latin essay on Theognis of Megara, _"De Theognide Megarensi"_ Between Nietzsche and that ancient aristocrat, with his fine contempt for democracy, there existed many temperamental affinities; and this final essay was no less than a foundation on which the young Dionysian later built his philosophy of aristocracy. On the 7th of September he left Pforta.
After resting at Naumburg until the middle of October, Nietzsche set forth for the University of Bonn. It was here that he came under the guidance of Professor Ritschl, who later was to exert a great influence over him. Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl was not only the foremost philologist of his time, but a scholar deeply versed in classical literature and rhetoric. It was he who founded the science of historical literary criticism as we know it to-day. When he first met Nietzsche his interest in the young man at once became very great, and the relationship between them rapidly developed into the warmest of friendships. To Ritschl Nietzsche owed many things. It was at the former's house that he became acquainted with many of the leading learned men of the day. And it would be unfair not to credit Ritschl with much of the future philosopher's ardent and lasting interest in ancient cultures.
At Bonn Nietzsche entered the collegiate life with unusual zest. He became a member of the Franconia Student Corps, and participated freely in the drinking bouts which, from what we can learn from his letters home, constituted one of the main duties attached to his membership. But this phase of the student life was foreign to his tastes, and after brief activities in the rôle of "good fellow," he found a more spontaneous recreation in attending concerts and the better class theatres. He privately studied Schumann, and during 1864 and 1865 his life bore a marked musical stamp.
It was during Nietzsche's days at Bonn that a decided change came over his religious views. His critical studies in the literature and culture of the ancients had done much toward weaning him from the formal and almost literal theological beliefs of his family. The first open breach between his newer ideals and the established prejudices of his mother came at Easter-time about midway of his course at Bonn. He was home for the holidays, and when the good people were preparing to attend communion, he suddenly informed them of his decision not to accompany them. Arguments were unavailing. An animated discussion arose in which he firmly defended his attitude; and from that time on there was never a reconciliation between his religious standpoint and the one held by his family. Two learned ecclesiastics were called into consultation, but they were unable to meet the disquieting arguments of the young heretic, and his case was dismissed for the moment on his Aunt Rosalie's theory that even in the lives of the devoutest Christians there often come periods of doubt, and that during such periods it is best to leave the backslider to his own conscience. Nietzsche, however, never again entered the fold.
Curiously enough it was at this same period that came his revulsion toward the dissipations of student life. He went so far as to attempt an imposition of his moral theories on the members of the Franconia, but this attempt at reformation resulted only in his own unpopularity. In his attitude toward duelling--a pastime somewhat over-emphasised at Bonn--Nietzsche was consistent with his other beliefs. The chivalrous side of it appealed to him, although he detested the spirit of it from the standpoint of the student body. However, he took heroic, if unconventional, means to involve himself in a duel lest his position be misconstrued as cowardice. He selected an adversary he thought worthy of him, and pleasantly demanded a combat on the field of honour, ending his request: "Let us waive all the usual preliminaries." The other agreed, and the duel was fought. But the incident merely resulted in emphasising Nietzsche's disgust for student life. Says his sister, "The circumstances which above all aroused my brother's wrath was the detestable 'beer materialism' with which he met on all sides, and owing to these early experiences in Bonn he for ever retained a very deep dislike for smoking, drinking, and the whole of so-called 'beer-conviviality.'" His decision to leave Bonn and enter the University of Leipzig was due to his fondness for Ritschl. In the dispute which arose between the two Professors, Jahn and Ritschl, Nietzsche's friendship for the latter made him a partisan, although he held Jahn in the highest respect; and when Ritschl decided to transfer himself to Leipzig, the young philosopher, along with several of the other students, followed him. This was in the autumn of 1865. Nietzsche reached Leipzig on the 17th of October, and the next day he presented himself to the Academic Board. It was the centennial anniversary of the day when Goethe had entered his name on the register, and the University was celebrating the event. The coincidence delighted Nietzsche greatly, who regarded it as a good omen for his future at the new institution.
It was during his residence at Leipzig that there came into his life two events which were to have a profound and lasting influence on his future. One of these was his acquaintance with Wagner--an acquaintance which several years later developed into the strongest friendship of his life. The other event (in many ways more important than the first) was his discovery of Schopenhauer. This discovery is characteristically described in a letter to his sister: "One day I came across this book at old Rohn's curiosity shop, and taking it up very gingerly I turned over its pages. I know not what demon whispered to me: 'Take this book home with thee.' At all events, contrary to my habit not to be hasty in my purchase of books, I took it home. Once in my room I threw myself into the corner of the sofa with my booty, and began to allow that energetic and gloomy genius to work upon my mind. In this book, in which every line cried out renunciation, denial, and resignation, I saw a mirror in which I espied the whole world, life and my own mind depicted in frightful grandeur. In this volume the full celestial eye of art gazed at me; here I saw illness and recovery, banishment and refuge, heaven and hell. The need of knowing myself, yea, even of gnawing at myself, forcibly seized me." This book went far in arousing the philosophic faculties of the young philologist, and later he wrote many essays, long and short, both in praise and in refutation of the great pessimist. That he should at first have subscribed to all of Schopenhauer's teachings is natural. Nietzsche was vital and susceptible to enthusiasms. It was in accord with his youthful nature, full of courage and strength, that he should have been seduced to pessimism.
At Leipzig Nietzsche accomplished an enormous amount of work: and his nature developed in proportion. The life was freer than it had been at Pforta or at Bonn. Far from being hampered in the voicings of his inner beliefs, he found his environment particularly congenial to self-expression. He made numerous friends, principal among them being Erwin Rohde, who crossed his later life at many points. He showed a great interest in political, as well as in literary and musical, events; and the war between Prussia and Austria fanned his youthful ardour to an almost extravagant degree. Twice he offered himself to the authorities, hoping to be permitted to serve as a soldier, but was rejected both times on account of his shortsightedness. His interest in his studies, however, was in no wise diminished. He read widely in English, French, Greek and Latin, and devoted much scholarly research to Theognis, Diogenes Laertius, and Democritus. His essay on the subject, _"De Fontibus Diogenis Laertii"_ won the first university prize, and was later published, with other of his essays on philology, in the _Rheinisches Museum._
At this time the Prussian army found itself in sore need of men, and although Nietzsche had been exempt from military duties and had failed to secure enlistment, he suddenly found himself, in the autumn of 1867, called upon for compulsory training. A new army regulation had just been passed requiring all young men, if otherwise physically sound, to enter military service even though their eyesight was partially impaired. As a consequence Nietzsche had to leave Leipzig and go into training. He made an effort to enlist in a Berlin Guard Regiment, but was finally compelled to join the horse artillery at Naumburg. Although he had previously volunteered for service, he now found that the life of a soldier was far more irksome and far less romantic than he had imagined. He was unhappy and disconsolate, and deplored the slavery attached to the life of a mounted artilleryman. He was not destined, however, to fulfil his arduous military duties to the full term of his proscription. Barely a year had gone by when he was thrown from his horse and received what at first was thought a slight strain, but what later turned out to be a serious injury. The pommel of his saddle had compressed his chest, and the inflammation which set in necessitated his permanent withdrawal from service.
For a long time Nietzsche was under the care of the famous specialist, Volkmann, to whom the military doctors had turned him over when they had begun to despair of his recovery. During convalescence, he busied himself with preparations for his coming university year and assisted in some intricate indexing for members of the faculty. In October, 1868, he was able to return to Leipzig and resume his work. But another unexpected event--this one of an advantageous nature and destined to alter his whole future--came in the form of an inquiry from the University of Bale in Switzerland. The members of that institution's educational board, attracted by Nietzsche's essays in the _Rheinisches Museum,_ wrote to Ritschl for information regarding the young philologist. Ritschl replied that Nietzsche was a genius and could do whatever he put his mind to. Thus it happened that, although only 24, he was offered the vacant post of Classical Philology at Bâle, without even being put through the formalities of an examination. However, he was straightway granted a Doctor's degree by the University of Leipzig, and on the 13th of April, 1869, he left Naumburg to assume the duties of his new appointment. His departure marked the passing of the Nietzsche household. His grandmother and both the maiden aunts were dead, and because, no doubt, of religious differences, he and his mother became estranged. Of that intimately welded family circle, only the deep friendship between Nietzsche and his sister remained.
On May 28, Nietzsche delivered his inaugural address at Bâle, using the personality of Homer as his subject. The hall was crowded, and the address made a decided impression on both students and faculty. The lecture was an unusual one and well off the conventional track. It created riot a little mild excitement among the professors at Leipzig, and the cut-and-dried philologists of that institution were frankly scandalised by its boldness. The address, however, was an index to Nietzsche's character, and, in looking back on it, we can see that it unmistakably pointed the way along which the future development of his mind was to take place. At Bâle, the young philologist, despite the people's kindly disposition toward him, suffered from solitude. His classes were small. Although he had made an impassioned plea for his particular science, the interest in philology was slight, and his morning lectures were attended by only eight students. Nietzsche was without a companion with whom he might exchange his ideas and personal thoughts. His only diversion came in the form of occasional trips to neighbouring parts of the country; and the letters he wrote to his sister and his former friends were tinged with melancholy. But he was conscientious in his work, and a year later he was given a professorship.
Before he could accept this later appointment it had been necessary for him to become a naturalised subject of Switzerland, so that when the Franco-German War of 1870 broke out, he could not serve as a combatant--a fact which caused him keen disappointment. He was able, however, to secure service as an ambulance attendant in the Hospital Corps, and set forth upon his patriotic duties with a glad heart. Having been granted the leave he asked for at the University, he went to Erlangen, where he entered for a course of surgery and medicine at the Red Cross Society. After a brief training as a nurse, in which line of work he showed remarkable adaptability, he was sent to the seat of war at the head of an ambulance corps. He was untiring in his energies and laboured day and night in the midst of the battlefields. But the overwork proved too much for him, and he soon reached the limit of his endurance. One day, after long exposure in a cattle truck filled with severely wounded and diseased men, he began to show signs of serious illness, and when, after great difficulty, he managed to reach Erlangen, it was discovered that he was suffering from diphtheria and severe dysentery. Though he had seen but a few weeks' hospital service, it was now necessary for him to discontinue his duties entirely. His sister tells us that this illness greatly undermined his health, and was the first cause of his subsequent condition. To make matters worse, the slight medical education which he had received in preparation for his ambulance service led him to pursue a fateful course of self-doctoring--a practice which he continued to his own detriment throughout the remainder of his life. Nietzsche did not even wait until he was well before resuming his duties at the University, and this new strain imposed on his already depleted system had much to do with bringing on his final breakdown.
As a result of the Philistinism which broke out all over Germany at the end of the war, Nietzsche delivered a course of lectures at Bonn, which he entitled "On the Future of Our Educational Institutions." Germany had insisted that her victory was due not only to physical bravery but also in a large measure to the superiority of Germanic culture and Teutonic ideals. Nietzsche beheld in this snobbish attitude a very grave danger for his country, and endeavoured in a small way to rectify this attitude by a series of lectures. He severely criticised the German educational institutions of the day and went so far as to deny them the great culture which they so ardently claimed. While these lectures in no wise stemmed, even locally, the tide of Philistinism at which they were aimed, the criticisms contained in them are of the greatest importance in reviewing the development of the philosopher himself. The lectures contained, perhaps unconsciously but none the less clearly, many of the elements of that philosophy which later was to have so tremendous an influence not only on Germany but on the whole civilised world.
In the same year, 1872, Nietzsche's first important book appeared. This work, dedicated to Richard Wagner, had been begun in 1869, and was first called "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music." When the third edition appeared in 1886 the title was changed to "The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism," and a preface called "An Attempt at Self-Criticism" was added. In a large measure this book was a tribute to Wagner, and was written by Nietzsche in an effort to be of immediate benefit to the musician who at that time was passing through a period of despondency. Wagner was then living at Tribschen, not far from Bâle, and Nietzsche's visits to him were frequent. It was during these years that the great friendship between the two men developed. "The Birth of Tragedy," however, was not well received by the public. Musicians were pleased with it, but philologists in particular deplored its utterances. They looked upon its author as a traitor to their science for having dared to venture beyond the narrow bounds of academic formalism. One well-known philologist, Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, attacked Nietzsche in an ill-humoured pamphlet; and although Erwin Rohde answered it adequately with another pamphlet, the attack proved detrimental to Nietzsche's standing at Bale. During the following winter term the young philologist was entirely without pupils.
His mind, however, was now undergoing decided and important changes. He was becoming bolder and surer of himself. New ideals were taking the place of old ones, and in 1873 he began a series of famous pamphlets which later were put into book form under the title of "Thoughts Out of Season." His first attack was upon David Strauss; the second was directed towards the German historians of the day; the third was aimed at Schopenhauer; and the fourth was the famous panegyric, "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth." These essays, together with his work at Bâle, occupied him until 1876. Nietzsche was now suffering severely from the malady he carried to his grave, catarrh of the stomach. This was accompanied by severe headaches, and during his holidays he alternated between Switzerland and Italy in an endeavour to recover his health. In the former place he was with Wagner. In Italy, at Sorrento, he met Dr. Paul Rée, who, if we are to believe Max Nordau, was the father of all Nietzsche's ideas. Credence, however, cannot be given to this accusation, for the nucleus of all of his later ideas was undeniably contained in his writings previous to his meeting with Rée. That Rée influenced him to some small extent no one will deny, for it was he who turned the young philosopher's attention to the latter day scientists of both England and France; and it was shortly after this meeting that Nietzsche began his first independent philosophical work, "Human, All-Too-Human."
It was in the year 1876 that his famous friendship with Wagner began to cool. Nietzsche had gone to Bayreuth to witness the performance of _"Der Ring des Nibelungen."_ Already he had begun to question his own high opinion of the composer, and Bayreuth solidified his doubts. It had been two years since he had seen Wagner, and after a brief conversation, Nietzsche became bitter and disgusted. When he finally went away his revulsion was complete, and one of the greatest of historic friendships was at an end. Whatever were the individual merits in the quarrel between these two great contemporaneous men, Nietzsche's attitude was at least consistent with his innermost ideals. He had admired in Wagner certain definite, revolutionary qualities, and when he was convinced, as he had every reason to be, that Wagner was compromising his art for the purpose of popularity, the ideal was broken. He could no longer remain true to himself and also to his friendship for the great composer. "Parsifal" was undoubtedly a decadent work, viewed from the standpoint of Wagner's previous performances. Decadence is simply the inability to create new tissue; and when Wagner forswore modern ideas and reverted to the past, it attested to an entire change of mental attitude: and no purely æsthetic doctrine can controvert the fact. Had Cézanne in later life essayed the painting of conventionally posed saints--no matter what his technical means might have been--his art would have contained the elements of decadence, for an artist's mental attitude cannot be dissevered from his product. This, I believe, was Nietzsche's theory in regard to Wagner. That the breaking off of this friendship was a great blow to the philosopher we know from his diary and from his letters. In fact, his affection for Wagner, the man, was so great that it was not until ten years had passed that he could bring himself to write the essay which he had long had in mind, "The Fall of Wagner."
The year after the appearance of "Human, All-Too-Human," Nietzsche's ill-health compelled him to resign his professorship at Bâle. He had a small income which, together with the three thousand francs retiring allowance granted him by the University, permitted him now to travel moderately and to devote his entire time to his literary labours. He first went to Berne, where he stayed a few weeks. Later he visited Zürich and then St. Moritz. It was a brief holiday, but the change of _locale,_ coupled with the relaxation from work, improved him both in physical health and in spirits. The winter of 1879-80 he spent with his mother at Naumburg, his old home; but the climate and the uncongenial surroundings dragged down his health once more, and it was not until toward the following spring, when he went to Venice, that he regained even a semblance of his normal condition. Here he was in company with Paul Rée and his life-long friend and disciple, Heinrich Köselitz, commonly known as Peter Gast. Nietzsche stayed at Venice until October, when he went to Genoa. The following year appeared "The Dawn of Day," his first book of constructive thinking.
The remainder of Nietzsche's life up to the time of his final breakdown in January, 1889, was spent in a fruitless endeavour to regain his undermined health. For eight years, during all of which time he was busily engaged in writing, he sought a climate that would revive him. His summers were spent for the most part in the quiet solitude of Sils-Maria, a little Swiss village to which the tourist rarely ventured. In 1882 he visited Genoa and, with Paul Rée as companion, made a trip to Monaco. This journey ended disastrously for his health, and by his physician's order he made a trip to Messina. Soon after he settled at Grunewald, near Berlin; but the place depressed him, and we find him later in Tautenburg. Again Genoa claimed him for several months, and then, addicted to chloral, and despondent, he sought relief at Rome. But he could not stand the hot weather, and again he visited Sils-Maria, where, it seems, he was for the time greatly improved. In 1884, we find him again at Naumburg, and a little later at Nice and Venice. In the autumn of the same year, he spent several weeks travelling with his sister in Germany, but at the approach of winter, he proceeded to Mentone. In 1885 he again sought the company of Peter Gast at Venice, and spent the larger part of that year and the next at Venice and Nice. The lonely philosopher then paid a short visit to Leipzig to be once again with his old friend Rohde. But the years had estranged them; their views were now at opposites. Another of his few friends thus lost to him, he immediately returned to Nice. The year 1886 found him at the Riviera, and in 1887 he was again at Sils-Maria. Here he laboured incessantly, travelling to both Venice and Nice in the meantime. In the spring of 1888 he changed his plans and went to Turin. Then after his usual summer visit to Sils-Maria, he returned to Turin, where he remained until the fatal winter of 1888-89. Nietzsche was rarely happy during his travels. He was constantly ill and for the most part alone, and this perturbed and restless period of his life resolved itself into a continuous struggle against melancholy and physical suffering.
During these eight years of solitary labour and futile seeking for health, Nietzsche had written "Thus Spake Zarathustra," "The Joyful Wisdom," "Beyond Good and Evil," "The Genealogy of Morals," "The Case of Wagner," "The Twilight of the Idols," "The Antichrist," _"Ecce Homo"_ "Nietzsche _contra_ Wagner," and an enormous number of notes which were to constitute his final and great philosophical work, "The Will to Power." The cold reception with which his books met tended to discourage him and to retard his physical recovery. His "Zarathustra" was as greatly misunderstood by the critics as had been his earlier volumes. With the exception of Burckhardt and Taine, the critics were unfavourable to "Beyond Good and Evil." "The Genealogy of Morals" met with scarcely more friendly a reception, and "The Case of Wagner," while arousing the ire of the Wagnerians, caused no comment of any kind in any other quarter. "The Twilight of the Idols" appeared about the time of his breakdown, and "The Antichrist" and _"Ecce Homo"_ were not published until long after his death. The notes on "The Will to Power" have only recently been put together and issued.
The events during this period of Nietzsche's career were few. Perhaps the most important was his meeting with Miss Lou Salomé. But even this episode had small bearing on his life, and has been unduly emphasised by biographers because of its isolation in an existence outwardly drab and uneventful. It was while Nietzsche was at Tautenburg that Paul Rée and another friend, Malvida von Mysenburg, hearing that he was in need of a secretary, sent to him Miss Salomé, a young Russian Jewess. That it would have been difficult to find a person less suited to the philosopher's needs was borne out by subsequent events. According to some accounts Nietzsche fell mildly in love with her, and was upset and irritated by her aloofness. But such a hypothesis is substantiated only by the flimsiest of evidence, and, when we take into consideration the temperamental gulf between these two people, it is highly incredible that Nietzsche had any desire to form an alliance with his amanuensis. The truth of the matter probably is that the philosopher was sadly disappointed in his secretary--if not indeed disgusted with her--and, in showing his regret, piqued her to retaliation. In fact, we have a letter from Nietzsche to the young lady which bears out this contention. In any event, we know that their companionship lasted but a short time and that Miss Salomé wrote a most inept and unreliable book on Nietzsche, _"Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken"_ published in Vienna in 1894. The affair had other painful results. Rée defended his protegée, and he and Nietzsche became bitter enemies. Nietzsche's sister also was dragged into the episode, and quarrelled with both Rée and Miss Salomé.
Shortly after this unpleasant event, Nietzsche, urged by his sister, made a half-hearted attempt to secure a professorship at the University of Leipzig, but negotiations for the post fell through, due largely to Nietzsche's own indifference in the matter. Soon after this the philosopher became estranged from his sister because of her intention to marry Dr. Förster. Nietzsche's opposition to the marriage--an opposition which was supported by his mother--was due to several reasons. First, it would necessitate his sister leaving him and accompanying her husband to Paraguay. Secondly, it had been rumoured that Dr. Förster had severely criticised his books. And thirdly, Nietzsche had small respect for Dr. Förster himself, who was an impractical idealist and an anti-Semite. However, despite all the family protestations, the marriage took place. Nietzsche was disappointed and brooded over the event, but a year later he became reconciled with his sister, and she remained, to the end of his life, his closest friend and companion.
In January, 1889, an apoplectic fit, which rendered Nietzsche unconscious for two days, marked the beginning of the end. His manner suddenly became alarming. He exhibited numerous eccentricities, so grave as to mean but one thing: his mind was seriously affected. There has long been a theory extant that his insanity was of gradual growth. Nordau holds that he was unbalanced from birth. But there is no evidence to substantiate these two theories. For seven years Nietzsche's physical condition had been improving, and his mind up to the end of 1888 was perfectly clear and gave no indication of what his end would be. During this period his books were thought out in his most clarified manner; in all his intercourse with his friends he was restrained and normal; and his voluminous correspondence showed no change either in sentiment or in tone. The theory advanced in some quarters that his books, and especially his later ones, were the work of a madman, is entirely without foundation. His insanity was sudden; it came without warning; and it is puerile to point to his state of mind during the last years of his life as a criticism of his work. His books must stand or fall on internal evidence--and on nothing else. Judged from that standpoint they are scrupulously sane.
The direct cause of Nietzsche's mental breakdown is not known. As a matter of fact, there was probably no direct cause. It was due to a number of influences--his excessive use of chloral which he took for insomnia, the tremendous strain to which he put his intellect, his constant disappointments and deprivations, his mental solitude, his prolonged physical suffering. We know little of his last days before he went insane. He was living alone in Turin and working desperately. Then suddenly to Professor Burckhardt at Bâle he wrote a letter which was obviously the work of a madman. "I am Ferdinand de Lesseps," he wrote. "I am Prado. I am Schambige.[1] I have been buried twice this autumn." This was the first indication of his insanity. Immediately after he wrote a similar letter to his old friend, Professor Overbeck. Other of Nietzsche's friends received disquieting and indecipherable notes. To Georg Brandes he sent a letter signed "The Crucified." To Peter Gast he wrote, "Sing me a new song. The world is clear and all the skies rejoice." To Cosima Wagner: "Ariadne, I love you."
There was now no doubt of his condition. Overbeck went immediately to Turin. He found the philosopher playing wildly on the piano, and crying blasphemies to the empty room. Nietzsche was taken back to Bâle, and then placed in a private psychiatric institution at Jena. Here he stayed until the following spring when he was permitted to be taken to the home of his mother at Naumburg. It was three years later that his sister returned from Paraguay, where her husband had died, and Nietzsche was sufficiently recovered to meet her when she arrived. But though he lived for another seven years, his mind was irretrievably ruined. When his mother died in 1897, his sister removed him to a villa at Weimar. There on a great veranda, overlooking the hills and the river valley, he remained until the end, receiving a few of his friends and taking his old delight in music. His sister watched over him tenderly, and though he was never strong enough to resume work, he would often talk of his books. When shown a portrait of Wagner, he said, "Him I loved dearly." He was all tenderness toward the end. The mighty yea-sayer had become as a little child. "Elizabeth," he would say, "do not cry. Are we not happy?"
Nietzsche died on the 25th of August, 1900, and was buried at Röcken, his native village.
[Footnote 1: Schambige and Prado were two assassins whose exploits were then occupying the French journals.]
II
"Human, All-Too-Human"
Volumes I and II
"Human, All-Too-Human" (_"Menschliches Allzu Menschliches"_) was first published in 1878. Previous to this time Nietzsche had devoted himself to a sedulous study of the French philosophers--Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Vanergues, Montaigne and others--and these men influenced him in his selection of the aphoristic style as a medium for his thoughts. His serious illness at the time made it impossible for him to attempt any large and co-ordinated philosophical task which would have required sustained thinking and continual physical labour, and the detached manner of writing employed by the French thinkers fitted in with the intermittent manner in which he was necessitated to work. "Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions," the second part of "Human, All-Too-Human," appeared the following year; and "The Wanderer and his Shadow," the third section, was made public in 1880. Six years later these three parts were put together in two volumes under the caption of the original book, and were subtitled "A Book of Free Spirits."
At that time Nietzsche already had numerous writings to his credit. "The Birth of Tragedy" (_"Die Geburt der Tragödie"_) was composed between 1869 and 1871, and issued in January, 1872. It was a treatise on pessimism and Hellenism, and in it Nietzsche endeavoured to ascertain the origin of Greek tragedy. In his research he passed over many of the lesser philological discussions which were then occupying the minds of his academic confrères, and, mild as was this first published work of his, he suddenly found himself the centre of a discussion which augured ill for his future at the University of Bâle. In this book he undertook to explain the constant conflict between the Apollonian and Dionysian ideals, and defined the differences underlying these two great influences in Greek art. Later in his writings we find him applying the theories stated in "The Birth of Tragedy" to all human transactions.
"On the Future of our Educational Institutions" and "Homer and Classical Philology," contained in one volume, were addresses delivered during Nietzsche's professorship of classical philology at Bâle University. In these lectures he pointed out the necessity of protecting the man of genius, and denied the existence of actual culture in the educational institutions of modern Germany, holding that true culture is only for the higher type of man. He made a plea for an institution where genuine culture, founded on the ideals of ancient Greece, would be harboured for the few who would devote their lives to it. Here unquestionably was the faint beginning of his conception of the superman. While these lectures dealt only with the educational institutions of Germany, the criticisms in them may nevertheless be applied in a broader sense to the general principles underlying all schools. This book is the first visible step in the development of his thought.
More evidences of what was to come later are found in a series of essays written during the early seventies, which are now published under the general caption of "Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays." The seven essays contained in this volume are: "The Greek State" (1871), in which he attacked the modern conception of labour, and advanced a brief for slavery based on the assumption that without it true culture cannot exist; "The Greek Woman" (1871), an outline of Nietzsche's ideal of woman; "On Music and Words" (1871), an analysis of the origins of music and language and a statement of the functions of each; "Homer's Contest" (1872), a comparison of the ancient and modern individualistic strife, in which was pointed out the necessity of competition in any successful commonwealth; "The Relation of Schopenhauer's Philosophy to a German Culture" (1872), a gay attack upon certain phases of German philistinism, with the suggestion that Schopenhauer's philosophy would prove an excellent counter-irritant; "Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks" (1873), a brilliant account and exposition of those Greek thinkers who preceded Socrates; and "On Truth and Falsity in their Ultramoral Sense" (1873), a rhapsodic refutation of the theory of absolute truth, in which we find many denials of the values attached to current conventions. These denials we are constantly meeting in the major part of Nietzsche's later work.
In Volume I of "Thoughts Out of Season" we find two essays: "David Strauss, the Confessor and Writer" (written in 1873), and "Richard Wagner at Bayreuth" (written during the close of 1875 and at the beginning of 1876). The first essay is an attack upon an ex-clerical who set up a philosopher's shop in Nietzsche's day and succeeded in sufficiently inflaming the popular mind to secure for himself a wide and ardent following. Nietzsche, angered by the effect that Strauss's sophistries had upon the German mind, undertook to answer them and show up their spuriousness. In the essay on Richard Wagner, Nietzsche praised the composer in no uncertain terms, hailing him as a saviour of mankind through the medium of the drama. Nietzsche thought he saw in Wagner a kindred spirit, a man free from the narrow dictates of his time, one capable of establishing a new order of things in the realm of art. Subsequently the philosopher turned against Wagner and denounced him bitterly for his anti-Hellenic tendencies.
Volume II of "Thoughts out of Season" contains "The Use and Abuse of History" and "Schopenhauer as Educator," both written in 1874. In the first of these essays Nietzsche attacked the study of history which was then the foremost educational fad in Germany. He denied it a place in the curriculum of culture unless it had for its foundation a profound knowledge of the causes of history. Also in this essay he made a plea for the individualistic interpretation of history, arguing that the events founded on the activities of majorities are useless to a true understanding of the fundamentals of racial development. Here again we encounter the foreshadowing of the philosophy of the superman. Nietzsche paid high tribute to Schopenhauer in his essay "Schopenhauer as Educator." Without subscribing unqualifiedly to all the doctrines of the great pessimist, he nevertheless allied himself philosophically with Schopenhauer's theory that all logic is an outgrowth of the law of self-preservation.
In the autumn of 1874 Nietzsche wrote a series of brief comments dealing with the subject of education. These paragraphs contain about 20,000 words, and were to have constituted, when completed, the fifth part of "Thoughts Out of Season." He never finished them, however, and they were not published until after his death. These fragments appear, under the caption of "We Philologists," at the end of the volume entitled "The Case of Wagner." "We Philologists" is a protest against the manner in which classical culture was promulgated in the universities. It offers a stinging criticism of those German professors, the philologists, to whom was entrusted the duty of disseminating Greek cultural ideals, and in addition presents a concise outline of what genuine Hellenic culture should consist. Nietzsche protests against the filtering of pagan antiquity through Christian doctrines--the method of teaching then in vogue--and insists that such a form of education entirely misses its aim. Although "We Philologists" is comparatively of small value to the student of Nietzsche's later philosophy, it is interesting to note that as early as 1874, his anti-Christian spirit was already well defined.
The four essays contained in the two volumes of "Thoughts out of Season" and "We Philologists" were the first of an intended series of pamphlets to be called _"Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen"_[1] but the series was never finished. However, the Nietzschean philosophical ideas had unquestionably begun to take definite form. Already there had been attempts at idealistic and moralistic valuations. There had also been a considerable amount of that preliminary analysis which was to form a foundation for the destructive and constructive thoughts of later years. In these essays Nietzsche had already begun to strike his bearings, and while they cannot be taken as a part of his philosophical scheme, they nevertheless form an excellent introduction for those students who care to go behind the final expression of his ideas and behold them in embryo.
"Human, All-Too-Human," following two years later, came as a distinct surprise even to Nietzsche's most intimate friends: Wagner especially was horrified at the heresies contained in it. There had not been sufficient indications in his earlier writings for one to predict so devastating an arraignment of modern life as was contained in this work. It was a departure, not only in thought but also in manner, from all else he had written. The conventional essay form had been set aside for an aphoristic style. Here we find a series of paragraphs varying in length from a few lines to a page or more, each dealing with a separate and syllogistically detached idea. The epigram, which was to play such an important part in all of Nietzsche's writings, is also found in abundance. The form in which these two volumes are cast gives the effect of a man felling a giant tree with a thousand blows of an axe, as distinguished from the method of the man who saws it down gradually and continuously.
Despite its muscular and incisive qualities, the manner of this work is calm. As a whole it is an excellent example of those writings which Nietzsche himself has called Apollonian. At times one even feels a tentativeness in its utterances not unlike that which attaches to the steps a man takes in a region he knows to be full of quicksands. In this regard it is interesting to note how a certain insecurity at the beginning of the work, which manifests itself in ultra-obscure passages, later gives way to a clarity and humour indicative of almost wanton temerity. In this book Nietzsche passes from the academician to the iconoclast. He bridges the chasm from the doctor of philology to the independent thinker. It is the record of the psychological transition of his mind; and this record is evident in both his outlook and his habits of expression.
Nietzsche, at his birth as a thinker, presents himself as an arch-nihilist. He realised the necessity of destroying the universe before an understanding of it was possible, and so the two volumes of "Human, All-Too-Human" are almost entirely destructive. In this work we have Nietzsche the trail-blazer, the incendiary, the idol-smasher, the pessimist, the devastator. One by one the doctrines and tenets, strengthened by the accumulative acceptance of centuries, go down before his bludgeon. Piece by piece the universe of reality is neutralised by his analyses. Every human transaction, every phase of human hope and aspiration, is reduced to negation. Ancient and modern cultures are dissected unsparingly. Political systems are stripped of their integuments and their origins exposed. New valuations are attached to the great artists and writers. Many of Nietzsche's most famous definitions grow out of the ruthless inquests he makes in this work.
This uncompassionate clearing away of accepted values prepared the way for the books which were to come. Once having ascertained the foundation on which human actions are built, the path was clear for reconstruction and reorganisation. "Human, All-Too-Human," then, was the first indirect voicing of Nietzsche's philosophy. All else had been mere skirmishing with ideas. Only vaguely and desultorily had his opinions been heretofore voiced. His analysis of history, his criticisms of ancient and modern thought, had actually pried away the superficial manifestations of existence and given him that insight into the undercurrents of causation which was later to inspire him in his work. For this reason we are more conscious of the man than of the philosopher when reading the series of aphorisms which constitute the main body of this document. "Human, All-Too-Human" is in the main an inquiry into the fundamental reasons for human conduct. Nietzsche devotes his efforts to showing that ideals, when pushed to their final analysis, reveal a basis in human need. Especially does he concern himself with the causes underlying current moral doctrines. He points out that there is no static and absolute morality, but that all moral codes are systems of deportment founded on human conditions in accordance with the environmental needs of a people. From this he states the corollary that all morality is subject to alteration, amendment and abrogation. He asserts the relativity of the terms "good" and "evil," and denies the justice of any final criticism of right and wrong as applied to any human action.
From this Nietzsche deduces the formula which is at the bottom of all individualistic philosophy, namely: that what is immoral for one man is moral for another, and that the application of any moral code is undesirable for the reason that no system of conduct can apply alike to all men. Thus any attempt on the part of any one man to direct the actions of any other man is in itself an immorality, because it is an attempt to hinder and retard the development of the individual. It must not be thought that Nietzsche's arrival at this conclusion is a direct and simple affair based on superficial observation. Nor is it in itself the end for which he strives. To the contrary, the conclusion is stated mainly by inference. The work he lays out for himself is one of analysis, and under his critical scalpel fall religions, political institutions and nations, as well as individuals. Wherever he finds a belief whose origin is considered divine, he tears away its surface characteristics and inquires into it. In every instance he finds a human ground for it. Going still further, he points out that all institutions, in order to meet the constantly fluctuating conditions of society, must subject themselves to change.
A multiplicity of themes comes under Nietzsche's observation in this work. Not only is there a great deal of abstract reasoning but also a vast amount of brilliant and penetrating criticism of men and art. Ancient and modern philosophers, novelists, poets, musicians, dramatists, as well as theories of art, literature and music, here come under his careful and acute analysis. There are passages of startling poetry interpolated between paragraphs of cynical and destructive research. Nietzsche reveals himself as a scholar, the philologist, the historian and the scientist, as well as the thinker. The amount of general knowledge he displays in nearly every line of human endeavour is astonishing. In his most elaborate processes of ratiocination he is always capable of adhering to authenticated facts. He never side-steps into the purely metaphysical or denies the existence of corporeality once it has been assumed as a hypothesis. He breaks once and for all with the metaphysicians and word-jugglers. Denying all reason in the Kantian sense, he is always scrupulously reasonable.
Although no direct philosophical doctrines are propounded in "Human, All-Too-Human," Nietzsche had undoubtedly outlined in his mind the constructive works which were to come later. However, in reading this work one finds but little indication--and that only obscurely hinted at--of the transvaluation of values which was to follow the devaluation. We have no hint, for instance, of the doctrine of the superman other than an implied ideal of an intellectual aristocracy which will permit of the highest development; of the individual. Evolution beyond the present is mentioned but indirectly. The future, to this destructive Nietzsche, is non-existent. His eyes are continually turned toward the past and they shift no further than the present. Only through implication is the Hellenic ideal voiced, and then it is with a certain degree of speculation as to its efficacy in meeting the demands of the modern man. Greek culture is used largely as a means of comparison, or as an arbitrary premise of his dialectic. The doctrine of eternal recurrence, which was to form one of the bases of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," is not even suggested. The "will to power," the anti-Schopenhauerian doctrine, which is the framework on which all of Nietzsche's constructive thinking is hung, was, at the time of his writing "Human, All-Too-Human," a hypothesis, vague and undeveloped.
"Human, All-Too-Human" is the first work of Nietzsche one should read. In reality it is an elaborate introduction to his later works. In his following book, "The Dawn of Day," comes the birth of his philosophy; it is the first real battle in his righteous warfare, the first great blasphemous assault upon the accepted order of things. But it cannot be readily understood or appreciated unless we have prepared ourselves for it.
The selection of the passages from the present two volumes has been extremely difficult, due to their multiplicity of themes and to the heterogeneity of their treatment. It is impossible to create a convincing effect of a razed forest by presenting a picture of an occasional fallen tree. Herein has lain my chief difficulty. I have been able to show only sections of the destruction of human values which Nietzsche here accomplishes. Furthermore, it has been impossible to give any very adequate idea of the vast amount of brilliant criticism of men and art which is to be encountered in these two volumes. All this must be got direct. It has been possible only to suggest it here. Those portions of the books which I have been able to comprehend in these excerpts are necessarily limited to Nietzsche's more important destructive conclusions.
[Footnote 1: "Inopportune Speculations."]
EXCERPTS FROM "HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN"
Everything _essential_ in human development happened in pre-historic times, long before those four thousand years which we know something of.... 1, 15
Everything has evolved; there are _no eternal facts,_ as there are likewise no absolute truths. 1, 15
It is probable that the objects of religious, moral, æsthetic and logical sentiment likewise belong only to the surface of things, while man willingly believes that here, at least, he has touched the heart of the world.... 1, 17
Nothing could be said of the metaphysical world but that it would be a different condition, a condition inaccessible and incomprehensible to us; it would be a thing of negative qualities. Were the existence of such a world ever so well proved, the fact would nevertheless remain that it would be precisely the most irrelevant of all forms of knowledge.... 1, 21-22
Belief in the freedom of the will is an original error of everything organic, as old as the existence of the awakenings of logic in it; the belief in unconditioned substances and similar things is equally a primordial as well as an old error of everything organic. 1, 33
A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitious and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul,--if he has attained to this degree of freedom, he has still also to overcome metaphysics with the greatest exertion of his intelligence. 1, 35
Away with those wearisomely hackneyed terms Optimism and Pessimism!... We must get rid of both the calumniating and the glorifying conception of the world. 1, 43-44
_Error_ has made man so deep, sensitive, and inventive that he has put forth such blossoms as religions and arts. Pure knowledge could not have been capable of it. 1, 44-45
The usual false conclusions of mankind are these: a thing exists, therefore it has a right to exist. Here there is inference from the ability to live to its suitability; from its suitability to its rightfulness. Then: an opinion brings happiness; therefore it is the true opinion. Its effect is good; therefore it is itself good and true. 1, 45
Every belief in the value and worthiness of life is based on vitiated thought; it is only possible through the fact that sympathy for the general life and suffering of mankind is very weakly developed in the individual. 1, 47-48
Science ... has no consideration for ultimate purposes, any more than Nature has, but just as the latter occasionally achieves things of the greatest suitableness without intending to do so, so also true science, as the _imitator of nature in ideas,_ will occasionally and in many ways further the usefulness and welfare of man,--_but also without intending to do so._ 1, 58
All single actions are called good or bad without any regard to their motives, but only on account of the useful or injurious consequences which result for the community. But soon the origin of these distinctions is forgotten, and it is deemed that the qualities "good" or "bad" are contained in the action itself without regard to its consequences.... 1, 59
The hierarchy of possessions ... is not fixed and equal at all times; if any one prefers vengeance to justice he is moral according to the standard of an earlier civilisation, but immoral according to the present one. 1, 63
People who are cruel nowadays must be accounted for by us as the grades of earlier civilisations which have survived.... 1, 63
Certainly we should _exhibit_ pity, but take good care not to _feel_ it, for the unfortunate are so _stupid_ that to them the exhibition of pity is the greatest good in the world. 1, 68
The thirst for pity is the thirst for self-gratification.... 1, 69
There must be self-deception in order that this and that may _produce_ great _effects._ For men believe in the truth of everything that is visibly, strongly believed in. 1, 71
One of the commonest mistakes is this: because some one is truthful and honest towards us, he must speak the truth. 1, 71
Why do people mostly speak the truth in daily life?... Because ... the path of compulsion and authority is surer than that of cunning. 1,72
One may promise actions, but no sentiments, for these are involuntary. 1,76
Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals. 1,79
Every virtue has its privileges; for example, that of contributing its own little fagot to the scaffold of every condemned man. 1, 80
Why do we over-estimate love to the disadvantage of justice, and say the most beautiful things about it, as if it were something very much higher than the latter? Is it not visibly more stupid than justice? Certainly, but precisely for that reason all the _pleasanter_ for every one. 1, 81
Hope,--in reality ... is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man. 1, 82
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear. 1, 83
Religion is rich in excuses to reply to the demand for suicide, and thus it ingratiates itself with those who wish to cling to life. 1, 85-86
The injustice of the powerful, which, more than anything else, rouses indignation in history, is by no means so great as it appears.... One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other. 1, 86-87
When virtue has slept, it will arise again all the fresher. 1, 87
What a great deal of pleasure morality gives! Only think what a sea of pleasant tears has been shed over descriptions of noble and unselfish deeds! This charm of life would vanish if the belief in absolute irresponsibility Were to obtain supremacy. 1, 90
Justice (equity) has its origin amongst powers which are fairly equal.... The character of _exchange_ is the primary character of justice.... Because man, according to his intellectual custom, has _forgotten_ the original purpose of so-called just and reasonable actions, and particularly because for hundreds of years children have been taught to admire and imitate such actions, the idea has gradually arisen that such an action is un-egoistic; upon this idea, however, is based the high estimation in which it is held.... 1, 90-91
The feeling of pleasure on the basis of human relations generally makes man better; joy in common, pleasure enjoyed together is increased, it gives the individual security, makes him good-tempered, and dispels mistrust and envy, for we feel ourselves at ease and see others at ease. _Similar manifestations of pleasure_ awaken the idea of the same sensations, the feeling of being like something; a like effect is produced by common sufferings, the same bad weather, dangers, enemies. Upon this foundation is based the oldest alliance, the object of which is the mutual obviating and averting of a threatening danger for the benefit of each individual. And thus the social instinct grows out of pleasure. 1, 97
The aim of malice is _not_ the suffering of others in itself, but our own enjoyment.... 1, 102
If self-defence is allowed to pass as moral, then almost all manifestations of the so-called immoral egoism must also stand.... 1, 104
He who is punished does not deserve the punishment, he is only used as a means of henceforth warning away from certain actions; equally so, he who is rewarded does not merit this reward, he could not act otherwise than he did. 1, 105
Between good and evil actions there is no difference of species, but at most of degree. Good actions are sublimated evil ones; evil actions are vulgarised and stupefied good ones. 1, 108
The religious cult is based upon the representations of sorcery between man and man.... 1, 121
Christianity ... oppressed man and crushed him utterly, sinking him as if in deep mire; then into the feeling of absolute depravity it suddenly threw the light of divine mercy, so that the surprised man, dazzled by forgiveness, gave a cry of joy and for a moment believed that he bore all heaven within himself. 1, 124
People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous. 1, 125
No man _ever_ did a thing which was done only for others and without any personal motive.... 1, 134
In every ascetic morality man worships one part of himself as a God, and is obliged, therefore, to diabolise the other parts. 1, 140
What is it that we long for at the sight of beauty? We long to be beautiful, we fancy it must bring much happiness with it. But that is a mistake. 1, 156
There is an art of the ugly soul side by side with the art of the beautiful soul.... 1, 157
Artists of representation are especially held to be possessed of genius, but not scientific men. In reality, however, the former valuation and the latter under-valuation are only puerilities of reason. 1, 166-167
A good author possesses not only his own intellect, but also that of his friends. 1, 178
To look upon writing as a regular profession should justly be regarded as a form of madness. 1, 181
A conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends. 1, 183
Complete praise has a weakening effect. 1, 184
There will always be a need of bad authors; for they meet the taste of readers of an undeveloped, immature age.... 1, 185
The born aristocrats of the mind are not in too much of a hurry; their creations appear and fall from the tree on some quiet autumn evening, without being rashly desired, instigated, or pushed aside by new matter. The unceasing desire to create is vulgar, and betrays envy, jealousy, and ambition. If a man _is_ something, it is not really necessary for him to do anything--and yet he does a great deal. There is a human species higher even than the "productive" man.... 1, 189
Deviating natures are of the utmost importance wherever there is to be progress. Every wholesale progress must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures _retain_ the type, the weaker ones help it to _develop_. 1, 208
In the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the _possession_ of it, not the impulse under which it was sought, the way in which it was found. 1, 210
The fettered spirit does not take up his position from conviction, but from habit; he is a Christian, for instance, not because he had a comprehension of different creeds and could take his choice; he is an Englishman, not because he decided for England, but he found Christianity and England ready-made and accepted them without any reason, just as one who is born in a wine-country becomes a wine-drinker. 1, 211
The restriction of views, which habit has made instinct, leads to what is called strength of character. 1, 212-213
The highest intelligence and the warmest heart cannot exist together in one person, and the wise man who passes judgment upon life looks beyond goodness and only regards it as something which is not without value in the general summing-up of life. The wise man must _oppose_ those digressive wishes of unintelligent goodness, because he has an interest in the continuance of his type and in the eventual appearance of the highest intellect; at least, he will not advance the founding of the "perfect State," inasmuch as there is only room in it for wearied individuals. 1, 218-219
Interest in Education will acquire great strength only from the moment when belief in a God and His care is renounced.... An education that no longer believes in miracles must pay attention to three things: first, how much energy is inherited? secondly, by what means can new energy be aroused? thirdly, how can the individual be adapted to so many and manifold claims of culture without being disquieted and destroying his personality,--in short, how can the individual be initiated into the counterpoint of private and public culture, how can he lead the melody and at the same time accompany it. 1, 224-225
A higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain-chambers, so to speak, one to feel science and the other to feel non-science, which can lie side by side, without confusion, divisible, exclusive; this is a necessity of health. In one part lies the source of strength, in the other lies the regulator; it must be heated with illusions, onesidednesses, passions; and the malicious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be averted by the help of conscious Science. 1, 232
Simultaneous things hold together, it is said. A relative dies far away, and at the same time we dream about him,--Consequently! But countless relatives die and we do not dream about them.... This species of superstition is found again in a refined form in historians and delineators of culture, who usually have a kind of hydrophobic horror of all that senseless mixture, in which individual and national life is so rich. 1, 235
It is true that in the spheres of higher culture there must always be a supremacy, but henceforth this supremacy lies in the hands of the _oligarchs of the mind._ In spite of local and political separation they form a cohesive society, whose members _recognise and acknowledge_ each other, whatever public opinion and the verdicts of review and newspaper writers who influence the masses may circulate in favour of or against them. Mental superiority, which formerly divided and embittered, nowadays generally _unites._ ... Oligarchs are necessary to each other, they are each other's best joy, they understand their signs, but each is nevertheless free, he fights and conquers in _his_ place and perishes rather than submit. 1, 243
The greatest advance that men have made lies in their acquisition of the art to _reason rightly._ 1, 249-250
The strength and weakness of mental productiveness depend far less on inherited talents than on the accompanying amount of _elasticity._ 1, 250
Whoever, in the present day, still derives his development from religious sentiments, and perhaps lives for some length of time afterwards in metaphysics and art, has assuredly gone back a considerable distance and begins his race with other modern men under unfavourable conditions; he apparently loses time and space. But because he stays in those domains where ardour and energy are liberated and force flows continuously as a volcanic stream out of an inexhaustible source, he goes forward all the more quickly as soon as he has freed himself at the right moment from those dominators.... 1, 252
Whoever wishes to reap happiness and comfort in life should always avoid higher culture. 1, 255-250
All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave.... 1, 259
If idleness is really the _beginning_ of all vice, it finds itself, therefore, at least in near neighbourhood of all the virtues; the idle man is still a better man than the active. You do not suppose that in speaking of idleness and idlers I am alluding to you, you sluggards? 1, 260
I believe that every one must have his own opinion about everything concerning which opinions are possible, because he himself is a peculiar, unique thing, which assumes towards all other things a new and never hitherto existing attitude. 1, 260-261
Whoever earnestly desires to be free will therewith and without any compulsion lose all inclination for faults and vices; he will also be more rarely overcome by anger and vexation. 1, 261-262
You must have loved religion and art as you loved mother and nurse,--otherwise you cannot be wise. But you must be able to see beyond them, to outgrow them; if you remain under their ban you do not understand them. 1, 264
The rage for equality may so manifest itself that we seek either to draw all others down to ourselves (by belittling, disregarding, and tripping up), or ourselves and all others upwards (by recognition, assistance, and congratulation). 1, 268
We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we perceive that it is entirely lacking in our adversary. 1, 269
We forget our pretensions when we are always conscious of being amongst meritorious people; being alone implants presumption in us. The young are pretentious, for they associate with their equals, who are all ciphers but would fain have a great significance. 1, 271
In warring against stupidity, the most just and gentle of men at last become brutal. They are thereby, perhaps, taking the proper course for defence; for the most appropriate argument for a stupid brain is the clenched fist. But because, as has been said, their character is just and gentle, they suffer more by this means of protection than they injure their opponents by it. 1, 284
The perfect woman is a higher type of humanity than the perfect man, and also something much rarer. 1, 295
Every one bears within him an image of woman, inherited from his mother: it determines his attitude towards woman as a whole, whether to honour, despise, or remain generally indifferent to them. 1, 295-296
Mothers are readily jealous of the friends of sons who are particularly successful. As a rule mother loves _herself_ in her son more than the son. 1, 296
If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent. 1, 298
As a rule women love a distinguished man to the extent that they wish to possess him exclusively. They would gladly keep him under lock and key, if their vanity did not forbid, but vanity demands that he should also appear distinguished before others. 1, 299
Those girls who mean to trust exclusively to their youthful charms for their provision in life, and whose cunning is further prompted by worldly mothers, have just the same aims as courtesans, only they are wiser and less honest. 1, 300
For goodness' sake let us not give our classical education to girls! 1, 301
The intellect of woman manifests itself as perfect mastery, presence of mind, and utilisation of all advantages. They transmit it as a fundamental quality to their children, and the father adds thereto the darker background of the will. His influence determines as it were the rhythm and harmony with which the new life is to be performed; but its melody is derived from the mother. For those who know how to put a thing properly: women have intelligence, men have character and passion. This does not contradict the fact that men actually achieve so much more with their intelligence: they have deeper and more powerful impulses; and it is these which carry their understanding (in itself something passive) to such an extent. Women are often silently surprised at the great respect men pay to their character. When, therefore, in the choice of a partner men seek specially for a being of deep and strong character, and women for a being of intelligence, brilliancy, and presence of mind, it is plain that at bottom men seek for the ideal man, and women for the ideal woman,--consequently not for the complement but for the completion of their own excellence. 1, 302-303.
It is a sign of women's wisdom that they have almost always known how to get themselves supported, like drones in a bee-hive. Let us just consider what this meant originally, and why men do not depend upon women for their support. Of a truth it is because masculine vanity and reverence are greater than feminine wisdom; for women have known how to secure for themselves by their subordination the greatest advantage, in fact, the upper hand. Even the care of children may originally have been used by the wisdom of women as an excuse for withdrawing themselves as much as possible from work. And at present they still understand when they are really active (as housekeepers, for instance) how to make a bewildering fuss about it, so that the merit of their activity is usually ten times over-estimated by men. 1, 303
Marriage is a necessary institution for the twenties; a useful, but not necessary, institution for the thirties; for later life it is often harmful, and promotes the mental deterioration of the man. 1, 308
Marriage regarded in its highest aspect, as the spiritual friendship of two persons of opposite sexes, and accordingly such as is hoped for in future, contracted for the purpose of producing and educating a new generation,--such marriage, which only makes use of the sensual, so to speak, as a rare and occasional means to a higher purpose, will, it is to be feared, probably need a natural auxiliary, namely, _concubinage._ For if, on the grounds of his health, the wife is also to serve, for the sole satisfaction of the man's sexual needs, a wrong perspective, opposed to the aims indicated, will have most influence in the choice of a wife. The aims referred to: the production of descendants, will be accidental, and their successful education highly improbable. 1, 309
We always lose through too familiar association with women and friends; and sometimes we lose the pearl of of our life thereby. 1, 312
Women always intrigue privately against the higher souls of their husbands; they want to cheat them out of their future for the sake of a painless and comfortable present. 1, 315
It is laughable when a company of paupers decree the abolition of the right of inheritance, and it is not less laughable when childless persons labour for the practical law-giving of a country: they have not enough ballast in their ship to sail safely over the ocean of the future. But it seems equally senseless if a man who has chosen for his mission the widest knowledge and estimation of universal existence, burdens himself with personal considerations of a family, with the support, protection, and care of wife and child, and in front of his telescope hangs that gloomy veil through which hardly a ray from the distant firmament can penetrate. Thus 1, too, agree with the opinion that in matters of the highest philosophy all married men are to be suspected. 1, 316
A higher culture can only originate where there are two distinct castes of society: that of the working class, and that of the leisured class who are capable of true leisure; or, more strongly expressed, the caste of compulsory labour and the caste of free labour. 1, 319
Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished revengeful. In favour of war it may be said that it barbarises in both its above-named results, and thereby makes more natural; it is the sleep or the winter period of culture; man emerges from it with greater strength for good and for evil. 1, 322
As regards Socialism, in the eyes of those who always consider higher utility, if it is _really_ a rising against their oppressors of those who for centuries have been oppressed and downtrodden, there is no problem of _right_ involved (notwithstanding the ridiculous, effeminate question, "How far _ought_ we to grant its demands?") but only a problem of _power_ ("How far _can_ we make use of its demands?") 1, 322
Well may noble (if not exactly very intelligent) representatives of the governing classes asseverate: "We will treat men equally and grant them equal rights"; so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on _justice_ is possible; but, as has been said, only within the ranks of the governing class, which in this case _practises_ justice with sacrifices and abnegations. On the other hand, to _demand_ equality of rights, as do the Socialists of the subject caste, is by no means the outcome of justice, but of covetousness. If you expose bloody pieces of flesh to a beast, and withdraw them again, until it finally begins to roar, do you think that roaring implies justice? 1, 326-327
When the Socialists point out that the division of property at the present day is the consequence of countless deeds of injustice and violence, and, _in summa,_ repudiate obligation to anything with so unrighteous a basis, they only perceive something isolated. The entire past of ancient civilisation is built up on violence, slavery, deception, and error; we, however, cannot annul ourselves, the heirs of all these conditions, nay, the concrescences of all this past, and are not entitled to demand the withdrawal of a single fragment thereof. 1, 327
Those who are bent on revolutionising society may be divided into those who seek something for themselves thereby and those who seek something for their children and grandchildren. The latter are the more dangerous, for they have the belief and the good conscience of disinterestedness. 1, 329
The fact that we regard the gratification of vanity as of more account than all other forms of well-being (security, position, and pleasures of all sorts), is shown to a ludicrous extent by every one wishing for the abolition of slavery and utterly abhorring to put any one into this position.... We protest in the name of the "dignity of man"; but, expressed more simply, that is just our darling vanity which feels non-equality, and inferiority in public estimation, to be the hardest lot of all. 1, 330
In all institutions into which the sharp breeze of public criticism does not penetrate an innocent corruption grows up like a fungus (for instance, in learned bodies and senates). 1, 336
The belief in a divine regulation of political affairs, in a mystery in the existence of the State, is of religious origin: if religion disappears, the State will inevitably lose its old veil of Isis, and will no longer arouse veneration. The sovereignty of the people, looked at closely, serves also to dispel the final fascination and superstition in the realm of these sentiments; modern democracy is the historical form of the _decay of the State._ 1, 342
Socialism is the fantastic younger brother of almost decrepit despotism, which it wants to succeed; its efforts are, therefore, in the deepest sense reactionary. For it desires such an amount of State Power as only despotism has possessed,--indeed, it outdoes all the past, in that it aims at the complete annihilation of the individual, whom it deems an unauthorised luxury of nature, which is to be improved by it into an appropriate _organ of the general community._ Owing to its relationship, it always appears in proximity to excessive developments of power, like the old typical socialist, Plato, at the court of the Sicilian tyrant; it desires (and under certain circumstances furthers) the Cæsarian despotism of this century, because, as has been said, it would like to become its heir. But even this inheritance would not suffice for its objects, it requires the most submissive prostration of all citizens before the absolute State, such as has never yet been realised, and as it can no longer even count upon the old religious piety towards the State, but must rather strive involuntarily and continuously for the abolition thereof,--because it strives for the abolition of all existing _States,_--it can only hope for existence occasionally, here and there for short periods, by means of the extremest terrorism. It is therefore silently preparing itself for reigns of terror, and drives the word "justice" like a nail into the heads of the half-cultured masses in order to deprive them completely of their understanding (after they had already suffered seriously from the half-culture), and to provide them with a good conscience for the bad game they are to play. Socialism may serve to teach, very brutally and impressively, the danger of all accumulations of State power, and may serve so far to inspire distrust of the State itself. 1, 343-344
It is nothing but fanaticism and beautiful soulism to expect very much (or even, much only) from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war. 1, 349
Wealth necessarily creates an aristocracy of race, for it permits the choice of the most beautiful women and the engagement of the best teachers; it allows a man cleanliness, time for physical exercises, and, above all, immunity from dulling physical labour. 1, 351
Public opinion--private laziness. 1, 354
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. 1, 355
The unreasonableness of a thing is no argument against its existence, but rather a condition thereof. 1, 361
People who talk about their importance to mankind have a feeble conscience for common bourgeois rectitude, keeping of contracts, promises, etc. 1, 363
The demand to be loved is the greatest of presumptions. 1, 363
When a man roars with laughter he surpasses all the animals by his vulgarity. 1, 369
The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about anything is not usually our own, but only the current opinion belonging to our caste, position, or family; our own opinions seldom float on the surface. 1, 372
Nobody talks more passionately of his rights than he who, in the depths of his soul, is doubtful about them. 1, 380.
Unconsciously we seek the principles and opinions which are suited to our temperament, so that at last it seems as if these principles and opinions had formed our character and given it support and stability, whereas exactly the contrary has taken place. Our thoughts and judgments are, apparently, to be taken subsequently as the causes of our nature, but as a matter of fact _our_ nature is the cause of our so thinking and judging. 1, 384
The man of unpleasant character, full of distrust, envious of the success of fellow-competitors and neighbours, violent and enraged at divergent opinions, shows that he belongs to an earlier grade of culture, and is, therefore, an atavism; for the way in which he behaves to people was right and suitable only for an age of club-law; he is an _atavist._ The man of a different character, rich in sympathy, winning friends everywhere, finding all that is growing and becoming amiable, rejoicing at the honours and successes of others and claiming no privilege of solely knowing the truth, but full of a modest distrust,--he is a forerunner who presses upwards towards a higher human culture. 1, 388
He who has not passed through different phases of conviction, but sticks to the faith in whose net he was first caught, is, under all circumstances, just on account of this unchangeableness, a representative of _atavistic_ culture.... 1, 400
Opinions evolve out of _passions; indolence of intellect_ allows those to congeal into _convictions_. 1, 404
He who has attained intellectual emancipation to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth--and not even as a traveller _towards_ a final goal, for there is no such thing. 1, 405
If we make it clear to any one that, strictly, he can never speak of truth, but only of probability and of its degrees, we generally discover, from the undisguised joy of our pupil, how greatly men prefer the uncertainty of their intellectual horizon, and how in their heart of hearts they hate truth because of its definiteness. 2, 15
With all that enthusiasts say in favour of their gospel or their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport themselves as the judges and not the accused: because they are involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and have to assert their legitimacy. 2, 18
The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed. 2, 20
Philosophic brains will ... be distinguished from others by their disbelief in the metaphysical significance of morality. 2, 29
You hold that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--Just consider whether in every action that is done with deliberation, in the best as in the worst, there be not a sacrifice. 2, 30
It is more convenient to follow one's conscience than one's intelligence, for at every failure conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people. 2, 33
All moralists are shy, because they know they are confounded with spies and traitors, so soon as their penchant is noticed. Besides, they are generally conscious of being impotent in action, for in the midst of work the motives of their activity almost withdraw their attention from the work. 2, 42
No one accuses without an underlying notion of punishment and revenge, even when he accuses his fate or himself. All complaint is accusation, all self-congratulation is praise. Whether we do one or the other, we always make some one responsible. 2, 44
We must know how to emerge cleaner from unclean conditions, and, if necessary, how to wash ourselves even with dirty water. 2, 44
The origin of morality may be traced to two ideas: "The community is of more value than the individual," and "The permanent interest is to be preferred to the temporary." The conclusion drawn is that the permanent interest of the community is unconditionally to be set above the temporary interest of the individual, especially his momentary well-being, but also his permanent interest and even the prolongation of his existence. 2, 46-47
We should not shrink from treading the road to a virtue, even when we see clearly that nothing but egotism, and accordingly utility, personal comfort, fear, considerations of health, reputation, or glory, are the impelling motives. These motives are styled ignoble and selfish. Very well, but if they stimulate us to some virtue--for example, self-denial, dutifulness, order, thrift, measure, and moderation--let us listen to them, whatever their epithets may be! 2, 48
The tendency of a talent towards moral subjects, characters, motives, towards the "beautiful soul" of the work of art, is often only a glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful soul. 2, 78
Art is above all and meant to embellish life, to make us ourselves endurable and if possible agreeable in the eyes of others. With this task in view, art moderates us and holds us in restraint, creates forms of intercourse, binds over the uneducated to laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed speech and silence. Hence art must conceal or transfigure everything that is ugly--the painful, terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of every effort will always break out afresh in accordance with the very origin of human nature. Art has to perform this duty especially in regard to the passions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to cause the significant factor to shine through unavoidable or unconquerable ugliness. To this great, super-great task the so-called art proper, that of works of art, is a mere accessory. A man who feels within himself a surplus of such powers of embellishment, concealment, and transfiguration will finally seek to unburden himself of this surplus in works of art. The same holds good, under special circumstances, of a whole nation. 2, 01-92
On great minds is bestowed the terrifying all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust aroused by such qualities. 2, 100
Original minds are distinguished not by being the first to see a new thing, but by seeing the old, well-known thing, which is seen and overlooked by every one, as something new. The first discoverer is usually that quite ordinary and unintellectual visionary--chance. 2, 105
The obvious satisfaction of the individual with his own form excites imitation and gradually creates the form of the many--that is, fashion. 2, 107
Who of us could dare to call himself a "free spirit" if he could not render homage after his fashion, by taking on his own shoulders a portion of that burden of public dislike and abuse, to men to whom this name is attached as a reproach? 2, 108
Immediate self-observation is not enough, by a long way, to enable us to learn to know ourselves. We need history, for the past continues to flow through us in a hundred channels. We ourselves are, after all, nothing but our own sensation at every moment of this continued flow. 2, 117
To young and fresh barbarian nations ... Christianity is a poison. 2, 120
Faith, indeed, has up to the present not been able to move real mountains, although I do not know who assumed that it could. But it can put mountains where there was none. 2, 121
Among travellers we may distinguish five grades. The first and lowest grade is of those who travel and are seen--they become really travelled and are, as it were, blind. Next come those who really see the world. The third class experience the results of their seeing. The fourth weave their experience into their life and carry it with them henceforth. Lastly, there are some men of the highest strength who, as soon as they have returned home, must finally and necessarily work out in their lives and productions all the things seen that they have experienced and incorporated in themselves.--Like these five species of travellers, all mankind goes through the whole pilgrimage of life, the lowest as purely passive, the highest as those who act and live out their lives without keeping back any residue of inner experiences. 2, 125
To treat all men with equal good-humour, and to be kind without distinctions of persons, may arise as much from a profound contempt for mankind as from an in-grained love of humanity. 2, 127
Towards science women and self-seeking artists entertain a feeling that is composed of envy and sentimentality. 2, 134
The intellectual strength of a woman is best proved by the fact that she offers her own intellect as a sacrifice out of love for a man and his intellect, and that nevertheless in the new domain, which was previously foreign to her nature, a second intellect at once arises as an aftergrowth, to which the man's mind impels her. 2, 136
By women Nature shows how far she has hitherto achieved her task of fashioning humanity, by man she shows what she has had overcome, and what she still proposes to do for humanity. 2, 137
Whence arises the sudden passion of a man for a woman, a passion so deep, so vital? Least of all from sensuality only: but when a man finds weakness, need of help, and high spirits united in the same creature, he suffers a sort of overflowing of soul, and is touched and offended at the same moment. At this point arises the source of great love. 2, 140
Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. 2, 140
The only remedy against Socialism that still lies in your power is to avoid provoking Socialism--in other words, to live in moderation and contentment, to prevent as far as possible all lavish display, and to aid the State as far as possible in its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries. 2, 145
Only a man of intellect should hold property: otherwise property is dangerous to the community. For the owner, not knowing how to make use of the leisure which his possessions might secure to him, will continue to strive after more property.... It excites envy in the poor and uncultured--who at bottom always envy culture and see no mask in the mask--and gradually paves the way for a social revolution. 2, 147-148
Only up to a certain point does possession make men feel freer and more independent; one step farther, and possession becomes lord, the possessor a slave. 2, 149
The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people independent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army, and a more refined, the school. 2, 152
To call a thing good not a day longer than it appears to us good, and above all not a day earlier--that is the only way to keep joy pure. 2, 158
To honour and acknowledge even the bad, when it _pleases_ one, and to have no conception of how one could be ashamed of being pleased thereat, is the mark of sovereignty in things great and small. 2, 158-159
When life has treated us in true robber fashion, and has taken away all that it could of honour, joys, connections, health, and property of every kind, we perhaps discover in the end, after the first shock, that we are richer than before. For now we know for the first time what is so peculiarly ours that no robber hand can touch it, and perhaps, after all the plunder and devastation, we come forward with the airs of a mighty real estate owner. 2, 162
You rank far below others when you try to establish the exception and they the rule. 2, 167
The most senile thought ever conceived about men lies in the famous saying, "The ego is always hateful," the most childish in the still more famous saying, "Love thy neighbour as thyself."--With the one knowledge of men has ceased, with the other it has not yet begun. 2, 172
You find your burden of life too heavy? Then you must increase the burden of your life. 2, 176
That the world is _not_ the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is sufficiently proved by the fact that that _bit of the world_ which we know--I mean our human reason--is none too reasonable. And if _this_ is not eternally and wholly wise and reasonable, the rest of the world will not be so either. 2, 184
There exists a simulated contempt for all things that mankind actually holds most important, for all everyday matters. For instance, we say "we only eat to live"--an abominable _lie,_ like that which speaks of the procreation of children as the real purpose of all sexual pleasure. Conversely, the reverence for "the most important things" is hardly ever quite genuine. 2, 185
The doctrine of free will is an invention of the ruling classes. 2, 190
If a God created the world, he created man to be his ape, as a perpetual source of amusement in the midst of his rather tedious eternities. 2, 193
The robber and the man of power who promises to protect a community from robbers are perhaps at bottom beings of the same mould, save that the latter attains his ends by other means than the former--that is to say, through regular imposts paid to him by the community, and no longer through forced contributions. 2, 200
The sting of conscience, like the gnawing of a dog at a stone, is mere foolishness. 2, 217
Rights may be traced to traditions, traditions to momentary agreements. 2, 217
Morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence. Its motives are fear and hope, and these in a more coarse, rough, and powerful form, the more the propensity towards the perverse, one-sided, and personal still persists. 2, 221
Moral prohibitions, like those of the Decalogue, are only suited to ages when reason lies vanquished. 2, 223
It is difficult to explain why pity is so highly prized, just as we need to explain why the unselfish man, who is originally despised or feared as being artful, is praised. 2, 224
The sum-total of our conscience is all that has regularly been demanded of us, without reason, in the days of our childhood, by people whom we respected or feared. 2, 224
Every word is a preconceived judgment. 2, 225
The fatalism of the Turk has this fundamental defect, that it contrasts man and fate as two distinct things. Man, says this doctrine, may struggle against fate and try to baffle it, but in the end fate will always gain the victory. Hence the most rational course is to resign oneself or to live as one pleases. As a matter of fact, every man is himself a piece of fate. When he thinks that he is struggling against fate in this way, fate is accomplishing its ends even in that struggle. The combat is a fantasy, but so is the resignation in fate--all these fantasies are included in fate.--The fear felt by most people of the doctrine that denies the freedom of the will is a fear of the fatalism of the Turk. They imagine that man will become weakly resigned and will stand before the future with folded hands, because he cannot alter anything of the future. Or that he will give a free rein to his caprices, because the predestined cannot be made worse by that course. The follies of men are as much a piece of fate as are his wise actions, and even that fear of belief in fate is a fatality. You yourself, you poor timid creature, are that indomitable _Moira,_ which rules even the Gods; whatever may happen, you are a curse or a blessing, and in any case the fetters wherein the strongest lies bound: in you the whole future of the human world is predestined, and it is no use for you to be frightened of yourself. 2, 228-229
In the first era of the higher humanity courage is accounted the most noble virtue, in the next justice, in the third temperance, in the fourth wisdom. 2, 230
Superficial, inexact observation sees contrasts everywhere in nature (for instance, "hot and cold"), where there are no contrasts, only differences of degree. 2, 231
On two hypotheses alone is there any sense in prayer, that not quite extinct custom of olden times. It would have to be possible either to fix or alter the will of the godhead, and the devotee would have to know best himself what he needs and should really desire. Both hypotheses, axiomatic and traditional in all other religions, are denied by Christianity. 2, 235-233
Distrust is the touchstone for the gold of certainty. 2, 266
Wrath and punishment are our inheritance from the animals. Man does not become of age until he has restored to the animals this gift of the cradle.--Herein lies buried one of the mightiest ideas that men can have, the idea of a progress of all progresses.--Let us go forward together a few millenniums, my friends! There is still reserved for mankind a great deal of joy, the very scent of which has not yet been wafted to the men of our day! Indeed, we may promise ourselves this joy, nay summon and conjure it up as a necessary thing, so long as the development of human reason does not stand still. Some day we shall no longer be reconciled to the logical sin that lurks in all wrath and punishment, whether exercised by the individual or by society--some day, when head and heart have learnt to live as near together as they now are far apart. That they no longer stand so far apart as they did originally is fairly palpable from a glance at the whole course of humanity. The individual who can review a life of introspective work will become conscious of the _rapprochement_ arrived at, with a proud delight at the distance he has bridged, in order that he may thereupon venture upon more ample hopes. 2, 284-285
Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist.... 2, 286
The more fully and thoroughly we live, the more ready we are to sacrifice life for a single pleasurable emotion. 2, 288
All intellectual movements whereby the great may hope to rob and the small to save, are sure to prosper. 2, 311-312
The desire for victory and pre-eminence is an ineradicable trait of human nature, older and more primitive than any respect of or joy in equality. 2, 312
If all alms were given only out of compassion, the whole tribe of beggars would long since have died of starvation.... The greatest of almsgivers is cowardice. 2, 317
The exertion of power is laborious and demands courage. That is why so many do not assert their most valid rights, because their rights are a kind of power, and they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise them. _Indulgence_ and _patience_ are the names given to the virtues that cloak these faults. 2, 319-320
"Stupid as a man," say the women; "Cowardly as a woman," say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine. 2, 328
All political work, even with great statesmen, is an improvisation that trusts to luck. 2, 332
The so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, of a disposition that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly from hate, partly from fear, refuses to lay down its weapons. Better to perish than to hate and fear, and twice as far better to perish than to make oneself hated and feared--this must some day become the supreme maxim of every political community!... 2, 236
In order that property may henceforth inspire more confidence and become more moral, we should keep open all the paths of work for small fortunes, but should prevent the effortless and sudden acquisition of wealth. Accordingly, we should take all the branches of transport and trade which favour the accumulation of large fortunes--especially, therefore, the money market--out of the hands of private persons or private companies, and look upon those who own too much, just as upon those who own nothing, as types fraught with danger to the community. 2, 340
If we try to determine the value of labour by the amount of time, industry, good or bad will, constraint, inventiveness or laziness, honesty or make-believe bestowed upon it, the valuation can never be a just one. For the whole personality would have to be thrown into the scale, and this is impossible. 2, 340
The _exploitation_ of the worker was, as we now understand, a piece of folly, a robbery at the expense of the future, a jeopardisation of society. We almost have the war now, and in any case the expense of maintaining peace, of concluding treaties and winning confidence, will henceforth be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and long-lasting. 2, 341
The masses are as far as possible removed from Socialism as a doctrine of altering the acquisition of property. If once they get the steering-wheel into their hands, through great majorities in their Parliaments, they will attack with progressive taxation the whole dominant system of capitalists, merchants, and financiers, and will in fact slowly create a middle class which may forget Socialism like a disease that has been overcome. 2, 343
The Two Principles of the New Life.--_First Principle:_ to arrange one's life on the most secure and tangible basis, not as hitherto upon the most distant, undetermined, and cloudy foundation. _Second Principle:_ to establish the rank of the nearest and nearer things, and of the more and less secure, before one arranges one's life and directs it to a final end. 2, 351
Through the certain prospect of death a precious, fragrant drop of frivolity might be mixed with every day life--and now, you singular druggist-souls, you have made of death a drop of poison, unpleasant to taste, which makes the whole of life hideous. 2, 355
We speak of Nature, and, in doing so, forget ourselves: we ourselves are Nature, _quand même_. 2, 356-357
We should not let ourselves be burnt for our opinions--we are not so certain of them as all that. But we might let ourselves be burnt for the right of possessing and changing our opinions. 2, 358
Man has been bound with many chains, in order that he may forget to comport himself like an animal. And indeed he has become more gentle, more intellectual, more joyous, more meditative than any animal. But now he still suffers from having carried his chains so long, from having been so long without pure air and free movement--these chains, however, are, as I repeat again and again, the ponderous and significant errors of moral, religious, and metaphysical ideas. Only when the disease of chains is overcome is the first great goal reached--the separation of man from the brute. 2, 362-363
III
"The Dawn of Day"
The first work to follow the transitional and preparatory criticism and comment of "Human, All-Too-Human" was "The Dawn of Day" ("_Morgen-röte_"). Such a treatise dealing with Nietzsche's constructive and analytical thinking, was no doubt expected. No man could so effectively rattle the bones of the older gods, could so wantonly trample down the tenets strengthened by the teachings of centuries, could so ruthlessly annihilate the accepted ethical standards and religious formulæ, unless there existed back of his bludgeon a positivity of will which implied creation and construction. Nietzsche realised the significance of this new book, and at its completion, early in 1881, sent an urgent letter to his publisher requesting its immediate printing. The publisher, however, failing to attach any importance to the document, delayed its issuance until late in the summer, at which time its appearance caused no excitement and but little comment.
"The Dawn of Day" nevertheless ranks among Nietzsche's best works. Its title, frankly symbolic, reflects the nature of its contents. It was the beginning of Nietzsche's positive philosophy. In it he begins his actual work of reconstruction. Many of its passages form the foundation of those later books wherein he augmented and developed his theories. However, there is here no radical change in his thought. The passages are logical sequences to that simple nihilism of prevailing customs which occupied him in his former essays. In his earliest beginnings we can see evidences of the direction his teachings were to take. His books up to the last were mainly developments and elaborations of the thoughts which were in his mind from the first. Though often vaguely conceived and unco-ordinated, these thoughts were the undeniable property of his own thinking. Although there have been many attempts to trace eclectic influences to the men of his time, and especially to Schopenhauer, the results of such critical endeavours have been easily controverted by the plainest of internal evidence. The philosophical Nietzsche has his roots firmly implanted in the scholastic Nietzsche; and though in superficial and non-important phases of his thought he changed from time to time, the most diligent research fails to reveal direct contradictions in any of his fundamental doctrines.
In "The Dawn of Day" Nietzsche goes again into the origin of morality. He carries his analyses further and supports them by additional enquiries and by more complicated processes of reasoning. Having ascertained the place which morals assume in the human scale and determined their relation to racial necessities, he points out that their application as permanent and unalterable mandates works havoc in any environment save that in which they were conceived. Inasmuch as all morality is at bottom but an expression of expediency, it follows that, since the means of expediency change under varying conditions, morality must change to meet the constantly metamorphosing conditions of society. And since the conditions of life are never the same in all nations, moral codes must likewise adapt themselves to geography in order to fulfil their function. The existing code of morals, namely: the Christian doctrine, grew out of conditions which were not only different from those in which we live to-day, but in many instances diametrically opposed to them. Nietzsche saw a grave danger in adhering to an ethical system which was not relative to the modern man, and argues that the result of such a morality would produce effects which would have no intelligent bearing on the racial problems of the present day. Knowing the deep-rooted superstition in man regarding the "divine" origin of moral laws, he undertakes the task of relating all ancient codes to the racial conditions existent at their inception, thus constructing a human origin for them.
Christianity, being the greatest moral force of the day, attracted Nietzsche's attention the most, and in "The Dawn of Day" much space is devoted to a consideration of it. While in tone these paragraphs are milder than those which followed in "The Antichrist," they nevertheless are among the profoundest criticisms which Nietzsche made of Nazarene morality. Though only a portion of the aphorisms contained in this work are devoted to an evaluation of theological modes of conduct, stumbling blocks are thrown in the path of an acceptance of Jewish ethics which the most sapient of modern ecclesiastics have been unable to remove. Out of certain aphorisms found here grew "The Antichrist" which is the most terrible and effective excoriation that Christianity has ever called forth. Beginning on page 66 of "The Dawn of Day" there appears one of Nietzsche's most fundamental passages dealing with Christianity. It is called "The First Christian," and is an analysis of the Apostle Paul. No theological dialectician has been able to answer it. Here is an aphorism so illuminating, so profound, yet so brief, as to dazzle completely the lay mind.
However, Christianity is but one of the subjects dealt with in "The Dawn of Day." The book covers the whole field of modern morality. Says Nietzsche in his introduction; "In this book we find a 'subterrestrial' at work, digging, mining, undermining.... I went down into the deepest depths; I tunnelled to the very bottom; I started to investigate and unearth an old _faith_ which for thousands of years we philosophers used to build on as the safest of all foundations.... I began to undermine our _faith in morals."_ It is true that from the beginning of history there has existed a ruling scale of values determining the acts of humanity. Morality implies the domination of certain classes which, in order to inspire reverence in arbitrary dictates, have invested their codes with an authority other than a human one. Thus has criticism been stifled. Morality has had the means of intimidation on its side, and has discouraged investigation by exercising severe penalties. Consequently morality has accumulated and grown, gathered power and swept on without its thinkers, its philosophers or its analysts. Of all the sciences, the science of conduct has been the last to attract investigators.
The vogue of that style of philosophy which was founded on the tradition of speculation and honeycombed with presuppositions, did not pass out until the advent of Darwin's evolutionism. But even the inauguration of biology and sociology did not entirely eliminate the metaphysical assumption from constructive thinking. The scientists themselves, not excluding Darwin, hesitated to acknowledge the laws of natural selection and of the survival of the fit. Neo-Lamarckism was but one of the reactions against this tough and unpleasant theory. Alfred Russel Wallace and, to take an even more significant figure, Herbert Spencer, endeavoured to refute the possibility of a biological basis in thought and thus to avoid an acquiescence to the Darwinian research. John Fiske, an avowed evolutionist, indirectly repudiated the scientific origin of philosophy; and likewise most of the lesser thinkers, following the exposition of Darwin's theories, refused to apply to man the biological laws governing the animal kingdom. Balfour and Huxley sensed the incongruities and variances in this new mode of thinking, and strove to bridge the chasm between natural science and human conduct, and to construct a system of ethics which would possess a logical and naturalistic foundation. But in both cases the question was begged. We find Balfour building up a moral system which, while it did not deny Darwinism, had for its end the destruction, or at least the alteration, of natural laws. And Huxley defines human progress as an overcoming of biological principles. Thus, even in the most materialistic of physio-psychologists, the subjugation of natural laws was the primary thesis. Biology, therefore, instead of being used as a basis to further philosophy, was considered an obstacle which philosophy had to overcome.
Nietzsche saw that a science of conduct based on natural and physiological laws was a possible and logical thing. And in him, for the first time in the history of philosophical thought, do we find a scholarly and at the same time an intellectual critic of authorised standards. The biological point of view was never lost sight of by him. If at times he seemed to abandon it, it was but for a brief period; he ever came back to it. Even his most abstract passages have their feet implanted in the fact that all phenomena are answerable to the law of vital fitness. Before the tribunal of biology Nietzsche arraigns and tries every phase of his thought, whether it deals with physical phenomena, ethical conduct or with abstract reasoning. Philosophy, for centuries divorced from science, is here clothed in the garments of scientific experimentation; a relationship is established between these two planes of rationalism and empiricism which have always been considered by other thinkers as detached and unrelated. Nor does Nietzsche ally himself, either consciously or unconsciously, with such philosophers as Bruno and Plato (who stood between the scientific thinkers on the one hand and the abstract dialecticians on the other), and attempt a formulation of a system of thought founded on intuitive processes. Such poetic conceptions had no fascination for him except as they were directly applicable to the problem of the universe. Those men who busied themselves with the mere theory of knowledge he held as supererogatory cobweb-spinners; and even in the realm of metaphysicians such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, he dallied but casually. His aim was to relate all thought to determinable values of life.
In his introduction Nietzsche calls morality the Circe of philosophies, and adds: "For, to what is it due that, from Plato onwards, all the philosophic architects in Europe have built in vain?" Later beneath his analysis--which never assumes the negative qualities of the metaphysical--the moral phenomenon goes to pieces, not by a few simple strokes, nor yet by the effrontery of cynicism or pessimism, but by the most careful and intricate surgery. He points out the great heretics of history as examples of the men who, looked at through the eyes of contemporaries, were "wicked" men, but who, under different environmental circumstances, were considered "good." He denies the static hypothesis on which morality is built, and postulates the theory that immorality is not without its place in the development of the reason. He is constantly attempting to translate the existing moral values into terms of their true nature, not necessarily into immoralities, but into natural unmoralities. The accepted virtues, such as pity, honesty, faith, obedience, service, loyalty and self-sacrifice, are questioned in their relation to racial needs; and modern attitudes toward all human activities are traced to their causes and judged as to their influence.
The research work in the present book differs from that contained in previous volumes. Heretofore Nietzsche indulged in inquiry without speculation; he dealt mainly with generalities. His analyses were along broad lines of human conduct. He confined himself for the most part to principles. But in "The Dawn of Day" these principles are balanced with existent morality. Specific modes of moral and ethical endeavour are weighed against expediency. Nietzsche presents a diagnosis of the fundamental nature of society to-day, and discovers many contradictions and inconsistencies between modern social needs and those virtues held in the highest reverence. He finds that deportmental means made use of by weak and subjugated peoples of ancient times to protect themselves against hostile invaders, are retained and practised to-day by nations whose position has been reversed to one of domination. In short, he points out that certain moralities have, by the alteration of national and racial conditions, become irrelevancies. Consequently there is often a compromise between ethical beliefs and ethical practices--a compromise made necessary by the demands of social intercourse. Even when the practice of these ancient moralities is conscientiously indulged in, Nietzsche denies their adequacy in coping with modern conditions, pointing out specific instances in which necessity and habit are constantly impinging. For instance, the softer virtues of a democratic and socialistic morality are shown to be desirable only in weakened nations where the hardier virtues of egotism, cruelty, efficiency, hard-mindedness, selfishness and retaliation would work directly against preservation.
Out of these conclusions grows a plea for individualism, and out of this individualism the superman can be seen rearing his head above the horizon of present-day humanity. The qualities of this man of the future are defined, and a finger is pointed along the necessary lines of racial culture. Nietzsche's first definite voicing of marriage ideals follows in the train of the superman's appearance, and the first comments of this philosopher in his criticism of woman are set down. In this latter regard Nietzsche has been unfairly interpreted by those who have considered his attitude toward woman superficially or without relating it to his general theories. It would be well therefore for the student to withhold judgment in this particular until the various elements of Nietzsche's philosophical system have been co-ordinated and understood. Woman plays an important, if small, part in his writings, and his passages dealing with women should be carefully weighed in conjunction with his theory of the superman.
In "The Dawn of Day" Nietzsche's conception of class distinction is defined and related to his later teachings. Throughout his analyses runs a subtle undercurrent of his doctrine, of social segregation which finds definite expression toward the end of the volume where modern socialism, with its altruism and philanthropy, is traced to its birth in Nazarene morality. In place of this present popular form of ethics Nietzsche proposes a social régime in which aristocratic culture will be set apart from mere utilitarian culture by very definite boundaries. He argues that not only is this disassociation in accord with the instincts of mankind, but that, as a workable theorem, it adequately answers the needs of present conditions. The slave-morality and the master-morality which he develops in his later works are defined tentatively and suggested by inference in many of the aphorisms. Out of this conception grew his dominant principle of the "will to power," and in "The Dawn of Day" we find this principle set forth in adequate definition for the first time, although the development of the idea is left till later. However, Nietzsche makes clear its point of divergence from the Schopenhauerian theory of the "will to live" as well as from the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest.
But it is not alone abstract theory that occupies the pages of this book. Nietzsche is never the mere metaphysician battling in an unreal world. There are few dark closets and secret passageways in his thought. Beyond a metaphysical hypothesis he does not go. He adheres to demonstrable formulas, and reasons along lines of strictest reality. The practical man he holds in high esteem, and constantly praises the advance of science. He devotes pages to the blowing to pieces of metaphysical air-castles. But, as I have previously pointed out, he is in no sense of the word a materialist; nor is his assumption of the world that of the realists. Life to Nietzsche is an eternal struggle toward--no goal. The lessons the world has to teach are as so much false doctrine. The meaning of life--the so-called absolute truth--is but a chimera. Intelligence is a process, not an ultimatum. The truth is mobile and dual, dependent on varying causes. In accepting the material world, Nietzsche does not grant it. In assuming natural laws, he denies them. In his adherence to logic and to the processes of cause and effect, he is accepting phantoms and inconsistencies, and yet it is along these lines that the race progresses.
In "The Dawn of Day" Nietzsche makes use of the same aphoristic style as that employed in "Human, All-Too-Human." (This broken, staccato form he uses throughout the remainder of his works, except in certain parts of "Thus Spake Zarathustra.") Each paragraph is captioned and deals with a specific phase of morality or with a definite critical attitude toward human conduct. Some of these paragraphs are scarcely a line in length--mere definitions or similes. Others extend over several pages. But they always pertain to a single idea. Occasionally they are in the form of a brief conversation; at other times they are short queries. One of these aphorisms is entitled "The Battle Dispensary of the Soul," and this is what follows: "What is the most efficacious remedy? Victory." That is all--brief, and perhaps, on first reading, inconsequent. But study it a moment, and you will find in it the nucleus of a great revolutionary doctrine. On the other hand, turn to aphorism 142, called "Sympathy," and you will discover several pages of flashing commentary. Out of the chaos of his style springs a feeling of plastic form. These brief paragraphs are not detached and desultory. They are pyramided on one another, and beneath them runs an undercurrent of unified thinking. When the end of the book is reached we have a carefully fabricated edifice, and we realise that each paragraph has been some necessary beam or decoration in its construction.
EXCERPTS FROM "THE DAWN OF DAY"
Morality is nothing else (and, above all, nothing more) than obedience to customs, of whatsoever nature they may be. But customs are simply the traditional way of acting and valuing. Where there is no tradition there is no morality; and the less life is governed by tradition, the narrower the circle of morality. The free man is immoral, because it is his _will_ to depend upon himself and not upon tradition: in all the primitive states of humanity "evil" is equivalent to "individual," "free," "arbitrary," "unaccustomed," "unforeseen," "incalculable." In such primitive conditions, always measured by this standard, any action performed--_not_ because tradition commands it, but for other reasons _(e.g.,_ on account of its individual utility), even for the same reasons as had been formerly established by custom--is termed immoral, and is felt to be so even by the very man who performs it, for it has not been done out of obedience to tradition. 14-15
Popular medicines and popular morals are closely related, and should not be considered and valued, as is still customary, in so different a way: both are most dangerous and make-believe sciences. 19
All those superior men, who felt themselves irresistibly urged on to throw off the yoke of some morality or other, had no other resource--_if they were not really mad--_than to feign madness, or actually to become insane. And this holds good for innovators in every department of life, and not only in religion and politics. 21
Every one who has hitherto overthrown a law of established morality has always at first been considered as a _wicked man:_ but when it was afterwards found impossible to re-establish the law, and people gradually became accustomed to the change, the epithet was changed by slow degrees. History deals almost exclusively with these _wicked men,_ who later on came to be recognised as _good men._ 28
A man who is under the influence of the morality of custom comes to despise causes first of all, secondly consequences, and thirdly reality, and weaves all his higher feelings (reverence, sublimity, pride, gratitude, love) _into an imaginary world:_ the so-called higher world. And even to-day we can see the consequences of this: wherever, and in whatever fashion, man's feelings are raised, that imaginary world is in evidence. 40
The history of the moral feelings is entirely different from the history of moral conceptions. The first-mentioned are powerful before the action, and the latter especially after it, in view of the necessity for making one's self clear in regard to them. 41
Trusting in our feelings simply means obeying our grandfather and grandmother more than the gods within _ourselves:_ our reason and experience. 41
The same impulse, under the impression of the blame cast upon it by custom, develops into the painful feeling of cowardice, or else the pleasurable feeling of _humility,_ in case a morality, like that of Christianity, has taken it to its heart and called it _good._ 43
_The origin becomes of less significance in proportion as we acquire insight into it;_ whilst things nearest to ourselves, around and within us, gradually begin to manifest their wealth of colours, beauties, enigmas, and diversity of meaning, of which earlier humanity never dreamed. 52
Only when man shall have acquired a knowledge of all things will he be able to know himself. For things are but the boundaries of man. 53
To whatever height mankind may have developed--and perhaps in the end it will not be so high as when they began!--there is as little prospect of their attaining to a higher order as there is for the ant and the earwig to enter into kinship with God and eternity at the end of their career on earth. What is to come will drag behind it that which has passed: why should any little star, or even any little species on that star, form an exception to that eternal drama? Away with such sentimentalities! 54
Those earnest, able, and just men of profound feelings, who are still Christians at heart, owe it to themselves to make one attempt to live for a certain space of time without Christianity! They owe it to _their faith_ that they should thus for once take up their abode "in the wilderness"--if for no other reason than that of being able to pronounce on the question as to whether Christianity is needful. 63
Christianity has the instinct of a hunter for finding out all those who may by hook or by crook be driven to despair--only a very small number of men can be brought to this despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those, and pursues them. 65
The "demon" Eros becomes an object of greater interest to mankind than all the angels and saints put together, thanks to the mysterious Mumbo-Jumboism of the Church in all things erotic: it is due to the Church that love stories, even in our own time, have become the one common interest which appeals to all classes of people--with an exaggeration which would be incomprehensible to antiquity, and which will not fail to provoke roars of laughter in coming generations. 78
It is only those who never--or always--attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of _the art of false reading._ 85
Christianity wants blindness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above the waves under which reason has been drowned!... 90
What if God were not exactly truth, and if this were proved? And if he were instead of vanity, the desire for power, the ambitious, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?... 93
One Becomes Moral--but not because one is moral! Submission to morals may be due to slavishness or vanity, egoism or resignation, dismal fanaticism or thoughtlessness. It may, again, be an act of despair, such as submission to the authority of a ruler; but there is nothing moral about it _per se._ 97
Morals are constantly undergoing changes and transformations, occasioned by successful crimes. 97
I deny morality in the same way as I deny alchemy, _i.e.,_ I deny its hypotheses; but I do not deny that there have been alchemists who believed in these hypotheses and based their actions upon them. I also deny immorality--not that innumerable people feel immoral, but that there is any true reason why they should feel so, should not, of course, deny--unless I were a fool--that many actions which are called immoral should be avoided and resisted; and in the same way that many which are called moral should be performed and encouraged; but I hold that in both cases these actions should be performed from motives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time. We must learn anew in order that at last, perhaps very late in the day, we may be able to do something more: feel anew. 100
It is a prejudice to think that morality is more favourable to the development of the reason than immorality. It is erroneous to suppose that the unconscious aim in the development of every conscious being (namely, animal, man, humanity, etc.) is its "great happiness"; on the contrary, there is a particular and incomparable happiness to be attained at every stage of our development, one that is neither high nor low, but quite an individual happiness. Evolution does not make happiness its goal; it aims merely at evolution, and nothing else. It is only if humanity had a universally recognised goal that we could propose to do this or that: for the time being there is no such goal. It follows that the pretensions of morality should not be brought into any relationship with mankind: this would be merely childish and irrational. It is quite another thing to recommend a goal to mankind: this goal would then be something that would depend upon our own will and pleasure. Provided that mankind in general agreed to adopt such a goal, it could then impose a moral law upon itself, a law which would, at all events, be imposed by their own free will. 105
Our duties are the claims which others have upon us. How did they acquire these claims? By the fact that they considered us as capable of making and holding agreements and contracts, by assuming that we were their like and equals, and by consequently entrusting something to us, bringing us up, educating us, and supporting us. 110
My rights consist of that part of my power which others have not only conceded to me, but which they wish to maintain for me. 111
The desire for distinction is the desire to subject one's neighbor.... 113
On this mirror--and our intellect is a mirror--something is going on that indicates regularity: a certain thing is each time followed by another certain thing. When we perceive this and wish to give it a name, we call it cause and effect,--fools that we are! as if in this we had understood or could understand anything! For, of course, we have seen nothing but the images of causes and effects, and it is just this figurativeness which renders it impossible for us to see a more substantial relation than that of sequence!... 129
Pity, in so far as it actually gives rise to suffering--and this must be our only point of view here--is a weakness, like every other indulgence in an injurious emotion. It increases suffering throughout the world, and although here and there a certain amount of suffering may be indirectly diminished or removed altogether as a consequence of pity, we must not bring forward these occasional consequences, which are on the whole insignificant, to justify the nature of pity which, as has already been stated, is prejudicial. Supposing that it prevailed, even if only for one day, it would bring humanity to utter ruin. In itself the nature of pity is no better than that of any other craving; it is only where it is called for and praised--and this happens when people do not understand what is injurious in it, but find in it a sort of joy--that a good conscience becomes attached to it; it is only then that we willingly yield to it, and do not shrink from acknowledging it. In other circumstances where it is understood to be dangerous, it is looked upon as a weakness; or, as in the case of the Greeks, as an unhealthy periodical emotion the danger of which might be removed by temporary and voluntary discharges. 144-145
You say that the morality of pity is a higher morality than that of stoicism? Prove it! But take care not to measure the "higher" and "lower" degrees of morality once more by moral yardsticks; for there are no absolute morals. So take your yardstick from somewhere else, and be on your guard!... 149
If, in accordance with the present definition, only those actions are moral which are done for the sake of others, and for their sake only, then there are no moral actions at all! If, in accordance with another definition, only those actions are moral which spring from our own free will, then there are no moral actions in this case either! What is it, then, that we designate thus, which certainly exists and wishes as a consequence to be explained? It is the result of a few intellectual blunders; and supposing that we were able to free ourselves from these errors, what would then become of "moral actions"? It is due to these errors that we have up to the present attributed to certain actions a value superior to what was theirs in reality: we separated them from "egoistic" and "non-free" actions. When we now set them once more in the latter categories, as we must do, we certainly reduce their value (their own estimate of value) even below its reasonable level, because "egoistic" and "non-free" actions have up to the present been undervalued owing to that alleged profound and essential difference. 158-159
If I were a god, and a benevolent god, the marriages of men would cause me more displeasure than anything else. 162
We ought publicly to declare invalid the vows of lovers, and to refuse them permission to marry: and this because we should treat marriage itself much more seriously, so that in cases where it is now contracted it would not usually be allowed in future! Are not the majority of marriages such that we should not care to have them witnessed by a third party? And yet this third party is scarcely ever lacking--the child--and he is more than the witness; he is the whipping-boy and scapegoat. 163
Shame! You wish to form part of a system in which you must be a wheel, fully and completely, or risk being crushed by wheels! where it is understood that each one will be that which his superiors make of him! where the seeking for "connections" will form a part of one's natural duties! where no one feels himself offended when he has his attention drawn to some one with the remark, "He may be useful to you some time"; where people do not feel ashamed of paying a visit to ask for somebody's intercession, and where they do not even suspect that by such a voluntary submission to these morals, they are once and for all stamped as the common pottery of nature, which others can employ or break up of their free will without feeling in any way responsible for doing so,--just as if one were to say, "People of my type will never be lacking, therefore, do what you will with me! Do not stand on ceremony!" 169
In the glorification of "work" and the never-ceasing talk about the "blessing of labour," I see the same secret _arrière-pensée_ as I do in the praise bestowed on impersonal acts of a general interest, viz., a fear of everything individual. 176
Behind the principle of the present moral fashion: "Moral actions are actions performed out of sympathy for others," I see the social instinct of fear, which thus assumes an intellectual disguise.... 177
Whatever may be the influence in high politics of utilitarianism and the vanity of individuals and nations, the sharpest spur which urges them onwards is their need for the feeling of power--a need which rises not only in the souls of princes and rulers, but also gushes forth from time to time from inexhaustible sources in the people. 186
As the aristocrat is able to preserve the appearance of being possessed of a superior physical force which never leaves him, he likewise wishes by his aspect of constant serenity and civility of disposition, even in the most trying circumstances, to convey the impression that his mind and soul are equal to all dangers and surprises....
This indisputable happiness of aristocratic culture, based as it is on the feeling of superiority, is now beginning to rise to ever higher levels; for now, thanks to the free spirits, it is henceforth permissible and not dishonourable for people who have been born and reared in aristocratic circles to enter the domain of knowledge, where they may secure more intellectual consecrations and learn chivalric services even higher than those of former times, and where they may look up to that ideal of victorious wisdom which as yet no age has been able to set before itself with so good a conscience as the period which is about to dawn. 203-205
What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the Stock Exchange: what gives rise to all this? It is not real want,--for their existence is by no means precarious; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying--but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. In this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning Jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of Peru and Mexico). The means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done "for the love of God" is now done for the love of money, _i.e.,_ for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience. 209-210
"Enthusiastic sacrifice," "self-immolation"--these are the catch-words of your morality.... In reality ... you only _appear_ to sacrifice yourselves; for your imagination turns you into gods and you enjoy yourselves as such. 226-227
Ceremonies, official robes and court dresses, grave countenances, solemn aspects, the slow pace, involved speech--everything, in short, known as dignity--are all pretences adopted by those who are timid at heart: they wish to make themselves feared (themselves or the things they represent). The fearless (_i.e.,_ originally those who naturally inspire others with awe) have no need of dignity and ceremonies.... 230
A strange thing, this punishment of ours! It does not purify the criminal; it is not a form of expiation; but, on the contrary, it is even more defiling than the crime itself. 235
When a vigorous nature has not an inclination towards cruelty, and is not always preoccupied with itself, it involuntarily strives after gentleness--this is its distinctive characteristic. Weak natures, on the other hand, have a tendency towards harsh judgments.... 236
Kindness has been best developed by the long dissimulation which endeavoured to appear as kindness: wherever great power existed the necessity for dissimulation of this nature was recognised--it inspires security and confidence, and multiplies the actual sum of our physical power. Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. The persistent exercise of such a dissimulation ends by bringing about the actual nature of the thing itself: the dissimulation in the long run suppresses itself, and organs and instincts are the unexpected fruits in this garden of hypocrisy. 242
Neither necessity nor desire, but the love of power, is the demon of mankind. You may give men everything possible--health, food, shelter, enjoyment--but they are and remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits; and must be satisfied. 243
It is probable that there are no pure races, but only races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare. 253
How many married men have some morning awakened to the fact that their young wife is dull, although she thinks quite the contrary! not to speak of those wives whose flesh is willing but whose intellect is weak! 255
Could there be anything more repugnant than the sentimentality which is shown to plants and animals--and this on the part of a creature who from the very beginning has made such ravages among them as their most ferocious enemy--and who ends by even claiming affectionate feelings from his weakened and mutilated victims! Before this kind of "nature" man must above all be serious, if he is any sort of a thinking being. 258
Among cowards it is thought bad form to say anything against bravery, for any expression of this kind would give rise to some contempt; and unfeeling people are irritated when anything is said against pity. 259
It is the most sensual men who find it necessary to avoid women and to torture their bodies. 261
A young man can be most surely corrupted when he is taught to value the like-minded more highly than the differently minded. 262
The general knowledge of mankind has been furthered to a greater extent by fear than by love. 267
The sum-total of those internal movements which come naturally to men, and which they can consequently set in motion readily and gracefully, is called the soul--men are looked upon as void of soul when they let it be seen that their inward emotions are difficult and painful to them. 268
All rules have this effect: they distract our attention from the fundamental aim of the rule, and make us more thoughtless. 273
We are most certain to find idealistic theories among unscrupulously practical men; for such men stand in need of the lustre of these theories for the sake of their reputation. They adopt them instinctively without by any means feeling hypocritical in doing so--no more hypocritical than Englishmen with their Christianity and their Sabbath-keeping. 277
It is not sufficient to prove a case, we must also tempt or raise men to it. 278
Asceticism is the proper mode of thinking for those who must extirpate their carnal instincts, because these are ferocious beasts,--but only for such people! 278
You refuse to be dissatisfied with yourselves or to suffer from yourselves, and this you call your moral tendency! Very well; another may perhaps call it your cowardice! One thing, however, is certain, and that is, that you will never take a trip round the world (and you yourselves are this world), and you will always remain in yourselves an accident and a clod on the face of the earth! 282
The first effect of happiness is the feeling of power, and this feeling longs to manifest itself, whether towards ourselves or other men, or towards ideas and imaginary beings. Its most common modes of manifestation are making presents, derision, and destruction--all three being due to a common fundamental instinct. 286
We approve of marriage in the first place because we are not yet acquainted with it, in the second place because we have accustomed ourselves to it, and in the third place because we have contracted it--that is to say, in most cases. And yet nothing has been proved thereby in favour of the value of marriage in general. 287
The criminal who has been found out does not suffer because of the crime he has committed, but because of the shame and annoyance caused him either by some blunder which he has made or by being deprived of his habitual element. 289
Where our deficiencies are, there also is our enthusiasm. The enthusiastic principle "love your enemies" had to be invented by the Jews, the best haters that ever existed; and the finest glorifications of chastity have been written by those who in their youth led dissolute and licentious lives. 293
Women turn pale at the thought that their lover may not be worthy of them; Men turn pale at the thought that they may not be worthy of the women they love. I speak of perfect women, perfect men. 300-301
You wish to bid farewell to your passion? Very well, but do so without hatred against it! Otherwise you have a second passion.--The soul of the Christian who has freed himself from sin is generally ruined afterwards by the hatred for sin. Just look at the faces of the great Christians! they are the faces of great haters. 302
Men have become suffering creatures in consequence of their morals, and the sum-total of what they have obtained by those morals is simply the feeling that they are far too good and great for this world, and that they are enjoying merely a transitory existence on it. As yet the "proud sufferer" is the highest type of mankind. 309-310
Rights can only be conferred by one who is in full possession of power. 317
"The rule always appears to me to be more interesting than the exception"--whoever thinks thus has made considerable progress in knowledge, and is one of the initiated. 319
Through our love we have become dire offenders against truth, and even habitual dissimulators and thieves, who give out more things as true than seem to us to be true. 337-333
All the great excellencies of ancient humanity owed their stability to the fact that man was standing side by side with man, and that no woman was allowed to put forward the claim of being the nearest and highest, nay even sole object of his love, as the feeling of passion would teach. 351
Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions as truth, we should nevertheless not wish them alone to exist. I cannot see why we should ask for an autocracy and omnipotence of truth: it is sufficient for me to know that it is a great power. Truth, however, must meet with opposition and be able to fight, and we must be able to rest from it at times in falsehood--otherwise truth will grow tiresome, powerless, and insipid, and will render us equally so. 352-353.
To hear every day what is said about us, or even to endeavour to discover what people think about us, will in the end kill even the strongest man. Our neighbours permit us to live only that they may exercise a daily claim upon us! They certainly would not tolerate us if we wished to claim rights over them, and still less if we wished to be right! In short, let us offer up a sacrifice to the general peace, let us not listen when they speak of us, when they praise us, blame us, wish for us, or hope for us--nay, let us not even think of it. 357
How many really individual actions are left undone merely because before performing them we perceive or suspect that they will be misunderstood!--those actions, for example, which have some intrinsic value, both in good and evil. The more highly an age or a nation values its individuals, therefore, and the more right and ascendency we accord them, the more will actions of this kind venture to make themselves known, 359-360.
Love wishes to spare the other to whom it devotes itself any feeling of strangeness: as a consequence it is permeated with disguise and simulation; it keeps on deceiving continuously, and feigns an equality which in reality does not exist. And all this is done so instinctively that women who love deny this simulation and constant tender trickery, and have even the audacity to assert that love equalises (in other words that it performs a miracle)! 361
Truth in itself is no power at all.... Truth must either attract power to its side, or else side with power, for otherwise it will perish again and again. 363
We should ... take the greatest precautions in regard to everything connected with old age and its judgment upon life.... The reverence which we feel for an old man, especially if he is an old thinker and sage, easily blinds us to the deterioration of his intellect. 368
We must not make passion an argument for truth. 372
Have you experienced history within yourselves, commotions, earthquakes, long and profound sadness, and sudden flashes of happiness? Have you acted foolishly with great and little fools? Have you really undergone the delusions and woe of the good people? and also the woe and the peculiar happiness of the most evil? Then you may speak to me of morality, but not otherwise! 376
"What do I matter?" is written over the door of the thinker of the future. 379
The great man ever remains invisible in the greatest thing that claims worship, like some distant star: his victory over power remains without witnesses, and hence also without songs and singers. The hierarchy of the great men in all the past history of the human race has not yet been determined. 380
Whether what we are looking forward to is a thought or a deed, our relationship to every essential achievement is none other than that of pregnancy, and all our vainglorious boasting about "willing" and "creating" should be cast to the winds! True and ideal selfishness consists in always watching over and restraining the soul, so that our productiveness may come to a beautiful termination. ... Still, these pregnant ones are funny people! Let us therefore dare to be funny also, and not reproach others if they must be the same. 384-385
Honest towards ourselves, and to all and everything friendly to us; brave in the face of our enemy; generous towards the vanquished; polite at all times: such do the four cardinal virtues wish us to be. 387
There is no "eternal justice" which requires that every fault shall be atoned and paid for,--the belief that such a justice existed was a terrible delusion, and useful only to a limited extent; just as it is also a delusion that everything is guilt which is felt as such. It is not the things themselves, but the opinions about things that do not exist, which have been such a source of trouble to mankind. 391
What is the most efficacious remedy?--Victory. 393
The snake that cannot cast its skin perishes. So too with those minds which are prevented from changing their views: they cease to be minds. 394
IV
"The Joyful Wisdom"
In 1882 Nietzsche wrote and published "The Joyful Wisdom" ("_La Gay a Scienza_"). Although originally intended as a supplement to "The Dawn of Day," under which title it was to have been issued in a later edition of this earlier work, it differs greatly, not only from "The Dawn of Day," but from everything else Nietzsche ever wrote. The destructive spirit of "Human, All-Too-Human" is nowhere to be found in it. The revolutionary doctrines of "The Dawn of Day" are but vaguely echoed. It is a book which shows Nietzsche in a unique and isolated mood--a mood which, throughout his whole life did not return to him. Temperamentally "The Joyful Wisdom" comes nearer being a parallel to "Thus Spake Zarathustra" than to any of his other writings. But even this comparison goes to pieces when pushed beyond the most superficial aspects of the two books. Nietzsche was at Naumburg at the time of writing this work. A long-standing stomach malady had suddenly shown signs of leaving him, and the period during which he wrote "The Joyful Wisdom" was one of the happiest of his life. Heretofore a sombre seriousness had marked both his thoughts and the expression of them. In the two volumes of "Human, All-Too-Human" he had attempted a complete devastation of all codes and ideals. In "The Dawn of Day" he waged a bitter and serious warfare on modern moral standards and made attempts at supplanting them with new dogma. In "The Joyful Wisdom" he revealed an entirely new phase of his character--a lenient, jovial, almost buoyant attitude toward the world.
Although "The Joyful Wisdom" may be considered in the light of an interpolation into Nietzsche's philosophical works, the book is nevertheless among the most interesting of his output--not so much because it gives us any additions to the sum of his thinking, but because it throws a light on the philosopher himself. It may be lifted bodily out of his works without leaving a gap in the development of his doctrines, but it cannot be set aside without closing up a very important and significant facet in the man's nature. Unfortunately Nietzsche is looked upon as a man who was entirely consumed with rancour and hatred--a man unconscious of the comic side of existence--a thinker with whom pessimism was chronic. But this is only a half truth, a conclusion founded on partial evidence. Nietzsche's very earnestness at times defeated his own ends. "The Joyful Wisdom" is one of the most fundamentally hilarious books ever written. It deals with life as a supreme bit of humour. Yet there is little in it to provoke laughter. Nietzsche's humour is deeper than the externals. One finds no superficial jesting here, no smartness, no transient buffoonery. The book is a glorification of that subtle joy which accompanies the experiencing of knowledge. In order to catch its spirit it is necessary that one be familiar with the serious and formulating Nietzsche, for on his most serious doctrines is founded that attitude which makes "The Joyful Wisdom" hilarious. Once familiar with Nietzsche's earlier writings one may read the present book with a feeling of exhilaration unlike that produced by his more manifestly solemn writings.
However, despite the buoyancy of this document, it is, beneath the surface, as serious as anything Nietzsche has ever written. His conception of the world and his assumption of the underlying aspects of existence are founded on deeply conceived formulas. It must be borne in mind that Nietzsche's thought is in a large measure personal, that the development of his doctrines is due to very definite biographical causes and to the flux and reflux of his own emotions. His system is not a spontaneous and complete conception, the sudden fruit of his entire research given to the world in a unified body. To the contrary, it is an amassing of data, a constant building up of ideas. No one book contains his entire teachings, logically thought out and carefully organised. Rather is his philosophy an intricate structure which begins with his earliest essays and does not reach completion until the end of "The Will to Power." Each book has some specific place in his thought: each book assumes a position relative to all the rest. Thus in "The Joyful Wisdom" we have the turning point between the denying and destructive Nietzsche and the asserting and fashioning Nietzsche. Says he in the fourth and most important section called "Sanctus Januarius": _"Amor fati:[1]_ let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. _Looking aside,_ let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!"
In "The Joyful Wisdom" begins Nietzsche's almost fanatical joy in life. Here, too, we encounter for the first time the symbol of the dance. Nietzsche constantly makes use of this figure in his later writings. Especially in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" does he exhort his readers to indulge themselves in dancing. The blasphemies and hatreds characteristic of the philosopher in his more solemn moods are nowhere discernible in this new book. It is therefore of considerable importance to the student in forming a just estimate of Nietzsche. Here the hater has departed; the idol-smasher has laid down his weapons; the analyst has become the satyr; the logician has turned poet; the blasphemer has become the child. Only occasionally does the pendulum swing toward the sombre Apollonian pole: the Dionysian ideal of joy is dominant. The month of January inspired the book, and Nietzsche says in his _Ecce Homo_ that it was the most wonderful month of January he had ever spent. This spirit of gaiety was to remain with him in some degree throughout the remainder of his life. He realised that his preparatory work was completed. He saw his way clear to forge ahead as his doctrines led him; and his exuberance no doubt grew out of the satisfaction he took in this prospect.
Although the contents of "The Joyful Wisdom" are not inherently a part of Nietzsche's philosophy, but only detached applications of his theories--ideas which floated to the surface of his doctrines--the material encountered here is of wide and varied interest. There are criticisms of German and Southern culture; valuations of modern authors; views on the developments of art; theories of music; analyses of Schopenhauer and an explanation of his vogue; judgments of the ancient and the modern theatre; excursions into philological fields; arraignments of contemporary classicism; doctrines of creative artistry; personal paragraphs on mental culture, politics and commerce. ... The book is, in fact, more critical than philosophical.
Nietzsche never entirely dissevered himself from his time and from the habits, both of thought and action, which characterised his contemporaries. From his first academic essays to his last transvaluation of values, he remained the patient and analytical observer of the life about him. For this reason it has been argued among disciples of "pure" thinking that he was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a "philosopher," but rather a critically intellectual force. This diagnosis might carry weight had not Nietzsche avowedly built his philosophical structure on a repudiation of abstract thinking. This misunderstanding of him arose from the adherents of rational thinking overlooking the fact that, where the older philosophers had detached themselves from reality because of the instability of natural hypotheses, Nietzsche re-established human bases on which he founded his syllogisms. Therefore one should not attempt to divorce the purely critical from the purely philosophical in his writings. Even in a book so frankly critical as "The Joyful Wisdom" there is a directing force of theoretical unity.
This is especially true of the third section. This division is made up almost entirely of comments on men and affairs, short analyses of human attitudes, desultory excursions into the sociological, brief remarks on man's emotional nature, apothegms dealing with human attributes, bits of racy philosophical gossip, religious and scientific maxims, and the like. Sometimes these observations are cynical, sometimes gracious, sometimes bitter, sometimes buoyant, sometimes merely witty. But all of them are welded together by a profound conception of humanity.
The most stimulating division of the book is the fourth, in which Nietzsche's good humour is at its height. This section is a glorification of victory and of all those hardy qualities which go into the perfecting of the individual. Nietzsche reverses Schiller's famous doctrine expressed in "_Die Braut von Messina_": "Life is not of all good the highest." He sees no good over and beyond that of human relationships. The normal instincts to him are the ones which affirm life; the abnormal instincts are those which deny it. The former are summed up in the ethics of Greece under the sway of Dionysus; the latter are epitomised in the Christian religion.
The fifth book, called "We Fearless Ones," and the appendix of "Songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird" were written four years later than the other material and added with an introduction in a later edition of the book. These addenda, while less specific and of a more dialectic nature than the preceding parts, are in spirit manifestly the same as the rest of the book.
In "The Joyful Wisdom" we have again an aphoristic style of writing, although it has become keener and more sure of itself since "Human, All-Too-Human" and "The Dawn of Day." In making selections from this book I have chosen those passages which are more general in tone. The connection between the various aphorisms is here even slighter than is Nietzsche's wont, and for that reason no attempt has been made to present a continuous perception of the work. However, the excerpts which follow, though of a less popular nature, are more intimately related to his thoughts than the ones omitted, and consequently are of more interest to the student.
[Footnote 1: Love of (one's) destiny.]
EXCERPTS FROM "THE JOYFUL WISDOM"
Whether I look with a good or an evil eye upon men, I find them always at one problem, each and all of them: to do that which conduces to the conservation of the human species. 31
To laugh at oneself as one would have to laugh in order to laugh _out of the veriest truth,_--to do this the best have not hitherto had enough of the sense of truth, and the most endowed have had far too little genius! There is perhaps still a future even for laughter! 32
The ignoble nature is distinguished by the fact that it keeps its advantage steadily in view, and that this thought of the end and advantage is even stronger than its strongest impulse: not to be tempted to inexpedient activities by its impulses--that is its wisdom and inspiration. In comparison with the ignoble nature the higher nature is more irrational:--for the noble, magnanimous, and self-sacrificing person succumbs in fact to his impulses, and in his best moments his reason _lapses_ altogether. 37
The strongest and most evil spirits have hitherto advanced mankind the most: they always rekindled the sleeping passions--all orderly arranged society lulls the passions to sleep. 39
The lust of property and love: what different associations each of these ideas evokes!--and yet it might be the same impulse twice named. 51
The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual--and he does not call it poison. 56-57
The virtues of a man are called _good,_ not in respect of the results they have for himself, but in respect of the results which we expect therefrom for ourselves and for society.... The praise of the virtues is the praise of something which is privately injurious to the individual; it is praise of impulses which deprive man of his noblest self-love, and the power to take the best care of himself.... The "neighbour" praises unselfishness because _he profits by it!_ If the neighbour were "unselfishly" disposed himself, he would reject that destruction of power, that injury for _his advantage,_ he would thwart such inclinations in their origin, and above all he would manifest his unselfishness just by _not giving it a good name!_ 58-60
Living--that is to be cruel and inexorable towards all that becomes weak and old in ourselves, and not only in ourselves. 68
It is probable that the manufacturers and great magnates of commerce have hitherto lacked too much all those forms and attributes of a _superior race,_ which alone make persons interesting; if they had had the nobility of the newly-born in their looks and bearing, there would perhaps have been no socialism in the masses of the people. For these are really ready for _slavery_ of every kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and _born_ to command--by its noble presence! 78
When one continually prohibits the expression of the passions as something to be left to the "vulgar," to coarser, bourgeois, and peasant natures--that is, when one does not want to suppress the passions themselves, but only their language and demeanour, one nevertheless realises _therewith_ just what one does not want: the suppression of the passions themselves, or at least their weakening and alteration.... 83
In magnanimity there is the same amount of egoism as in revenge.... 86-87
Where bad eyesight can no longer see the evil impulse as such, on account of its refinement,--there man sets up the kingdom of goodness.... 88
To become the advocate of the rule--that may perhaps be the ultimate form and refinement in which nobility of character will reveal itself on earth. 90
Women are all skilful in exaggerating their weaknesses, indeed they are inventive in weaknesses, so as to seem quite fragile ornaments to which even a grain of dust does harm; their existence is meant to bring home to man's mind his coarseness, and to appeal to his conscience. 101
There is something quite astonishing and extraordinary in the education of women of the higher class; indeed, there is perhaps nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed to educate them with as much ignorance as possible _in erotics,_ and to inspire their soul with a profound shame of such things, and the extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of them. It is really here only that all the "honour" of women is at stake; what would one not forgive in them in other respects! But here they are intended to remain ignorant to the very backbone:--they are intended to have neither eyes, ears, words, nor thoughts for this, their "wickedness"; indeed knowledge here is already evil. And then! To be hurled as with an awful thunderbolt into reality and knowledge with marriage--and indeed by him whom they most love and esteem: to have to encounter love and shame in contradiction, yea, to have to feel rapture, abandonment, duty, sympathy, and fright at the unexpected proximity of God and animal, and whatever else besides! all at once!--There, in fact, a psychic entanglement has been effected which is quite unequalled! Even the sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner of men does not suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along with the solution of this enigma and the enigma of this solution; what dreadful, far-reaching suspicions must awaken thereby in the poor unhinged soul; and forsooth, how the ultimate philosophy and scepticism of the woman casts anchor at this point!--Afterwards the same profound silence as before: and often even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes to herself.--Young wives on that account make great efforts to appear superficial and thoughtless; the most ingenious of them simulate a kind of impudence.--Wives easily feel their husbands as a question-mark to their honour, and their children as an apology or atonement,--they require children, and wish for them in quite another spirit than a husband wishes for them.--In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards women! 104-105
Of what consequence is all our art in artistic products, if that higher art, the art of the festival, be lost by us? 124
The best thing I could say in honour of Shakespeare, _the man,_ is that he believed in Brutus and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus represents! 131
We must rest from ourselves occasionally by contemplating and looking down upon ourselves, and by laughing or weeping _over_ ourselves from an artistic remoteness: we must discover the _hero,_ and likewise the _fool,_ that is hidden in our passion for knowledge; we must now and then be joyful in our folly, that we may continue to be joyful in our wisdom! And just because we are heavy and serious men in our ultimate depth, and are rather weights than men, there is nothing that does us so much good as the _fool's cap and bells:_ we need them in presence of ourselves--we need all arrogant, soaring, dancing, mocking, childish and blessed Art, in order not to lose the _free dominion over things_ which our ideal demands of us. 146
The general character of the world ... is to all eternity chaos; not by the absence of necessity, but in the sense of the absence of order, structure, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever else our æsthetic humanities are called. Judged by our reason, the unlucky casts are far oftenest the rule, the exceptions are not the secret purpose; and the whole musical box repeats eternally its air, which can never be called a melody,--and finally the very expression, "unlucky cast" is already an anthropomorphising which involves blame. But how could we presume to blame or praise the universe! Let us be on our guard against ascribing to it heartlessness and unreason, or their opposites; it is neither perfect, nor beautiful, nor noble; nor does it seek to be anything of the kind, it does not at all attempt to imitate man! It is altogether unaffected by our æsthetic and moral judgments! Neither has it any self-preservative instinct, nor instinct at all; it also knows no law. Let us be on our guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. When you know that there is no design, you know also that there is no chance: for it is only where there is a world of design that the word "chance" has a meaning. Let us be on our guard against saying that death is contrary to life. The living being is only a species of dead being, and a very rare species.--Let us be on our guard against thinking that the world eternally creates the new. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is just another such error as the God of the Eleatics. 152-153.
Man has been reared by his errors: firstly, he saw himself always imperfect; secondly, he attributed to himself imaginary qualities; thirdly, he felt himself in a false position in relation to the animals and nature; fourthly, he always devised new tables of values, and accepted them for a time as eternal and unconditioned, so that at one time this, and at another time that human impulse or state stood first, and was ennobled in consequence. When one has deducted the effect of these four errors, one has also deducted humanity, humaneness, and "human dignity." 160
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. 161
There is no such thing as health in itself, and all attempts to define a thing in that way have lamentably failed. It is necessary to know thy aim, thy horizon, thy powers, thy impulses, thy errors, and especially the ideals and fantasies of thy soul, in order to determine _what_ health implies even for thy _body._ 163
Mystical explanations are regarded as profound; the truth is that they do not even go the length of being superficial. 169
I set the following propositions against those of Schopenhauer --Firstly, in order that Will may arise, an idea of pleasure and pain is necessary. Secondly, that a vigorous excitation may be felt as pleasure or pain, is the affair of the interpreting intellect, which, to be sure, operates thereby for the most part unconsciously to us, and one and the same excitation _may_ be interpreted as pleasure or pain. Thirdly, it is only in an intellectual being that there is pleasure, displeasure and Will; the immense majority of organisms have nothing of the kind. 171
Prayer has been devised for such men as have never any thoughts of their own, and to whom an elevation of the soul is unknown, or passes unnoticed. 171
Sin, as it is at present felt wherever Christianity prevails or has prevailed, is a Jewish feeling and a Jewish invention. 174
A Jesus Christ was only possible in a Jewish landscape--I mean in one over which the gloomy and sublime thunder-cloud of the angry Jehovah hung continually. 176
Where there is ruling there are masses: where there are masses there is need of slavery. Where there is slavery the individuals are but few, and have the instincts and conscience of the herd opposed to them. 183
We love the _grandeur_ of Nature and have discovered it; that is because human grandeur is lacking in our minds. 186
Egoism is the _perspective_ law of our sentiment, according to which the near appears large and momentous, while in the distance the magnitude and importance of all things diminish. 187
He who knows that he is profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to the multitude strives for obscurity. The multitude thinks everything profound of which it cannot see the bottom; it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water. 190
Thoughts are the shadows of our sentiments--always, however, obscurer, emptier, and simpler. 192
**To laugh means to love mischief, but with a good conscience. 196
Virtue gives happiness and a state of blessedness only to those who have a strong faith in their virtue:--not, however, to the more refined souls whose virtue consists of a profound distrust of themselves and of all virtue. After all, therefore, it is "faith that saves" here also!--and be it well observed, not _virtue_! 198
Although the most intelligent judges of the witches, and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchcraft, the guilt, nevertheless, was not there. So it is with all guilt. 205
It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do something to make the idea of life even a hundred times _more worthy of their attention._ 215-216
I greet all the signs indicating that a more manly and warlike age is commencing, which will, above all, bring heroism again into honour! For it has to prepare the way for a yet higher age, and gather the force which the latter will one day require,--the age which will carry heroism into knowledge, and _wage war_ for the sake of ideas and their consequences. 218-219
They are disagreeable to me, those men in whom every natural inclination forthwith becomes a disease, something disfiguring, or even disgraceful. _They_ have seduced us to the opinion that the inclinations and impulses of men are evil; _they_ are the cause of our great injustice to our own nature, and to all nature! There are enough of men who _may_ yield to their impulses gracefully and carelessly: but they do not do so, for fear of that imaginary "evil thing" in nature! _That is the cause_ why there is so little nobility to be found among men: the indication of which will always be to have no fear of oneself, to expect nothing disgraceful from oneself, to fly without hesitation whithersoever we are impelled--we free-born birds! Wherever we come, there will always be freedom and sunshine around us. 229
Every one knows at present that the ability to endure contradiction is a high indication of culture. Some people even know that the higher man courts opposition, and provokes it, so as to get a cue to his hitherto unknown partiality. But the _ability_ to contradict, the attainment of _good_ conscience in hostility to the accustomed, the traditional and the hallowed,--that is more than both the above-named abilities, and is the really great, new and astonishing thing in our culture, the step of all steps of the emancipated intellect: who knows that? 232
In the main all those moral systems are distasteful to me which say: "Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome thyself!" On the other hand I am favourable to those moral systems which stimulate me to do something, and to do it again from morning till evening, and dream of it at night, and think of nothing else but to do it _well,_ as well as it is possible for _me_ alone!... 238
In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self-preservatives of a species. Were it not so, pain would long ago have been done away with; that it is hurtful is no argument against it, for to be hurtful is its very essence. 247
One form of honesty has always been lacking among founders of religions and their kin:--they have never made their experiences a matter of the intellectual conscience. ... But we who are different, who are thirsty for reason, want to look as carefully into our experiences, as in the case of a scientific experiment, hour by hour, day by day! We ourselves want to be our own experiments, and our own subjects of experiment. 248
Let us no longer think so much about punishing, blaming, improving! We shall seldom be able to alter an individual, and if we should succeed in doing so, something else may also succeed, perhaps unawares: _we_ may have been altered by him! Let us rather see to it that our own influence on _all that is to come_ outweighs and overweighs his influence! Let us not struggle in direct conflict!--all blaming, punishing, and desire to improve comes under this category. 249
Who could know how to laugh well and live well, who did not first understand the full meaning of war and victory? 250
That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good-humour whenever he thinks well; he becomes "serious"! And "where there is laughing and gaiety, thinking cannot be worth anything:"--so speaks the prejudice of this serious animal against all "Joyful Wisdom." 252-253
If you had thought more acutely, observed more accurately, and had learned more, you would no longer under all circumstances call this and that your "duty" and your "conscience": the knowledge _how moral judgments have in general always originated,_ would make you tired of these pathetic words.... 261
We _would seek to become what we are,_--the new, the unique, the incomparable, making laws for ourselves and creating ourselves! And for this purpose we must become the best students and discoverers of all the laws and necessities in the world. We must be _physicists_ in order to be _creators_ in that sense,--whereas hitherto all appreciations and ideals have been based on _ignorance_ of physics, or in _contradiction_ to it. 203
Our "benefactors" lower our value and volition more than our enemies. 265
It is always a _metaphysical belief_ on which our belief in science rests,--and that even we knowing ones of to-day, the godless and anti-metaphysical, still take _our_ fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine. 279
Belief is always most desired, most pressingly needed where there is a lack of will: for the will, as emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for one who commands, who commands sternly,--a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma, a party conscience. 286
To seek self-preservation merely, is the expression of a state of distress, or of limitation of the true, fundamental instinct of life, which aims at the _extension of power,_ and with this in view often enough calls in question self-preservation and sacrifices it. 289
The subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in proportion to the _capacity for communication_ of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion to the _necessity for_ communication. ... _Consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure of the necessity for communication,_ --that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying), and has only developed in proportion to its utility. 296-297
The Church is under all circumstances a _nobler_ institution than the State. 314
It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish the cause of the action generally from the cause of action in a particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique and definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder. 317
I will never admit that we should speak of _equal_ rights in the love of man and woman: there are no such equal rights. The reason is that man and woman understand something different by the term love,--and it belongs to the conditions of love in both sexes that the one sex does _not_ presuppose the same feeling, the same conception of "love," in the other sex. What woman understands by love is clear enough: complete surrender (not merely devotion) of soul and body, without any motive, without any reservation, rather with shame and terror at the thought of a devotion restricted by clauses or associated with conditions. In this absence of conditions her love is precisely a _faith:_ woman has no other.--Man, when he loves a woman, _wants_ precisely this love from her; he is consequently, as regards himself, furthest removed from the prerequisites of feminine love; granted, however, that there should also be men to whom on their side the demand for complete devotion is not unfamiliar,--well, they are really--not men. A man who loves like a woman becomes thereby a slave: a woman, however, who loves like a woman becomes thereby a _more perfect_ woman.... Woman wants to be taken and accepted as a possession, she wishes to be merged in the conceptions of "possession" and "possessed"; consequently she wants one who _takes,_ who does not offer and give himself away, but who reversely is rather to be made richer in "himself"--by the increase of power, happiness and faith which the woman herself gives to him. Woman gives herself, man takes her.--I do not think one will get over this natural contrast by any social contract, or with the very best will to do justice, however desirable it may be to avoid bringing the severe, frightful, enigmatical, and unmoral elements of this antagonism constantly before our eyes. For love, regarded as complete, great, and full, is nature, and as nature, is to all eternity something "unmoral."--_Fidelity_ is accordingly included in woman's love, it follows from the definition thereof; with man fidelity _may_ readily result in consequence of his love, perhaps as gratitude or idiosyncrasy of taste, and so-called elective affinity, but it does not belong to the _essence_ of his love--and indeed so little, that one might almost be entitled to speak of a natural opposition between love and fidelity in man, whose love is just a desire to possess, and _not_ a renunciation and giving away; the desire to possess, however, comes to an end every time with the possession. 321-323
Everything that is thought, versified, painted and composed, yea, even built and moulded, belongs either to monologic art, or to art before witnesses. Under the latter there is also to be included the apparently monologic art which involves the belief in God, the whole lyric of prayer; because for a pious man there is no solitude,--we, the godless, have been the first to devise this invention. 328
A "scientific" interpretation of the world as you understand it might consequently still be one of the _stupidest,_ that is to say, the most destitute of significance, of all possible world-interpretations.... An essentially mechanical world would be an essentially _meaningless World!_ 339-340
We, the new, the nameless, the hard-to-understand, we firstlings of a yet untried future--we require for a new end also a new means, namely, a new healthiness, stronger, sharper, tougher, bolder and merrier than any healthiness hitherto. 351
Another ideal runs on before us, a strange, tempting ideal, full of danger, to which we should not like to persuade any one, because we do not so readily acknowledge any one's _right thereto:_ the ideal of a spirit who plays naively (that is to say involuntarily and from overflowing abundance and power) with everything that has hitherto been called holy, good, inviolable, divine; to whom the loftiest conception which the people have reasonably made their measure of value, would already imply danger, ruin, abasement, or at least relaxation, blindness, or temporary self-forgetfulness; the ideal of a humanly superhuman welfare and benevolence, which may often enough appear _inhuman._ ... 352-353
V
"Thus Spake Zarathustra"
He student of Nietzsche can well afford to leave the reading of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" _("Also Sprach Zarathustra")_ until he has prepared himself for the task by studying Nietzsche's other and less obscure books. In both its conception and execution it differs markedly from all the works which preceded and followed it. It is written in an archaic and poetical style, and in many places is purposely obscure. Nietzsche did not intend it for the general public, and the fourth part was not published until seven years after its completion. It would have been better had "Zarathustra" been withheld from the presses until Nietzsche's other works had gained a wider recognition, for it unfortunately lays itself open to all manner of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. In fact, it is impossible to read "Thus Spake Zarathustra" comprehendingly until several of the other books of this philosopher, such as "The Dawn of Day," "The Genealogy of Morals" and "Beyond Good and Evil," have been consumed and assimilated.
Unfortunately this book, because of the attractive medium of its style, was one of the first to fall into the hands of English speaking people. For many years it was the principal source of the many false accusations against Nietzsche which gained wide circulation. The figures of speech contained in it and the numerous parables which are used to set forth its ideas lend themselves all too easily to falsities of judgment and erroneous evaluations. Reading the book unpreparedly one may find what appear to be unexplainable contradictions and ethical sophistries. Above all, one may wrongly sense the absence of that higher ethical virtue which is denied Nietzsche in quarters where he is least understood, but which every close student of his works knows to form the basis of his thought.
Nietzsche began the writing of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" early in the year 1883, and he did not finish it until the middle of February, 1885. The actual conception of the book came much before this time even, as far back as the summer of 1881. This is when the idea of eternal recurrence first took possession of him. At once he began making notes, using this idea as the basis of Zarathustra's teachings. At this time Nietzsche was just recovering from a siege of ill health which had extended over many years, and no doubt the buoyant and rhapsodic form in which he conceived this work was due to his sudden acquisition of bodily health. The first part was written in ten days, the second part a few months later, and the third part in the autumn of the same year. But it was not until after a lapse of eighteen months that the fourth and last section was completed. Because of this long interval we see a radical difference between the first three parts of the book and the last part. The language remains very much the same throughout--spectacular, poetic and symbolic--but the form is changed. The epigrammatic and non-sequacious mandates give way to a long connected parable. The psalmodie brevity of the utterances of the first three sections is supplanted by description and narrative. A story runs through the entire fourth part; and it is in the obscurities of this fable, rather than in any specific statements, that we must seek the gist of Nietzsche's doctrines. This would be an impossible task were we not more or less familiar with his other books. Yet, once we understand the general trend of his thought, we can penetrate at once to the meanings hidden in the fantastic divagations of his story and can understand the dithyrambic utterances of both Zarathustra and the "higher men" in the cave.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" is unique for the reason that there are few points in Nietzsche's system of ethic--and for the most part they are the unimportant ones--which we cannot find somewhere in its pages. But do not think that one can grasp an idea of the sweep of his entire thought merely by reading this book. Even in the most simply worded and most lucidly phrased passages one would find difficulty in following the steps in his philosophy, unless there had been considerable preparatory study. To be sure, there are numerous isolated epigrams and bits of observation which are easily understood, but their mere isolation very often robs them of the true meaning they hold when related to the other precepts. The very literalness with which these passages have been taken by those who have read "Zarathustra" before studying any of the other works of Nietzsche, accounts in a large measure for the ignorance in which he is held even by those who profess to have read him and understood him. A philosophy such as his, the outposts of which are so far removed from the routine of our present social life, is naturally hampered by the restricted connotation of current words--even those technical words used to express abstract and infinite things. For this reason it is inevitable that false meanings should attach to many of his statements, and that misunderstandings should arise in quarters where there does not exist a previous general knowledge of the co-ordinated structure of his teachings. This general knowledge cannot be gained from "Thus Spake Zarathustra." Many of its pages are entirely without significance to the reader not already acquainted with Nietzsche's thought. And much of its nomenclature is meaningless without the explanations to be found in the main body of his work.
For the reader, however, who picks up this book after having equipped himself for an understanding of it, there is much of fascination and stimulation. Nietzsche regarded it as his most intimate and personal, and therefore his most important, work. He even had plans for two more parts which were to be included in it. But these were never finished. The indifference with which the book was received, even by those on whose sympathy and understanding he had most counted, reacted unfavourably upon him. It is nevertheless, just as it stands, one of the most remarkable pieces of philosophic literature of modern times. Its form alone makes it unique. Instead of stating his beliefs directly and without circumlocution, as was always his method both before and after the writing of this book, Nietzsche chose for his mouthpiece a poet and philosopher borrowed from the Persians, namely: Zoroaster. This sage of the ancients was used as a symbol of the higher man. Into his mouth were put Nietzsche's own ideas in the form of parables, admonitions, exhortations and discourses. The wanderings and experiences of this Zoroaster are chronicled, and each event in his life embodies a meaning in direct accord with the Nietzschean system of conduct.
Because of the Persian origin of Zoroaster one might imagine that influences of Persian philosophy would be discoverable in the teachings of this nomadic poet. But with the name all similarity between the spokesman and his doctrines ends. Nietzsche's choice of Zoroaster as his mouthpiece grew out of his early admiration for the Persians who, he declared, "were the first to take a broad and comprehensive view of history." As we see Zoroaster in this book we recognise him at once as none other than Nietzsche himself; and the experiences through which he goes in his wanderings are but picturesquely stated accounts of Nietzsche's own sufferings, raptures, aspirations and disappointments. To those familiar with Nietzsche's life, many of the characters introduced in the book will be recognised as portraitures of men whose lives crossed that of the philosopher. Likewise, many of the parables and fables are thinly disguised accounts of the incidents in his own life. In the last part of the book we find Nietzsche creating a fantastic poet to represent Wagner, and holding him up to severe and uncompromising criticism.
Zoroaster, as he appears in this book, is an itinerant law-giver and prophet who seeks the waste places of the earth, the mountains, plains and sea shores, avoiding mankind and carrying with him two symbolic animals, an eagle and a snake. At the end of his wanderings he discovers a lion which is for him the sign that his journey is drawing to a close, for this lion represents all that is best and most powerful in nature. The book is comprised of the discourses and sermons which Zoroaster delivers from day to day to the occasional disciples and unbelievers who cross the path of his wanderings. There are conversations between him and his accompanying animals; and in the last part of the book he gathers together in his cave a number of men representing types of the higher man and talks with them. In all his discourses he makes use of a rhapsodic and poetic style, not unlike that found in the Psalms of David. The text telling of Zoroaster's wanderings and experiences is cast in the manner of the early religious books of the Orientals.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra" was the first book to follow "Human, All-Too-Human," "The Dawn of Day" and "The Joyful Wisdom," and many of Nietzsche's constructive ideas are presented here for the first time.