Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XVIII

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XVIII

CRITICISM OF MORALITY (Cont.). HAVE EVIL AND CRUELTY NO PLACE IN THE WORLD?

I

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

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

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

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

 

II

Nietzsche answers by observing facts of psychology and history. For instance, he notes that what inspires fear and may do harm may be a stimulant to men. If, he once says, we open our eye and conscience to the question where and how the plant "man" has hitherto grown most vigorously, we discover that to this end danger had to increase enormously for him, that his power of invention and dissimulation (his "mind") had to become subtle and daring through long hardship and compulsion, that his will to live had to rise to an unconditional will for power—in other words and more particularly, that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, that what is evil, fearful, tyrannical, predacious, snakelike may serve for the elevation of the species as well as their opposites.^[18] He accordingly draws the inference that if a higher form of humanity is to come in the future, great and terrible odds will be required—the superman will need for an antagonist a superdragon.^[19] One application of the general idea is made that decidedly jars on us, living in an age of intellectual tolerance as we do. In speaking of what we owe to the Christian church, he says that its very intolerance helped to render the European mind fine and supple, and that in our democratic age with freedom of the press, thought becomes "plump." He thinks that the ancient polis was like-minded with the church and produced similar beneficial effects, while in the Roman Empire, when freedom of belief and unbelief came to be permitted, mind coarsened and degenerated. He speaks of the distinguished appearance which men like Leibnitz and Abelard, Montaigne, Descartes and Pascal present under the régime of the church.^[20] Freedom of the press, he repeats, ruins style and finally the mind. "Galiani was aware of it a hundred years ago. 'Freedom of thought' ruins the thinker. Between hell and heaven and in danger of persecutions, banishments, eternal damnations, and ungracious looks of kings and ladies the mind was lithe and bold: alas! what is mind becoming today!"^[21] In brief, danger and enmity are good for man. So strongly does he feel this, that he regards it as no more desirable that "good" men alone should inherit the earth, than that there should be uninterrupted good weather.^[22] With blended satire and seriousness he says that to ask that every one should be a "good man," a social animal, blue-eyed, benevolent, a "beautiful soul," or as Herbert Spencer wishes, altruistic, would strip existence of its grand character and reduce mankind to a miserable Chinadom.^[23] "As the tree needed the storm, that it might become strong, so evil is necessary to the growth of life."

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

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

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

 

III

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

 

IV

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

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

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

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

We may even be cruel to ourselves, in a subtle way. To criticise others is common—apparently it is an unfailing spring of pleasure for men and for women; but the philosopher—a rare species—criticises himself, and in a sense has pleasure in this also. He enjoys correcting his surface views, breaking up old satisfactions. It may sound nice to speak of excessive "honesty," "love of truth," "sacrifice for knowledge," but the individual himself, if schooled in introspection and strictly truthful, is apt to say, "There is something cruel in the propensity of my mind."^[87] All conquests of knowledge come from courage and from hardness to oneself.^[88] Nietzsche honors the English psychologists who know how to hold their heart as well as their

pain in check, and have trained themselves to sacrifice wishes to truth, even to ugly, disagreeable, unchristian, unmoral truth.^[89] He finds our strong sides unmerciful to our weak sides generally—yes, our very greatness may lie in our unmercifulness.^[90] The ground-law of life is self-overcoming—we have to put away what is weak and old in us and be inexorable in doing so: it is the secret both of bodily and of spiritual renewal.^[91] William James spoke of "imperative goods," whose nature it is to be "cruel to their rivals," and Nietzsche says, "Whoever has greatness is cruel to his virtues and reflections (Erwägungen) of lesser rank."^[92] There is something cruel in conscience itself. When man comes under the ban of society and social law, he sooner or later turns against his old nature, contradicts it, despises it, mistreats it, and makes it suffer—the process being intensified under the influence of ethical, ascetic religions like Brahmanism and Christianity. Denying self, sacrificing self, pleasure in doing this—all is a refined, elevated cruelty;^[93] and the motive is the same as that behind cruelty in its crudest forms—love of superiority and power. That we can put ourselves under our feet gives us a sense of wings: in the famous story of King Viçvamitra which the Brahmans tell, the long-continued, self-inflicted sufferings of the king give him such a feeling of power, such confidence in himself, that he is ready to build a new heavens.^[94]

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

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

 

V

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

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

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

I am a man of war!
Such things I understand:
When Devils against Cherubim
Are leagued throughout the land." ^[113]

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

1. See ante, p. 119.
2. Cf., for instance, the use of übel in Will to Power, §§ 870, 928.
3. Op. cit., p. 117.
4. Werke, XIV, 64, § 124; cf. XII, 91, § 181 (omnia naturalia affirmanti sunt indifferentia, neganti vero vel abstinenti aut mala aut bona).
5. Dawn of Day, § 68.
6. Mixed Opinions etc., § 345.
7. Beyond Good and Evil, § 212.
8. Werke, XIII, 305, § 746.
9. Genealogy etc., I, § 8; Werke, XII, 171, § 354.
10. Werke, XIV, 352, § 213. Cf. what he says of his Bosheit in writing Dawn of Day (Werke, XIV, 401, § 276), and the remark of Karl Joël, Nietzsche und die Romantik, p. 135, à propos of a passage from Friedrich Schlegel.
11. Werke, XIV, 387.
12. Essay on "Heroism."
13. Zarathustra, II, xii; IV, xiii, § 13.
14. Will to Power, § 1019.
15. Ibid., § 319.
16. Ibid., § 933.
17. I let übel here stand for the simple calamitous and undesirable) (doing so under correction).
18. Beyond Good and Evil, § 44; of. Will to Power, § 957.
19. footZarathustra, II, xxi. note
20. Werke, XIII, 310-1; cf. the general reflections in Beyond Good and Evil, § 188.
21. footWerke, XIV, 206, § 412. note
22. Will to Power, § 386.
23. Ecce Homo, IV, § 4; cf. Joyful Science, § 373; Twilight of the Idols, ix, § 37.
24. Werke, XIII, 147, § 345.
25. Ibid., XII, 86, § 170.
26. Ibid., XII, 123, § 243.
27. Dawn of Day, § 432.
28. Werke, XII, 86-7; cf. XIV, 98, § 210; Joyful Science, § 333; Zarathustra, III, xii, § 7.
29. "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 4.
30. Werke, XI, 240, § 198.
31. Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 5.
32. Op. cit., pp. 97-8.
33. Cf. Werke, XII, 86, § 170.
34. Joyful Science, § 4; cf.Werke, XIII, 142, § 329.
35. Joyful Science, § 35.
36. Will to Power, § 45.
37. Mixed Opinions, etc., § 93.
38. Cf. Werke, XIII, 221, § 527; XIV, 350, § 208; Joyful Science, § 4; Ecce Homo, IV, § 2.
39. Werke, XII, 86, § 170; cf. Joyful Science, § 1.
40. Werke, XII, 93, §§ 186-7.
41. Ibid., XIII, 147, § 343; cf. Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 5; Will to Power, § 747; Werke, XII, 134, § 260.
42. Werke, XIII, 147, § 344.
43. Ibid., XIII, 141-2, § 329.
44. Ecce Homo, III, i, § 2.
45. Joyful Science, § 289.
46. Beyond Good and Evil, § 213; cf. Werke, XIII, 118, § 161; Will to Power, § 1015.
47. Will to Power, § 1025; cf. § 896.
48. Ibid., § 1025.
49. Ecce Homo, IV, § 2.
50. Will to Power, § 1015.
51. Werke, XII, 87, § 170; XIII, 122, § 272.
52. Zarathustra, II, xxi.
53. Will to Power, § 1017.
54. Ibid., § 1026.
55. Werke, XII, 81, § 156.
56. Will to Power, § 968.
57. Werke, XIV, 80-1, § 160; 78, § 153.
58. Ibid., XIV, 79, § 154.
59. Ibid., XIV, 79, § 153.
60. Ibid., XII, 119, § 232.
61. Will to Power, § 1027.
62. Genealogy etc., II, § 6.
63. Dawn of Day, § 371. On the need of decadents and the nervously weak for spice (Pfeffer) and even cruelty, cf. Will to Power, § 119.
64. Op. cit., p. 98.
65. Zarathustra, II, iii. Cf. other passages cited later in the discussion of pity, pp. 303-4.
66. Apocalypse, xxi, 4. Cf. Nietzsche's comment on Christianity, Will to Power, § 1025.
67. Genealogy etc., II, § 6; cf. § 7; also Werke, XI, 197-8, § 106; Dawn of Day, § 18.
68. Joyful Science, § 318; cf. Will to Power, § 778.
69. Will to Power, § 1003.
70. Preface, § 3, to Joyful Science.
71. Joyful Science, § 1120; cf. Genealogy etc., III, § 9.
72. Will to Power, § 1030.
73. 'Ibid., § 1013.
74. Werke, XIII, 151, §§ 357-8. He has English Utilitarianism particularly in mind.
75. Beyond Good and Evil, § 225; Epilogue to "Nietzsche contra Wagner."
76. "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 4.
77. Beyond Good and Evil, § 225; cf. Zarathustra, II, ii.
78. Werke, XII, 295, § 334; 296, § 339.
79. Zarathustra, III, xiii, § 2.
80. Werke, XIII, 190, § 420.
81. Genealogy etc., II, § 5.
82. Cf., in addition to the earlier references, Werke, XII, 88-9, § 173; XIV, 82, § 163; Genealogy etc., I, § 7 (on the specific character of priestly revenge).
83. Genealogy etc., II, § 6.
84. Werke, XIII, 310, § 759.
85. Ibid., XII, 89, § 176.
86. Dawn of Day, §§ 30, 113.
87. Beyond Good and Evil, § 230. Cf., on the inability to see sublimated forms of a thing, Werke, XII, 87, § 172.
88. Will to Power, § 104.
89. Genealogy etc., I, § 1.
90. Joyful Science, § 28.
91. Zarathustra, passim; Joyful Science, § 26.
92. Joyful Science, § 266.
93. Genealogy etc., II, § 18.
94. Dawn of Day, § 113; Genealogy etc., III, § 10.
95. Cf. Werke, XIV, 70, § 136.
96. Joyful Science, § 325.
97. Werke, XIV, 81, § 162.
98. Genealogy etc.. III, § 9.
99. Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 494, §§ 68-9.
100. Beyond Good and Evil, § 23.
101. Ibid., § 2.
102. Ibid., § 8.
103. Will to Power, § 1013.
104. Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 2, 24.
105. Genealogy etc., II, § 17; cf. Werke, IX, 148-58.
106. Genealogy etc., II, § 2.
107. Ibid., I, § 8.
108. Mixed Opinions etc., § 90.
109. Werke, XII, 101-7, §§ 205-8, 215, 216; Dawn of Day, § 26.
110. Werke, XIV, 97, § 206.
111. Will to Power, § 351; cf. § 1027. Nietzsche finds also rationality and mysticism complementary, see ibid., § 1012; Werke, XI, 234, § 189.
112. Werke, XIII, 121, § 270.
113. Anna Hempstead Branch, "The Puritan," in The Shoes that Danced (Boston, 1906).
114. Werke, XIV, 274, §§ 66, 68.
115. Zarathustra, I, v.
116. Werke, XII, 87, § 171.
117. Human, etc., § 107.
118. Will to Power, § 1025; cf. Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 5; Werke, XIII, 122, § 274; Beyond Good and Evil, § 116.
119. Genealogy etc., III, § 9.
120. Werke, XII, 91, § 182.
121. Ibid., XIV, 64, § 125.
122. Cf. the strong language of Genealogy etc., II, § 24.
123. Werke, XIII, 147, §§ 345, 348.
124. Zarathustra, I, vi.