Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XXII

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XXII

CRITICISM OF MORALITY (Cont.). THE "ALTRUISTIC" SENTMENTS^[1]

A sense of the gradations of life noted in the last chapter underlies also the discussion of the "altruistic" ^a sentiments. These sentiments may be said to make up the finer, more inward, more spontaneous part of morality, as contrasted with conceptions such as rights, duties, justice, obligation. ^b

 

I

However inconsistently with views expressed in other connections, Nietzsche regards the roots of altruism as lying very deep in man—he even says in one place that more than any other animal, man is originally "altruistic."^[2] He seems to look on two factors as co-operating to produce the result. On the one hand, social existence requires it, and, on the other, individuals themselves find compensation for a sense of their unimportance in serving others—mothers their children, slaves their masters, the soldier his commander, even the prince his people, and in general.^[3] Pleasure in the group to which one belongs is really older than pleasure in oneself, and the sly, loveless ego that only seeks its own advantage in the advantage of others, is not the origin of the group but its destruction.^[4] Altruistic sentiment, however, implies egoism somewhere or to some extent—not as its contrary, but as its complement and condition. If there is service there must be those willing to be served—individuals, or the group (as such); altruistic sentiment cannot be universal and all-controlling. In fact, quite apart from individuals the group or community is almost always egoistic, freely allowing its members to serve it, calling on them to do so, and even allowing them on occasion to injure themselves or be killed in its behalf. Many of the great "virtues" are simply practices or qualities that serve this naïve egoism of the community. If the community should itself become altruistic, it might sacrifice for individuls rather than allow them to sacrifice for it. That is, altruism taken as a universal maxim, conducts to an impasse. Only as a limit is set to it, is it really possible.^[5] Perhaps some of my readers have found how difficult it is to deal with thoroughly altruistic people: they will scarcely allow us to do anything for them—they want to be ever giving, and are not willing to receive. In a way they are the most embarrassing people in the world—they frustrate our own virtue! But though, taken universally, altruism is self-contradictory, it makes an excellent, rough, practical rule for great masses of people. The community's instinct of self-preservation is behind the sanction given to it; and most actually do best when they serve others or the community, rather than themselves—the "self," in their case, not being massive or important enough to justify special attention; where individual distinctions do not stand out, many, not to say all, are more important than one.^[6]

But there is another way in which egoism is indispensable—egoism now of an active sort. The view appears in sayings like these:—Love your neighbor as yourselves, but first be such as love themselves—loving with a great love and a great contempt^[7] (looking down on ourselves being a condition of our rising). Grant that benevolence and beneficence make the good man, one must first be benevolent and beneficent to himself—else one is not a good man.^[8] Making oneself into a whole person goes further in the direction of the general advantage than compassion towards others.^[9] Hence there may be a "quite ideal selfishness."^[10] It involves an art—of all arts the finest and the one requiring most patience. In practising it we learn to endure being by ourselves and do not need to be ever roaming about.^[11] Even too much reading is to be guarded against, because then we learn to think only by reacting, not spontaneously.^[12] The broad objection to a sweeping unegoistic morality is that it easily leads to sins of omission, and just because it has the guise of human friendliness, it seduces the higher, rarer type of man the most.^{[13] c} So strong at this point is Nietzsche's feeling that he is led to the view that the absolute supremacy of altruistic conceptions would be an indication of degeneration—for if all should find the significance of their lives in serving others, it would show that none found value in themselves, did not know how to protect and preserve themselves, had no real self (none worth while), and humanity would be so far on the downward grade.^[14] Deficiency in personality revenges itself everywhere. A weakened, thin, obliterated, self-denying person is useful for no good thing—"selflessness" of this type has no value for either heaven or earth.^[15]

The egoism thus so strongly preached is, however, regarded for the most part under an ultimately altruistic perspective: it is for the good of others, however dimly or impersonally they may be conceived or far off they may be put. And yet Nietzsche raises a rather daring question: Why is the man better who is useful to others than one who is useful to himself? And the answer comes, that this is true when others are of more value, higher than oneself. But suppose that the contrary is true—that others are of less value: in such a situation, he who serves himself may be better, even if he does so at the expense of others.^[16] The reasoning sounds cold-blooded, yet can hardly be gainsaid—and the underlying point of view conducts to important distinctions. The character of selfishness (if we use the opprobrious word, and Nietzsche, in a half-defiant way, sometimes does) much depends upon who it is that is selfish. When he speaks of the "wild waters and storm-floods of selfishness" in Europe in the sixteenth century, he means ordinary, vulgar selfishness—the selfishness of princes and peoples who were grabbing, among other things, for the possessions of the Catholic Church^[17]—and this he despises as much as any one. Once he formally distinguishes two kinds of egoism: a sacred one that forces us to serve what is highest in us; another, the egoism of the cat, that wants only its life.^[18] Both are preservative—the only question is, of what? The higher kind of selfishness is so contrasted with the lower that he even refuses to call it by this name: "heroism is no selfishness (Eigennutz), for one perishes of it"^[19]—this, though he is perfectly aware and expressly says that the higher virtue, so far from being selfless, is that into which one's very self goes.^[20] The distinction between the two kinds of selfishness and the two kinds of men is not sentimental or arbitrary. It turns on whether the selfishness represents the advancing or the retrogressive line of life. To quote: "Selfishness is worth as much as the man is worth physiologically who has it; it can have a very high worth, it can have no worth at all and be despicable."^[21] Some only want to receive and gather in—the weak, needy, sickly in body and mind; when such people say "all for myself," they are a horror (Grauen) to Nietzsche. But there are others who get and accumulate only to give out again in love: their selfishness, even if it is insatiable in gathering to itself, is sound and holy.^[22]

 

II

And yet what is love? Somewhat daringly and bluntly Nietzsche puts [finds] at the bottom of it a desire to possess. It is not fundamentally different from, is a kind of spiritual form of, the feeling for property or for what we want to make such.^[23] Love between the sexes, marriage, is palpably that: each wishes to possess the other, to possess indeed exclusively—here is the basis of jealousy. In very love one may kill, as Don José does Carmen; if he had not loved her, she might have gone to other men.^[24] On other levels, too, love shows its root character—though in subtler form. What is love of truth but desire to get it, to make it our own, to be so far enriched—and what does love of new truth often mean but that, acquainted with and perhaps a little tired of what we have, we reach out our insatiable hands for more? Is the love of our neighbors quite destitute of the desire to have something of our own in them? And when with sympathetic heart we help and tend those who are suffering or ill, is there not some secret pleasure in thus extending our power over them, in feeling that for the moment they are ours? We may not confess it to ourselves—but suppose that we are told that we are unnecessary, is it not as if something were taken from us? The desire for possession may have very subtle shades.^[25] Does this, then, mean that there cannot be an unselfish desire to give and bestow? Not at all, but (says Nietzsche in effect) let us analyze what is meant by such a desire. Here, for instance, is a philosopher who wants to give his ideas to the world. In the first place, let us not be too ready to credit him with unselfishness. Very possibly he simply wants to impress himself upon the world, to put his mark on it, and so far make it his world—philosophers generally, especially the great ones, want to rule.^[26] And yet we can imagine that pure blessing may be the aim—and if philosophers are not frequent instances, there are plenty of instances from other walks in life, parents, for example, or wherever the essentially parental impulse manifests itself.^[27] But what is the real psychology of this unselfishness? Nietzsche can only answer: the soul is full, over-full, and has to give. For love may be of two kinds: here a soul is empty and wants to be full; there a soul is already overflowing and wants to pour itself out. Both seek an object to satisfy their needs, and really the full soul is as needy and is as much prompted by the sense of need as the empty one—neither is, strictly speaking, unegoistic.^[28] Some of the supreme passages in Nietzsche are those in which he pictures the great soul giving. When Zarathustra is expostulated with for leaving his high solitudes to come down among men, his answer is, "I love men—I bring to them a gift."^[29] When the mountain comes down to the valley and the winds from the heights descend to the levels below, what is the right name for such a longing? Zarathustra asks, and "bestowing virtue" is the only answer he can give.^[30] It is a love that does not wait to be thanked, but thanks any one who will receive it—a love that suffers if it cannot pour itself out.^[31] Perhaps when we reach this love, if only in imagination, it does not matter much what we call it, egoistic, unegoistic, selfish, unselfish—words, categories, being but

""Sound and smoke,
Hiding heaven's glow."

Nietzsche criticises the "golden rule." He considers it first as a dictate of prudence, showing that one's ends are not necessarily reached in the manner prescribed by the rule, and remarking that one's best actions are marked by a disregard of prudence anyway; but secondly and principally in so far as the notion of equality lies behind it. So far as men are equal, it is indeed a reasonable requirement, and the flock instinct, disregarding differences between the members of the flock, is behind it.^[32] But so far as men are unlike, it is without application. What a great man does, that others cannot do to him. "What thou doest, no one can do to thee in return." Moreover, "What I do not wish that you should do to me, why may I not be allowed to do it to you? And, indeed, what I must do to you, just that you could not do to me."^[33] The thought is that, so far as men are different, their powers and privileges and duties are different.

That, however, Nietzsche was inspired by no lack of consideration and tenderness for others appears in what he says of the treatment of injuries. It is paradoxical in form, and the reader is liable to be shocked by it at first. Zarathustra is the speaker, and he says (in substance), "If you have an enemy, do not return his evil with good—that will humiliate him; if he curses you, curse a little back; if he does you a great wrong, do him a few small ones—dreadful to behold is one under the weight of wrong that he has done alone; more humane is a little revenge than absolutely no revenge."^[34] Of course, this has to be taken in the spirit rather than the letter (like the paradoxes of the Sermon on the Mount), but we do not have to attend long to see that an extreme (if you will, fantastical) tenderness breathes through it. A certain great apostle urged returning the evil of an enemy with good, "for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." One can hardly say that tenderness for the wrongdoer inspires that; the desire is rather to cover with shame—the subtlest spirit of revenge breathes through it. Which is the truer, or even more Christian spirit, I leave the reader to judge. Nietzsche wanted to spare shame and to purge the world of the spirit of revenge. As he put it, he desired a justice that should be "love with seeing eyes," and that would absolve all, save him who judges. At the same time he knew that this was not a height for every one, but only for those rich in inner wealth, the overflowing.^[35]

The analysis of sacrifice resembles that of "love": on the one hand there is a psychological Aufklärung; on the other an assertion of the thing itself, so strong that to many it may seem extreme. It is not unselfish, he declares, when I prefer to think about causality rather than about the lawsuit with my publisher; my advantage and my enjoyment lie on the side of knowledge; my tension, unrest, passion, have been longest active just there.^[36] Hence he finds something hypocritical in the current language about sacrifice. Naturally, he says, in order to accomplish what lies near his heart, he throws much away—much that also lies near his heart; but the throwing away is only consequence, incidental result—the bottom fact is that something else lies nearest his heart.^[37] And this is why a proposal to reward sacrifice is inept. Nietzsche even demurs at speaking of virtue as its own reward—he dislikes the latter word altogether. When, Zarathustra asks, was it ever heard that a mother would be repaid for her love? and a man should love his virtue as his child.^[38]

"Who will be paid?
The saleable."^[39]

"You are too pure for the soil of the words revenge, punishment, reward, requital."^[40] And yet sacrifice (for he does not eschew the word) may go far. Virtue, in the great sense, is an arrow of yearning and a willingness to disappear.^[41] To be free in any great way is to be indifferent to hardship, severity, privation, even to life; to be ready to sacrifice men for a cause, oneself not excepted.^[42] Nietzsche's mind goes back to ancient customs, and he says, "whoever is the first-born, he is ever sacrificed. Now we are the first-born. But so wills it our kind and species; and I love those who will not hold themselves back."^[43]

With perspectives like these Nietzsche criticises "love of neighbors." Higher than love to those near us is love to those far away. Yes, higher than love to men is love to things (Sachen) and ghosts (Gespenster). "This ghost that follows thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou; why givest thou not to it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou art afraid and fleest to thy neighbor.… Let the future and what is furthest off be the motive of thy to-day."^[44] More prosaically he puts his idea and demand thus: "to bring beings to existence who shall stand elevated above the whole species 'man'; and to sacrifice ourselves and our neighbors to this end."^[45] The motive is still love, but love with distant instead of near perspectives. He formulates the "new problem" in this way: whether a part of mankind might not by training be developed into a higher race at the expense of the rest.^[46] Sacrifice would thus become part of a deliberate program. Undoubtedly to most the thought is repulsive. We may sacrifice ourselves, but how can we exact sacrifice from others! How can we willingly contemplate men suffering, living stunted lives, or dying prematurely—all for an end beyond themselves? But suppose they consented to the sacrifice. Suppose that with some dim sense of a greatness to come they were willing to be used up, and to disappear when they could no longer serve! That were a possibility not ordinarily reckoned with. Indeed, our prevailing methods of thought today tend to keep it out of mind. We want to alleviate men's lot. Our altars are to pity. The idea is abroad that no one should suffer or be sacrificed. All have rights to what pleasure and enjoyment can be got out of life, we say—and they, the great mass, are beginning to say so too. Unconsciously we play into their latent instincts of self-assertion, their egoism—not now the egoism that gives, but the egoism that takes and that takes all it can get. Where do we hear nowadays that men might willingly deny themselves or even disappear for a glory possible to mankind! There may be such voices, but I do not hear them. The result is that all classes, "high" and "low" (to use the conventional terms), are pervaded by the same greed for near and personal goods. But Nietzsche credits better things of men, of the "low" as well as the "high," even of those who are no longer of any use in life—all might be guided by the thought of a great end beyond them, willingly enduring hardship and even consenting to end their lives when it is better not to live.^[47]

 

III

And now I come to that part of my subject about which perhaps more nonsense has been uttered than about any other aspect of this debatable thinker—his view of pity. The current idea is that Nietzsche was a sort of monster. "Close the hospitals, let the weak perish and tend the strong"—this is supposed to be his counsel.^[48] It is a doctrine inciting "the overman ruthlessly to trample under foot the servile herd of the weak, degenerate, and poor in spirit," according to the Encyclopœdia Britannica.^[49] The ironical remark is made that in his last days Nietzsche "had to be cared for by Christian charity—Christian charity, which in health had been the object of his bitterest attack." ^d The late Professor William Wallace was one of the few English-speaking writers of distinction to attend carefully enough to Nietzsche's thought to get his real meaning.^[50]

The German word is "Mitleid." "Mitgefühl," fellow-feeling in general, is one of Nietzsche's "four virtues."^[51] He also uses "Sympathie," where we should say "sympathy" (in the broad sense).^[52] I remember no special criticism of fellow-feeling or sympathy. ^e It is pity that he dissects and estimates. Pity is, even more distinctly in the German word than in ours, suffering—suffering with, really suffering with suffering. It is, of course, a species of fellow-feeling or sympathy, but of this peculiar character.

There was a special occasion for Nietzsche's analysis of pity—an occasion that we in America and England do not easily appreciate. Perhaps in general we are less reflective peoples than the Germans, and some problems that occupy them we hardly feel. Pessimism, i.e., the ripe philosophical view, not mere spleen or fits of indigestion, has no hold among us. But it was pessimism, spreading like a contagion through Germany and becoming almost a religion with many, pessimism of the peculiarly seducing type which Schopenhauer represented, that awoke Nietzsche to the necessity of criticising pity. For what is pessimism? Without pretending to a formal definition, I may say that it is a sense so great and so keen of the suffering and wrong in the world—of suffering and wrong, too, as bound up with the individual existence which characterizes the world—that one is led to turn his back on life. And how is release from life secured? By pity itself—at least, this is the first step. For in pity, we take others' plight on ourselves, become one with it—and if we go far enough, we may almost cease to feel separately, individual craving and even individual consciousness tending to disappear; partly in this way, and partly by actively mortifying ourselves, crucifying the instincts that lead to life, we sink at last into Nirvana.^[53] It is pity in the light of its Schopenhauerian consequences of this description that fixed the attention of Nietzsche, and made him look into it and over it in all its forms and guises.^[54] A sentiment similar in character, though unaccompanied by the radical general view, is characteristic of Christianity. Indeed, pity is an under (or over) note in modern socialism and anarchism, and in the modern democratic movement generally.^[55] To Schopenhauer, pity was the essence of morality itself. ^f

Now, I find no natural hardness of heart in Nietzsche, and, what is stranger, considering the common opinion, no failure to approve pity within limits. He once spoke of it as shameful to eat one's fill while others go hungry. ^g "I am thinking," he writes in relation to a friend who had had a sad experience, "how I can make a little joy for him, as proof of my great pity." ^h His sister says as to his experiences as ambulance nurse in the Franco-Prussian war: "What the sympathetic heart of my brother suffered at that time cannot be expressed; months after, he still heard the groans and agonized cries of the wounded. During the first year it was practically impossible for him to speak of these happenings."^[56] Nietzsche himself says in a general way that one who begins by unlearning the love of other people ends by finding nothing worthy of love.^[57] He speaks reverently of Prometheus's pity for men and sacrifice in their behalf.^{[58] i} Addressing judges, Zarathustra says, "Your putting to death should be an act of pity, not of revenge."^[59] "That you are pitiful I presuppose; to be without pity means to be sick in mind and body"—this though it is added that much mind is needed to dare to be pitiful.^[60] Nietzsche gratefully recognizes what the "spiritual men" of Christianity have done for Europe in giving consolation to the suffering, courage to the oppressed and despairing, however otherwise these same men have sinnved.^[61] He speaks of the pity of the saint as pity for the soil (Schmutz) of the human, all-too-human.^[62] One who says things like these can hardly be said to be without appreciation of pity. He does, indeed, speak of triumphing over pity at times—but this presupposes that one has it. His "higher men," called to great tasks of creation and destruction, are usually beings with normal sympathetic feelings—otherwise how could he speak of their not going to pieces from the suffering they bring?^[63]

In fact, ordinary sympathetic feeling for those who are temporarily disabled or sick or otherwise unfortunate, such as we show in our homes or as the community shows in public institutions, I see no trace of disapproval of in Nietzsche: he rather comments with implied satisfaction on the immense amount of humanity attained by present-day mankind, though putting on the other side of the balance-sheet the fact of decadence.^[64] He knows that communities as hard-hearted as he is sometimes supposed to have been simply could not hold together or live—and he once mentions the care of the sick and poor as among the natural customs and institutions of society (along with the state, courts of justice, and marriage).^[65]

What he has in mind in criticising pity comes out in the saying of Zarathustra, "Not your pity but your bravery has saved hitherto the unhappy";^[66] and again in a remark that where there is the impulse to help, the unpleasant sensation of pity is overcome.^[67] For here pity is taken as feeling simply—and feeling of a sad and depressing sort.^[68] If we become the echo of others' miseries, he questions whether we can be really helpful or quickening to them.^[69] One day, as Zarathustra is walking along, he comes on a repulsive object which he at last makes out to be a human being; at first pity overcomes him and he is described as sinking down like a falling tree, heavily; and then he arises, and, his face becoming hard, he speaks the truth to him.^[70] Pity of itself weakens, unnerves—such is the idea. We know that the Greeks, viewing it in this light, classed it along with fear, and, according to Aristotle, the purpose of tragedy was to give, as it were, a vent to these emotions, and so effect a purgation of the soul. So Nietzsche says that if any one should go about seeking for occasions for pity and holding ever before his mind all the misery he could lay hold of in his neighborhood, he would inevitably become sick and melancholy. He who wishes to be a physician—a physician in any sense—must accordingly be on his guard, otherwise the depressing feeling may lame him and keep his fine hand from doing its proper work.^[71] A reviewer of one of Mr. Galsworthy's recent books says: "The spectator in these vignettes … is always pensive, always passive, prone to lose himself in what might not unfairly be called an intoxication of pity."^[72] Here is the point of view of a part of Nietzsche's criticism. Pity of this kind tends to leave things as they are—is a kind of sinking and melting before them; one who gives up to it is really taking his first step in the downward Schopenhauerian path.

And yet when pity is active, ^j it may do harm unless it is guided. Much mind, Nietzsche urges, is needed in exercising it. With the sense of the danger connected with it, he once puts the problem thus: "To create circumstances in which every one can help himself, and he himself decide whether he shall be helped."^[73] Helping, he feels, is a delicate business; if the impulse to it were twice as strong as it is, life might become unendurable for many. Let a man think, he says, of the foolish things he is doing daily and hourly from solicitude for himself, and then what would happen if he became the object of a similar solicitude from others—why, we should want to flee when a "neighbor" approached!^[74] What has done more harm than the follies of the compassionate? asks Zarathustra.^[75] Benevolence must be newly appraised, and the limitless injury perceived that is continually worked by benevolent acts—for example, what a subject for irony is the love of mothers!^[76] In short, pity is dangerous; it must be held within limits, intelligence must master it—it must be habitually sifted by reason.^[77]

I pass over the further and more detailed analysis of pity. At bottom it is not unlike the analysis of love and sacrifice, although it of course brings out the specific features of pity, such as that it is the opposite of admiration and means a looking down, and hence should be practised with shame, not publicly, out of regard for its object.^[78] Nietzsche is, to my recollection, the first moralist to point out the lack of delicacy in pity as often shown, its intrusiveness—so that to be protected from it is the instinct of many a fine nature, and a certain purification is necessary for us after we have shown it, inasmuch as we have gazed on another in suffering, and, in helping him, have hurt his pride.^{[79] k}

 

IV

What, then, are the limits for pity? If one stops to reflect a moment, one sees that an answer to the question depends upon what sort of an ideal one has in his mind; indeed, upon whether one has any ultimate ideal. Early Christianity, for example, had its ideal—that of the kingdom of heaven. Into that heavenly order (whether to be consummated on this earth or not) were to be gathered the good, the just, the loving, the merciful, the pure—they from the Christian standpoint were the wheat of the harvests of the world, they were to be garnered up in the coming order for ever. It is a dream that still has power to charm the heart. But what of those of a different moral character—the chaff or waste of the world, or, to use still other images, the trees that bore no fruit, the salt that had no savor? Was this kind of material, this waste and wreckage of human life, to be tenderly regarded all the same, to be nursed, pitied, allowed to continue and perpetuate its kind? Hardly: we know rather that the chaff was to be burnt up with unquenchable fire, the trees hewn down, the salt cast out and trodden under foot. I use the consequence not in the slightest as an objection to Christianity. There is the same logic implicit in any affirmation of a great end of life—and something kindred is involved in our most commonplace practical purposes. If we have any good thing in mind, we reject what does not correspond to it. If we set out an orchard, we leave to one side trees that come maimed or broken from the nursery. If we send our apples to market, we exclude those below a certain grade. Well, Nietzsche had an ideal, an ultima ratio of human life. It was a wholly earthly (diesseitige) ideal, and yet it was of humanity rising to what may relatively be called superhuman heights, of men who should be half like Gods—not merely good, but much more, beings to be feared, revered as well as loved. They should be the consummate fruit of humanity's tree, and, if all could not be such men or supermen themselves, they could at least facilitate them, work for them, fit themselves into a scheme of social existence that would tend that way. Nietzsche conceives that humanity might actually be turned into an organism working to this end—no longer then a disconnected, sprawling mass of atoms (smaller or larger) as at present, but a related, interdependent, organic whole—a whole with an aim, this aim. And so arises his principle of selection, and canon for pity. What will fit into an organism of this sort is worth preserving, what will not is not worth preserving. Equal regard for all material is impossible. What will make itself a part of an ascending humanity, of a process by which the type will be raised and the power and splendor of the species shine forth, what will at last give us "supermen"?—that is the critical question. If the energy of ascending life is in a man, or, if not just that, if he is willing to be used for ascending life, if he will do good work, even if only to stand and wait on those who are better than he, such a man is good, and all, high and low, will protect him; but if a man is a sponge, a parasite, unfruitful, unproductive—not to say diseased and degenerate—he is bad, and pity to him is misplaced.

Nietzsche argues substantially in this way: there can be no solidarity in a society where there are unfruitful, unproductive, and destructive elements, which may moreover have still more degenerate offspring than themselves; to this extent the law of altruism does not apply; there is no right to help, to equality of lot, of unsound members—the organism is liable to perish if such a course is pursued; when within it the smallest organ fails to do its part in however slight degree, the organism degenerates; the physiologist accordingly—the social physiologist as truly as one who deals with a physical body—demands the removal of the degenerate part, denies solidarity with it, is at the farthest remove from pity for it.^[80] Undoubtedly it is strong doctrine, and yet Nietzsche must not be taken to mean what he does not mean. It is not, for example, temporary illness or disability that he has in mind; I might almost say that it is not primarily sickness of the body at all, but rather of will and character, and bodily incapacity so far as it is a symptom of this, of defective life-energy. We read that Zarathustra is gentle to the sick and wishes that they may recover and create a higher body for themselves.^[81] It is the hopeless, the badly made in the beginning, that Nietzsche has in view. Secondly, he does not mean, as some have understood him, particularly the working class, the poor pecuniarily. Nietzsche has as much honor for the worker with his hands, as much sense of his necessity, his indispensableness in an organic humanity, as any one—he even questions if he need be poor as he now commonly is.^[82] He means the defectives, the incapables, the "good-for-nothings" everywhere—men who hate a day's work more than they do vice or crime, and will live in idleness if they can; and these are not confined to the so-called lower classes in the community.

And yet what do we modern peoples do, what have we been doing for centuries? Somehow we have acquired (Nietzsche thinks largely through Christian influence) the idea that men as such are beings of infinite worth, that all are equal before God, that we must love, cherish, protect, care for every one of them. And the idea of the individual's importance and of equality, equal rights, has taken political form in democracy and is now taking a still more accentuated form in the socialistic and anarchistic movements. The single person has become so important, so absolute in our eyes, that he can't be sacrificed; the sickly, degenerate, misshapen specimens of the race are, forsooth, ends in themselves along with the rest, and we must minister to them. And so here they are, apparently in accumulating numbers as time goes on, in view (and out of view) in all the great centers of population—so that a recent writer has calculated (let us hope that it is an overestimate) that while in England of "superior men" there are about one to four thousand of the population, of idiots and known imbeciles (not counting those kept out of sight) there are one to four hundred.^[83] Not only can we not sacrifice these miserable individuals; they think themselves that they can't be sacrificed—they feel that they have as much right to life as others: we have stuffed them up in a sense of their importance—have played, as thoughtless altruism is apt to do, into their egoism. Their methods of keeping themselves alive have become instincts, institutions, are called "humanity."^[84] And the "good" man—and this is the terrible thing to Nietzsche—is just the one who takes the side of these miscarriages; goodness, as it is now commonly conceived, being pre-eminently shown in pitying, caring for, and tending them.^[85]

In other words, by following mistaken ideas we have cut athwart the law of selection, which is an inevitable part of the law of development.^[86] We have ourselves acquired a sickly and unnatural sensibility (we can't stand the sight of suffering, we weak creatures of today);^[87] we have stimulated the egoism of the sickly and degenerate, and, by holding fast in life great numbers of misshapen beings, have given to existence itself a gloomy and questionable aspect.^[88] And for the result, Nietzsche holds, as I have said, Christianity chiefly responsible. ^l By giving, as it does, an absolute value to the individual, it makes it impossible to sacrifice him. Genuine human love is hard, full of self-conquest, because it needs sacrifice; while this pseudo-humanity which is called Christianity strives just that no one be sacrificed.^[89]

Nietzsche is sometimes said to have been carried away by Darwin—his ideas have been called "Darwinism gone mad." ^m This is superficial (Nietzsche's attitude to Darwin was in reality a very mixed one), ⁿ indeed a bit childish, when one considers the rôle which the idea of selection has played in the world. Emerson, in "The World-Soul," says:

"He serveth the servant,
The brave he loves amain;
He kills the cripple and the sick,
And straight begins again;
For gods delight in gods,
And thrust the weak aside;
To him who scorns their charities
Their arms fly open wide."

And this was before Darwin. Indeed, the idea of selection, of acceptance and unpitying rejection, of an immanent struggle for existence in the world, is as old as the Bible—as the prophet Isaiah, with his doctrine of the survival of a remnant. The question is, what is to be selected? Nature does not do so very ill herself, and, in Nietzsche's estimation, is not to be set down as unmoral because she is without pity for the degenerate;^[90] and yet man with clear vision might do better than nature, and avoid her enormous waste—he might, substitute purposive selection for natural selection and intelligently aim at what she is blindly groping for, or at least making possible.^[91] The aim which Nietzsche suggests is that organic aim, culminating in something transcendent, which I have hinted at. It springs from a love that looks far away, and conquers and transcends pity. "Spare not thy neighbor. Man [present man] is something that must be surpassed."^[92]

Just how the selective process is to be carried out in detail Nietzsche does not tell us—there is no systematic or special treatment of the subject. He hints at the segregation of undesirable elements."^[93] He tells the story of a saint who recommended a father to kill a misshapen, sickly child, and who, when reproached with cruelty, said, "Is it not more cruel to allow it to live?"^[94] He urges a new and more sacred conception of marriage. Are you a man, Zarathustra says, who dare wish for himself a child? Are you a victorious one, a self conqueror, master of your senses, lord of your virtues? Not only onward shall you propagate yourself, but upward. Marriage: so call I the will of two to create one who is more than they who created him.^[95] Those with only cattle-like dispositions in their bodies, it is elsewhere stated, should not have the right to marry.^[96] Stern and exacting as all this sounds, Nietzsche is not conscious of any real inhumanity.^[97] While he would not have the higher, stronger types leave their own tasks to tend the sickly, he has so little idea of wishing to put an end to the latter summarily that he wants them tended by the more spiritual and gifted members of their own class—defining thus the function of the ascetic priest.^[98] He would make their lot as easy as possible. Ironical as it may sound—he does not mean it ironically—he would help them to pass away. When something has to fall, it may be a mercy to hasten its falling—such is his feeling.^[99] He puts it as a proposition of human love, his first proposition: the weakly and misshapen should pass away, and we should help them to this end.^[100] He also hints that they may come to choose their own passing away, dying then in perhaps greater dignity than they have ever lived, and almost winning the right to life again.^[101]

Such, then, and so inspired are the limits which Nietzsche would set to pity.^[102] Pity of the prevailing, thoughtless kind he calls a crime against life, an extreme immorality—he does not mince his words in speaking of it.^[103] Indeed, he goes further, and in a lofty way would not pity his own disciples. "To the men that concern me, I wish suffering, solitude, illness, mistreatment, disgrace.… I have no pity for them, because I wish them the one thing that can prove today whether a man has value or not—that he hold his ground."^[104] Yet the warnings which Nietzsche utters in general against pity are not, he says, for all, but rather for him and his kind, i.e., those who rise to his point of view; the implication being that otherwise to renounce pity might be mere callousness and brutality.^{[105] o} And how far he is from condemning pity per se, is shown in what be says of "our pity," "my pity." It is a pity for the too common lot of the higher, rarer types of men, seeing how easily they go to pieces, what a waste there often is of their capacities.^[106] It is a pity over the low averages of human life, over the process of making men smaller, that he thinks is going on under Christian and democratic influence, over the very pity of which we Christians are so proud, which does not see the place and necessity of suffering and sacrifice in the world—so pity, he says, against pity!^[107] Oh, for a glimpse now and then, he exclaims, of something perfect, wrought out to the end, happy, mighty, triumphant, in which there is still something to fear—of a man who justifies man, a complementary and redeeming instance, in view of whom we dare hold our faith in man! But what he sees has a wearying effect upon him. We modern creatures, indeed, want nothing to fear, we want great men only as they serve us, as they make themselves one with us—no, they must not harm us or the least thing that lives! And yet for Nietzsche to lose the fear of man, is also to lose the love of him, reverence for him, hope in him, yes, the wish for him—it is the way to satiety with the umana commedia, to nihilism.^[108]

1. The substance of this chapter appeared in The Hibbert Journal, October, 1914.
2. Will to Power, § 771.
3. Cf. Ibid., §§ 785; Werke, XII, 104-5, § 209; XIII, 178, § 406. "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 6, as to the way in which young men may compensate for their felt imperfection.
4. Zarathustra, I, xv.
5. The inherent contradictions in altruism as a principle were perhaps never better stated than in Joyful Science, § 21.
6. Cf. Will to Power, § 269.
7. Zarathustra, III, v, § 3.
8. Dawn of Day, § 516.
9. Human, etc., § 95.
10. Dawn of Day, § 552.
11. Zarathustra, III, xi, § 2.
12. Ecce Homo, II, § 8.
13. Beyond Good and Evil, § 221.
14. Twilight of the Idols, ix, § 35.
15. Dawn of Day, § 345.
16. Werke, XIV, 63-4, § 123.
17. Beyond Good and Evil, § 212.
18. Letter to Lou Salomé, quoted by D. Halévy, Vie de Frédéric Nietzsche, p. 25. Cf. the reference to "cats and wolves," Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 2.
19. Werke, XIV, 216, § 245.
20. Zarathustra, II, v.
21. Twilight of the Idols, ix, § 33.
22. Zarathustra, I, xxii. The self-love of the sickly and diseased (Süchtigen) "stinkt" (ibid., III, xi, § 2).
23. Werke, XII, 104, § 208.
24. "The Case of Wagner," § 2. There is the same implication in Jahweh's frankly calling himself a "jealous God."
25. Joyful Science, § 14.
26. Cf. Werke, XIII, 177, § 406; Will to Power, § 874.
27. Werke, XII, 253, § 228.
28. Dawn of Day, § 145.
29. Zarathustra, prologue, § 2.
30. Ibid., III, x, § 2.
31. "Dionysus Dithyrambs" ("Of the Poverty of the Richest").
32. Will to Power, § 925.
33. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 4; Werke, XIV, 303, § 120.
34. Zarathustra, I, xix.
35. Ibid., I, xix.
36. Werke, XIV, 95, § 197.
37. Ibid., 94, § 196; cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 220; Twilight etc., ix, § 44; Will to Power, §§ 372, 930.
38. Zarathustra, II, v.
39. "Dionysus Dithyrambs" ("Glory and Eternity").
40. Zarathustra, II, v.
41. Ibid., prologue, § 4.
42. Twilight etc., ix, § 38.
43. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 6.
44. Ibid., I, xvi.
45. Werke, XIV, 262, § 4.
46. Ibid., XII, 121, § 237.
47. Dawn of Day, § 146; Twilight etc., ix, § 36; cf. Zarathustra, I, xxi; The Wanderer etc., § 185; Human, etc., §§ 80, 88; Joyful Science, § 131.
48. So J. G. Hibben in a sermon, as reported in Springfield Republican, January, 1913.
49. Art., "Nietzsche."
50. Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology etc.', pp. 536-7.
51. Beyond Good and Evil, § 284; cf. § 290.
52. E.g., in Will to Power, § 269.
53. See Nietzsche's moving description of the saint in the early tribute to Schopenhauer ("Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 5).
54. Cf. Genealogy etc., preface, §§ 5, 6; Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 222, 293; Dawn of Day, § 138; The Antichristian, § 7; Will to Power, § 82; also the comments of Simmel, op. cit., pp. 213-4; Vaihinger, op. cit., p. 88; Chatterton-Hill, op. cit., pp. 22, 69. There is a sarcastic reference to the religion of pity " and its disciples in Joyful Science, § 377.
55. Cf. Dawn of Day, § 132; Beyond Good and Evil, § 202.
56. Leben etc., II, 682.
57. footnote
58. Dawn of Day, § 401.
59. Zarathustra, I, vi.
60. Werke, XII, 297, § 344.
61. footnote
62. Ibid., § 271.
63. Werke, XIV, 412, § 291.
64. Will to Power, § 63.
65. The Antichristian, § 26. A. W. Benn, ordinarily discriminating, misinterprets Nietzsche at this point (International Journal of Ethics, October, 1908, pp. 16-7).
66. Zarathustra, I, x.
67. Werke, XI, 230, § 179.
68. Cf. Höffding's remarks, op. cit., pp. 149, 150; also Wallace's, op. cit., p. 237; and see Will to Power, §§ 44, 368.
69. Dawn of Day, § 144.
70. Zarathustra, IV, vii.
71. Dawn of Day, § 134. By way of contrast, the superior man is said to help the unfortunate, not or scarcely from pity, but out of his over-flowing strength (Beyond Good and Evil, § 260).
72. The Nation (New York), December 12, 1912.
73. Werke, XIV, 261, § 3.
74. Dawn of Day, § 143.
75. Zarathustra, II, iii.
76. Werke, XIII, 212, § 493.
77. Will to Power, § 928; Werke, XI, 270, § 276.
78. Dawn of Day, § 135; Zarathustra, II, iii.
79. Zarathustra, TV, viii; Ecce Homo, I, § 4; Beyond Good and Evil, § 270; Werke, XIV, 360, § 227; Zarathustra, II, iii.
80. Will to Power, § 52; Ecce Homo, III, iv, § 2; cf. Will to Power, § 734.
81. Zarathustra, I, iii.
82. Cf. Will to Power, § 764. This position of the worker will be considered at length in chap. xxix.
83. Mrs. John Martin, Is Mankind Advancing? p. 48 n. Cf. A. J. Balfour, "High authorities, I believe, hold that at this moment in Britain we have so managed matters that congenital idiots increase faster than any other class of the population" (Theism and Humanism, 1915, p. 109).
84. Will to Power, § 401.
85. Ecce Homo, IV, § 8; of. Werke, XIV, 66-7, § 132; 119, § 252.
86. The Antichristian, § 7.
87. Will to Power, § 52; Beyond Good and Evil, § 202.
88. The Antichristian, § 7. Cf. Emerson (Representative Men, chap, i), "Enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgusting, like hills of ants, or of fleas—the more, the worse."
89. Will to Power, § 246. Emerson says, on the other hand, "The more of these drones perish, the better for the hive" (The Conduct of Life, "Fate").
90. Will to Power, § 52.
91. Werke, XII, 123-4, § 243: 191, § 408.
92. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 4; cf. prologue, § 3; also I, x; and Werke, XIV, 72, § 140.
93. Dawn of Day, § 17; Genealogy etc., III, § 26.
94. Joyful Science, § 73.
95. Zarathustra, I, xx.
96. Werke, XIV, 72, § 119. Cf. as to the chronic sick and neurasthenics, Will to Power, § 734.
97. Cf. the picture of future "humanity," Joyful Science, § 337 (particularly the close of the paragraph).
98. Genealogy etc., III, §§ 14, 15.
99. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 20.
100. The Antichristian, § 2.
101. Cf. footnote 47, p. 301.
102. Edmund Burke spoke of "minds tinctured with humanity"—is not this a happy phrase, "tinctured," not controlled?
103. Will to Power, § 246; cf. § 54.
104. Ibid., § 910.
105. Zarathustra, IV, vii.
106. Beyond Good and Evil, § 269; Will to Power, § 367.
107. Beyond Good and Evil, § 225.
108. Genealogy etc., I, § 12; cf. Werke, XIV, 66-7, § 132; Joyful Science, §§ 379, 382.