Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XXIV

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XXIV

MORAL CONSTRUCTION. THE MORAL AIM PROPOSED BY NIETZSCHE^[1]

I

In passing to Nietzsche's construction in morality I may say at the outset that it is a mistake to suppose that he was by temperament and instinct a radical—traces of a certain natural conservatism are plainly visible in his writings. He mentions with pride that he came of a line of Protestant pastors,^[2] and it is evident that it was intellectual necessity more than anything else that led to his departure from the ancient ways, and that even in his mental revolutions he kept something of the old spirit. He once speaks of conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, as a preparatory school for the scientific character.^[3] He says in so many words, "We will be heirs of all the morality that has gone before and not start de novo. Our whole procedure is only morality turning against its previous form."^[4] If he speaks of an overcoming of morality, it is a self-overcoming,^[5] i.e., not by a foreign and hostile party. "Why do I love free thinking? As the last consequence of previous morality"—and he goes on to indicate how it comes from justice, courage, honesty, loving disposition to all.^[6] The demand for a wherefore, a critique of morality, is a form of morality, the most sublimated kind of it.^[7] In reflecting over the struggles and changes he had gone through, he says, "at last I discovered in the whole process living morality, driving force—I had only imagined that I was beyond good and evil"^[8] (here using the latter phrase broadly), or, as he puts it in paradoxical form, "I had to dissolve (aufheben) morality, in order to put my moral will through."^[9]

Moreover, criticism had revealed to him the fact of varying types of morality, and the question arose, might there not be still other and perhaps higher types?^[10] Of course, this presupposes a generic idea of morality, more or less separable from special instances. Nietzsche does not make a formal definition, but we gather from a variety of direct or incidental references what he thought was involved. In the generic sense, a morality is a set of valuations resting on supposed conditions of existence of some kind.^[11] Further, it is something regulating, commanding, so that it introduces order into life: some things may be done, others may not be done—discipline, strictness hence arising.^[12] On the subjective side, its root is reverence, the only properly moral motive.^[13] As action, it is free (not in the indeterminist sense, but in the sense of voluntary, not forced).^[14] Nietzsche sometimes criticises ideals, but when he does so, he has in mind mere abstract desirabilities, fancy pictures unrelated to reality.^[15] A morality, as he understands the term, must be a really possible ideal of real beings—something then related to the earth and actual men.^[16] Further, although he objects to praising and blaming with their ordinary implications of responsibility and free-will, he none the less recognizes things to honor and things to despise,^[17] things to further and things to oppose^[18]—so that a basis for moral discriminations still remains. All this in general. And now as to the special type of morality which he proposes.

 

II

It is conceivable, he says, that the existence of man should be so precarious on the earth, that any rules and any illusions would be justified by which he was kept alive—the strictest discipline might be necessary. In this way primitive types of morality were justified, even if they covered much that seems to us superfluous or absurd—man could live only in and by society, and the social strait-jacket was imperative. Now, however, human existence has become relatively secure. Man abounds, perhaps superabounds. While under the early situation morality was not a matter of choice, now a certain freedom arises: we can more or less choose our ends, aiming in this or that direction as our imagination or taste or reason dictates.^[19]

It is under such a presupposition that Nietzsche proposes his moral aim. The problem appears to him in its most general form like this: Here within what we call humanity is an immense mass of force, accumulated and kept from wasting and self-destruction in no small measure by the influence of past morality—what shall be done with it, what impress shall be put upon it, what direction shall it take? Shall we let it drift? Shall our policy in relation to it be laisser aller, laisser passer—trusting to Providence or to destiny? Nietzsche thinks that confidences like these have an uncertain foundation and that humanity has already drifted too long. We should rather, he urges, seek to put an end to the horrible rule of folly and chance, hitherto called "history," for things do go to a fearful extent by accident in this world, and the call for foresight, for reason, is great.^[20] "The immense amount of accident, contradiction, disharmony, stupidity, in the present human world points to the future"; this is its "field of labor, where it can create, organize, and harmonize."^[21] A goal does not exist now, the ideals of men contradict one another; they arose in far narrower relations and were born of numberless errors.^[22] Moreover, it is an aim for the totality of humanity that is wanted; it is humanity as a whole that needs to be organized. What is the ideal that may make an aim, a goal, and a principle of organization?^[23]

Before giving Nietzsche's actual answer to this question, a word may perhaps properly be said as to the general logic of his procedure. In the first place, he remembers that it is an interregnum in which we live—hence we cannot be dogmatic, can only propose: "we are experiments, we wish to be."^[24] He is simply convinced in general that the future (future possibilities) must regulate our valuations—that we cannot seek the laws of our actions behind us.^[25] Secondly, the end or goal is not given to us. There is no absolute command, saying "so and so thou must choose," there is none from metaphysics and there is none from science: science indicates the flow of things, but not the goal.^[26] Once with an ideal, science may tell us how to reach it; science also gives us presuppositions (the general nature of existence) with which an ideal must correspond—but it does not fix the ideal itself.^[27] Herbert Spencer's picture of the future, for instance, is not a scientific necessity, it simply indicates a wish born of present ideals.^[28] Indeed, thirdly, this realm of ends is a field where the ordinary categories of true and false do not apply. In the final analysis, an end or goal or ideal is not a reality, an object to which thought must conform, but a something projected by the mind and set (made objective) by the will. We make ends, goals, ideals, they are a proof of our creative power. When we have set them, there are real conditions of attaining them, and these we do not make; we have to discover them, here we are bound, and science is supreme. But the ends do not exist save as we posit them: they are beyond questions of true and false.^[29] Here the extraordinary assassin-motto holds: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."^[30] But, fourthly, we do not need to have an end given us (by God or nature); we have creative power and can make one ourselves. I say "can," for it is at last a question of strength; perhaps some cannot. Zarathustra draws a picture of the history of man's mind; there are three stages—it is in turn a camel, a lion, and a child. The camel carries, bears what is heavy, dutifully submits, originates nothing, endures all things. The lion wants freedom, gets it, does away with all masters, still is not able to create. The child, however, can; it arises in innocence and oblivion of the past, is a new beginning, a first motion, a wheel turning of its own energy; the child plays, and is equal to the play of creation. The camel represents the old morality, useful, but limited in power; the lion the critical, destructive spirit, also useful, but limited in strength; the child positive creation. Man's mind in its historic course passes through these stages; and now it is the age of the child.^[31] Fifthly, as to how the mind shall create, what it shall produce, there is in the nature of the case no outside law. It is a matter of choice, of will absolutely, not of will as opposed to reason, for reason makes no deliverances on a supreme question like this [reason is the faculty of reasoning, and proceeds from a starting-point which it presupposes, i.e., finds, but does not create]. In a moral aim, one puts forth one's supreme choice—there is no other basis than this voluntaristic and æsthetic one. Nietzsche sometimes uses this word, "æsthetic," so often repugnant to moral thinkers.^[32] His meaning becomes clear in illustrations he uses. For example, we commonly take for granted that we should do this and that, since otherwise our life would be in danger. But suppose a man is ready, for the sake of honor or knowledge or some supreme passion, to risk his life or to throw it away, how shall we argue with him, what common premise have we to start from, since we take life as supreme and he something else? Or, again, we often say that this or that is good, because posterity and the preservation of the race depend on it. But this presupposes that we will posterity and the preservation of the race. Suppose that some one does not, the instinct and demand that is so strong in most of us being weak or lacking (Nietzsche thinks that it is not necessary)—what then? What will reasoning help in such circumstances?^[33] Or, supposing that we are all agreed that existence is desirable, what kind of existence shall it be? Some may prefer the greatest possible amount of existence, at least of comfortable, happy existence. Others may prefer the highest type of existence, even if small in amount, or if the comfort and happiness of the mass would have to be sacrificed somewhat to attain it. How is a decision to be reached? There would appear to be a difference of ultimate ideals, last choices. That the welfare of the mass is in itself the more valuable end is a naïveté which Nietzsche leaves to the English biologists.^[34] In truth, there is no value in itself, all values are posited, set, and relative to those who posit them. Instead of a rationale (i.e., rational deduction) of supreme ideals, it is possible only to give a psychology of them—that is, to indicate how as matter of fact they arise: and this is the sixth point. Ideals, says Nietzsche, [though he is speaking here of his own personal ideals, I think he would say that the truth is general] are the anticipatory hopes, i.e., hoped-for satisfactions of our impulses; as surely as we have impulses, so inevitably do they work on our fancy to produce a scheme of what we [or things] should be, to satisfy them—this is what idealizing means. Even the rascal has his ideal, though it may not be edifying to us.^[35] Nietzsche does not blink the fact that ideals, and ideals of honest people, may vary, that there is no one of which we can say with logical honesty (men being as they are today) that it is the ideal. Especially at the present are differences rife.^[36] Even when men agree in calling certain things good, they differ as to which are better and the best—that is, the order of rank (Rangordnung) is different.^[37] The very concepts of things—of health, for instance—differ. To a Schopenhauerian or Buddhist, a strong lusty man, eager for life and power, is not in a state of health at all; while from another point of view, it is the Schopenhauerian or Buddhist, craving for the extinguishment of his individuality, who is sick.^[38] It is the final ruling impulse in every case that fixes the ideal, and even gives names to things corresponding to its valuations.

The practical conclusion of all this is that in his own case Nietzsche, who most surely has an ideal, does not make any pretensions of absolute rationality about it and does not propose to force it upon any one else, whether by arms or by logic. He simply says to us, "This is my way; what is yours? The way there is not." In other language, "I am a law only for my own kind, I am no law for all."^[39] Indeed, having in mind the native differences and inequalities of men, he thinks it no special distinction to have an ideal that everybody shares with us. An ideal is something in which we body forth our very will and personality; how can we expect that all others will have just the same, unless we are like all the rest and have no distinctive being of our own?^[40] As we shall see, particular ideals Nietzsche expects will vary more or less among different classes. The ideal that mankind may have in common can only be very general and one that for many will perhaps seem far away.

All the same, ideals may be recommended, and the possibly universal ones to all. While mankind has no generally recognized goal at present, and to go ahead and lay down moral rules as if it had, is unreason and trickery, recommending a goal is different, for if it pleased mankind, mankind could adopt it and give itself a corresponding moral law of its own pleasure.^[41] And despite all Nietzsche's concern for freedom, he is eager to recommend his own ideal—eager and, one might almost say, imperious. The higher meaning of the world's spiritual endeavor, the supreme significance of the striving of the highest minds is, he thinks, to find the thought that will stand over mankind as its star.^[42] He enters the lists—here is the practical meaning of his will to power.

Yet, though Nietzsche recognizes this voluntaristic or æsthetic basis of the moral aim he proposes, we must not be led to think that there is any lack of stringency, whether logical or practical, in the aim when once accepted. All morality, Nietzsche's included, involves law and subordination. We choose the ideal, not the means by which to attain it—these are fixed by the general nature of things. The taste that is voluntary is only the supreme taste, not the lesser ones. If we want a strong physical organism, what we like or dislike at the moment, whether as to exercise or to diet, may count for little—so and so we have got to live.^[43] It is the same with a great social ideal: if we will the end, we must will the means, whether they strike the fancy and please us or not. Even a musical melody, remarks Nietzsche, "has laws of logic which our anarchists would cry down as slavery."^[44] Professor Riehl cites in this connection Goethe's word about "exact fancy," the fancy of the classic artist, of classic art; he says that moral judgments, even taken as æsthetic, remain absolute demands, whose object is formed by generally valid ideas of value.^[45] Nietzsche thinks that connecting morals with art in general means no reproach, I may say in passing. It is true that art has as a rule looked backward, glorifying the past; but in its essential nature it is simply an ideal-building force, a making visible of our innermost hopes and wishes.^[46] From this point of view, morality is itself a species of art. But it is a very particular species, since while it starts with a picture, it proceeds to create in flesh and blood, the philosopher-artist taking the lead, the rest of us being fashioned or fashioning ourselves according to the requirements of the ideal projected. So Goethe's "Prometheus":

"Here sit I, form men
After my image."^[47]

Life comes thus to be very strictly under law, and obedience a part of the nature of most of us. "To the good soldier 'Thou shalt' sounds pleasanter than 'I will.'"^[48] And for the men of the future whom Nietzsche anticipates, there will be something a hundredfold more important than how they or others feel at the moment, namely an aim for the sake of which they are willing to suffer everything, run every risk, and sacrifice all (themselves and others)—the great passion.^[49]

 

III

And now what is the final aim which Nietzsche proposes? As I have already stated more than once by way of anticipation, it is no other than life, and particularly the highest ranges of life. Man is higher than the animal, and there may be something higher than man, i.e., than man as we ordinarily know him. The instinct for something perfect, or as perfect as the conditions of existence will allow, is, I take it, the bottom instinct, the ruling impulse in Nietzsche. Essentially he was a religious man. Perhaps in the last resort we should not call him a moralist in the ordinary restricted sense of that term. As I read him, deep instincts of reverence preponderate in him, instincts that have their ordinary food and sustenance in the thought of God. But as his scientific conscience forbade him that belief, the instincts were driven to seek other satisfaction and found it (measurably) in the thought of the possibilities of mankind. Very far, indeed, was he, from a Comtean worship of humanity; the mass of men excited little reverence, rather pity or disdain, at best moderate respect for the moderate work they do. But now and then there emerge from the ordinary run of our species extraordinary individuals, and the thought of them, the possibilities they suggested, set his mind on fire. If there be no God, he, as it were, said to himself, may there not still be something beyond man! From our human stock, may not something transcendent arise? It is in the light of such a view that I interpret a remark to the effect that his tendency as a whole was not to morality, and that from an essentially extra-moral way of looking at things he was led to the consideration of morality—from a distance.^[50] The distant elevation on which he stood was that essentially of the religious nature. For from this standpoint something great belongs to the fabric of things, something awe-inspiring, something unreckonable, something sovereign and clean above us, and the world and life become inevitably flattened, when the thought of it is lost.^[51] It was Nietzsche's experience, and is the secret of the undertone of melancholy that we feel in him. One who knew him intimately (at least for a time) thinks that his history turned on this loss of faith, on "emotion over the death of God," and that the possibility of finding a substitute for the lost God became an animating thought with him.^[52] Later, when a readjustment had taken place, Nietzsche uses [makes Zarathustra use] this significant language: "Once, when men looked on the far-stretching sea, they said God; but I teach you to say, Superman."^[53] That is, the conceptions are in a way correlative. The future lords of the earth, he says, will "replace God," begetting in those whom they rule a "deep, unconditional confidence."^[54] Nietzsche's moral aim starts with a transcendent conception like this. The task of the race is to create these lords or Gods—if you cannot create a God, Zarathustra says, stop talking of one.^[55] That is, the morality of Nietzsche is a semi-religious morality. To this extent, he belongs in a different category from Utilitarians and others, who, taking men as they are, simply think of a way in which they may get along pleasantly and profitably together.^[56] He rather belongs to the company of those, or of One, who said, "be ye perfect," and set up as the standard the infinite perfection of God. ^a "Let the future and the furthest be the motive of thy today." "Do I counsel you to love your neighbor, the one nearest you? I counsel you rather to flee the nearest and love the furthest human being."^[57] In such sayings the spirit of the man and the final principle of his morality come to light. Man [as he exists] is something to be surpassed:^[58] that is his starting-point. It is not a proposition that can be proven, nothing that can be deduced, nothing that can be scientifically established; naïvetés of that sort he leaves to others: it is simply his choice, the outcome of his ruling impulse, which is to see the great, the transcendent in the world, so far as the conditions of existence allow. ^b If we do not make such a preliminary choice with him, his practical prescriptions will have little meaning to us.

In a sense, the aim might be called cosmical, i.e., the world is apparently thought of as pressing to a higher realization of its potencies through us in this way. Nietzsche says, "We are buds on one tree—what do we know of what can come out of us in the interests of the tree! … No. Beyond 'me' and 'thee'! To feel cosmically!"^[59]

I have spoken of Nietzsche's instinct for the perfect—how real it was comes out in a variety of minor indirect ways. Zarathustra gives comfort to his guest-disciples in the thought of the little good perfect things already in the world—put them around you, he says, their golden ripeness heals the heart; the perfect teaches hope.^[60] Nietzsche knows the charm of the imperfect, but, as already explained, it is in its suggestions, not for itself.^[61] Oddly as it may sound in these secular days, he pronounces the love of man "for God's sake" the most superior and elevated sentiment which mankind has hitherto reached—a love of man, without this thought of something beyond that hallows it, being a more or less stupid and brutish thing.^[62] "To man my will clings, with chains I bind myself fast to man, because so I am pulled up to the superman: for thither moves my other will."^[63] "Grant me from time to time a glimpse of something complete, finished, happy, mighty, triumphant, in which there is still something of fear, a glimpse of a man who justifies mankind, a complementary and redeeming instance, for whose sake we can hold fast our faith in man!"^[64] For man as he is is not a happy throw of nature's dice; there is something fundamentally wrong (verfehltes) with him; connecting with the old religious language, Nietzsche says that in place of the sinfulness we must substitute the general ill-constitutedness (Missrathensein) of man.^[65] He is tentative material merely; the failures preponderate; broken fragments, ruins (ein Trümmerfeld) are what we see about us.^[66] Hence suffering is Nietzsche's main feeling.^[67] We thirst, he says, for great and deep souls, and discover at best a social animal.^[68] Only a living habitual sense of perfect things could beget a dissatisfaction like this.

The aim which Nietzsche proposes is different, he thinks, from that of previous moralities. The various moral judgments of the past have been in the interest of "peoples," "races," etc., not of the species man and its utmost development, and indeed of peoples who wished to assert themselves against other peoples, classes who wished to mark themselves off from other classes. Morality has been an instrument for the preservation of a group (of some kind), not for the development of the race.^[69] This we have seen in the preceding criticism. Even in Christian morality he finds no exception, since he sees in it an assertion of the interest of the mass as against the class that had ordinarily stood above them, the kingdom of heaven being only an order in which the mass-morality (Heerdenmoral) should rule absolutely, leaving no room for moral conceptions of another order, and no place for another than social type of man. But for the mass to aim at their own good and make their valuations supreme, is not necessarily to raise the type of man; nay, just to the extent this morality dominates and excludes all others, it tends to fix the human type as it now exists and prevent the rise of anything different and higher. Here is the secret of the antagonism, violent at times, which Nietzsche manifests to Christian morality. By its very attractiveness and sweetness, by the very validity it has within a limited area (for he never questions the place of mutual love and help), it seduces us to give it an absolute authority and leads us away from the thought of those higher possibilities of mankind that alone, to his mind, make life greatly worth while. The carrying life to new and [practically] superhuman heights, not security, happiness and comfort for the mass, is Nietzsche's ideal.

 

IV

The aim is vague and yet already with it Nietzsche has a principle for judging things. With an ultimate value, he estimates other things accordingly. If the highest reach of life is the measure of things, then good is what tends that way, and bad what tends in an opposite direction. There are lines of procedure now, possible actions, feelings, thoughts, institutions, laws that harmonize with movement toward the desired goal—they are then to be furthered; other courses are to be opposed. Nietzsche calls it a naturalistic view; by this he means that there are no "oughts" or "ought nots" transcending life, but that life itself is the ultimate standard, and that "ought" and "ought not" are fixed by the demands of life^[70]—in the last resort, the demands of the highest life. He also has in mind the fact that we are bodies, a certain type of physiological organization, something far more and deeper than our momentary thoughts and feelings, or, for that matter, the whole reign of our conscious life, ^c and that it is this perduring substratum, the same whether we are awake or asleep, the same more or less in father and son, this actual line of physiological descent, out of which the higher men of the future are to spring—in other words, that we carry in our loins now the superman, that he is no angel from other spheres or bodiless phantasm like the Greek Gods.^[71] This is the meaning of the value which Nietzsche gives to the earth, of which we hear so much in Zarathustra. Stay true to the earth, he exclaims, and lead the virtue that has flown away from the earth back to it, back to body and life.^[72] Deserting life and wallowing in the thought of some other sort of existence is the supreme disloyalty.^[73] To spin the threads of our human life so that they ever become stronger—that is the task.^[74] Let us now see how the supreme valuation brings still other detailed valuations in its wake.

First, we have a standard for measuring truth and goodness. These are valuable so far as they serve life, but they are not supreme over life. If there are truths that are unfavorable to life (and we have no guarantee that there may not be such and rather reason to think that there are some—unfavorable at least to the life of most), there is no absolute duty to know them. Some forms of goodness—for instance, the mass ideals of goodness taken absolutely—may work contrary to the highest forms of life, may paralyze the springs of great desires^[75]—they are not binding upon all. The hostile, destructive spirit (the Böse), not love and pity only, has work to do in the world.

Second, we are able to judge the popular ethical notion that the aim of morality is the general welfare, or, as it is sometimes put, the preservation and furthering of the interests of mankind. Preserving, says Nietzsche, but in what, along what line? Furthering, but toward what? Is it the longest possible duration of mankind that is in mind or its greatest possible deanimalization?—for these things may contradict one another. To Nietzsche, I need not say, a line of ascending life is better, even though it comes to an end, than life continuing on the same level, even though it be indefinitely prolonged.^[76] "General welfare" is equally ambiguous; or, if it means that the welfare of the mass is the goal to be aimed at as opposed to the evolution of higher types, which may have to be at the expense of the mass, then "general welfare" is a false and anti-evolutionary principle.^[77] Indeed, remembering how man has risen from the animal and higher races from lower, only as superior members of a species got an advantage over the rest and bred more successfully their kind (a higher species thus in time resulting), Nietzsche says that the principle, "the good of the majority is to be preferred to that of individuals," is enough to take mankind in the course of time back to the lowest animality, for it is the reverse principle, "individuals are of more importance than the mass," that has elevated it.^[78]

Third, we have a measurement of healthy and sickly—health taken as covering body and spirit (things perhaps ultimately not so very different). Whatever Schopenhauer and Christian saints may say from their standpoint, to Nietzsche those who turn away from life and exalt virtues antithetical to life are sick, and they rank lower, are less desirable members of the species, on this account. It is the sound and strong who keep alive our confidence in life—and their right to be, the prerogative of the bell with full tone, is a thousandfold greater than the right of the discordant and broken; the latter undermine life and faith in life—they, and not the Bösen and "robber-animals," are man's greatest danger.^[79]

Fourth, we can now measure egoism and altruism from a standpoint superior to either. Dr. Dolson, perhaps the earliest philosophical student of Nietzsche in America, says that "the one name that can be given" to his system "without qualification is egoism"; but she straightway begins to make qualifications—and really they are most necessary.^[80] For all depends on who or what the ego is. The egoism of one who represents the rising tide of life is justified, though only in those who reach the highest crest is it completely justified, all the rest having their ends more or less beyond themselves. The egoism of the sickly and the degenerate, on the other hand, is not justified, it is rather something pitiful and revolting.^[81] In a similar way altruism is justified so far as there are (or may be) others better than ourselves; altruism under these conditions is justified, even if carried to the point of sacrifice. But altruism is not justified, when the "others" are not worth preserving and belong to those whose reason for existence has ceased to be (if it ever was). ^d

Fifth, life being essentially a process, a series of actions, a successive accumulation and expenditure of force, an adverse judgment is necessarily involved on viewing anything that is static, like pleasure or happiness, as an end. Life is not a means to enjoyment (Genuss). The noble soul does not wish to enjoy, save as it gives enjoyment.^[82] Whether it be pleasure or happiness or Carlyle's "blessedness" or peace of mind or good conscience, any and all are but incidents by the way.^[83] We are here rather to develop a certain kind and way of acting, and move toward a certain end; it is this, and not any momentary state or how we feel, that is the critical thing. It seems to be taken for granted in many quarters that pleasure of some kind (gross or refined) must be the final end of every act, moral action only differing in that it seeks lasting pleasure, or the greatest or the highest pleasure, or others' pleasure as well as our own; that there is no raison d'être for an action save in the agreeable feeling it gives somewhere. ^e Nietzsche had argued more or less in this way in his purely critical period, but he has now come to give pleasure an entirely subordinate place.^[84] He thinks indeed that it is the commoner sort of men who especially seek pleasure, the greater sort wishing above all to expend their force, more or less indifferent to pleasure and pain calculations.^[85] He regards marked emphasis on pleasure and particularly craving for enjoyment as "symptomatic": it implies people who lack these things—a more or less suffering and unhappy class.^[86] "Utility and enjoyment" are really "slave" theories of life, i.e., of those who are overburdened and want relief from their hard lot.^[87] The strong man is not after happiness—but he acts, acts successfully, and in that action is happiness: happiness comes without his seeking it—it is comes, not dux of his virtue.^[88] This does not mean contempt of happiness—Nietzsche knows its place as an adjunct in life.^[89] He even gives to utilitarianism a certain relative validity—it is the natural doctrine of the great working mass of men, and of those who take their standpoint.^[90] But he absolutely refuses to regard happiness (sensation of any kind) as the final measure of what is desirable, and has a kind of contempt for "green pastures and quiet waters" felicity, when made a universal ideal;^[91] he even thinks that the "salvation of the soul" is a better aim and a fuller conception than the happiness which moralists talk about, since it covers the whole willing, creating, feeling self and not merely a secondary accompanying phenomenon like happiness.^{[92] f}

Sixth, Nietzsche's final principle involves judgment on the idea sometime advanced that we are to develop all the impulses of our nature. "Develope all thy powers? but that means: develope anarchy! Go to pieces!"^{[93] g} A ruling principle, a master impulse is necessary, something to bring all the rest of our being into order, and that is what a final aim like Nietzsche's does. ^h

And now I come to a paradox, Nietzsche makes life supreme and yet honors on occasion those who risk their life or even sacrifice it. Indeed, he says in general that one should part with life as Ulysses did from Nausicaa—more blessing it than in love with it.^[94] Is this inconsistent? Let us see. What is life (as he understands it)? Heaped-up force which in turn expends itself, a continuous process of this sort. The acting, expending is the final thing, and doing this in a certain way, for a certain end, is to his mind the moral. But suppose such action puts one's existence in peril, what then? If persisted in, is life thereby despised? In a sense it certainly is—for we no longer set a supreme value on continued existence. If we care for life in that sense above all else we may go far, but shall not actually put it in jeopardy—simple prudence will hold us back. And yet we find Nietzsche on occasion despising prudence. He even honors a strong sinner more than one who is held back by motives of this sort.^[95] Those he counts great are always those who can transcend them. "I love him," says Zarathustra, "whose soul is prodigal," who "will not save himself." "What matters long life! What warrior wishes to be spared!" "Myself I sacrifice unto my love, and my neighbors as myself."^[96] Nietzsche goes so far [he is careless of formal consistency] as to say, "much is more highly prized by the living being than life itself"; and again, "men have become so pitiable that even the philosophers do not notice the deep contempt with which antiquity and the middle ages treated this 'self-evident value of values, life.'"^[97] Have we then a contradiction? Verbally, yes; but not really in thought. The fact is that "life" may be taken in two senses: on the one hand it may mean the inner active process already described, on the other, something static and external, mere existence. Nietzsche implies the two meanings and puts the matter in a nutshell, when he says that to risk life is not to despise it, but rather to lift it to a higher potency.^{[98] i} The supreme act of life (in one sense) may be to lose it (in another). Even the life of the species, in the sense of its mere continued existence, is not the end to Nietzsche.^[99] The great man, the genius, the superman, the final raisan d'être of the species, is himself a prodigal (Verschwender)—that he spends himself is his greatness; the instinct of self-preservation is suspended in him, the mighty urge of the forces streaming out through him forbidding every such care and precaution.^[100]

 

V

A word as to the objectivity of Nietzsche's standard. He is sometimes said to give us only a subjective arbitrary moraity,^[101] being compared to the Greek Sophists who denied all objective norms. The element of truth in such a view we have already seen—all morality is, according to him, the result of subjective demand somewhere; but in another way it contains more error than truth. Though ends are set by the intelligent

will have no existence apart from it, the particular end which Nietzsche himself chooses is something that belongs to the realm nature itself, and, once turned into an end, it becomes as exacting, and as independent of individual caprice or individual welfare in its requirements, the natural law itself could be. ^j An American writer from whom many seem to get their ideas of Nietzsche, but who unfortunately more or less vulgarizes him, says that completely rejecting "all fixed codes of morality," he leaves a man to "judge a given action solely by its effects upon his own welfare, his own desire or will to live, and that of his children after him."^[102] There could hardly be a greater misunderstanding. For what has the ascending life of humanity necessarily to do with any chance individual's personal welfare, or that of his children, unless indeed they are a part of that ascending life, in which case their welfare is a matter not so much of personal, of general moment? This writer says, "Nietzsche offers the gospel of prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism."^[103] But Nietzsche expressly declares, "my philosophy aims at an order of rank, not at an individualistic morality";^[104] he declares the morals of then individual happiness, it is not science and not wisdom, but mere prudence mixed with stupidity;^[105] he calls it the most immodest of arrière-pensées to measure good and evil from the standpoint of our personal selves.^[106] Particularly if a man belongs to the descending line of life, as it a horror in Nietzsche's eyes when he says, "all for myself."^[107] Ascending life and the highest possible ascent being the measure of things,^[108] individuals are themselves good and bad as they belong to it or no—at least as they further or retard it.

The standard is of such a nature that it is independent of personal feeling—or even opinion. Can one think, Nietzsche asks, of a madder extravagance or vanity than to judge the worth of existence by agreeable or disagreeable feelings?^[109] One is not well because he feels so, any more than one is "guilty," "sinful" because he feels so—witches not only were believed to be guilty, but they thought themselves so.^[110] By this is meant that as health is a matter of objective physiological measurement, so is life, advancing life, and the highest life.^[111] The value of a "thou oughtst" is independent of opinion about it, as certainly as the value of a medical prescription is independent of whether one thinks scientifically, or like an old woman, about medicine.^[112] The greatest sincerity of conviction avails nothing; on the other hand, decisive and valuable actions may be done without assurance of conscience.^[113] It is plain from utterances like these that Nietzsche thinks that in his standard of value he has something absolutely objective. It is even independent of our chance affirmation of it. To call an action good, he derisively exclaims, because our conscience says yes to it! It is as if a work of art became beautiful because it pleased the artist! As if the value of music were determined by our enjoyment of it, or the enjoyment of the composer!^[114] All this subjective way of judging things that have really a law and logic of their own is abhorrent to Nietzsche.^[115] Life is something objective to him; being at bottom an organization of power, the worth of any particular specimen depends upon how much power it incorporates, and upon how high the level is to which the power attains.^[116] The whole range of feeling, even of consciousness, is more or less accidental in relation to it. Feeling makes nothing good, and consciousness is a means of life, more or less a help, too much of it a hindrance,^[117] but never a basic thing in life—he holds to the old Schopenhauerian view in this respect, which has points of contact with what is called the "instrumental" view now. Nietzsche himself speaks of the necessity of an objective valuation.^[118] He believes that he has an objective value. He is in reality the opposite, as Professor Simmel has remarked, of the Greek Sophists or of a thinker like Max Stirner in recent times, for whom the only reality is the individual subject, each subject judging according to its own personal standpoint; in Stirner, not in Nietzsche, is the position of the Sophists revived.

1. The substance of this and the following chapters appeared in The International Journal of Ethics, January and April, 1915.
2. Werke, XIV, 358, § 223.
3. Will to Power, § 469.
4. Werke, XIII, 125, § 282; cf. Dolson on this point, op. cit., p. 63.
5. Beyond Good and Evil, § 32.
6. Werke, XIII, 124, § 281.
7. Will to Power, §§ 399, 404.
8. Werke, XIV, 312, § 144.
9. Ibid., XIII, 176, § 404; cf. XIV, 351-2, § 212; 308-9, § 141.
10. Beyond Good and Evil, § 202.
11. Conditions for passing from one form of existence into another included (cf. Werke, XIV, 313, § 144; XIII, 139, § 322). As to the special conditions of existence of the philosopher, see Genealogy etc., III, § 8.
12. Werke, XIII, 216, § 510; Will to Power, § 966 (cf. the use of "extreme immorality" in § 246); ibid., §§ 914, 981; Werke, XI, 239, § 197.
13. So only can I interpret Dawn of Day, § 97; cf. Joyful Science, § 335; Werke, XIII, 150, § 355; 190, § 421.
14. Werke, XIII, 124, § 280.
15. Will to Power, §§ 330, 709; Twilight etc., ix, § 32.
16. Cf. Zarathustra, I, iii; also IV, xviii, § 2 ("We have no desire to go into the kingdom of heaven, we are men and desire a kingdom of the earth").
17. Numberless citations might be given; even praising and blaming are sometimes viewed from another angle and to this extent justified (see Werke, XIII, 197-8, § 435).
18. Cf. Dawn of Day, § 103; Genealogy etc., I, § 17.
19. Cf. Will to Power, §§ 260-1, 953.
20. Beyond Good and Evil, § 203; cf. Zarathustra, I, iii; Werke, XIV, 337, § 186; cf. 335, § 178.
21. Werke, XIII, 362-3, § 895; cf. Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 2; II, xx; III, xii, § 3; IV, xvi, § 2.
22. Werke, XIV, 335, § 178.
23. Cf. Will to Power, § 880 (a substitute for morality through will to our end, and hence to the necessary means).
24. Dawn of Day, § 453; cf. § 164. Nietzsche regards past moralities as really built on hypothesis more or less; but as man's mind was too weak and unsure of itself to take an hypothesis as such and at the same time make it regulative, faith (Glaube) was necessary (Werke, XIII, 139, § 321).
25. Will to Power, § 1000; cf. Werke, XIII, 342, § 984.
26. Werke, XIV, 320, § 155; cf. Will to Power, § 583; Werke, XII, 357, § 672.
27. Dawn of Day, § 453; Werke, XII, 357, § 672.
28. Werke, XIII, 80, § 155.
29. Cf. The Antichristian, § 55 ("There are questions where decision as to truth and untruth is not possible for man; all supreme questions, all ultimate problems of value are beyond human reason").
30. Zarathustra, IV, ix; Genealogy etc.. III, § 24.
31. Zarathustra, I, i. Cf. the high view of man as creator as well as creature in Beyond Good and Evil, § 225.
32. Cf. Mixed Opinons etc., § 329; Dawn of Day, § 114; Joyful Science, §§ 3, 13, 77, 290, 294; Zarathustra, III, iv; xii, § 2; IV, vi; Beyond Good and Evil, § 205; Werke, XII, 64, § 116; 95-6, § 193; XIII, 154, § 363. Morality being a personal choice and the ultimate moral valuation determining the character of one's philosophy, every great philosophy has been a self-confession of its author, a sort of involuntary and unconscious mémoires (Beyond Good and Evil, § 6).
33. Werke, XII, 220, § 155.
34. Note at the end of Genealogy etc., I.
35. Werke, XI, 390, § 613.
36. Ibid., 371-2, § 576; cf. 196, § 102.
37. Beyond Good and Evil, § 194.
38. Werke, XII, 124-5, § 244; 78, § 150; 80, § 155.
39. Zarathustra, III, xi, § 2; IV, xii; cf. Joyful Science, § 321; Werke, XIII, 176, § 404; XI, 220-1, § 155 ("An impulse to live individually exists: I think in its service. Others who do not have the impulse cannot be obligated by me").
40. Cf. Will to Power, § 349.
41. Dawn of Day, § 108.
42. Werke, XII, 360, § 679.
43. Nietzsche calls it the greatest error to think that taste determines the value of a food or an action (Werke, XII, 78, §150). Cf. the remark about "actual relevance to the preservation of life, strict causality" (Werke, XI, 204, § 121).
44. Letter to Krug, Briefe, I, 321.
45. Op. cit., pp. 130-1.
46. Werke, XIV, 355, § 178.
47. See Meyer's fine observations, op. cit., pp. 77-8.
48. Zarathustra, I, x.
49. Will to Power, § 26.
50. Werke, XIV, 74, § 144.
51. Cf. passages like Human, etc., § 223; Joyful Science, § 125.
52. Lou Andreas-Salomé, op. cit., pp. 38-9. In a similar spirit Nietzsche speaks of the doctrine of eternal recurrence as taking the place of metaphysics and religion (Will to Power, § 462).
53. Zarathustra, II, ii.
54. Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 486, § 36; cf. Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 2 ("God died: now we will that the superman live"); also I, xxii, § 3. He quotes a passage from Plato's Theages: "each of us would like if possible to be lord of all men, most of all to be God," and adds "this sentiment must arise again" (Will to Power, § 958).
55. Zarathustra, II, ii. Still further, "God is a conjecture; but what I wish is that your conjecturing should go no further than your creative will." Again, "He who does not find the great in God any more finds it in general no more—he must either deny or create it" (Werke, XII, 329, § 536).
56. Such a view, ever asking how man can maintain himself best, longest, most agreeably, is what makes men of today small and common (Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 3).
57. Zarathustra, I, xvi.
58. Ibid., prelude, § 3. Cf. IV, xiii, § 3 ("it is the superman whom I have at heart—he is my first and only, and not man.… Oh, my brothers, what I can love in man is that he is a transition, a passing away"); also, I, x ("let your love to life be love to your highest hope; and let your highest hope be your highest thought of life").
59. Werke, XII, 128-9, § 248.
60. Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 15.
61. Joyful Science, § 79.
62. Beyond Good and Evil, § 60. So "in thy friend thou shalt love the superman as thy motive" (Zarathustra, I, xvi).
63. Zarathustra, II, xxi.
64. Genealogy etc., I, § 12.
65. Werke, XIV, 204, § 405; 330, § 166.
66. Will to Power, § 713. Cf. the descriptions in Zarathustra, II, xx.
67. Genealogy etc., I, § 11 ("derm wir leiden am Menschen, es ist kein Zweifel").
68. Werke, XIII, 213, § 498.
69. Ibid., XIII, 141-2, §§ 327-9.
70. Twilight etc., v, § 4; cf. Will to Power, § 462.
71. Cf. Werke XII, 362, § 688 (mankind must set its aim beyond itself, not, however, in a false world, but in its own continuation); cf. XIV, 263, § 10.
72. Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 2. Zarathustra loves those who do not have to seek a reason beyond the stars for sacrifice (prologue, § 4).
73. Cf. Zarathustra, prologue, § 3 (once crime against God was the greatest crime; now the most terrible thing is to sin against the earth).
74. Will to Power, § 674.
75. Ibid., § 244.
76. Dawn of Day, § 106; cf. Will to Power, § 864 (towards the close).
77. Dawn of Day, § 106; Beyond Good and Evil, § 228; Genealogy etc., I, note at the end.
78. Werke, XI, 223, § 160; cf. ante, in this volume, p. 64.
79. Genealogy etc.. III, § 14.
80. Op. cit., p. 101.
81. Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 1. The egoism (Eigenliebe) of the "Siechen und Süchtigen" "stinkt" (ibid., III, xi, § 2). Cf. still further on the two kinds of egoism, Will to Power, § 873.
82. Werke, XIV, 95, § 198; Zarathustra, III, xii, § 5.
83. Werke, XII, 137-8, § 266. As to the various meanings of "peace of mind," see Twilight etc., v, § 3; as to "blessedness," Will to Power, § 911. Cf. the characterization of "enjoyment, coarse, heavy, brown enjoyment, as those who enjoy life, our 'educated' class, our rich men and rulers understand it" (Joyful Science, preface, § 4).
84. Cf. Will to Power, § 928.
85. Werke, XIII, 177, § 405; Will to Power, §§ 579, 909, 1022.
86. Werke, XII, 152, § 359; cf. Will to Power, §§ 781, 790. Christianity with its vista of future "blessedness" is a typical way of thinking for a suffering and impoverished species of man (Will to Power, § 222).
87. Will to Power, § 758. Hence the running fire on utilitarianism (whether egoistic or universalistic), and, since England is its principal home, the sarcastic references to Englishmen. As to utilitarianism, see Werke, XIII, 150-1; Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 174, 188, 190, 225, 228, 260; as to Englishmen, Will to Power, §§ 930, 944; Twilight etc., i, § 12.
88. Werke, XIII, 158, § 367; XII, 137-8, § 266; Will to Power, §§ 1023, 1026. So love is comes of reason and justice, joy in it, pleasure in its possession, desire to possess it wholly and in all its beauty—the æsthetic side of reason and justice, a subsidiary impulse (Werke, XII, 137, § 265).
89. Cf. the recognition of Bentham and particularly Helvetius (Werke, XIII, 107).
90. Cf. Werke, XIII, 150-1, § 356.
91. Will to Power, § 957.
92. Werke, XIII, 152, § 361.
93. Ibid., XI, 277, § 304.
94. Beyond Good and Evil, § 96.
95. Zarathustra, prologue, § 3; cf. Werke, XI, 250, §§ 216-8; Will to Power, § 909. President Wilson said, when Governor-elect of New Jersey (1911), "God defend us against compromise; I would rather be a knave than a coward."
96. Zarathustra, prologue, § 4; 1,x. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 13 ("a living thing will above all expend its force—self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results of this"); Werke, XIV, 314, § 146 (mankind a mass of force, which grows and must spend itself).
97. Zarathustra, II, xii; Werke, XI, 223, § 159.
98. Will to Power, § 929.
99. Ibid., § 864.
100. Twilight etc., ix, § 44; cf. Werke, XIV, 335, § 178. O. Külpe leaves this out of account when he speaks of life at any price as Nietzsche's supreme value (Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Deutschland, 3rd ed., p. 65). Meyer remarks that Nietzsche's own short life, inspired and productive as it was, was better than a long, healthy life, filled with moderate labors (Jahrbuch für das classische Alterthum, Vol. V, p. 727).
101. Cf. Arthur Drews, op. cit., p. 312.
102. Henry L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 92-3.
103. Op. cit., p. 102. These crudities are retained in the "fully revised, 3rd ed.
104. Will to Power, § 287.
105. Beyond Good and Evil, § 198.
106. Dawn of Day, § 102. Frank Thilly hardly bears this in mind in (speaking of Nietzsche as standing for an extreme form of moral individualism, every one striking for himself (Hibbert Journal, October, 1911, (pp. 262-3); and Paul Carus is absolutely mistaken in speaking (in the announcement of his book on Nietzsche) of Nietzsche's, along with Max Stirner's, "extreme individualism, which regards every single person as an absolutely autonomous sovereign being." On the other hand, Simmel makes all the discriminations needed (op. cit., pp. 242-5).
107. Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 1.
108. Cf. a statement like that of Will to Power, § 354 or § 373.
109. Ibid., § 674.
110. Genealogy etc., III, § 16; cf. Werke, XII, 148, § 293.
111. Cf. the suggestions of Will to Power, § 291.
112. Werke, XIV, 402, § 278; XIII, 129, §§ 293-4.
113. Ibid., XIII, 134, § 310; 135, § 311.
114. Werke, XIII, 135, § 311; Will to Power, § 291.
115. Cf., as to music and the lack of an aesthetics of music at the present time. Will to Power, §§ 838, 842.
116. Ibid., § 674.
117. Neitzsche says, "everything good is instinct," which is not the same as saying, "every instinct is good," a confusion to which A. S. Prngle-Pattison comes very ner (op. cit., p. 313). Neitzsche’s general view is that consciousness is only an instrument in the development of life—reason too (Beyond Good and Evil, § 191).
118. Will to Power, § 707; cf. Werke, XIII, 135, § 311 (a community's "advantage" distinguished from its pleasurable feelings).