Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XXVII

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XXVII

MORAL CONSTRUCTION (Concluded). THE SUPERMAN^[1]

"Superman" is a strong, picturesque expression such as Nietzsche delighted on occasion to use. It occurs chiefly in the prose-poem, Thus spake Zarathustra (1883). It does not appear in Beyond Good and Evil, which soon followed and is a more matter-of-fact statement of essentially the same thoughts as those contained in the earlier work, and only once in The Genealogy of Morals, which succeeded Beyond Good and Evil and is a somewhat connected treatment of certain controverted special points in that book.

 

I

Yet, like all Nietzsche's extreme phrases, it covers a substantial thought. The word, oddly as it sounds (I think it was Mr. Bernard Shaw who first popularized it among us), is formed most naturally. We often speak of "superhuman" excellencies and qualities, though usually having in mind something bordering on the Divine; and any one having these superiorities is, of course, literally speaking, a "superman"—the only novelty in Nietzsche's view being that the superhuman traits are regarded as attainable by man. The substantive itself is not absolutely new. Mommsen spoke of the Æschylean heroes as "supermen." Homberger (1882) called Bismarck a "superman." Goethe used the word a couple of times:^[2] Herder did once in an unfavorable, Jean Paul in a favorable, sense.^[3] The first use of it by Nietzsche (so far as I remember) is in Joyful Science (1882), where "Übermenschen" are spoken of along with Gods and heroes, and by way of contrast to "Nebenmenschen" and "Untermenschen" (such as dwarfs, fairies, satyrs).^[4] Before this, he had made use of the adjective as we all do, speaking, for instance, of "superhuman goodness and justice"—and, indeed, "super" in general (or its equivalent) appears rather often, as in "super-German" (of Wagner's thoughts), "super-national" (of universal aims), "super-hellenic," "super-historical"; he spoke of man as the "super-animal" and of a "distant super-world."

During the period of reaction against his early idealization of Wagner, Nietzsche made adverse reflections on the elevation of individuals into superhuman beings. The cultus of genius seemed to him a continuation of the old worship of Gods and princes; when one raises certain men to a superhuman level, one is apt to look on whole classes as lower than they really are. He felt that there is a danger for genius itself when it begins to fancy itself superhuman.^[5] It is curious that Nietzsche always had a more or less pronounced aversion to Carlyle's hero-worship.^[6] Even as late as Thus spake Zarathustra there is a slighting reference to Gods and supermen (taken as people up in the clouds); Zarathustra is tired of them^[7]—as of the poets who invent them. And yet, despite such chaffing, Nietzsche's early instinct for what is superior and great is by the time of Thus spake Zarathustra in full away again, and this book itself is a product of it. He had said almost at the outset of his career (I have quoted the words before, but they will bear repeating): "I see something higher and more human above me than I myself am; help me all to attain it, as I will help every one who feels and suffers as I do—in order that at last the man may arise who is full and measureless in knowledge and love and vision and power, and with his whole being cleaves to nature and takes his place in it as judge and valuer of things."^[8] And now, after years of self-criticism in which everything in his early beliefs that could be shaken was shaken, the old attitude recurs—and stands out clearer, and more assured than ever.

"When half-gods go,
The gods arrive."

Wagner had gone, the early illusions about him had vanished; but the transcendent vision of superhuman excellence which Nietzsche had momentarily identified with that great figure survived.

 

II

"Superman" is a poetic designation for great individuals carried to their utmost human limit, for "persons" in the full sense of that term. ^a Superman is man as he might be—not another species, but our very human flesh and blood transfigured. As Professor Simmel, one of the critical writers on Nietzsche who has penetrated most deeply into his thought, puts it, "The superman is nothing but the crystallization of the thought that man can develop beyond the present stage of his existence—and hence should."^[9] Zarathustra has scanned the great men of history, and the greatest of them are, like the smallest men, "all-too-human"; "there has never yet been a superman."^[10] Individuals like Alcibiades, Cæsar, Frederick II, Leonardo da Vinci, Cæsar Borgia, Napoleon, Goethe, Bismarck are approximations to the type, but all come short somewhere—they were men of power, took great and fearful responsibilities, but were spoiled by some defect.^[11] Zarathustra is spoken of by Nietzsche as an incorporation of the ideal,^[12] but Zarathustra is an imaginary figure—and, as portrayed, he himself looked beyond.

Nietzsche once puts his problem, and incidentally reveals his understanding of the new phrase, thus: Dismissing the current individualistic morality along with the collectivistic, since the former, like the latter, fails to recognize an order of rank among men and wants to give equal freedom to all, he says that the thoughts turn rather on the degree of power that one or another person may exercise over others or over all, i.e. or how far a sacrifice of freedom and virtual enslavement may be the basis for the bringing forth of the higher type. Put in the crudest way, to what extent could we sacrifice the development of humanity to the end of bringing a higher type than man into existence? His concept, or rather image (Gleichniss), for such a type is "superman"^[13] Another statement of the problem, put in the form of the demand, is; "To bring forth beings who stand elevated above the whole race of man, and to sacrifice one's kind to this end."^[14] Taking this literally, a new species is suggested, and countenance is lent to the view that Nietzsche conceived of an evolution in the future like that which Darwin is supposed to have proved in the past, namely, of a new biological type. But there is reason to doubt whether Nietzsche had anything so definite as this in mind. The whole question as to his relation to Darwinism is a mooted point. He may himself have had different attitudes at different times—that of criticism becomes marked toward the end of his life. The view that seems to me most reasonable is that he finally settled down to thinking of supermen simply as extraordinary specimens of men, who, however, if favored, instead of being fought as they commonly are, might lead to a considerable modification of the human type—one so great that, speaking in literary and fluid rather than scientific fashion, the result might be called a new species. He expressly says in one of his later books, "Not what shall take the place of humanity in the successive order of beings is the problem I propose—man is an end; but what type of man we shall train, shall wish for as one of higher value, worthier of life, surer of the future. The more valuable type has often enough existed, but as a happy chance, an exception, never as something willed. Instead of this it has been something feared, almost the fearful thing—and from motives of fear the contrasted type has been willed, trained, attained: man the domestic animal, the social animal, the sick animal—the Christian." In the following paragraph, he speaks of the higher as "relatively" a "sort of superman."^[15] Once he makes a derisive reference to "learned cattle who had suspected him of Darwinism."^[16] If Nietzsche finally held to Darwinism at all—and it is not certain that he did^[17]—it was only in the sense of a development-theory in general, much as Emerson spoke of the worm mounting "through all the spires of form" to man. For not evolution, not even selection, is a distinctive Darwinian idea, but only natural selection, along with the theory of surplus numbers and the consequent struggle for existence—and Nietzsche distrusted these premises of Darwin's view, and wanted not so much natural selection (which he thought often favored the weak) as conscious, human selection in the direction of individuals of maximum power.

 

III

But when we ask how the superman is to be got, we are left more or less in the vague. Nietzsche thinks that we have not sufficient data for a judgment as yet. Physiology, medicine, psychology, sociology—sciences that must give us the data—are not developed enough. Those who imagine that Nietzsche has any short cut to Utopia have little idea of the manner of man he was. Brandes called his view "aristocratic radicalism" (in distinction from radicalism of the democratic or socialistic type); but he is radical in thought, not in proposing a program. He has a profound sense of the slowness of all real social changes. He contrasts the French Revolution with what it might have been, had steadier heads kept in control.^[18] Chronic ailings (such as lung troubles) develop from slight causes repeated constantly, he observes, and cures, if possible, come in much the same way (in this case by repeated deep breathing); and the truth holds equally of spiritual ills.^[19] So "no impatience" now! "The superman is our next stage "—but "moderation" along with courage is needed in aiming thitherward. Zarathustra, the prophet of the coming order, has repose, can wait. Life and action having got a purpose and meaning, there is no need of leaping, and each step onward may be perfect and give happy feeling. All violent longing is to be overcome—the calm of the great stream is to come in its place.^[20] Speaking more prosaically, we are to guard against exchanging the customary morality for a new valuation suddenly and violently—we must continue to live in the old for a long time and take the new in small doses repeatedly, till we find, very late, probably, that the new valuation has got predominant force and that the little doses have made a new nature in us.^[21] Indeed, in order to be taught, the new morality must introduce itself in connection with the existing moral law and under its names and guises—that is, it must be more or less opportunist and compromising.^[22] Nietzsche does not think much of "agitators," all too apt to be empty heads, who flatten and inflate any good idea they get hold of and give it out with a hollow sound.^[23] It is a change in the depths of thought that is needed, not a noisy enthusiasm. And this is why he might have had reserves as to some who call themselves Nietzscheans today—for, he observes, with a touch of humor, the first disciples of a doctrine prove nothing against it! ^b

I have said that his thought as to how to reach the superman is vague. It may be something, however, to turn the mind in this direction, and to have a clear conviction that the result is more or less in our hands. If mankind were really persuaded that its chief function is not to make itself happy and secure on the earth, but to produce godlike individuals, it would surely make a difference. At present, the old Christian thought of heaven and hell being no longer regnant, there is, Nietzsche thinks, no common aim, and things are going by luck, hit or miss. If there is any faith, it is a vague and more or less lazy confidence that things will come out right anyway, "Providence" or "evolution" or "progress" or "the course of things" being the determining matter—as if, says Nietzsche, it did not depend on us how things come out, as if we could let them go their way.^[24] Indeed, what does "coming out right" mean, save as we have some notion of what is right? Nietzsche is opposed to leaving things to chance—and it may be counted one of his distinctions in the future that he restored rationality (in the large sense) to its proper place as the ruler of the world—something to be quite distinguished from the faith that rationality, with a big R, does rule the world—and that he helped to make man the sovereign creator of his own destiny.

A word which Nietzsche often uses is "Züchtung"; its meaning is training or breeding, a practical equivalent being purposive selection. It is something that Burbank is doing in California in the realm of plant life. Nietzsche, however, uses the term in a large sense and comprehends under it all the means, physical, social, spiritual, that may be used for producing the great result at which he aims.^[25] Sometimes he uses "Erziehung," meaning education, not in our conventional, but in the broadest sense. "Züchtung," however, brings out more clearly the necessary factor of selection.^[26] Let us observe, he urges, nature and history and see in what way notable results have been reached unconsciously and perhaps clumsily and by very slow methods in the past; then, taking things into our own hands, let us see if the results we aim at cannot be reached in a similar way, but more surely and with less waste of time and force. Let an organized mankind test Darwin's assertions by experiment—even if the experimentation covers centuries and millenniums and we have to turn the whole earth into experiment stations. Let it be proved whether apes can be developed into men, and lower races into higher races, and whether from the best mankind has at present to show, something still higher can be reared.^[27] The Chinese have made trees that bear roses on one side and pears on the other—and where are the limits to be set to the possibilities of selective human breeding? Historical processes may be improved upon: granting that races and racial struggles, national fevers and personal rivalries, have done their part, why could not the long-drawn-out and painful tale be crowded into brief space and the net results be got without the fearful waste!^[28] It is evident that Nietzsche has in mind a control of humanity such as has not been heard or perhaps thought of before. He speaks repeatedly of a world-economy, a rule of the earth—and it might be said in reply that there would be need of a God to administer it. A sort of contradiction might be charged up to him in that the superman who is to be reached as the outcome of a process of evolution would be required to start and guide the process—we should have to be Gods to know how to create them! And Nietzsche could only answer that, as individuals learn by doing and have to venture even if they make mistakes, so with mankind—that the only practical thing in the present case is to start with as strong, masterful intelligence as we can get, aiming at world-control, and hope to win sooner or later a world-result.

 

IV

The initiative in such an enterprise can evidently only be taken by those who have the thought that inspires it—naturally they will be few. They must be thinkers, and men of action at the same time.^[29] They will choose themselves, and, so to speak, put the crown on their own heads. Evidently physical force is not sufficient to constitute them—force of this kind can do little in a connection like this. Neither is it a question of wealth—our rich men are the poorest, says Nietzsche, the aim of all wealth being forgotten.^[30] Nor is it any longer a question of race, though a superior race, the "blond [Aryan] beast," did once lift Europe to a higher level—there are no pure races in Europe now.^[31] Nor is it a question of aristocratic descent—where in Germany will you find, Nietzsche asks, a great family in whose blood there is not venereal infection and corruption? Peasant blood, he thinks, is still the best. ^c Not whence you come, but whither you go, is the critical question for the nobility to be.^[32] The challenge is, How strong are you, how near completeness in body, mind, and soul, how far can you stand alone, assume responsibility, be your own master, and thereby be fit to master others.^[33] In other words, it is a question of character (in the great sense).^[34] The men to take the lead in redeeming the world from folly and chance, and in organizing collective experiments and hazardous enterprises to that end, will be "philosophers" of this type. Every sound quality that belongs to the ascending line of life will be theirs. So-called "aristocrats of intellect" are not enough;^[35] there must be blood and sound physical organization; they must be capable of projecting a new physiological line—all aristocracies start from superior whole men. ^d Nor will they despise the economic basis of life. Though wealth will be nowise a distinctive mark of them (others will have more than they) they will have wealth—enough to make them independent and able to do what they like, instead of what other people like, enough to lift them above pitiful economies, enough to marry well on and pay for the best instruction to their children. Nietzsche's ideas will hardly be thought extravagant in this connection. He says that 300 Thaler a year may have almost the same effect as 30,000;^[36] and, in commenting on the Greek aristocracies with their hereditary property and saying that they "lived better" than we, he significantly adds that he means "better in every sense, above all much more simply in food and drink."^[37] At the same time the aristocracy to be will control wealth, even if not possessing it in any high degree—they will see that it does not hinder, but rather serves the great public ends they have at heart. Nietzsche even throws out what may seem a wild suggestion, namely, that the wise must secure the monopoly of the money-market: however elevated they may be above the wealthy class by their aims and manner of life, they must give direction to wealth—it is absolutely necessary, he declares, that the highest intelligence give direction to it. Money will be safest under their control—otherwise it will be liable to go (as so often happens now) for extreme one-sided tendencies.^[38]

These men, too, will know, as real aristocracies always know, the significance of marriage.^[39] Love will be looked at from a new angle (new, that is, to the modern world)—it will be controlled by ideal considerations.^[40] Marriage will not be from passion or emotion simply. Nor will mere considerations of mutual fitness and compatibility be the controlling thing. The main aim of marriage for men like these will be the continuation of their type, and propagation will be a matter of the utmost sacredness.^[41] Zarathustra speaks in this spirit in a passage already summarized.^{[42] e} He speaks also of the helpful influence which physicians may exert.^[43] Women may help directly—the deepest instincts of motherhood may be brought into line with the aim of producing a higher race.^[44] It is, of course, a different aim from the ordinary one of "founding a family" which vulgar and self-centered people may wish to do—the aristocracy to be will exist for universal ends, and, instead of being a closed line or set of lines, it will take to itself new elements of promise wherever they appear, and will draw on all the varied talents that are needed for the administration of the earth.^[45] As little is it a national aristocracy which Nietzsche has in mind. His thought is European^[46] (or wider) and the aristocracy will be international—the principle of the possibility of a United Europe; he speaks of possible "international marital unions" as fortresses under whose protection the training of a race of future lords of the earth may go on.^[47] He is aware that accident more or less rules in the world, and perhaps always will—he is aware that genius itself is often a happy accident.^[48] Indeed, some of his interpreters cannot clearly make out whether the superman is to be trained and educated or is to come like a piece of fate.^[49] Nietzsche, however, really combines both views, saying that we may look to heredity, happy marriages, and to happy accidents to give us great men^[50]—he is really a more balanced thinker than many imagine.

With this training of an aristocracy is also to go every possible measure for preventing degeneration among the mass of men. Races that cannot be utilized in some way may be allowed to die out. Sickly people and criminals may be kept from propagating themselves.^[51] Nietzsche does not think much of those who talk of man's rights in marriage; it is better to speak of the right to marry, and he thinks it a rare right. Permission to produce children should be granted as a distinction—physicians' certificates being in order.^[52] Women have obvious power here, and with power Nietzsche suggests responsibility. Remarking that the earth might be turned into a garden of happiness, if the dissatisfied, melancholy, grumbling could be prevented from perpetuating themselves, he intimates here "a practical philosophy for the female sex." It would also be better if men of high intellect, but with weakly nervous character, could not be perpetuated in kind. Society may hold in readiness the severest measures of restriction to this end, on occasion even castration. "The Bible commandment 'thou shalt not kill' is a naïveté compared with the commandment of life to decadents, 'thou shalt not beget.'"^[53]

 

V

Under what general social conditions would the higher species (or the incipient approaches thereto) best arise? Nietzsche's view is almost paradoxical. Not favorable, but unfavorable conditions are best for them. With all said and done as to aiming at them and facilitating them, circumstances must not be too easy, conditions too soft, for them. He generally gives us the extremes of his thought (of course, at different times or in different connections), leaving us to reconcile them—and I am not sure that I can quite reconcile them in this case. The underlying idea is that the men of the future will be men of power and can only be proved by opposition. He early saw the place of insecurity, peril, and danger in educating the race and bringing out its higher qualities, and he applies the view in the present connection. He had made a special study of Greek life, and of the marked individuals who appeared in such numbers in the Greek city-states he observes, "It was necessary to be strong: danger was near—it lurked everywhere." Men became great not so much from the good intentions of the people, as because danger challenged them and they asserted themselves even to the point of seeming böse to the people.^[54] So with the Romans—they were the outcome of a long-continued struggle for power: it was in this way that they reached their giant stature, like that of a primeval forest.^[55] Let one go through history, says Nietzsche: the times when the individual becomes ripe for his perfection, i.e., free, when the classic type of the sovereign man is reached—"oh, no, they were never humane times!" There must be no choice, either above or below trodden under foot. It is no small advantage to have a hundred Damocles-swords over one—thereby one learns to dance, comes to "fredom of motion."^[56] The view seems extreme, and yet the very fundamental idea of Nietzsche, that of an order of rank (Rangordnung), presupposes differences of power, differences usually determined by opposition and conflict—man in his struggle with nature being the grandiose prototype. Even under conditions of civilization one must guard against too much intercourse with the good-natured—for it relaxes: all intercourse is good in which one is armed (not necessarily with a pistol—need I add for the benefit of the simple?).^[57] Perhaps in no way does Nietzsche go so contrary to current ways of thinking; and he is well aware of it. Modern life, he remarks, wants at all points to be protected—yet when danger goes, vigilance goes, too, and stimulus and exuberance of spirit, "coarse remedies" being revolutions and wars. It may even be that with the general increase of security, fineness of mind will no longer be needed—and will decrease as in China; struggle against Christianity, the anarchy of opinion, competition among princes, peoples, and business men, having thus far hindered the complete result.^[58] To this extent Nietzsche looks at the whole modern situation from an unusual standpoint. With his main thought on the development of a new and higher class of men, he exclaims, "If things grow more insecure about us, so much the better! I wish that we live somewhat circumspectly and martially."^[59] Wars are for the time-being the greatest stimulants of the imagination, now that Christian transports and terrors have become feeble. The social revolution which he thinks is coming will, perhaps, be something still greater. He accordingly faces eventualities of this sort undisturbed. The French Revolution, he observes, made Napoleon and Beethoven possible; and for a parallel recompense one would be obliged to welcome an anarchistic downfall of our whole civilization.^[60] It is under conditions of peril that personal manly virtue gets value, and a stronger type, physically and in every way, is trained; beauty (schöne Männer) again becomes possible, and it really also goes better with the philosophers.^[61]

And yet Nietzsche had not had his Christian education for nothing; and it is the necessities of the situation, the logic of the production of great men, that lead him to say what he does. "Persons" do not come easily in this world. Good intentions alone are not sufficient—the force of circumstances is generally a co-operating cause. Moreover, rude situations may be necessary, where finer ones cannot be appreciated. Speaking of physical wars and revolutions, he calls them "coarse remedies"^[62] [for the overmuch security in which we love to live]. The general truth is simply that a "person," being by nature something more or less isolated, needs temporary isolating and compulsion to an armed manner of existence: if this is not his fortune, he does not develope. What the nature of the compulsion is, or rather must be, depends on the grain of the man. Nietzsche required no wars or physical combats to make him a "person," and one of the most individual ones of modern time; but power on a lower level may require opposition of a coarser sort. Hence, though it is quite possible that the coming aristocracy he looked for will be a fighting aristocracy (in the literal sense) almost from the start, it will not be merely that; the fighting, too, may be forced rather than chosen. Moreover, the fighting may be delayed; at least Nietzsche saw no immediate occasion for it. At present, he says, though the new association will assert itself in warrior fashion, it will be a war without powder, a war between ideas and their marshaled hosts.^[63] Most of what he says in praise of war (not all) has reference to war of this sort. How little physical war was an ideal to him appears in his asking whether the higher species might not be reached in some better and quicker way than by the fearful play of wars and revolutions—whether the end might not be gained by maintaining, training, separating certain experimental groups?^[64] His mind evidently wavered as to the probable future course of things. One can only describe him as in utrumque paratus. Sometimes he has misgivings as to whether we can foresee the most favorable conditions for the emergence of men of the highest worth—it is too complicated, a thousandfold too complicated a matter, and the chances of miscarriage are great, very great.^[65] The only thing plain to him is what ought to be, what he desires—and the fact that we can set the type on high in our estimation, and be ready for any manifestation of it when it appears; and also that those who feel that they anywise approximate to it can more or less train themselves.

Of this self-training Nietzsche makes much. Men of the type he looks for may heighten courage, insight, hardness, independence, the feeling of responsibility in themselves—they may live differently from the mass now, and will probably find plenty of opposition without seeking it or coming to an actual passage of arms.^[66] Nietzsche was aloof from the world of today, and had and has plenty of opposition. Is not his an evil name in the mouths of most men now? I hear little but dispraise of him, or at best condescension and pity towards him, in America (this quite apart from the ignorant abuse of him just now, as one of the causes of the present war). He himself had no illusions about the probable lot of men who thought as he did. In the figure of Zarathustra he tells us that he attempted a portraiture of the pain and sacrifice involved in a higher man's training—he leaves home, family, fatherland, is contemned by current morality, and has the suffering attendant on new ventures and mistakes, without any of the comfort which older ideals bestow.^[67] Nietzsche says of his own disciples: "To the men who concern me I wish suffering, solitude, illness, mistreatment, disgrace—I desire that deep self-contempt, the suffering of self-mistrust, the pitiful state of the vanquished, may not be unknown to them: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the one thing that can prove today whether a man has worth or not—that he hold his ground."^[68] These men, looking before and after, may in certain particulars anticipate the immensely slow processes of natural selection, put aside conditions not propitious to them (isolate themselves), select influences (nature, books, high events) that suit them, doing much thinking on the subject; they may keep in mind benevolent opponents only, independent friends,^[69] and put out of view the lower sorts of humanity, practising the willing blindness and deafness of the wise.^[70] Further, they may concede to themselves a right to exceptional actions, as exercise in self-control and in the use of freedom; they may put themselves in circumstances where they are obliged to be hard;^[71] they may win surplus power and self-confidence by all kinds of asceticism; they may school themselves in fine obedience and in the fixed sense of differences of rank among men, altogether outgrowing the idea that what is right for one is allowable for another and ceasing to emulate virtues that belong to others than themselves.^[72] Their manner of life will vary from that of the "industrial masses" (the business and working class). Industrious habits, fixed rules, moderation in all things, settled convictions—in short, the "social virtues"—are indeed best for men at large; in this way they reach the perfection of their type. But for the exceptional men whom Nietzsche covets to see, other things are good: leisure, adventure, unbelief [as ordinarily understood], even excess—things that, if allowed to average natures, would cause their undoing. The very discipline that strengthens a strong nature and fits it for great undertakings undermines and shatters weaker men—"doubt," la largeur de cœur, experiment, independence.^[73]

So may higher men educate themselves. And yet to create the whole set of conditions which accident sometimes provides for the appearance of great individuals, would require, Nietzsche remarks, an iron-hardness, "iron men," such as have never existed. Practically higher natures can only train themselves, utilize any existing situation, and wait for developments.^[74] Wars will probably come willy-nilly, and though Nietzsche has little interest in ordinary wars, serving as they do only national ambitions and aims of trade^[75] [such, I may say on my own account, as the present war in Europe] they may none the less serve in some measure as training-ground for the future type. ^f But more than this, the great war may come, the war for an idea, for the rule and organization of the earth (since willing compliance with the idea on the part of all concerned cannot be taken for granted)—and to this, if it comes, Nietzsche's higher men will not merely consent, they will inspire and lead in it. Oddly as it may sound to our ears today, he has a special word of recognition for religious wars, and this just because they turn on intellectual points.^[76] In general, he regards the church as a superior institution to the state, since it gives to spiritual things the first place and to spiritual men rather than men of physical force the supreme authority; and if war must needs be, then it is nobler to contend for shades of doctrine than for material possessions.^[77] And the great war, the only conflict in which Nietzsche is supremely interested, will be one for a conception, a philosophical doctrine—not with this as a cloak for other aims, but on behalf of it^[78]—that conception of an ordered world, a rule and administration of the round earth, to which I have before alluded. He ventured to say—most extravagantly perhaps, and perhaps not—that his ideas would precipitate a crisis in the world's history, wars ensuing such as never had been known before.^[79] The supreme result would justify all it cost, and would consecrate those who took part in the struggle—for it is bringing death into connection with the aims we strive for, that makes us reverend (ehrwürdig).^[80]

 

VI

Nietzsche was a passionate spirit and took his ideas greatly, and would have others take them so. He animadverts on the scholars who are content to sit in cool shadows; it is not enough, he says, to prove a thing, one must win men over or lift them to it.^[81] We and our thoughts are not to be like shy deer hidden in the wood, but to go forth to conquer and possess. It may be left to little maidens to say, "good is what is pretty and touching"; to be really good is to be brave.^[82] The time of war may not yet be come; Nietzsche is human enough, Christian enough to count it his happy fortune that he lives a preparatory existence and can leave to future man the conduct of actual conflicts;^[83] but war in the large sense belonged to his nature. Although I do not remember his quoting Heraclitus's dictum, πόλεμος πᾶτήρ πάντων, it accords with his spirit. He might also have said with Goethe:

"Machet nicht viel Federlesen,
Schreibt auf meinen Leichenstein:
Dieser ist ein Mensch gewesen,
Und das heisst: ein Kämpfer sein!"

—and he wished to transmit a legacy of this spirit to his disciples. Zarathustra says, "Your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts.… Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars—and the short peace more than the long. I counsel you not to work, but to conflict. I counsel you not to peace, but to victory. Let your work be a conflict, your peace be a victory; … Let your love to life be love to your highest hope, and let your highest hope be the highest thought of life!… What matter about long life! What warrior wisheth to be spared?"^[84]

Nietzsche had his dark hours, as the strongest have, and about details and methods he had no settled assurance; but his dominant mood was one of hope. "We children of the future, how can we be at home in this world of today?" Zarathustra scarcely knew how to live, save as a seer of things to come—so did the past oppress him; but atonement would be made for the shortcomings of the past and the great Hazar be finally ushered in.^[85] "Have ye not heard anything of my children? Speak to me of my garden, my Happy Isles, my new beautiful race. For their sake, I am rich, for their sake I became poor; … what have I not surrendered? What would I not surrender that I might have one thing: those children, that living plantation, those life-trees of my will and my highest hope!"^[86] One feels the full longing of a man's soul (of one who is woman too in the great, divine sense of the word) in language like this. Yet it is not mere longing with Nietzsche. He speaks of the "unexhausted possibilities" of man and our human world. He is confident that in the long course of history the fundamental law will break through and the best come at last to victory—supposing that man with supreme determination wills their supremacy. "From you, the self-chosen," says Zarathustra to his disciples, "shall a chosen people grow; and from it the superman."^[87] Indeed, the conditions for a change in the general attitude exist now—only the great persuasive men are lacking."^[88] And from the class of new moralists, or, as he daringly said, "immoralists," he believed they would arise. "We immoralists," he declares—and it is one of his proudest utterances—"are today the only power that needs no allies in order to come to victory: hereby we are by far the strongest of the strong. We do not even need falsehood: what other power can dispense with it? A strong allurement fights for us—perhaps the strongest that exists, the allurement of the truth." And then disdaining that word as savoring of presumption, he adds, "The charm that fights for us, the Venus-eye that ensnares even our opponents and blinds them, is the magic of extremes, the allurement that goes with all daring to the utmost."^[89]

Itself an extreme utterance, we say. But it may be safer to let the future decide that. In this strange world, the unexpected, the undreamed of, sometimes happens.

1. This chapter appeared in substance in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, August 5, 1915 (Vol. XII, No. 16).
2. In the "Zweignung" of 1784 and the "Urfaust," 1775.
3. For a full nocoiint of the history of the term, see R. M. Meyer's article, "Der Übermensch. Eine vorgeschichtliche Skizze," Zeitschrift für deutsche Wortforschung, May, 1900.
4. Joyful Science, § 143. Cf. the description of the way in which he "picked up" the word, in Zarathustra, III, xii, § 3.
5. Human, etc., §§ 461, 164; cf. Dawn of Day, § 298.
6. The references to Carlyle are in Dawn of Day, § 298; Joyful Science, § 97; Will to Power, § 27; Ecce Homo, III, § 1.
7. Zarathustra, II, xvii.
8. "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 6.
9. Op. cit., p. 235; cf. pp. 5, 6.
10. Zarathustra, II, iv.
11. Napoleon, Goethe, Stendhal, Heine, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Balzac are once spoken of as "good Europeans" (i.e., super-national) and a kind of "higher men," but not deep and original enough for a philosophy such as Nietzsche craves (Beyond Good and Evil, § 256).
12. Ecce Homo, III, vi, § 6.
13. Will to Power, §§ 859, 866.
14. Werke, XIV, 261, § 4.
15. The Antichritian, §§ 3,4. Cf. the language, "a relatively superhuman type," in Ecce Homo, IV, § 5.
16. Ecce Homo, III, § 1.
17. I have already alluded to Richter's excellent discussion of the whole subject, Richter, op. cit., pp. 219-38.
18. Dawn of Day, § 534.
19. Ibid., § 462.
20. Werke, XIV, 263, § 10; 265, § 21; 286, § 99.
21. Dawn of Day, § 534.
22. Will to Power, § 957.
23. Genealogy of Morals, III, § 8.
24. Will to Power, § 243.
25. Cf. the excellent remarks of Nietzsche's sister, Werke (pocket ed.), VII, p. xi.
26. "Züchtung" is contradistinguished from "Erziehung" by F. Rittelmeyer, one of the most discriminating German writers on Nietzsche (Friedrich Nietzsche und die Religion, p. 59).
27. Werke, XII, 191, §§ 408-9; cf. Dawn of Day, § 551; Werke (pocket ed.), V, 396, § 13.
28. Werke, XII, 190, § 408.
29. Cf. Shaw's description of the superman as some kind of "philosopher-athlete" (Man and Superman, p. 182), and Montaigne's remark, "The true philosophers, if they were great in science, were yet much greater in action" (Essays, I, xxiv).
30. Will to Power, § 61.
31. Werke, XIII, 356, §§ 877-9.
32. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 12.
33. Werke, XII, 363-4, §§ 397, 399.
34. Beyond Good and Evil, § 203.
35. Will to Power, § 942.
36. Human, etc., § 479.
37. The Wanderer etc., § 184; cf. Werke, X, 388, § 209. As to the danger of wealth, and of possessions possessing us, see Mixed Opinions etc., §§ 310, 317. Burckhardt remarks that social rank was not determined by wealth among the Greeks of the 5th century B.C. (Griechische Kulturgeschichte, Vol. IV., pp. 208-10).
38. Werke, XII, 204, §§ 434-5.
39. Cf. Ibid., XI, 350, § 505.
40. Ibid., XIV, 261, § 3. Cf. XII, 196, § 418 (reflections on conditions that were favorable to the many free individuals among the Greeks, among them, "marriage not on account of erotic passion").
41. Ibid., XIV, 261, § 3; cf. Will to Power, §§ 732, 804.
42. Zarathustra, I, xx; see p. 311 of this volume.
43. Human, etc., § 243; cf. Werke, XI, 145, § 453.
44. Zarathustra, I, xviii ("Let the beam of a star shine in your love! Let your hope say 'May I bear the superman!").
45. Werke, XIV, 226-7, §§ 457, 459.
46. Ibid., XIII, 358, § 881; cf. XIV, 226, § 466.
47. Will to Power, § 960; cf. Werke, XII, 368, § 718.
48. Cf. Werke, XI, 273, § 289; Will to Power, § 907.
49. E.g., Dorner, op. cit., pp. 194-5.
50. Will to Power, §§ 995-6.
51. Werke, XI, 139, § 441 (cf. J. A. Thomson, "We do not want to eliminate bad stock by watering it with good, but by placing it under conditions where it is relatively or absolutely infertile," Heredity, p. 331); Werke, XII, 188, § 404.
52. Ibid., XIV, 249, § 522; XII, 188, § 403; XIV, 248, § 518.
53. Mixed Opinions etc., § 278; Werke, XIV, 263, § 10; Will to Power, § 734 (cf. XII, 196, § 418, as to what the Greeks allowed).
54. Twilight etc., x, § 3; Werke, X, 384-5, § 199.
55. Will to Power, § 959.
56. Ibid., § 770; cf. Twilight etc., ix, § 38, and what Stendhal says of the condottieri and small princes of Italy in 1400 (Vie de Napoléon, pp. 17-8); also what Nietzsche quotes, in explanation of the success of Mohammed in the space of thirteen years, from Napoleon, "perhaps there had been long civil wars, under the influence of which great characters, great talents, irresistible impulses, etc., were formed" I Werke, XIII, 330, § 814).
57. Will to Power, §§ 856, 918.
58. Werke, XI, 369, § 558; XII, 191, § 410.
59. Ibid., XI, 368, § 557; cf. 142, § 451.
60. Ibid., XI, 369, § 559; Will to Power, §§ 868, 127, 877.
61. Will to Power, § 127; cf. § 729; also Werke, XIII, 358, § 882.
62. Will to Power, § 886.
63. Werke, XII, 368, § 718.
64. Ibid., XIII, 175-6, § 401.
65. Will to Power, § 907.
66. Ibid., § 907.
67. Werke (pocket ed), VII, 494, § 67.
68. Will to Power, § 910; cf. Zarathustra, III, iii; IV, xiii, § 6.
69. Nietzsche remarks that "crowds are not good even when they follow you."
70. Werke, XII, 123-4, § 243.
71. Nietzsche uses the word Barbar here; he has in mind, as he elsewhere explains, not barbarians such as we ordinarily fear, namely, those coming up from the lower ranks of society, but conquering, ruling natures descending from above, of whom Prometheus is a type (Will to Power, § 900).
72. Will to Power, § 921.
73. Ibid., §§ 901, 904. The (or an) element of danger in Nietzsche's teaching is that those reading him may not make these distinctions—that one who is only an average man may think himself ah exception and the weak imagine themselves strong.
74. Ibid., § 908.
75. See, among many passages, Werke, XIII, 357; Beyond Good and Evil, § 256.
76. Joyful Science, § 144.
77. Ibid., §§ 358, 114
78. Cf. Werke, XII, 207, § 441.
79. Ecce Homo, IV, § 1.
80. Will to Power, § 982.
81. Zarathustra, II, xvi; Dawn of Day, § 330.
82. Joyful Science, § 283; Zarathustra, I, x.
83. Werke, XII, 209, § 442.
84. Zarathustra I, x (practically Common's translation).
85. Joyful Science, § 377; Zarathustra, II, xx; cf. Werke, XIV, 306, § 136; Zarathustra, IV, i.
86. Zarathustra, IV, xi.
87. Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 45, 203; Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 2; Werke, XIV, 71, § 137.
88. Werke, XI, 372, § 567.
89. Will to Power, § 749. In Ecce Homo, III, ix, § 2, he says, in speaking of the new hopes and tasks for mankind, "I am their happy messenger" (cf. IV, § 1).