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Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XXX

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Nietzsche the thinker
by William Mackintire Salter
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1939073Nietzsche the thinker — Chapter XXXWilliam Mackintire Salter
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CHAPTER XXX

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION (Concluded). POLITICAL VIEWS AND ANTICIPATIONS

I

Nietzsche's political principles are implied in his general social doctrine and receive no separate statement. The state was originally founded on force and not on contract,[1] though it may be assented to in time and obedience to it become a second nature.[2] Political power is conceived of as coming from above down, not from below up. Sovereignty is inherent in the first social class, delegated to the second class (the rulers), and only sparingly to be granted to the third (business and professional men and laborers). So far as the third class are allowed power, it should be as great interests rather than as individuals—and the idea is evidently that they should be heard, considered, rather than rule.[3] It cannot be too distinctly stated that possession of power, not wealth, is the distinguishing mark of the two upper classes. They control wealth, but the lowest class may own more of it than they—they live "poorer and more simply, still in possession of power."[4] It is an odd conception in this plutocratic age.

The state, like independent social groups in general, has a more or less super-moral way of thinking and acting.[5] Morality, in Nietzsche's conception, as we have already seen, concerns the relation of parts of a society to one another and to the whole, but does not apply to the whole as such.[6] Representing the ​social whole as the shepherd does his flock, the state may act to other societies, and even on occasion to its own subjects, as the individual members of a society in their dealings with one another may not. It may kill, rob, subject the unwilling to control, lie, deceive, entrap, without and within (in the latter case, through its courts and executioners, taxation-agencies, compulsory schools, and police)—acts absolutely forbidden to private persons.[7] In a sense it is "immorality organized,"[8] which is not, however, a reflection on it as might be imagined, but rather an indication of the limited range of morality. Nietzsche remarks that the study of societies is particularly instructive, as man shows himself more naïve in them—societies always using morality (and by implication, dispensing with it, on occasion] for their own ends (of force, power, order).[9] In other words, politics in essentially Machiavellian—i.e., it has its aim (the good of the social body) and does whatever is necessary to secure it; its rule is expediency entirely, though to know all the depths and refinements of expediency, and to have the courage to act accordingly, may require almost superhuman powers.[10] A statesman, for example, who does not believe in parliaments on principle, may none the less make use of them—he may find them extremely useful, when he wants something upon which he can support himself, on to which he can shift responsibility.[11] The state and the statesman have to reckon with much greater complexes of effects than private morality does, and a world economy is conceivable with such long-range perspectives that all its single requirements would seem for the moment unjust and arbitrary.[12] That a state may do whatever ​its interests require does not, however, mean (so far as the logic of Nietzsche's thought is concerned) that it may not of its own accord make contracts or treaties with other states, and then be bound by them as truly as individuals are by contracts with other individuals. It becomes to this extent in effect a member of a larger society, however shadowy and tentative this may be, and the ordinary law governing the relations of parts of a social whole, i.e., morality, applies to it. States that break their word incur the contempt which falls on all liars, as so vividly described in Genealogy of Morals, II, § 2.[13]

II

Nietzsche is sometimes set down as an anarchist. The Social Museum of Harvard University so classes him,[14] and what may rank with some as a higher authority, the Encyclopœdia Brittanica, says that his "revolt against the theory of statesupremacy turned him into an anarchist and individualist."[15] a But this view has a very limited truth. He did indeed think that the modern world is approaching an "age of anarchy," as has been before noted, and he failed to take the situation as tragically as some would, for he thought that compensations would arise—just as there had been compensations for the French Revolution in the rise of a Napoleon and a Beethoven.[16] Anarchy is an opportunity for master-spirits of original force—almost a compulsion to them. But to suppose that anarchy was an ideal to him is to fundamentally misconceive him—save as to one particular feature of his social doctrine. For the general non-political attitude of Nietzsche, his aversion to taking part in the public life of his time, is no more to be set down as anarchism than a similar "apolitie" of some of the Greek philosophers, on which Burckhardt comments. b When he said, "It seems to me useful that there should be some Germans who remain indifferent to the German Empire—not merely as a spectator might, but as those who turn their faces away from ​it,"[17] this does not mean that he disapproves of empires in general, or that he would not have taken part in the defense of the German Empire, however much he disapproved of it, if it had been attacked (whether by anarchists or anybody else). Even if he does not put political activity in the highest range of human activities, he does not question its necessity—the place and function of the second class (the rulers) in his ideal scheme of social organization alone demonstrates this. It is true that he hates "the non-plus-ultra state of the socialists"; and he does not want too "ordered conditions," or to take the risks out of life absolutely, for anybody;[18] but the ordinary protection of life and property which the state gives is something he takes for granted as necessary and desirable—he wished rather that the state should do this work better, and particularly that property should be more widely distributed.[19]

And yet, as we have seen, higher than the citizen or any social functionary (whether policeman or prince) is to his mind the individual who takes his law from within and has his own sphere and quantum of life, more or less independently of society. Here lies whatever basis there is for the idea that Nietzsche is anarchistic. These higher individuals are unquestionably a law to themselves and above the state. But this view has so little in common with what is ordinarily called anarchism that it is positively misleading to use this word in connection with it. Anarchism in the common revolutionary sense Nietzsche abhorred.[20] Anarchism in the so-called "philosophical" sense, had he known of it, would have been almost equally repugnant, for its ideal is liberty for all, the cure for the evils of liberty being "more liberty" and so on, while in Nietzsche's estimation only the few are fit for liberty, the rest doing best both for themselves and for society as they obey social laws. Never, so far as I remember, does Nietzsche use the term "anarchy" or "anarchism" in a laudatory sense.[21] Laisser ​faire, of which anarchism is only the extreme application, he almost uniformly opposes. He is here, as in his ethics, the antipodes of a thinker like Max Stirner. It is true that he made no idol of the state and that one of Zarathustra's discourses appears to be directed against it,[22] but if we observe carefully, we see that it is the state as contradistinguished from a people or flock that he has in mind—artificial formations such, I may say, as Austria-Hungary, or in less degree, the German Empire, or, for that matter, the British Empire, in opposition to the natural formations which arise wherever there is unity of blood or race or in the free following of a leader or idea. c And yet in peoples and flocks, as truly as in these artificial conglomerate states which only force holds together, there is order, law, authority as against individual license, in short a Rangordnung of rulers and ruled. Let one think of a Greek polis, or of a primitive Germanic tribe, or of a people arising, as Nietzsche dreams, out of the welter of modern Europe[23] in obedience to a great longing and a great idea and under the leadership of a great man or set of men—in none of these was or will there be anarchy, in the sense of individuals following each his own way regardless of the social whole. Only to the few can it be given to follow their own way—and even so within limits. When Nietzsche said "as little state as possible," he meant, as the connection clearly shows, for himself and his kind;[24] d he did not mean to say it broadly as Herbert Spencer did, or as our modern manufacturing and commercial classes say it, when they really only wish to be more free to follow policies of exploitation and greed. For these particular classes Nietzsche wished more state, rather than less.[25] e Indeed, in most of the relations of life Nietzsche contemplates the supremacy of organized civil society—if he does not argue for it, it is that he takes it for granted. I may refer to his views of punishment (where the state has an indispensable function as over against private vengeance).[26] He would allow some experimentation in marriage, but always under social sanction. f

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III

When Nietzsche attempts to make anything definite of his social and political views, to form plans or make forecasts, he is perhaps not more at sea than most thinkers with ideal constructions who are unable to connect themselves with existing tendencies. He was fully aware that he was not in harmony with his time (unzeitgemäss); he really looked at the world from afar. In a sense he was more mediæval than modern, even more Greek than mediæval, and, I might almost say, more Asiatic (at least Hindu) than Greek.[27] Perhaps there never was a more undemocratic thinker. It is only the notion of progress that he takes from the modern (shall I say? Christian) world, and this he practically reverses; for progress to him is not, as to most of us, towards universal liberty, equality, fraternity, but towards a graded society, a pyramidal form of existence, with the mass at the foundation and men like Gods at the top.

He has accordingly a full sense of the gravity of the situation—for him. Not only are political tendencies and social sentiments against him, but morality (as commonly conceived) is. He distinguishes himself also from "free-thinkers"—they too are levelers.[28] g He faces the (to him) depressing possibility, that mankind, by following its present watchwords of "humanity," "sympathy," "pity" (i.e., taking them absolutely, not relatively and circumspectly) may become a fixed type like any defined animal species—for hitherto the human type has not been fixed.[29] How, he asks, out of the European as he is now developing—a most intelligent sort of slave-animal, very laborious, at bottom very modest, curious to excess, multiform, spoiled by too much tenderness, weak in will, a cosmopolitan chaos ​of emotions and ideas—is ever a strong race to emerge, a race of the classic type?[30] Moreover, with all his esteem for antiquity, he found no exact models for us there, only suggestions, beginnings (Ansätze).[31] We have higher standards than the old world; fidelity, magnanimity, jealousy for one's good name (die Scham des guten Rufes) belong, as the result of our mediæval inheritance, to our conception of what is noble.[32] The future aristocracy cannot follow Greek nobles, who on occasion would shamelessly break their word; although the heirs and bounden heirs of all that has been superior in the past, they will be "the firstlings of a new nobility, the like of which no age has seen or dreamt."[33]

And yet Nietzsche accepts things as he finds them, and as we have already seen, believes that in the long run, democracy, socialism, and the relative decadence accompanying them will be utilized by, and only make more necessary, the strong men of the future.[34] The modern movement has to run its course—we may check, dam it, and thereby make it more vehement and sudden: more we cannot do.[35] In the meantime and as the prime thing, there must be a war of ideas. Higher men must declare war against the mass. Everywhere the average are combining to make themselves master; we must make reprisals and bring all these goings on (which began in Europe with Christianity) to light and to judgment.[36] "If things went according to my will, it would be time to declare war on European morality and all that has grown out of it: we must demolish Europe's existing order of peoples and states. The Christian-democratic way of thinking favors the flock-animal and tends to make man smaller, it weakens the great impulses (such as the Böse), it hates control, hard discipline, great responsibilities, great ventures. It is the most commonplace who carry off the profit, and put their measures of value through."[37] The task of " ​enlightenment" now is to make not only priests, but princes and statesmen so sensible of the untruth of their conduct that it becomes conscious falsehood—to strip them of their good conscience.[38] "Also in the things of the mind I wish war and oppositions: and more war than ever, more oppositions than ever."[39]

But it is as to ways and means for accomplishing the new social order that Nietzsche is uncertain and vacillating. I have already spoken of this in considering his view of the conditions most favorable to the emergence of the superman; I shall now only go a little further into detail. Though the avoidance of war is theoretically possible and would in his eyes be desirable,[40] his preponderant opinion is that the higher race will arise and be trained in times of social disturbance and commotion—such times making them indeed necessary. Labor or socialistic crises seem to be principally in his mind—though ordinary wars may serve the purpose. The critical thing is that circumstances be of such a nature that the new organizing forces must either prevail or go under—only in this way will they be tested and bring out all their force, and only as they show overmastering force will the future (the right kind of future) be guaranteed.[41] Relatively to the old, sick, moribund culture they will be "barbarians"—not barbarians coming up from the slums and below, such as our capitalistic society now fears, but barbarians coming from above, of whom Prometheus was an instance, fresh, unspoiled conquering natures who look for material on which to impress themselves.[42] It is men of this type—completer men, completer animals—who have always been the instruments for lifting the human level and establishing a higher culture, however fearful and violent they may have been in the first stages of the process (instances being the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans)[43]—and they will be needed again. In answering the question, "Where are the barbarians of the twentieth century?" he says, "they will appear and consolidate themselves after ​immense socialistic crises—being elements capable of the greatest hardness towards themselves and of guaranteeing the longest will."[44] He is sometimes supposed to preach a "return to nature" after the manner of Rousseau (except that the return is to be to a violent instead of a gentle savage),[45] but he tells us himself that it is no "going back," but a "coming-up" that he has in mind—"up to a high, free, even fear-inspiring nature and naturalness, one that plays with great tasks, dares to play." Napoleon was this sort of a "return to nature," another instance being Goethe.[46]

IV

Nietzsche's conjectures as to who, what stocks, will lead in the future organizing work are various. His horizon is practically limited to Europe, which, with all its untoward tendencies, he conceives of as the advance-guard of humanity.[47] America (so far as it may be distinguished from Europe) he does not so much exclude, as fail to take into account. He is actually little acquainted with it—though enough to allow him to say, "no American future"! Indeed, he suspects that Americans use themselves up too quickly, and are perhaps only apparently a future world-power.[48]

As to the Germans, he has mixed feelings. The old stock was deeply injured in the Thirty Years' War, the nobility most of all.[49] A certain deficiency in the higher intellectual qualities shows itself generally—"a people that subjected itself to the ​intelligence of a Luther!"[50] They robbed Europe of the harvest, the meaning of the last great period in history, the Renaissance, through Luther and his Protestantism, "the most impure (unsauberste) type of Christianity that exists."[51] Twice, when straight, unambiguous, wholly scientific ways of thinking might have established themselves, they found—through Leibnitz and Kant—furtive paths (Schleichwege) back to the old ideals.[52] The nobility itself is almost absent in the history of the higher culture—Christianity and alcohol being large contributory factors to the result.[53] There has never been, properly speaking, a German culture—there have been great solitaries who had their own, but Germany in general has been in this respect rather like a moor in which every step of the foreigner left its mark, but itself was without character."[54] It has clever and well-instructed scholars—that is the principal thing one can say; in particular, a high-water mark and divinatory refinement of the historical sense has been reached.[55] Nietzsche speaks caustically at times of the smallness and pitiableness of the German soul, their "Bedientenseele," their involuntary bowing before titles of honor, etc.;[56] they know how to obey better than to command, and if they occupy themselves with morality, they proceed to idealize the impulse to obedience. "Man must have something he can unconditionally obey"—it is a characteristically German sentiment and piece of logic.[57] Yet, inspired ​by a narrow patriotism and a false racial pride,[58] they have made themselves, or allowed themselves to be made, into a nation, and have added one more to the system of small states into which Europe is divided."[59] With their "Freiheits-Kriegen," they cut athwart the possibility of a united Europe which Napoleon opened, and brought Europe into the blind alley where it is today.[60] In 1870, indeed, they might have attempted what Napoleon had, but they renounced the task and compromised with democracy and "modern ideas," under the pompous pretense of founding an Empire.[61] The Empire has absorbed the mind of Germany since, and thought and culture have suffered correspondingly. The first thing is now to be "German," to emphasize "race"—and all values and even historical facts are estimated accordingly. "German" becomes an argument, "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles" a principle, the Germans are proclaimed as the "moral world-order" in history—standing for freedom in contrast with the imperium Romanum and for the re-establishment of morality against the eighteenth century; there is an Imperial-German way of writing history, even "a court style of history (and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed …)."[62] The exclusive interest in questions of power, in business and trade, in "good-living" lowers the intellectual level.[63] "'Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles'—I fear that was the end of German philosophy."[64] They were once the "people of thinkers"; but the Germans of today think in ​general no more—they have something better to do than to think; the "great politics" swallows up all earnestness for really great things.[65] The era of Bismarck is the era of German Verdummung.[66] Indeed, with the new haste and tension, Nietzsche fears a premature old age for the Germans[67]—as for Americans. And yet there is a natural seriousness, depth, and capacity for great passion in the German people.[68] They have the masculine virtues, more so than any other people in Europe; soberness (Mässigung), too, which needs more a spur than a brake.[69] Wagner is quoted approvingly: "The German is angular and awkward, when he attempts to be mannered, but he is grand (erhaben) and superior to all, when he is on fire."[70] He is strong in industry, in endurance, and in capacity for a cold-blooded critical view of things; on account of these qualities German philology and the German military system are ahead of anything in Europe.[71] Although between the German of today and the original "blond German beast" there is little connection, whether of blood or ideas, Germans are still great enough to awaken anxiety in Europe,[72] and the deep injury to ​the stock before referred to has still left sound elements—notably in Hanover, Westphalia, Holstein, and, in general, North Germany.[73] Peasant blood is the best, but Nietzsche has respect for the nobles of the Marches and for the Prussian nobility in general—once venturing the remark that the future of German culture lies with the sons of Prussian officers.[74] Though Germans understand obeying better than commanding, there are those who can command.[75] In 1888 Nietzsche wrote his sister, "Our new Kaiser pleases me more and more: his latest is that he has taken a very firm stand against AntiSemitism and the Kreuzzeitung.… He would surely understand will to power as a principle."[76] Moreover, the present Verdummung may not last forever, and there may be room for greater ideas than the Empire in time; the Germans should train a ruling caste on broader lines than at present.[77]

Not unnaturally Nietzsche gives less attention to other European stocks—he is less acquainted with them. Of the English he does not expect much. England is the home of parliamentarism and democracy.[78] Comfort, business, and personal liberty are inadequate ideals. He sees more of the impulse for greatness in the feelings of Russian Nihilists than in those of English Utilitarians—"England's small-mindedness (Klein-Geisterei) is now the greatest danger on earth."[79] But he does not think that England is strong enough to continue her old commercial and colonial rôle fifty years longer: too many ​homines novi are coming to the helm—and women may be entering Parliament, too—and it is not easy to turn a private individual into a statesman with immense horizons.[80] All the same, the rule of the earth is actually in Anglo-Saxon hands, and Europe cannot go ahead without an understanding with England—the German element makes a good ferment, but it does not understand how to rule.[81]

Since Germany has become a "great power," France wins an altered significance as a power in the realm of culture (als Culturmacht).[82] There is no greater error than to think that the success of the German armies [in the Franco-Prussian War] proved anything in favor of German culture.[83] France is the seat of the most spiritual and refined culture in Europe, though one must know where to find it.[84] European noblesse-of feeling, taste, manners, in short, in every high sense—is France's work and invention. But it was the work of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and now the âme française is thin in comparison. France has been overcome by England and its "modern ideas"—Frenchmen having been the best soldiers of these ideas.[85] The French are infected too with the skepticism and weakness of will which belongs to modern Europe generally with its mishmash of classes and races, and which developes most just where culture has existed the longest."[86] Nietzsche evidently no longer looks for leadership from France, i.e., in his direction.h

Italy is too young to know what it wills and must first prove that it can will.[87] Nietzsche loved the Italians and wrote in Turin in 1885, "Quousque tandem, Crispi … Triple alliance: with the 'Empire' an intelligent people makes ever only a mésalliance."[88] He found there "much republican superiority (Vornehmheit)" and a way of demonstrating excellence and pride without vanity.[89] In the old cities, once states, there was ​even among the lower classes an aristocratic self-sufficiency and manly breeding (which showed, by the way, that it was not necessary, as Germans sometimes said, to have a great state to make the soul free and manly); "a poor Venetian gondolier is ever a better figure than a Berlin Geheimrath, and in the end, indeed, a better man."[90] He finds too the Italian genius able to make the freest and finest use of what it borrows from abroad, and to contribute more than it takes—this in contrast with the ways of the English or French or German genius.[91]

As to Russia, Nietzsche's attitude varies—indeed, he has almost contradictory views. He finds Germany stronger in will than France, and North Germany stronger than the central parts, England with its phlegm stronger than Germany, and Russia strongest of all, thanks in part at least to its absolutist type of government and the lack [limited extent, we must now say] of the "parliamentary imbecility."[92] Force of will has been long accumulating there, and is now in threatening manner awaiting its release. Russia is the one power that has durability in its body, that can still promise something—Russia the antithesis of the pitiable European system of small states and nervosity, which with the founding of the German Empire has passed into a critical state. It is an analogue of the imperium Romanum.[93] With a view like this Nietzsche contemplates the possibility of its becoming the world-power, colonizing, gaining China and India, ruling Asia and Europe—Europe coming to stand to it somewhat as Greece did in its later days to Rome,[94] and Germany, which already owes much to Russia, being its advance-post and preparing the way for a pan-Slavist Europe. An extraordinary perspective! And yet he contemplates a quite different possibility. From Europe's own standpoint Russia is a danger, Europe's "greatest" danger;[95] and for his own part he would prefer a combination against it. Indeed, he would ​like to have Russia's menace so increased that Europe would be forced to combine against it, to get one will, a long formidable will that could propose aims for thousands of years—this by means of a new ruling caste that should transcend national lines and put an end to the old comedy of petty rival states and dynasties and peoples. This would be a great politics for which he would have heart. "The time for small politics is past; the next [our] century will bring on the struggle for the mastery of the earth (Erd-Herrschaft)—the compulsion to great politics."[96] There is still a third possibility. It is that of a combination of Germany and Russia, "a new common program," even a mixing of the two races.[97]

V

And yet behind these varying and more or less contradictory attitudes and forecasts there is a comparatively constant idea—that of some kind of a united Europe and organization of the world. Nietzsche's fundamental problem was human, and the utilization and destination of mankind is always in the background of his mind. It is true that here also there is no definitive (at least definitively wrought-out) view. There is even apparent inconsistency. Once we find him saying that it is not his ideal to turn humanity into one organism—that there should be rather many organisms succeeding one another (wechselnde) and differing types, each coming to its ripeness and perfection and letting its fruit drop.[98] In another place, after speaking of the struggle between the various social units or complexes of power, he says that if law (eine Rechtsordnung) became sovereign and universal and hence were directed against struggle in general, this would be hostile to life and progress.[99] But, on the other hand, he speaks of a "world-economy," of laying the foundations for an oligarchy ​over the various peoples and their interests, of training for a universal politics (Erziehung zu einer allmenschlichen Politik).[100] The "rule of the earth" (Erd-Herrschaft, or Regierung der Erde) is a phrase continually on his lips. He has in mind transcending not only national, but racial lines and animosities.[101] "There is approaching the great task and problem: how shall the earth as a whole be administered, and for what shall 'man' as a whole, and no longer a people, a race, be reared and trained?"[102] The "world-economy" which he has in mind is one in which the backward savage races of Asia and Africa would be utilized and no longer allowed to live merely for themselves.[103] , In short, an organic relation of all mankind is contemplated—and a law co-extensive with mankind would seem to be a natural consequence. Perhaps the ​contradiction cannot be reconciled; and yet it may be that in the last analysis the difference is between near and distant perspectives, between what is suited to preparatory stages in a process of evolution and the ultimate issue.[104] Undoubtedly an organization of the world such as is sometimes contemplated today is contrary to Nietzsche's view. For the prevailing scheme is of a voluntary federation, a consensus of the nations—all of them, perhaps even all the races, to have equal rights, none to be subordinated to others—in other words, it is based on democratic principles, to be applied on a grand scale. But Nietzsche does not recognize equal rights, whether as between individuals, or between classes, or between peoples. The greater man, the greater people, should rule—in this way, and not by mutual agreement, do organizing force and right arise. As man's bodily organism is not the outcome of any consensus, but of the supremacy of certain parts and the subjection of others, so with a sound social organism; the truth is the same if the organism is co-extensive with mankind—the highest brains, the supreme type of men (in body, soul, and spirit) must organize the world. But how, we ask, are the supreme men to be found out? Well, how are the real rulers in any society found out? As Emerson has already told us, by trial, by struggle (explicit or implicit). That this or that man is the victor is not the outcome of any agreement—the result establishes itself, the victor proves himself. Something similar must go on among the nations (at least among the various stocks or breeds—for the same type may be in different nations, and it is this, and not whether the individual instance is German, English, French, or Russian, that is of moment). In other words, for a time, perhaps for a long time, there must be struggle, competition. "Competition of all egos to find the thought that shall stand over mankind as its star"—such is a perspective or philosophy of history that Nietzsche once gives,"[105] at least of history as it should be and may come to be. "Competition for the control of the power that mankind represents—this is the competition to ​which Zarathustra calls," is another statement.[106] Wars for conceptions, for fundamental philosophical doctrines, will be the wars of the future, i.e., those that signify anything.[107] It follows that peace between the different nations and stocks on the earth as they exist now, a mutual agreement to live and let live, universal brotherhood, is undesirable and would cut athwart the law of life and progress.[108] Yet in the end, when, as a result of competition and conflict, those really fitted to organize the world had proved themselves and accomplished their work, a different situation would arise and a universal reign of law would seem to be inevitable. I say "in the end," though in fact there might be end beyond end, the work of organization never being perfect, the completely ordered world remaining forever an ideal. In that case struggle and competition would ever and anon arise afresh.

  1. ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 17.
  2. ↑ Nietzsche even speaks of power being "intrusted" to his future ruling caste, their innate superiority demonstrating itself in a variety of ways (Werke, XII, 204, § 434); and he admits that reverence and the nobler emotions have played their part in sustaining state-formations in the past (ibid., XIII, 195).
  3. ↑ Cf. ibid., XIII, 352, § 872.
  4. ↑ Will to Power, § 764.
  5. ↑ Ibid., § 927.
  6. ↑ See pp. 218 ff.
  7. ↑ Werke, XIII, 195-6, § 431. Cf. Will to Power, § 755, where it is said that there is an element of violence in law, and of hardness and egoism in every kind of authority.
  8. ↑ The phrase is, I think, Nietzsche's own, though I cannot locate it (I borrow it from Ribot's summary of Orestano's Le idee fondamentali di F. Nietzsche in the Revue Philosophique, April, 1903, p. 456). On the other hand, it is just for moral reasons that he fulminates against the state in Zarathustra, I, xi—but I think that he really has in mind there the artificial political formations of modern times (see later, p. 459).
  9. ↑ I follow Faguet (op. cit., p. 240) here, not being able to place the original passage.
  10. ↑ Will to Power, § 304. In speaking here of Machiavellism as the type of perfection in politics, Nietzsche calls it something "superhuman, divine, transcendent."
  11. ↑ Werke, XIII, 349, § 864.
  12. ↑ Will to Power, § 927.
  13. ↑ See ante, p. 220.
  14. ↑ Publications of the Department of Social Ethics in Harvard University, number 4, p. 8.
  15. ↑ Art. "Nietzsche."
  16. ↑ Werke, XIII, 361, § 887; cf. XII, 108, § 219. On the possibility of an eventual peaceful disappearance of the state, see ante, p. 141, and Human, etc., § 472.
  17. ↑ Werke, XIII, 351-2, § 871.
  18. ↑ Ibid., XI, 369, § 557; cf. Human, etc., § 235.
  19. ↑ fooCf. The Wanderer etc., § 285. note
  20. ↑ Cf. the reference to the "spouting and subversive devils," who roar for "freedom," in Zarathnstra, II, xviii.
  21. ↑ Unless in a passage in which anarchy of opinion is referred to, cited on p. 410 (Werke, XII, 191, § 410).
  22. ↑ Zarathustra, I, xi, "Of the new idol."
  23. ↑ The present war is only a symptom of this welter.
  24. ↑ Werke, XI, 36S, 567.
  25. ↑ See ante, pp. 74, 418.
  26. ↑ See ante, p. 272.
  27. ↑ Nietzsche once says, as if to indicate what he conceived to be the line of progress: "Step by step to become more comprehensive, more super-natural, more European, more super-European, more Oriental, finally more Greek—for the Greek was the first great combination and synthesis of all Oriental elements, and thereby the beginning of the European soul" (Will to Power, § 1051).
  28. ↑ Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 44.
  29. ↑ Werke, XIV, 66-7, § 132; cf. XIT, 120, § 235. The flock as such tends to select those who fit into it, guarding itself alike against those who fall below and those who rise above it, i.e., to produce a fixed, stationary type—there is nothing creative about it (Will to Power, § 285).
  30. ↑ Will to Power, § 868.
  31. ↑ I am compelled to rely on Richter here (op. cit., p. 260, citing Werke, XV, 1st ed., 484).
  32. ↑ Dawn of Day, § 199; cf. § 165.
  33. ↑ Joyful Science, § 337.
  34. ↑ Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 222; Will to Power, §§ 132, 954-5, 960.
  35. ↑ Twilight etc., ix, § 43.
  36. ↑ Will to Power, § 361.
  37. ↑ Werke, XIV, 226, § 456.
  38. ↑ Ibid., XIV, 206, § 413.
  39. ↑ Ibid., XIV, 397, § 267.
  40. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 175-6, § 401.
  41. ↑ Cf. Will to Power, §§ 770, 868.
  42. ↑ Ibid., § 900.
  43. ↑ Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 257; Genealogy etc., I, § 11; II, § 17.
  44. ↑ Cf. Will to Power, § 868. Nietzsche uses language boldly here as always; barbarism as usually understood is far from having his sympathy—see, for instance, Werke, XI, 373, § 569.
  45. ↑ So Dolson (op. cit., p. 98). Nietzsche's estimate of Rousseau's primitive man is unfavorable, whether as to his ever having existed (Will to Power, § 1017), or as to the worth of the type ("Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 4).
  46. ↑ Twilight etc., §§ 48, 49. Nietzsche raises the question whether there ever was a "natural" mankind, whether anti-natural virtues have not been the rule from the beginning—man coming up to nature after long struggle, not going back to it (Will to Power, § 120). He had early said in answer to the question how man really finds himself, "Thy true being lies not hidden deep within thee, but immeasurably high above thee, or at least above that which thou commonly takest as thyself" ("Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 1).
  47. ↑ Cf., however, what is said of the Asiatics, Werke, XIII, 330, §§ 811-2; 326, § 797.
  48. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 353, § 872; 355, § 876.
  49. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 346-7, § 857.
  50. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 338, § 840; 340, § 845.
  51. ↑ The Antichristian, § 61; Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2.
  52. ↑ Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2.
  53. ↑ In the Crusades (a kind of higher piracy), the German nobles, Viking nobles at bottom, were in their element—the Church knew well what it had in them: they were its "Swiss," ever in service of its bad instincts, but well-paid (The Antichristian, § 60).
  54. ↑ Will to Power, § 791; cf. Werke, XIII, 334, § 829; 336, § 833; also Joyful Science, § 357, where Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel are represented as German in their characteristic ideas, but not Goethe or Schopenhauer or Bismarck.
  55. ↑ Will to Power, § 792; Beyond Good and Evil, § 204. "In psychologicis the German mind has always lacked in fineness and divination (Will to Power, § 107).
  56. ↑ Werke, XIII, 336, § 834; 344, §§ 854-5; 347, § 859. The Bedientenseele becomes "idealized as scholars-and-soldiers-virtue." "How degenerate in taste, how servile before dignities, rank, dress, pomp, and parade must a people have been that estimated the simple and plain as the bad (das Schlichte als das Schlechte), the simple and plain man as the bad man!" (Dawn of Day, § 231).
  57. ↑ Dawn of Day, § 207.
  58. ↑ "One must come down to Wagner in his last epoch and the Bayreuther Blättern to find a marsh of presumption, uncleanness, and Deutschthümelei equal to Fichte's 'Reden an die deutsche Nation'" (Werke, XIII, 340, § 846). "The false Germanism in Richard Wagner … goes as much against me as the false pictures of ancient Rome by David or the false English Middle Ages of Walter Scott" (ibid., 343, § 851).
  59. ↑ When Nietzsche speaks of the "small states of Europe," he says, "I mean all our present states and Empires" (Werke, XIII, 357, § 881).
  60. ↑ Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2; cf. Werke, XIII, 349, § 866; The Antichristian, § 61.
  61. ↑ "Attempt at Self-criticism," § 6, prefixed to later editions of The Birth of Tragedy.
  62. ↑ Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2.
  63. ↑ Cf. Werke, XIII, 350-1, § 870; Genealogy etc., III, § 26.
  64. ↑ Twilight etc., viii, § 1; cf. ibid., viii, § 4, and i, § 23 ("Deutscher Geist: seit achtzehn Jahren eine contradictio in adjecto"—this said in 1888); Werke, XIII, 351, § 870 ("Germany has lost the intellectual leadership in Europe; no significant men come from her any longer—for Wagner is from 1813, Bismarck himself from 1815").
  65. ↑ Werke, XIII, 339-40, § 844.
  66. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 350, § 870; cf. ibid., XIII, 351, § 869 ("To be enthusiastic for the principle 'Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles' or for the German Empire we are not stupid enough"); ibid., III, 350, § 867 ("'Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles' is perhaps the most imbecile [blödsinnigate] watchword there ever was. Why Germany in general?—I ask, if it does not will, stand for, represent something that is of more value than any previous power stood for! In itself only a great state the more, an absurdity the more in the world."); also ibid., XIII, 352, § 872 ("Can one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it does not know what it wills. Peace and letting things alone are no politics for which I have respect. To rule and help the highest thought to victory—that is the only thing that could interest me in Germany. What concern is it of mine whether Hohenzollern are there or are not there?"). The Empire had helped to spoil Wagner; Nietzsche could never forgive him for having condescended to it (Ecce Homo, II, § 5). He wished that his book, Will to Power, were written in French, to avoid the appearance of strengthening in any way Imperial aspirations (Werke, XIV, 420, § 304).
  67. ↑ Werke, XIV, 211,. § 423.
  68. ↑ Twilight etc., viii, § 3.
  69. ↑ Ibid., viii, § 1.
  70. ↑ "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 6.
  71. ↑ Werke, XIII, 338, § 840; cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 209. It is in good part these qualities that enable the Germans to train all kinds of mandarins for Europe (Genealogy etc., II, § 3)—men, I may say, of the type of Lord Haldane in England, and, though they have led mostly a scholar's life, Bancroft, Motley, and Burgess in America.
  72. ↑ Genealogy etc., I, § 11.
  73. ↑ Werke, XIII, 346-7, §§ 857, 859.
  74. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 347, § 859; 345, § 856.
  75. ↑ Dawn of Day, § 207.
  76. ↑ Leben, II (2), 890.
  77. ↑ Werke, XIV, 420, § 304; XIII, 356, § 880; cf. suggestions of a new German "Wesen" in Werke (pocket ed.), III, 435, § 4. Nietzsche expresses the wish that Germans might get control of Mexico to the end of giving an example to future humanity of a model forest-culture (Werke, XII, 207, § 441).
  78. ↑ "Modern ideas," contributory to or symptomatic of the European decline noted in chap, xxviii, are ultimately of English origin (Beyond Good and Evil, § 263; cf. what is said of Buckle, Genealogy etc., I, § 4).
  79. ↑ Werke, XIII, 352, § 872 (cf. 332, § 822). The last statement must be in view of England's predominance on the earth—she sets the tone and gives the example. As to the first statement, one notices that the last English writer of distinction on ethics (G. E. Moore, Ethics), as so many earlier ones, makes pleasure and pain the final measure of right and wrong. There is a friendlier attitude to English thinkers (though not on this score) in Genealogy etc., I, § 1; Mixed Opinions etc., § 184; and, generally, in his second, less idealistic, period.
  80. ↑ Werke, XIII, 356, § 880; 358, § 881.
  81. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 358, § 881; 359, § 884.
  82. ↑ Twilight etc., viii, § 4.
  83. ↑ Ecce Homo, III, ii, § 1.
  84. ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 254.
  85. ↑ Ibid., § 253.
  86. ↑ Ibid., § 208.
  87. ↑ Ibid., § 208.
  88. ↑ Preface to "Nietzsche contra Wagner."
  89. ↑ Werke, XIII, 332, § 824.
  90. ↑ Ibid., XIII, 344-5, § 855.
  91. ↑ Will to Power, § 831.
  92. ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 208; Werke, XIII, 356, § 880.
  93. ↑ Twilight etc., ix, § 39.
  94. ↑ Werke, XIII, 359, § 884; 346, § 858.
  95. ↑ This danger would only disappear with inner revolutions in Russia, the splitting up of the empire into little bodies, above all the introduction of the parliamentary imbecility and "the obligation of everybody to read his newspapers at breakfast."
  96. ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 208.
  97. ↑ Werke, XIII, 352-3, § 872; 356, § 880 ("a German-Slav rule of the earth does not belong to the most improbable things"); XII, 208, § 441 (Slav-Germanic-Northern culture—lesser, but robuster and more laborious!").
  98. ↑ Werke, XII, 204, § 434. If I am right in my interpretation of "wechselnde" in this passage, it might be compared with ibid., XII, 114, § 272, where eternal "states" are said to be something unnatural and fresh formations to be desirable.
  99. ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 11.
  100. ↑ Will to Power, §§ 927, 1057.
  101. ↑ Cf. Joyful Science, § 377. He is severe here against the race-hatred closely connected with German nationalism and with the racial self-admiration which deports itself as a sign of German loyal sentiment today—something, he says, false twice over and unseemly in a people with the "historical sense." While deriding sentimental humanitarianism (and in effect what passes nowadays as "cosmopolitanism"), he adds, "We are a long way from being German enough, in the current use of the term 'German,' to speak in favor of nationalism and racial hatred, to be able to take pleasure in the national heart-itch (Herzenskrätze) and blood-poisoning, in virtue of which in Europe now peoples mark themselves off, barricade themselves against one another as with quarantinestations." In Werke, XIII, 14, § 28, he speaks of Schopenhauer as one of the best-educated Germans, that is to say, a European. A good German—I must be pardoned, if I ten times repeat it—is a German no more." Cf. also Werke, XIII, 349, § 866; 356, §§ 878-9. Nietzsche did not live long enough to pour his satire on Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He holds that pure races no longer exist. "How much mendacity and swamp-land are necessary to raise race-questions in today's mishmash Europe! (supposing, that is, that one does not come from Borneo or Horneo)." "Maxim—to have nothing to do with a man who takes part in the mendacious race-swindle" (Werke, XIII, 356, §§ 878-9). Indeed, he thought that racial mixtures, if of a certain kind, might have good results. For Germans, a Bedientenseele people, there had come an improvement through the admixture of Slav blood—Bismarck being an instance; and a general growing in together of German and Slavic stocks was desirable (ibid., XIII, 347, § 859; 352, § 872; cf. the strong language, 346, § 858). Particularly did he oppose anti-Semitic feeling: he thought that just for the future ruling class, Jews had qualities that were indispensable, having in mind especially their understanding for finance (ibid., XIII, 352, § 872; 356-7; cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 251). Even "nation," though in a given case it may be more res facta than res nata, seemed to him a finer conception than race (Werke, XII, 207, § 441).
  102. ↑ Will to Power, § 957.
  103. ↑ Werke, XI, 376-7, § 572.
  104. ↑ Cf., for instance, the apparently contradictory views as to the origin of the state (ante, p. 448, and note t).
  105. ↑ Werke, XII, 360, § 679.
  106. ↑ Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 486, § 39.
  107. ↑ Werke, XII, 207, § 441.
  108. ↑ Nietzsche's recognition of this does not exclude a belief in international associations of a variety of kinds. He wished as many of them as possible, to the end of accustoming men to world-perspectives (see Werke, XIII, 362, § 891; cf. ibid., 359, § 883, as to freedom of travel enabling groups of like-minded men to come together and found fellowships). He even looked for a new international language—devised at the start for commercial purposes, then utilizable for intellectual intercourse; it might be long before it came, but it was as certain as the navigation of the air (Human, etc., § 267).
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