Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/146

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
130
NIETZSCHE THE THINKER

forces of society.[1] Progress is doubted by artists, and by metaphysical philosophers like Schopenhauer, but the very fact that we are now passing out of the tropical zone of culture with its violent contrasts and glowing colors, in which artists live, into the cooler, clearer, temperate zone of science, seems to him an instance of progress.[2] He questions indeed the necessity of progress and thinks that the days of the unconscious sort may be over; all the same, he urges that we might now consciously strive for a new culture, might create better conditions for the rise of human beings, for their nourishment, training, and instruction, might undertake an economic administration of the earth as a whole, measuring and distributing the forces of men wisely to this end—and this would surely be progress and would itself destroy the old mistrust of progress.[3] Nietzsche really began, as we have seen, with a general hope of this character; the difference is now that he has been somewhat chastened and no longer looks for appreciable help from art, and that he emphasizes certain practically necessary measures—something which preoccupation with art is liable to make one neglect. At the same time he continues to be thinker rather than himself reformer—believing, like Socrates, that "a private life, not a public one," is alone suitable to him, and not having any too high idea of existing states and of the kind of political activity they make necessary anyway.[4]

As regards the economic structure of society, there is no change from the view that slavery is necessary. A higher culture can arise only where there are the two castes of those who labor and those possessed of leisure, or, as he sometimes puts it, of compulsory labor and free labor. The way in which happiness (Glück) is distributed is not vital when the production of a higher culture is at stake; in any case it is those with leisure, to whom come the greater tasks, who have less ease in existence, who suffer more. If only there might be exchange between the castes, so that worn-out stocks and individuals in the upper could descend into the lower, and freer men among the lower could rise to the higher, a state would be reached,

  1. Human, etc., § 108; cf. §§ 147, 148, 159.
  2. Ibid., § 108.
  3. Mixed Opinions etc., § 187.
  4. Cf. The Wanderer etc., § 232; Dawn of Day, § 179.