energy do creative work.[1] Equally with the robber, the barbarian, and adventurer is the philosophic innovator after power, only it is the supreme kind of power not the lesser.[2] Nietzsche speaks of the calling of the philosopher as a kingly one; he cites Alcuin the Anglo-Saxon's definition of it, prava corrigere et recta corroborare et sancta sublimare (to correct what is wicked, to strengthen what is right, and to lift what is sacred on high).[3] There is something of the Cæsar in the philosopher's nature—Nietzsche speaks of the "Cæsarian trainer and strong man of culture"; and he thinks that the type of philosopher needed in the future will be bred in a caste accustomed to rule and will be its highest spiritualization.[4] For the function of the philosopher is pre-eminently to be a lawgiver, not merely to define and name the valuations that are,[5] but to say what ought to be, to give an end and an aim to mankind, to turn what is and was into means, instruments, hammer for forging the future—his knowing is creating, his creating law-giving, his will to truth will to power.[6] Beyond the actual rulers concerned with the administration of government and in a state apart, is this highest man—a power above powers, determining the values and guiding the will of centuries.[7]
Nietzsche also speaks of power on the moral level. What is the difference between vulgar selfishness (which Nietzsche looks down upon as much as any one), and the love that looks beyond oneself and gives and bestows? It is, according to his view, that the selfish man requires all his energy for his own ends and has no surplus—he is really a needy kind of man who must
- ↑ Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 210; Will to Power, § 972.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 779.
- ↑ Ibid., § 977.
- ↑ Ibid., § 978; cf. § 960, and Beyond Good and Evil, § 213.
- ↑ Cf. Will to Power, § 422, as to the contrast with the purely scientific man who now is supreme; even Hegel made the philosopher subject to reality—he prepares for it, nothing more.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 972; Beyond Good and Evil, § 211.
- ↑ Will to Power, §§ 998-9. Somewhat in the same spirit Nietzsche ranks the church as an institution higher than the state, i.e., because it gives to the spiritual type of men the supreme place and has such confidencein the power of spirituality (Geistigkeit) that it renounces the use of rude force (Joyful Science, § 358). So the rule exercised by heads of religious orders is spoken of as "the highest kind of ruling" (Beyond Good and Evil, § 61). Cf. the striking picture of the Vornehmheit of the higher Catholic clergy, Dawn of Day, § 60.
