Part 4 (1/2)
(18) _Biologische Probleme, zugleich als Versuch einer rationellen Ethik._ Leipzig, 1882.
Now to a believer in progressive evolution with a strong ethical bent such a theory brings home man's ulterior responsibility for the betterment of life, and therefore acts as a call to his supreme duty of preparing the ground for the arrival of a higher order of beings. The argument seems simple and clinching. Living nature through a long file of species and genera has at last worked up to the _h.o.m.o sapiens_ who as yet does not even approach the perfection of his own type. Is it a legitimate ambition of the race to mark time on the stand which it has reached and to entrench itself impregnably in its present mediocrity?
Nietzsche did not shrink from any of the inferential conclusions logically to be drawn from the biologic argument. If growth is in the purpose of nature, then once we have accepted our chief office in life, it becomes our task to pave the way for a higher genus of man. And the only force that makes with directness for that object is the Will to Power. To foreshadow the resultant human type, Nietzsche resurrected from Goethe's vocabulary the convenient word _ubermensch_--”Overman.”
Any one regarding existence in the light of a stern and perpetual combat is of necessity driven at last to the alternative between making the best of life and making an end of it; he must either seek lasting deliverance from the evil of living or endeavor to wrest from the world by any means at his command the greatest sum of its gratifications. It is serviceable to describe the two frames of mind respectively as the optimistic and the pessimistic. But it would perhaps be hasty to conclude that the first of these att.i.tudes necessarily betokens the greater strength of character.
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy sprang from pessimism, yet issued in an optimism of unheard-of exaltation; carrying, however, to the end its plainly visible birthmarks. He started out as an enthusiastic disciple of Arthur Schopenhauer; unquestionably the adherence was fixed by his own deep-seated contempt for the complacency of the plebs. But he was bound soon to part company with the grandmaster of pessimism, because he discovered the root of the philosophy of renunciation in that same detestable debility of the will which he deemed responsible for the bovine la.s.situde of the ma.s.ses; both pessimism and philistinism came from a lack of vitality, and were symptoms of racial degeneracy. But before Nietzsche finally rejected Schopenhauer and gave his shocking counterblast to the undermining action of pessimism, he succ.u.mbed temporarily to the spell of another gigantic personality. We are not concerned with Richard Wagner's musical influence upon Nietzsche, who was himself a musician of no mean ability; what is to the point here is the prime principle of Wagner's art theory. The key to the Wagnerian theory is found, also, in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Wagner starts from the pessimistic thesis that at the bottom of the well of life lies nothing but suffering,--hence living is utterly undesirable. In one of his letters to Franz Liszt he names as the duplex root of his creative genius the longing for love and the yearning for death. On another occasion, he confesses his own emotional nihilism in the following summary of _Tristan und Isolde_: ”_Sehnsucht, Sehnsucht, unstillbares, ewig neu sich gebarendes Verlangen--Schmachten und Dursten; einzige Erlosung: Tod, Sterben, Untergehen,--Nichtmehrerwachen._”(19) But from the boundless ocean of sorrow there is a refuge. It was Wagner's fundamental dogma that through the illusions of art the individual is enabled to rise above the hopelessness of the realities into a new cosmos replete with supreme satisfactions. Man's mundane salvation therefore depends upon the ministrations of art and his own artistic sensitiveness. The glorification of genius is a natural corollary of such a belief.
(19) ”Longing, longing, unquenchable desire, reproducing itself forever anew--thirst and drought; sole deliverance: death, dissolution, extinction,--and no awaking.”
Nietzsche in one of his earliest works examines Wagner's theory and amplifies it by a rather casuistic interpretation of the evolution of art. After raising the question, How did the Greeks contrive to dignify and enn.o.ble their national existence? he points, by way of an ill.u.s.trative answer, not perchance to the Periclean era, but to a far more primitive epoch of h.e.l.lenic culture, when a total oblivion of the actual world and a transport into the realm of imagination was universally possible. He explains the trance as the effect of intoxication,--primarily in the current literal sense of the word. Such was the significance of the cult of Dionysos. ”Through singing and dancing,” claims Nietzsche, ”man manifests himself as member of a higher community. Walking and talking he has unlearned, and is in a fair way to dance up into the air.” That this supposit.i.tious Dionysiac phase of h.e.l.lenic culture was in turn succeeded by more rational stages, in which the impulsive flow of life was curbed and dammed in by operations of the intellect, is not permitted by Nietzsche to invalidate the argument. By his arbitrary reading of ancient history he was, at first, disposed to look to the forthcoming _Universal-Kunstwerk_(20) as the complete expression of a new religious spirit and as the adequate lever of a general uplift of mankind to a state of bliss. But the typical disparity between Wagner and Nietzsche was bound to alienate them. Wagner, despite all appearance to the contrary, is inherently democratic in his convictions,--his earlier political vicissitudes amply confirm this view,--and fastens his hope for the elevation of humanity through art upon the sort of genius in whom latent popular forces might combine to a new summit. Nietzsche on the other hand represents the extreme aristocratic type, both in respect of thought and of sentiment. ”I do not wish to be confounded with and mistaken for these preachers of equality,” says he. ”For within _me_ justice saith: men are not equal.”
His ideal is a hero of coercive personality, dwelling aloft in solitude, despotically bending the gregarious instincts of the common crowd to his own higher purposes by the dominating force of his Will to Might.
(20) Work of all arts.
The concept of the Overman rests, as has been shown, upon a fairly solid substructure of plausibility, since at the bottom of the author's reasoning lies the notion that mankind is destined to outgrow its current status; the thought of a humanity risen to new and wondrous heights of power over nature is not necessarily unscientific for being supremely imaginative. The Overman, however, cannot be produced ready made, by any instantaneous process; he must be slowly and persistently willed into being, through love of the new ideal which he is to embody: ”All great Love,” speaketh Zarathustra, ”seeketh to create what it loveth. _Myself_ I sacrifice into my love, and _my neighbor_ as myself, thus runneth the speech of all creators.” Only the fixed conjoint purpose of many generations of aspiring men will be able to create the Overman. ”Could you create a G.o.d?--Then be silent concerning all G.o.ds!
But ye could very well create Beyond-man. Not yourselves perhaps, my brethren! But ye could create yourselves into fathers and fore-fathers of Beyond-man; and let this be your best creating. But all creators are hard.”
Nietzsche's startlingly heterodox code of ethics coheres organically with the Overman hypothesis, and so understood is certain to lose some of its aspect of absurdity. The racial will, as we have seen, must be taught to aim at the Overman. But the volitional faculty of the generation, according to Nietzsche, is so debilitated as to be utterly inadequate to its office. Hence, advisedly to stimulate and strengthen the enfeebled will power of his fellow men is the most imperative and immediate task of the radical reformer. Once the power of willing, as such, shall have been,--regardless of the worthiness of its object,--brought back to active life, it will be feasible to give the Will to Might a direction towards objects of the highest moral grandeur.
Unfortunately for the race as a whole, the throng is ineligible for partners.h.i.+p in the auspicious scheme of co-operative procreation: which fact necessitates a segregative method of breeding. The Overman can only be evolved by an ancestry of master-men, who must be secured to the race by a rigid application of eugenic standards, particularly in the matter of mating. Of marriage, Nietzsche has this definition: ”Marriage, so call I the will of two to create one who is more than they who created him.” For the bracing of the weakened will-force of the human breed it is absolutely essential that master-men, the potential progenitors of the superman, be left unhampered to the impulse of ”living themselves out” (_sich auszuleben_),--an opportunity of which under the regnant code of morals they are inconsiderately deprived. Since, then, existing dictates and conventions are a serious hindrance to the requisite autonomy of the master-man, their abolishment might be well. Yet on the other hand, it is convenient that the _Vielzuviele_, the ”much-too-many,” i. e. the despised generality of people, should continue to be governed and controlled by strict rules and regulations, so that the will of the master-folk might the more expeditiously be wrought. Would it not, then, be an efficacious compromise to keep the canon of morality in force for the general run, but suspend it for the special benefit of master-men, prospective or full-fledged? From the history of the race Nietzsche draws a warrant for the distinction. His contention is that masters and slaves have never lived up to a single code of conduct. Have not civilizations risen and fallen according as they were shaped by this or that cla.s.s of nations? History also teaches what disastrous consequences follow the loss of caste. In the case of the Jewish people, the domineering type or morals gave way to the servile as a result of the Babylonian captivity. So long as the Jews were strong, they extolled all manifestations of strength and energy.
The collapse of their own strength turned them into apologists of the so-called ”virtues” of humility, long-suffering, forgiveness,--until, according to the Judaeo-Christian code of ethics, being good came to mean being weak. So races may justly be cla.s.sified into masters and slaves, and history proves that to the strong goes the empire. The ambitions of a nation are a sure criterion of its worth.
”I walk through these folk and keep mine eyes open. They have become _smaller_ and are becoming ever smaller. _And the reason of that is their doctrine of happiness and virtue._
For they are modest even in their virtue; for they are desirous of ease. But with ease only modest virtue is compatible.
True, in their fas.h.i.+on they learn how to stride and to stride forward. That I call their _hobbling_. Thereby they become an offense unto every one who is in a hurry.
And many a one strideth on and in doing so looketh backward, with a stiffened neck. I rejoice to run against the stomachs of such.
Foot and eyes shall not lie, nor reproach each other for lying. But there is much lying among small folk.
Some of them _will_, but most of them _are willed_ merely. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
There are unconscious actors among them, and involuntary actors. The genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.
Here is little of man; therefore women try to make themselves manly.
For only he who is enough of a man will save the woman in woman.
And this hypocrisy I found to be worst among them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.
'I serve, thou servest, we serve.' Thus the hypocrisy of the rulers prayeth. And, alas, if the highest lord be merely the highest servant!
Alas! the curiosity of mine eye strayed even unto their hypocrisies, and well I divined all their fly-happiness and their humming round window panes in the suns.h.i.+ne.
So much kindness, so much weakness see I. So much justice and sympathy, so much weakness.
Round, honest, and kind are they towards each other, as grains of sand are round, honest, and kind unto grains of sand.