THE arguments against Nietzsche, voiced in America and Europe, by a host of ingenious and industrious critics, may be reduced to five fundamental propositions, viz:If you want to know what the squares are for, click here.
THE arguments against Nietzsche, voiced in America and Europe, by a host of ingenious and industrious critics, may be reduced to five fundamental propositions, viz:
He was a lunatic, and in consequence, his philosophy is not worth attention. His conclusions were contradictory and it is impossible to find in his writings any connected philosophical system. He was ignorant of certain important facts of human existence, or purposely misstated them, and in consequence argued from erroneous data. His assumption that the idea of self-sacrifice tends to make humanity less and less able to cope with the vicissitudes of existence on earth, is based upon a direct contradiction of known facts. The scheme of things proposed by him is opposed by ideas inherent in all men and so is unthinkable and unworkable and if put into practice would make life impossible. It is scarcely worth while to linger long over the first and second propositions. The first has been laid down most noisily by Max Nordau((1)) in Degeneration, a book based upon certain ideas borrowed, quite frankly, from Lombroso,((2)) an Italian quasi-scientist whose chief mission in life seems to be to furnish sensational copy for the American yellow journals. Nordau's book remains a masterpiece of erudition and rhetoric, in the highest and most honorable sense of both words; but despite its vogue a dozen years ago, it is now well nigh as archaic as a play by Bronson Howard. His definition of degeneracy is "a morbid deviation from an original type" and he lays stress upon the fact that by "morbid" he means "infirm" or "incapable of fulfilling normal functions," but straight-way he begins to regard any deviation as degenerate, despite the obvious fact that it may be quite the reverse. He says, for instance, that a man with web toes is a degenerate and entirely overlooks the fact that web toes, under easily imaginable circumstances, might be an advantage instead of a handicap, and that, under ordinary conditions of life, we are unable to determine, with any accuracy, whether they are one or the other. Dubois((3)) and other latter-day pathologists have set at rest forever this notion that every variation spells degeneracy, and today Nordau, Lombroso and the rest of that crowd, when they rise above their proper business of dispassionately recording actual phenomena, become merely ridiculous. Lombroso, for one, has unearthed a vast mass of interesting facts about criminality, but the theories which he has sought to evolve from these facts are scarcely accepted by psychiatrists. He is a skilful reporter, but a silly and extravagant philosopher.
Nordau, having started out with the knowledge that Nietzsche eventually became insane, tried to exhibit every act of his life and every idea in his philosophy as a symptom of that insanity. As a matter of fact, he failed miserably, for while he found it easy to prove that Nietzsche was a blatant egoist, that he had a fondness for repeating certain favourite arguments ad nauseum, that he hated most things that other people held sacred, and that he was intolerant, irritable, and occasionally self-contradictory, it is plain that these allegations find their effective answer in the fact that they might be urged just as truthfully against any other original thinker - Savonarola, Jenner, Malthus, Rousseau, Nordau himself, or any undoubtedly sane reformer that he might select. In a word, his symptoms of degeneracy fit everyone except the satisfied, orthodox, conventional, unoriginal, automatic bourgeois - that purely vegetable being whom Nordau seems to regard as the supreme masterpiece of the creator.
As we have seen in a previous chapter, the fact of Nietzsche's progress from mere neurasthenia, a disease which afflicts nearly all of us, to undoubted insanity, has no bearing whatever upon the essential truths of his philosophical scheme. We must judge his philosophy as we judge any other idea: by its inherent probability and its correspondence with the known facts of existence. If Nietzsche had tried to prove that cows had wings it would have been proper enough to dismiss him as a raving maniac. But when he essayed to show us that Christianity impeded human progress, he laid down a proposition which, whatever its extravagance, was not, in itself, insane. This is demonstrated, beyond a doubt, by the fact that it is possible for sane men to debate it, and to be stimulated to thought, in their consideration of it, by Nietzsche's reasoning. It is perfectly possible for a man to think clearly and yet die insane, just as it is perfectly possible for a man to attain international renown as a consumer of hot mince pies and then, in the end, to die of indigestion.
Nordau also voices the second of the objections noted at the beginning of this chapter. Nietzsche, he says, tore down without building up, and died without having formulated any definite substitute for the morality he abhorred. It is obvious, from all that has gone before, that this is nonsense. No other man, indeed, ever left a more complete system of philosophy, and if it be true that he occasionally modified details radically, it is equally true that his fundamental ideas remained unchanged from first to last. But even supposing that he had died before he had arranged his observations in any connected form, and that it had remained for his disciples to deduce and group his conclusions - even then it would have been possible to weigh his ideas and accept them for what they were worth. Nordau lays it down as an axiom that a man cannot be a reformer unless he proposes some ready-made scheme of things to take the place of the notions he seeks to overturn, and that if he does not do this he is a mere hurler of bricks and shouter of blasphemies. That this rule is an arrant absurdity is shown by the fact that every considerable reform the world has ever known has been accomplished, not by one man, but by many generations of men, working in series, and that, as a matter of actual experience, the man who first points out the need for change seldom lives long enough to evolve a complete substitute for the thing he proposes to abolish. Nordau himself furnishes a case in point, and every critic of the arts and letters is a shining example. The man who first noticed the inefficiency of sails was just as necessary to the birth of the steamboat as the man who built the pioneer steam engine.
So much for the first two arguments against Nietzsche. Both raise immaterial objections and the second makes an allegation that is not true. The other propositions are based upon better logic, and, as we shall see, afford reasonable grounds for objecting to Nietzsche's system, either wholly or in part. It would be interesting, perhaps, to give in detail the arguments supporting them, but this would necessitate a complete review of the vast mass of criticism which Nietzsche's works have brought forth in Europe and America. Instead, we must content ourselves with glancing at a few of them.
Some of these arguments, it must be admitted, are extraordinarily ingenious, but some, again, are extraordinarily absurd. One man argues, for example,((4)) that Nietzsche's criticism of the beatitudes is fallacious because, if it were not for Christianity, there would be no asylums and refuges for the suffering, and in consequence, no concerted and effective effort to make man more efficient physically. Hence, he says, it must be admitted that Christianity's influence has been beneficial to the race. Setting aside the fact that the advantages of preserving the unfit are dubious, it is apparent that this fine syllogism is ridiculous, for, in the first place, everyone knows that the healing of the sick has been practised for ages in numerous non-Christian countries, and in the second place, a rudimentary acquaintance with history is enough to convince any sane man that the influence of Christianity has been ever hurled against that exact knowledge which alone makes our hospitals appreciably superior to those of Tibet and Bokhara.
Another sapient critic((5)) argues that Nietzsche is wrong in regarding an aversion to organization as a characteristic of the strong. A struggle, says this critic, is always a waste of strength, and power, when exerted, is weakened by the power it arouses and provokes. Darwin is summoned from his tomb to substantiate this argument, but its exponent seems to be unfamiliar with the Darwinian doctrine that strength is an effect of use, and the further Darwinian doctrine that disuse, whether produced by organized protection or in some other way, leads inevitably to degeneration. In other words, the ideal strong man of this subtle serpent of wisdom is one who seeks, with great enthusiasm, the readiest possible way of ridding himself of his strength.
Still another critic((6)) argues that Nietzsche's doctrine "of the paralyzing effect of infallibility and sanctity has been completely overthrown by the unparalleled success of the Japanese, resting upon these qualities in their Emperor." This incredibly fatuous sophist overlooks the fact that the wily Japs, whatever their ostensible belief in their Emperor's infallibility, have pushed to the front solely as the result of their quite extraordinary thirst for experiment and innovation. No other race in history has been more eager to embrace new ideas or more willing to abandon old ones. They are almost ideal dionyisians, and since accepting the learning of the western world they have explored its possibilities with a daring which has made most western nations stand aghast. ((7)) In a word, their national policy is utterly skeptical and excessively individualistic, and for all their poetic pretense of accepting their sovereign's utterances as law, they are, in reality, most bitter enemies of all rigidity, ritualism and formalism in human thought. In this very contempt for authority and thirst for experiment, indeed, lies the secret of their remarkable advancement. No other race is so free from hampering conventions and doctrines; no other race is so determined to weigh an idea, not by its respectability or authority, but by its inherent truth.
Yet another critic argues that Nietzsche's plea for obedience to a willkür-gesetze (self-imposed law), and to it only, overlooks the fact that, since a man is not a companionless being in vacuo, his tastes and opinions are merely reflections of the tastes and opinions of other men, and it is therefore impossible for him to have any idea utterly and entirely his own. [This is incredibly easy to satirize if you take out "ideas" and substitute "the senses." >>> "That apple tree which dropped one of its fruits on Newton's head never got the share of credit it deserved! - DMR.] This seems true enough until it is recalled that, besides his ideas, which must necessarily come from without, a man also has his natural attitude of mind, which is born in him. In other words, every human being comes into the world cast in a definite mold and this mold varies so much in different individuals that it is impossible to find two men exactly alike. One man is sunny and his brother is gloomy, one is honest and another a liar, one shrewd and another a fool. One man's instincts are reliable and efficient and we see him prosper in whatever effort he makes to rise above his fellows; another is a born blunderer and we see him fail in everything. To put it more understandingly, every human being's ego is the sum of his native personality's reaction against the ideas that reach him through his consciousness. The same ideas, impinging upon two men, often produce diametrically different reactions. This is a commonplace of observation, and no Schopenhauer was needed to crystallize it into the doctrine set forth in The World as Will and Idea. If it be admitted, as it must be, it must be admitted, too, that a man's native instincts, and not his acquired ideas, constitute the determining factor in his ego. Therefore, he is most himself - and according to Nietzsche, safest and most efficient - when he most depends upon these instincts - expressed as inclinations, predispositions, predilections - for guidance. The existence of the personal equation is obvious. Nietzsche merely sought to give it a free rein.
Practically all the critics of Nietzsche agree in denying that his fundamental assumption - that self-sacrifice tends to make humanity decay - is true. Max Nordau maintains, for instance, that a race whose members have learned to help one another has really made a distinct step forward. Gregariousness, charity and co-operation are to be met with, he says, in most of the higher vertebrates, and the man-apes nurse their sick and feed their helpless just as men do. This argument, on its face, appears to be a sound one, but a bit of reflection will show that while it exhibits an undoubted fact, it is possible to draw two opposing conclusions from that fact. Admitting that the man-apes do these things, we may argue therefrom, either that they have made a step forward or that they have made a step backward. If it is true that the preservation of the unfit means progress, then the apes are advancing. But if it is true that the preservation of the unfit handicaps and retards the fit, then they are decaying. And so we get back to our original dilemma.
Setting aside those who argue in favor of self-sacrifice because they believe it to be ordained of God, its defenders may be divided into two classes: first, those who believe that, if it were not practiced, the race would become a mere herd of wild beasts, who would soon consume one another; and secondly, those who hold that despite its admitted tendency to preserve the unfit, it also tends to protect and stimulate the fit. To the first class belongs "Vernon Lee" (Miss Violet Paget).(8) Her argument is that humility is a sort of governor placed upon human egotism to keep it from running amuck. A human being is so constituted, she says, that he necessarily looms in his own view as large as all the rest of the world put together. Now, this distortion of values is met with in the consciousness of every individual, and if there were nothing to oppose it, it would soon lead to a hopeless and deadly conflict between exaggerated egos. Humility, says Miss Paget, tempers this conflict, without wholly ending it. A man's unconscious tendency to magnify his own importance and to invite death by trying to force this unnatural view upon others, is held in check by the constant presentation of the idea that he must think, also, of the welfare of these others. In a word, humility is a corrective of the human weakness for worshipping self.
Miss Paget is a subtle metaphysician, and on the surface, this theory appears to be impeccable, but it is easy to show, all the same, that humility, as she conceives it, is nothing more than a selfish desire to avoid antagonizing others, and that, in consequence, it is a manifestation of true egotism - i.e., the instinct of the individual to preserve his life. Under present conditions the man who gave his ego free rein would soon perish at the hands of his indignant fellow men, because these fellow men would combine against him. But in Nietzsche's ideal world, there would be no such combination. Every member of the "first caste" would look after his own affairs unaided, and in consequence, his battles would be fought without allies and his opponents, too, would fight without allies. The result of this would be that the strongest would survive - the very aim and object of Nietzsche's scheme. That there is an abysmal difference between the dionysian forethought born of prudence and the Christian humility born of charity needs no demonstration. Miss Paget's picture of humility, indeed, is a very accurate picture of policy, cunning and craft.
The second argument for self-sacrifice - that it benefits the fit as much as, or more than, it benefits the unfit - is scarcely debatable in the face of the present lack of accurate data. We may maintain, for instance, that our hospitals make useful and capable citizens, every year, of thousands who would otherwise become burdens upon the fit, or perish utterly, but we cannot prove that this is entirely true. A man who has had tuberculosis, for example, and has been cured, may live to a green old age and do his full share of the world's work, but it is questionable whether the children he begets will be fully as well fitted to survive as the children of men who have never been ill at all. That is to say, we can arrest the progress of a specific case of disease, but we cannot stamp out an individual's tendency to contract that disease nor can we keep him from transmitting this tendency to his children. We may cure a man and a woman of tuberculosis in this generation, and by the same token, burden the next generation with ten potential or actual consumptives - their descendants.
It was the fashion a few years ago to pooh-pooh this idea that tendencies to disease - i.e. dispositions to perish in the struggle for existence - are inheritable, but the investigations of Sir Almroth Wright in the field of immunity have proved beyond a doubt that it is sound. The child of a consumptive, even if that consumptive be cured, is more liable to contract tuberculosis than the child of a perfectly normal person, and this liability, by Dr. Wright's opsonic method, may now be accurately gauged and even expressed in figures.(9) Now, if we can prove this of definite physical disease, we may reasonably assume it, too, of every other evidence of a subnormal capacity for surviving in the struggle for existence. In point of fact, the sociologists and criminologists have demonstrated it, in their own fields, empirically. We may induce a thief to lead a better life, we may devise corrective shoes for a club-footed man, we may cure a dipsomaniac of his craving for drink, and we may provide policemen, judges and hangmen to protect the weak from the strong, but we cannot help these unfit beings from transmitting their unfitness to their descendants. As Malthus showed more than a century ago, every pauper kept alive at the public expense becomes the ancestor of a hundred other paupers. Inasmuch as the time will come, soon or late, when some of these descendants will have to starve, would it not be wiser to let their solitary progenitor himself starve, and so confine the attendant suffering to one individual instead of spreading it among many? [A simple realization that we cannot predict the nature of the future environment, which may make presently "unfit" organisms "fit," should be enough to stop this argument, if your conscience already hasn't. Call anyone "fatty" lately? - DMR.]
As Nietzsche points out, this notion that the unfit should be preserved artificially leads to another danger. It makes sympathy a virtue, and thus gives us a sneaking liking - a sort of unconscious gratitude - for those who inspire it in us. That this is true is demonstrated by the alacrity and zest with which the charitably-inclined pounce upon any new object of charity. Modern Christianity, indeed, has translated "Blessed are the poor in spirit" into "Blessed are the poor." But it is obvious, on a moment's reflection, that there is nothing honorable in poverty, considered in itself, and that, on the contrary, it is invariably a symptom of actual dishonor - of neglect, license, ignorance and inefficiency - if not in the individual, at least in his family. "Whenever you see a woman struggling for a livelihood in the world," said a recent philosopher,(10) "you see proof that some man has neglected his duty." In the same way, whenever you see a poor man or a sick man, you see a proof that some one - perhaps the man himself and perhaps his grandfather - has swallowed too much whiskey, basked too much in the sun, breathed bad air, shirked work and got too little nourishing food, or dreamed futile dreams.
It would be easy to pile up examples showing that a reverence for the unfit causes nations as well as individuals to perish. The Southern Confederacy furnishes a case in point. The ideals of the South, before the war, were essentially Christian. Women were protected entirely from the struggle for existence and so lost efficiency in mind and body.((11)) The courtesy of the period crucified self. Even the dionysian institution of slavery was transformed - in theory, at least - into a scheme for protecting and maintaining a weaker race. The net result was that the culture of the South came to be based upon an admiration of inefficiency, and the shock of the civil war left the whole country below the Potomac in chaos. It was not that the southerners were craven warriors, but that they were unfitted to meet the vicissitudes of a harsh existence in times of peace. Not until an infusion of northern blood gave them back their old Anglo-Saxon efficiency - which commonly expresses itself in a desire to obtain power by accumulating wealth, i.e., in a "business-like" outlook upon life and a liking for sharp trading - did they rise out of their slough of despond. Those ancient southerners who have clung to their antebellum ideals remain useless, miserable and poverty-stricken today. It is only those who have abandoned the old Southern culture for the ideals of the Yankee that have shown a fitness to survive.
Nietzsche points out that, in considering the part co-operation has played in the advancement of the human race, the historian is apt to make two grievous errors. In the first place, he is easily led into assuming that it is invariably efficacious, which is not true, and in the second place he is prone to assume that it is always based upon an altruistic impulse to self-sacrifice, which is untrue also. As a matter of fact progress is nearly always the work of individuals rather than of associations, and, in the only forms of co-operation which really work for advancement, self-interest, rather than self-sacrifice, is the ruling motive. Men commonly combine because each man in the combination sees in it a possible advantage to himself - i.e. a possible means of widening the gap which separates him from the hewers of wood and drawers of waters - and not because he harbors a yearning to sacrifice himself for his fellow men. When Isabella of Spain pawned her jewels and so enabled Columbus to cross the western ocean, her motive was not a saintly desire to make the poor man happy or an impulse to save the Indians' souls, but a quite lowly yearning to invest her money in a venture which promised a large profit in glory and cash. Such co-operation is entitled to no little respect, because it raises all the parties to it, to some measurable extent, above the herd, and so makes them, to that extent, pioneers of progress. But that form of co-operation by which the strong give of their strength to the weak, without hope of profit, is of dubious value, because it depletes the vanguard of progress to swell the horde of camp-followers. Had Isabella, for example, used her money to support a colony of lepers and so enabled them to live at ease and beget their kind, it is plain that her investment, without tending to her personal benefit in the slightest degree, would have outrageously burdened and handicapped posterity.
Whenever co-operation is thus tainted with the notion of self-sacrifice, the weak are benefited at the expense of the race as a whole. All those forms of universal co-operation which men accept as inherently righteous and beneficial because they seem necessary to the maintenance of the church or state are costly to the strong and vigorous man - the only man who is capable, in any sense, of increasing the knowledge and relative importance of the human race. As one very keen observer puts it, "the weakest have fared best by our legislation."((12)) That is to say, any co-operative scheme which forces all the members of a race, a nation or a community to become parties to it, with the idea of elevating all en masse, is grounded upon a fallacy, and this fallacy is the notion that one man may gain without making some other man lose. When two men combine against the herd - as in business, for example - the herd, having less intelligence, usually loses, and so the distance between these men and the common level is increased and their potential value, as heralds of progress, is increased, too. But when the whole body politic enters into a scheme of co-operation - when the strong permit the assumption that the weak are their equals, "before God" or "in the eyes of the law" - then this assumed equality tends to become an actual equality, and the strong lose as the weak gain.
This means progress, true enough, at the bottom, but it also means retrogression at the top and it is evident that the only progress worth while is that which takes place at the top. It would be pleasant, perhaps, if the masses could be made to understand that it is dangerous to introduce the tetanus bacillus into wounds, but it was of infinitely more importance to the race when certain learned pathologists discovered it, and so invented the art of aseptic surgery and made it possible to save the lives of many very important and valuable men, who might have died, otherwise, of wound infections. The death of a hundred ploughmen is regrettable, but not costly because there are always plenty of ploughmen, but the death of one Pasteur was a calamity, because there was only one of him.
Civilization expends its main energy in combating the law of natural selection, by artificially preserving the weak and so increasing the quantity of men at the expense of their quality, but in the long run this great law gets its revenge. We may battle against it, conceal it and deny it, but we cannot suspend its operation. We may preserve the lives of sickly babies and permit them to grow up into men and women, but the death rate among these men and women will be greater than the death rate among those who were born healthy. We may send grain ships to the starving Russians today, but ten years hence their sterile fields, their dry skies and their racial incompetence will combine to weed out their weakest once more - and the number of possible victims will grow larger every year. "We may compare civilized man," says Prof. Lankester, "to a successful rebel against nature, who by every step forward, renders himself liable to greater and greater penalties."((13)) The self-sacrifice of today, indeed, is but the forerunner of a race-sacrifice tomorrow.
Let us now look into the allegation that Nietzsche's scheme of things, as a whole, is opposed to ideas and impulses inherent in the nature of man, and that, in consequence, it is unworkable and impossible. Taking the latter part of this allegation first, let us consider the claim that, if our present conception of morality were abandoned and each individual of the Nietzschean first caste were permitted to seek his own welfare in obedience to his own impulses and without considering the desires and "rights" of his fellows - that if we were to cease living in accordance with the will of the majority and to cease trying to glorify this majority by raising its weakest members up and so putting all mankind, as far as possible, upon a common level - that if we were to put these enterprises behind us forever, the race would slip back to the state it exhibited in the days of the cave-men and all progress would be turned to decay.
It is big with soothing and eloquent phrases - this argument for brotherhood, for humility and for a love unlimited and unspeakable - but isn't it true, nevertheless, that despite our poetry and our platitudes, our rhetorical psalming of ideal Christianity and our efforts, now and then, to gain halo and harp by immolation and flagellation - isn't it true, all the while, that we really put self above the Golden Rule in our working scheme of daily life? Isn't it true, in a word, that we are utterly unchristian at bottom, that we are well aware of it, and that this spirit of unchristianity is to be credited with all our advancement and "success" - that it is, indeed, the moving spirit of our progress? Miss Paget attempts to prove, in the essay I have quoted, that self-sacrifice is of benefit to those who practice it by asserting that, in the struggle for existence, many genera of plants and animals save themselves by dwindling, which action relieves them of hopeless competition with stronger species. But isn't it obvious that dwindling, no matter what its temporary efficacy, is essentially degeneration, and that, if it is persisted in, it will inevitably lead to death? Isn't it plain, indeed, that this very argument constitutes a powerful indictment of the slave-morality which Nietzsche denounced? A species which dwindles thereby confesses its unfitness to survive. It accepts death as its goal. It acquiesces in its own decay. Not even the most ardent advocate of humility will admit, I take it, that it is mankind's end and aim thus to degenerate and perish. If we accept death as a goal we must regard life as an infliction. And despite the effort of slave-morality to make us so regard it, our primary life instinct roars a deafening "Nay!" Every thinkable scheme of human living - every deed worth doing and every thought worth thinking - tends, first of all, to perpetuate the race. To love and hate, to hope and dream - we must first live. Unless we hold that it is pleasant to be alive and that death is something to be dreaded and put afar - unless we take this as our fundamental axiom, all existence becomes a mockery and all thought a torture.
We try hard to live up to our code of slave-morality, but, for the life of us, we cannot. We say that humility means bliss eternal, and try thereby to forget that it also means decay on earth, but the hard facts of existence make the truth ever imminent and ever plain. Isn't it obvious to all sane men that when European civilization put its weapons into the hands of the Japanese, instead of destroying or enslaving them with those weapons before they were capable of making effective resistance - isn't it evident that this action resulted in the creation of a new enemy, whose power has been demonstrated already? Isn't it plain that when we set a burglar free and give him "another chance," instead of enslaving him forever or killing him at once, we merely increase our risk of being robbed? Isn't it plain that, in the long run, it is wiser to shoot savages or poison them with whiskey than to educate them - and thus make formidable rivals of them? Isn't it plain that if the unfit survivors of the American civil war had been permitted to perish in the struggle for existence instead of being preserved artificially at the expense of the whole population - isn't it plain that, in such an event, this whole population would have been fated to live under conditions more favorable than those which confront it to-day? In England, it is said, one fiftieth of all the inhabitants are in receipt of daily assistance from the rest. This means that every normal man has to give up one-fiftieth [2%] of his earnings, roughly speaking, [depending on the wages earned and the size of the dole payment], to the unfit. Isn't it plain that this scheme of things handicaps the fit and so tends to increase the number of unfit, and that, if the whole body of unfit were permitted to perish tomorrow, the surviving fit would have their fitness increased by one-fiftieth? [Probably less than that 2% - you can whip out the calculator and see - DMR.]
Isn't it patent, therefore, that self-sacrifice is costly to all security, health, power and efficiency? We deny it, and try to make ourselves believe that it is not so, and even enter upon disastrous experiments to prove its error, and yet, at the same time, a multitude of familiar facts show that we feel instinctively that it is true. We preach the doctrine of brotherly love in our synagogues, and send out missionaries to convey it to the heathen, and yet all the while, we maintain vast navies and huge armies, whose sole purpose it is to force our will upon other peoples, including these same heathen. [How many of those on relief carried a gun in the First World War? - DMR.]...
We preach humility and self-effacement - the cardinal virtues of ideal Christianity - and applaud and practise the very reverse. Consider, for example, the matter of marriage. It is the law of our largest and most consistent sect and the theory of all of the others, that marriages are made in heaven and that what God hath joined together no man shall put asunder. But isn't it a fact that our native common-sense teaches us that this is nonsense? There was no need for "A Doll's House" and "Ghosts"((14)) to show us that the actual and unmistakable needs of the individual are more reliable guides than the theoretical or purely imaginary needs of others. Therefore, while we still talk of indissoluble marriages in our churches, we know very well that, in real, every-day life, we must take account of the individual's powerful instinct to live under the most favorable conditions possible, and that unions which make life intolerable must and should be dissolved.
Again, we hold to the theoretical proposition that vengeance is the Lord's and that the casting of the first stone should be left to him who is without sin - and yet, all the while, we build penitentiaries for the confinement of those who combat our instinctive desire to live long and happily, and kill those whose opposition is violently strong. Again, we hold in theoretical abhorrence the man who commits the sin of Dives, and yet, when his offense grows so aggravated that it brings him an unusually rich profit, we envy him, honor him and show by our every action that we see in him dionysian qualities which we would like to possess ourselves. I am not going to multiply examples. In a previous chapter I have cited many more - racial as well as individual. Taken together, they prove, I think, that, despite the naked ugliness of the proposition, Nietzsche was not far wrong when he maintained that we subscribe to the doctrine of humility and self-sacrifice by the mouth only, and that our primary life instinct warns us against putting it into actual and unqualified practice. We write the law upon our scrolls, but we are dionysians at heart, and we are becoming more and more aware of it and more and more disposed to admit it.
In every treatise upon ethics and "moral philosophy" these rules of "natural morality" are given in the first chapter.((15)) One of them is the rule that murder is a crime. Another is the rule that the liar is an abomination. Another is the rule that the thief is an outcast. To them the moralists of Christendom have added another. It is the rule that every normal man loves his brother - that the soul of the Samaritan is in all of us. Ages ago some primeval soothsayer made the rough draft of this catalogue, and ever since then each successive moralist has adopted it and expanded it. It is now the Cabala and Magna Charta of all who discourse upon evil and describe the face and qualities of sin. And yet, despite this vast sound and glitter of authority, the fallacy of assuming that these are "natural" laws is demonstrated by all history and human experience. Nothing is right to all men and nothing is wrong. There has never existed an idea that someone did not combat. There has never been a virtue that someone did not denounce as a sin. There has never been a sin that someone did not exalt as a virtue. There is today, and ever has been, but one universal impulse in all healthy human beings - and that one, as everyone knows, is the impulse to remain alive - the life instinct - the will to power.
Nietzsche spent his best years proving this, and we have seen how he set about the task - how he showed that the "good" of one race and of one age was the "bad" of some other race and some other age. All history bears him out. Mankind is ever revising and abandoning its "inherent" ideas. We say that the human mind "instinctively revolts" against cruel and excessive punishments, and yet a moment's reflection recalls the fact that the world is, and always has been, peopled with millions to whom cruelty seems and seemed natural and agreeable. We say that man has an "inherent" impulse to be fair and just, and yet it is a commonplace of observation that multitudes of men, in the midst of our most civilized societies, are the very reverse. Therefore we may set aside the argument that a "natural" instinct for humility and self-sacrifice stands as an impassable barrier in the path of Nietzsche's dionysian philosophy. There is no such barrier. There is no such instinct. It is an idea merely - an idea powerful and persistent, but still mutable and mortal. Some day, perhaps, we shall abandon it.
It is not pleasant thus to use the knife upon our souls. It is not pleasant to smash the axioms of ages and cast them out forever. What pain is greater than that of dis-illusion? But it is only by facing pain unafraid that men move on to higher things. "Every step toward the truth has had to be fought for at the expense of all that human hearts and human love hold dear."((16))
Herein we find the cornerstone of Nietzsche's philosophy, and herein, perhaps, we discern the germ of that future philosophy which will rise beyond it. Today we cling to our illusions and guard them from sacrilegious hands, because we know that their death brings us exquisite anguish. But some day - who knows? - there may arise a race of men to whom disillusion will mean, not sorrow, but joy - a race in whom the yearning for the truth will transcend the yearning for a rock and a refuge. And when that time comes - will there remain any color of extravagance in the dream of a superman?
Perhaps, after all, the time has come already. Perhaps, if we studied history aright, we would not find that the world has always had its sect of disillusionists. In the ages of faith these men faced, not only the stake, but also doubts and damnation. A human being is the child alike of his forebears and of his environment. If the men about him and the men who have gone before him, believe and believed in hell, purgatory, grace, salvation and divine intercession, he must believe in these things, too, to some slight extent - in the face of all his intelligence and his reason. And so he will suffer. But, in the end, these doubts will turn upon themselves and give him renewed confidence. The more he is opposed and tortured, the more he will stand by his guns. And in this fact lies the value of all organized opposition to free and clean thinking. Looking back over the history of Christianity we are prone to see only the blood and the flames - the great and good men of the race tortured and butchered; Galileo on his knees; Bruno in his flames; pyres of books; the ruin of nations - one long, sickening orgy of murder, robbery, persecution, brutality, dishonesty, tyranny, corruption and ignorance. But we forget that the higher man yearns for a life that is hard - that, had he been made a bishop, Galileo's retraction might have been sincere - that, had the church been clean and Christianity beneficent, men might still believe, with St. Augustine, that "it is impossible that there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth... for, on the day of judgment, these men could not see the Lord descending through the air." All of this Nietzsche seems to have overlooked. Forgetting his own words, he took no account, toward the end, of the fact that stimulation comes only by opposition - that, without enemies, there can be no heroes - that without abuses, there can be no reforms. He forgot, in a word, that morality has served the race by giving the strong man something to wield his sword upon - to fight, to wound, to hate. He forgot that every effect must have a cause. He forgot his own maxims and so thundered against himself. And this, then, is the one ineradicable fault in his philosophy: he showed the strong man's need for an enemy and yet argued that all enemies should be enchained. There is no way to rid the Nietzschean system of this paradox.
[The twentieth century saw two ways.
This should be an adequate warning/clue to any neo-Nietzscheans,
of which most who go by the name "Nietzchean" are nowadays.
Their way is called "the soft Nietzsche" interpretation - DMR.]
1. Max Simon Nordau (1849 - 1923). A former physician and the author of many medical and quasi-medical works, novels, plays, etc. His extraordinary capacity for weaving the verbiage of science into startling theories of life and civilization has given him a huge popular following, but he is not to be taken too seriously.
Back to the text2. Cesare Lombroso (1836 - 1909), professor of psychiatry at the University of Turin, Italy. The founder of what may be denominated criminal pathology. Some of his investigations are of considerable scientific interest, but, like Nordau, he is prone to say things for the mere joy of startling the public. His best known books are The Man of Genius and The Female Offender. His work on prostitution was the first attempt to lift the study of this phenomenon above the level of silly moralizing.
Back to the text3. Dr. Paul Dubois, professor of neuropathology at the University of Berne. In The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders (New York, 1906) he has reduced the Nordau-Lombroso theory of degeneracy to an absurdity (page 200 et seq.).
Back to the text4. Bennett Hume, in the London Quarterly for October, 1900.
Back to the text5. Alfred Fouillée, in the International Monthly, III, 2, pp. 134-165.
Back to the text6. Douglas Sladen, in The Queen, Jan. 5, 1907.
Back to the text7. Consider, for example, their successful use of typhoid and dysentery vaccines during the Manchurian war. The only Western nation daring enough to experiment with these vaccines at that time was Great Britain, and the result there was a most vociferous howl of protest from professional humanitarians. The Japs made the test boldly - and saved 10,000 lives.
Back to the text8. Violet Paget (1856-1935) is an English romancer and critic whose writings appear over the nom de plume "Vernon Lee." She has written many brilliant essays on art and literature, but her logic, being feminine, is usually curious, not to say weird. The article quoted here and in subsequent paragraphs appeared in the North American Review for December, 1904.
Back to the text9. Vide a host of authorities in recent files of The Journal of the American Medical Association, The British Medical Journal, The Lancet, etc.
Back to the text10. The fair and ingenious Miss Ada Patterson in a discourse in the New York Evening Journal, Feb. 19, 1907.
Back to the text11. It is obvious, I believe, that all those physical characteristics which Americans regard as marks of beauty in women - small hands and feet, small waists, soft palms, pink nails; round, soft arms and legs; sloping shoulders, small ears, small pearly teeth; and soft and tender skin - are evidences of inefficiency. It is the same with most of the psychic attributes - innocence, trustfulness, credulousness, unworldliness and humility.
Back to the text12. Prof. Marshall of Cambridge, before the Royal Economical Society, in London, Jan. 9, 1907.
Back to the text13. Prof. Sir E. Ray Lankester: The Kingdom of Man, London: 1907.
Back to the text14. In "A Doll's House" Ibsen exhibits a married woman who discovers that her marriage will inevitably destroy her individual ego and so renounces it, abandoning her husband and children. The protests provoked by this play brought forth "Ghosts," in which the dramatist exhibits a woman, who, despite great suffering, remains a faithful wife. Then he shows the horrible consequence of this in the next generation.
Back to the text15. Aristotle formulated them and they made the jus gentian, - or perhaps more accurately, the jus naturate - of the Romans. Thomas Aquinas called them "the eternal law." Hobbes was the first English philosopher to show their essential absurdity.
Back to the text