Certainly within these eternal pools not a few repulsive things have
been born: in Perfection, Sin; in Justice, Guilt. It was when human
judgments were apotheosized and became Eternal Justice that guilt was
insinuated into the core of Life. A falsehood, a presumption! What man
found necessary at one moment in his history for his preservation,
that, forsooth, was a law governing the spheres, the everlasting edict
of God Himself. And when Life did not operate in conformity with this
law, it was Life that must needs be guilty--a very ingenious method
of world-vilification! It was human vanity that created the eternal
verities. And how much have we suffered from them! For the deification
of Things meant the diabolization of Man, nay, of Life itself. The
metaphysician who created Heaven created Hell at the self-same
moment; but, ever since, it has been Hell that has given birth to the
metaphysicians. Being _condemns_ Becoming, and pollutes all Life with
sin. So in the pools of Being we can no longer cleanse ourselves, and
our preference for a doctrine of Becoming may be at bottom a hygienic
preference.
159
_The God of Becoming_
Love is the God of Becoming. All the other gods are static gods,
changeless for yesterday, today and tomorrow. But Love belongs
altogether to the future. It is the deity of those who would create a
future.
160
_Utopias_
It is sympathy that has built the Utopias. On every one of them is
written, "Conflict and suffering are bad." Utopia is nothing but
a place where men are happy, like how many heavens, an ideal of
exhaustion. The thing that is omitted from it is always Love, for
Love would shatter all Utopias and leave them behind. In Nowhere Man
no longer creates, but enjoys. But creation and pain go hand in hand;
for what is creation? The dissolution of the outworn, the birth of the
new; a continuous fury in which the throes of death and of life are
mingled. And Love calls Man to that fate.
What we need is an ideal of energy. But that must needs be an ideal
of Man, not of Society; for Man is the dynamic, Society the static.
Utopia is a goal, but the Superman is a goal beyond a goal; for, once
attained, he is naught but the arrow to shoot into _his_ future. To
attain the Superman is to surpass the Superman. Only ideals of this
kind are unassailable by Love.
161
_"Primacy of Things"_
If we aim at a state of society in which static values, as far as we
can know them, are conformed with, we aim at a state in which the
creative impulse will not only be needless, but harmful. For does not
belief in absolute values necessarily imply belief in a Utopia? And
therefore in something antagonistic to Love? The metaphor of static
Perfection, lovely as it is, has perhaps ruled us too long, and it is
time we superseded it by another. Or is it still, as it has always
been, a crime to substitute one metaphor for another? Even if it is
Love that drives us on?
Progress conceived as a discovery of the unknown instead of as
a pursuit of Perfection--might not that take us a long way? Did
Nietzsche, perhaps, create his Superman, and give him his hardness and
lightness for no other purpose than to carry out that task? Perfection
is something that we have yet to discover! In this conception of
progress all Utopias are transcended, all goals renounced, yet a set
of values, a morality, is retained. The morality might be judged by
the criterion, Does it aid us in our quest? A future of discovery, of
creation and change, not of enjoyment: what a task for energetic Love
does that open out! The Superman is a goal, but what is the Superman's
goal? The Superman is something that must be surpassed!
162
_Perfection_
When men write largely of Perfection, as if it were a concept every
one could understand, we are entitled to ask what exactly they mean.
Do they mean a sort of synthesis or hotchpotch of the virtues in which
they believe? Does X believe in a Christian and Y in a Nietzschean
perfection? As a rule, conceptions of Perfection are offshoots of
the morality prevalent at any given time. And, for action, people's
conception of Perfection is much more important than Perfection itself.
Therefore, let us ceaselessly repeat, Perfection is something still to
be discovered! As for the current conception, is conflict an ingredient
in it, or rest? Is it an ideal of Life, or a thing impossible,
self-contradictory, static, an eternal stick with which to chastise
existence? The first question to be asked.
163
_Goals_
When people speak of the unthinkableness of eternal Becoming which has
no goal in Being, what they express is their longing for rest. It is
unendurable, they feel, that Life, creation, change, should travel on
their way forever: at the very thought their minds become tired, and
Being is conjured up. Hitherto, our goals have not been resting stages,
but eternal termini. But a true goal should not be a cul-de-sac, but
the peak from which to descry our next goal. And so on eternally? Well,
why not? Finality was born when the mind became weary at the thought
of eternal ascent and found refuge in that of eternal rest. We have not
fully learned yet how to live: struggle is still with us an argument
against Life. What we need is perhaps a few re-incarnations! When we
have learned to live, however, we shall welcome struggle as a necessary
part of Life, and Becoming will be as desirable to us as Being now. And
not till then shall we be _fit_ for immortality.
164
_Love and Sympathy_
Love and Hatred are not the true opposites, but Love and Sympathy. Love
is creation, that is to say, strife: a battle between the inanimate
not yet dead, and the living still unborn. And it is also, therefore,
the hatred of the one for the other. True, this hatred may not be of
individuals but of things; but does that make it any more harmless? It
is naïve democratic prejudice to think that hatred of things is less
_wicked_ than hatred of individuals; the very opposite is the case!
The former is a thousand times more dangerous and destructive than the
latter, which, indeed, is little more than an idiosyncrasy. Hatred is
contained in and is an aspect of Love; it is Love seen as destruction.
Well, only Love has a right to Hatred, for only Love can create.
Sympathy, however, would maintain in existence what should be dead, and
would bid what should be living remain forever unborn. For in death and
in birth alike there is pain. Sympathy--that is, Sympathy with the
_necessary_ suffering of existence--is a far greater danger than Hatred.
165
_The Humanitarians_
Hatred only to things, not to men; Love only to men, not to things: the
formula of the half-and-half.
166
Love and the Virtues
Love is the mother of all the harder virtues, and that because she
requires them. For how without them could she suffer to create, and
endure the pain of Becoming? Everything dynamic must become virtuous.
The soft, hedonistic, and degenerate in morality, however, arise from
Sympathy. Sympathy needs the comfortable virtues; it seeks the static,
for movement is pain, and pain, of the devil--if Sympathy will admit a
devil! Its virtues are all in bad training.
167
_The Other Side_
He ceaselessly groaned that he was weary of life and wished to be rid
of it; but all the time it was life that wished to be rid of him.
168
_Love and Danger_
The fear that danger might perish--the immortal fear of Nietzsche--need
cause us no anxiety, could we but believe that creative Love will
continue to exist. For Love is the great source of danger, and of the
heroic in action and thought. If military wars were to disappear from
the earth, danger need not be diminished; it might become emancipated
and voluntary: it might be raised from a common necessity to an
individual task. Perhaps in the distant future nations will become more
pacific, men more war-like; peace will be maintained among nations
_in order_ that individuals may have a free arena in which to carry
on their great contests--"without powder," as Nietzsche said. The
battles, born of Love, of the Brands and Zarathustras, not those of
the Napoleons: that is what creative Love would envisage! But this
prophecy has not sufficient foundation as yet, alas, to be called even
a conjecture!
169
_Fellowship and Love_
Fellowship is of two kinds: that which is inspired by Sympathy,
and that which is an expression of Love. Men unite for the mere
satisfaction which union brings, or for that which is found in the
struggle for more remote things--an aspiration or a vision. This latter
thing, impractical and paradoxical, which lends Man what nobility
he has--it was Love that gave it to him. Fellowship is the sublime
attempt to complete the figure of Man. My friend is he who possesses
the qualities which I lack and most need: in that sense, he creates me.
Fellowship should enrich _all_ who partake of it, make their highest
qualities productive, and throw bridges over the chasms of their
defects. But the association of men for mere enjoyment is not worthy
the name of Friendship. Sympathy is its parent.
170
_The Paradox_
It is possible to live nobly without Happiness, but not without Love.
Love, however, confers the highest happiness. Is it because Love
is indifferent to Happiness that Happiness flutters around it, and
caresses it with its wings?
171
_Moral Indignation_
We should altogether eschew moral censoriousness in our contemplation
of Life, for it is merely destructive. To destroy that which we cannot
re-create in a better form is a crime. Only Love should condemn, for
only Love can create. To bring the good into existence, or prepare the
way of those who can create the good--that should be our only form
of condemnation. In what consists the passion of the moral fanatic?
In respect for the law, that it should not be violated. So he would
extirpate whatever does not conform, even though thus he should destroy
all life, and have no power to create it anew. No wonder he is gloomy:
the vulture is not a bird of cheerful mien.
172
_Morality and Love_
Into what a dilemma falls the poor lover of life who goes to make
the choice of morality! He sees that both great types of morality,
the humanitarian and the military, the Hedonistic and the Spartan,
lead in the end to Nihilism, the one by liquefying, the other by
hardening. The former becomes too sensitive to endure Life; the
latter, too insensible to feel it. Yet they were to serve Life; but
they soon forgot the purpose for which they were formed; they exalted
themselves as something higher than Life; they become "absolute," and
a stumbling-block to existence. And this was because they were not
founded in the beginning upon the very principle of Life, which is
Love, but upon accidentals. The conflict between Morality and Love
has accordingly been a conflict between the forces of Death and of
Life: for "works" without Love are dead. Morality should be but the
discipline which Love imposes upon itself in order to create. It
should crown all the virtues which oppose a gallant and affirmative
countenance to suffering and change, such as heroism, fortitude,
joy, temperance. This morality is the antithesis of the humanitarian
morality sprung from Sympathy.
173
_Paradise Regained_
If Life is but an expression of creative Love, then a morality founded
upon Love must be the only true morality. And, moreover, in it ethics
and the instincts are reconciled; innocence is grasped.
174
_Love and Knowledge_
If in all Life there is change, creation, Becoming, and if in our
lives we know these things only in the interpretation of them which we
call Love, must not Love be a necessary part of our knowledge of Life?
Observation, investigation and the weighing of results may tell us much
_about_ Life, and show it to us in many aspects, but it does not give
us immediate knowledge. Is it possible to know Life? If Life be the
expression of Love----! Upon that "if" depends everything. For if it is
justified, then we have within us the clue to the riddle of existence.
Perhaps here we discern the faint struggling for birth of that
undiscovered faculty of the mind of which men speak. The comprehension
of Life through Love! The profoundest of intuitions? The maddest of
dreams?
175
_Proverb and Commentary_
Love is blind, but it is with excess of light.
176
_Bad Thoughts_
She was as perfect as a drop of dew or a beam of light; a pure thought
of God, delicate, spontaneous and finished. There was nothing misshapen
in body or soul; Love did well to create such a being. But the others,
the crooked, blind and defiled! Are these the bad thoughts of God? From
whence do they come? Whither do they go? Conceived in darkness, born
for destruction?
177
_Love and Sympathy_
We must not think of Love as a mere concept. For it is something
more real than Life itself: the very Life of Life, the very soul of
Becoming. It is a force both spiritual and physical, but transcending
the distinction of spiritual and physical. We must not conceive Love
as a thing akin to Sympathy. It is not humanitarian or even human; it
is a force as unsullied by humanity as the mountain winds or the tides
of the ocean. Nevertheless, it is within Man, just as it is within
the stars and seas; a great creative, destructive, transforming and
purifying force; beyond Good and Evil as the dew and the lightning are.
This is the power that is known by Man in his moments of love. He is
then free to create and enjoy, as if he were re-born, with a will new,
joyful and innocent. But seldom does he attain this knowledge: his
moments of exultation are brief. Yet Love has not on that account lost
any of its potence. Man may decay and become corrupt; but Love remains
unalterable, forever pure, incapable of corruption.
178
_Multum in Parvo_
You are but a drop in the ocean of Life. True: but it is in the ocean
_of Life!_
179
_Love and the Senses_
When one loves, the distinction between soul and body is passed. In
Love alone is the dream of Goethe, Heine, and the moderns realized:
here the reconciliation of the spirit and the senses is celebrated in
perfect innocence. For Love irradiates and makes fragrant the body in
which it dwells, and raises it aloft to sit by its brother the soul.
180
_Love and Innocence_
Life takes us back to its bosom when we love. The heavens, the
earth and the race of men no longer appear things external and
hostile, against which we must arm ourselves. We return from exile
in personality; our thought sweeps to the farthest horizons, and
plunges into the deepest gulfs of existence, at home in all places.
The "external" is no longer external: we contemplate it from the
inside, we gaze through its eyes. For the very principle of Life, of
which all living things are the expression, has been apprehended by
us. Our personality has been emancipated. This feeling of universal
comprehension is called Innocence.
181
_Love and the Fall_
Has the fable of the Fall still another interpretation for us? Was
the Fall of Man the fall from Love? When the feeling of universal
comprehension was lost, personality in the individualistic sense
arose. And Sin was the child of this Individualism. To the first man
bereft of Love, the earth assumed a terrible mien; nature glared at
him with a million baleful eyes: he became an outcast in his home.
No longer knowing the earth or other men, he experienced terror,
hatred and despair. To protect himself against existence, he created
Love's substitute, morality. And with morality arose sin, and perished
innocence.
182
_Love and its Object_
Nietzsche's psychology was wrong when he spoke of Love as a narrowly
egoistic thing isolating two people and making them indifferent to
every one else. There is too much of the philosopher and too little of
the psychologist in this observation. For mankind cannot be loved, Life
cannot be loved, until One has been loved. Only lovers can generate
such wealth of life that it overflows, enriching their friends, their
enemies, all the world. To love one is to love all.
183
_Freedom in Love_
In true love there is a feeling of entire freedom. Is it because the
lovers have by a divine chance found their true path, have become a
pulse in the very heart of Life? If Love is the principle of Life, then
in Love alone is perfect freedom. Ethics and instinct become one. This
is the road that leads beyond good and evil: Man must learn to love.
184
_Love and the Sensualists_
On those who affirm Life as innocent and holy, there is an obligation
laid. Their lives must be innocent: Life must be to them a sustained
act of worship. How many of them have been lacking just here! Heine
failed, in spite of his real nobility. Goethe, however, attained unity
and sincerity; and Nietzsche was a figure of beautiful integrity and
innocence. They were neither of them mere "writers." Nor must we be:
there is upon us the compulsion to prove that a life of innocence is
possible. And as a first step, we must separate ourselves from those
who, before they have sought innocence, praise the senses. For they
confuse and defile everything.
185
_Free Will_
Only those who have knowledge of Becoming can know what the freedom of
the will is. Freedom--that is to will Becoming with all its suffering,
voluntarily to go on the way which Fate and the highest Life direct
us. Slavery--that is to deny Becoming, to cling to the static, and to
be dragged along the stream of change. To be dragged, not to remain
stationary; for men by taking thought cannot gain immunity from change.
Their will and their desires avail them nothing. For the stream of
Becoming is unchangeable in its power. It is Man that changes. When he
affirms Becoming, he is enlarged; when he denies it, he is straitened.
186
_Tragedy, Life and Love_
In the highest Life two qualities are always to be found together,
exuberance and suffering. Life is founded on this paradox, which is
fundamental; for in the emotion of Love we are most conscious of
it. Love is the most joyful and most suffering thing: its plenitude
of joy is so great that it can endure gladly the worst griefs. And
tragedy is the truest expression in art of Life and of Love; for its
characteristic, too, is a Joy triumphing over Fate.
VI
THE TRAGIC VIEW
187
_Life as Expression_
Schopenhauer interpreted life as the expression of a Will to Live.
Nietzsche showed with profound truth that beneath this will there was
something more fundamental, the Will to Power. Have we here got to the
foundation, or shall we find that underlying the Will to Power there is
something more fundamental still? _Why_ do all living things strive for
power? Is it, indeed, power that they desire in their striving, power
for the sake of power? That which everything by a law of its being
searches for is _expression:_ the Will to Power is merely an outcome of
that search. For seeing that the sun of created Life is split up into
individuals, related and yet diverse, the expression of one unit is
bound to collide with that of another, and the outcome is a conflict.
Life, therefore, is essentially something that injures itself, and
injures itself the more the more powerful it is; in a word, Life is
essentially tragic. Most people, however, live in illusion, knowing
nothing of this. The philosophers, and, before them, the priests, were
those who perceived that Life was of this nature; but, alas, from the
truth they drew the immediate and not the more profound conclusion.
They sought, unconscious Hedonists, a palliative for Life, and
contemned expression, which they saw was the cause of suffering. These
were the creators of that morality which has prevailed to our own day;
a morality antagonistic to Life, anti-tragic, negative. All the systems
which have been created in this way are colossal panaceas and remedies:
they are not fundamental.
There were others, however, who saw as the priests did that Life was
tragic, but who at the same time affirmed it. These were the tragic
poets. They were more deeply versed in Life than the priests: tragic
art is more profound than morality. For morality is based on the belief
that man desires above everything else Happiness. But Tragedy has
perceived that this is not so. Man will express himself, it proclaims,
whatever the outcome, whether it be joy or suffering.
Since then morality has sunk deep into Life, and there is now almost a
second instinct in man striving against expression. Consequently there
are many existences passed without expression; sometimes even in a
resolute struggle against it, as in the case of innumerable religious
men and ascetics. To some men it seems that their spirit has been lying
frozen and dead within them, until one day an influence touches them,
and they feel an imperious desire to express themselves, to create.
This influence is nothing else than Love, which is the desire for
expression itself. When its rule is recognized and obeyed Life reaches
its highest degree of joy and of pain, and becomes creative. This is
the state which is glorified by the tragic poets. To those who affirm,
it is the highest condition of Life.
188
_"Self-Expression"_
Self-expression is something infinitely more subtle than the moderns
conceive. This man studied to express himself: he investigated his
ego, and thereby cut himself off from Life more completely than
any anchorite, for the anchorite had at least heaven in addition to
himself. This neo-anchorite, however, turned his eyes deliberately
inward and strove to find expression for what he discovered there, but
for nothing more. Thus he became his own prison. Eventually he turned
out an æsthete.
This other man found that his thoughts and desires flew away from him
as irrevocably as a flock of wild birds and became lost or strangers.
He seemed constrained to express everything _not_ himself, everything
foreign, remote and as exalted; but in the end he discovered that it
was himself he had expressed. "Thy true being," said Nietzsche, "lies
not deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above thee, or at
least above that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself."
189
_Life as a Value_
Those who say that the belief in Life as a value is not a belief which
will arouse the heroic passions and make men die for it, use a form
of reasoning, at any rate, which is erroneous. They first confuse the
ideal of more complete existence with the more complete existence
of an individual, and then demonstrate that this individual will not
lay down his life for the sake of _his_ more complete existence! But
Life as an ideal is just as impersonal as any other ideal, whether it
be Justice or Perfection or Renunciation. True, it has not yet become
static, but on that account its attraction is only the stronger; it
arouses our very love. And men will die for what they love: they will
die for Life.
190
_Hebbel's Theory of Tragedy_
Hebbel's theory of Tragedy is noble and profound. Not in the
misdirection of wills does he find the source of the tragic, but in the
core of the will itself, in the inexorable expression and collision
of wills. This conception raises Tragedy from a mere consequence and
punishment of sin to an expression of Life itself, to the most profound
and essential expression of Life. And this is just and worthy of
Tragedy. For the character of Tragedy is not negative and condemnatory,
but deeply affirmative and joyous. How shallow then must be the
theories which would deny Tragedy to the good, to those whose wills
are highly directed! Tragedy is not a punishment. The more noble man
becomes the more tragic he will also become.
191
_Tragic Philosophy_
The belief, against which Nietzsche declaimed, that Reason brings
Happiness has become to the modern man second nature, so that now the
notions of Reason and Happiness are indissolubly connected in his mind.
Any argument for a tragic view of Life must therefore appear, first of
all, unreasonable; for Happiness as an end is the only reason that will
be acknowledged. It remains for us to show that Happiness is itself
unreasonable, an impossibility, a chimera. There is no Happiness as
an end. Reason does not bring Happiness, nor does virtue, nor does
asceticism, nor does comfort. Happiness is an accident. And not even a
modern can make accidents happen!