swallowed up and lost in the life of the tribe. He did not count as an
individual, but was valued only as a member of the group to which he
happened to belong. Subsequently, man’s endowment to personality entered
upon its unfolding—the first syllables of the long human story were
stammered. Man began to become a self. To be a self was to specialize
into a difference from all other men. From that moment on, the entire
course of evolution may be considered as a progressive differentiation
and specialization of the human personality. At the outset there were
only a few splendidly and highly endowed natures that felt a distinct
life of their own welling up in themselves from mysterious springs of
being. They took up the gauge of battle against others, against the mass
which attempted to subject and assimilate them to its peculiarity. Mass
meant monotony. But the differentiating energy and impetus encroached
further and further, passing from the great to the small, pushing into
the mass whose members no longer wanted to be mass, herd, but men. The
might of spiritual personality opposed itself to the superiority of
corporeal peculiarity. Psychical feeling more and more became personal.
Character increasingly received a distinctive stamp. Along with this,
the impulse to self-dependence began to stir even in those men who were
outclassed in physical strength by their stronger human brothers. Later,
when the head and heart, and no longer the fist, formed the strength of
man, woman pressed into the circle of life’s evolution. She was no
longer a mere exemplar of the genius. She, too, would be personality.
This course of events signified an infinite refinement and enrichment of
cultural life on the one side; on the other, it gave rise to the
question as to how, in this differentiation of men into even more
decidedly pronounced personalities, a cohesiveness could be originated
among them that would save life from disintegration and consequent
decay. At bottom, the individual is not sufficient unto himself.
Self-dependent, he would be miserably impoverished and stunted—of this
there can be no doubt, according to the most elementary laws of life.
Hence, along with the formation of human personality, there is a
refinement of those forces of life which seem summoned to secure a bond
of fellowship among men: law, custom, a benevolent disposition toward
others, the feeling of sympathy for others. Even Nietzsche, who foresees
a future in which all these older group forces and moral impulses shall
be obliterated, and every man pander to his own self alone and his own
peculiarity in willing and feeling, in thinking and speaking—even
Nietzsche cannot help preaching a new love that shall bind men together.
Even Zarathustra confesses: “I love men! My will, my ardent will to
creation, impels me constantly to men—as the hammer to the stone!” To be
sure, this Zarathustra-love is to grow out beyond and above what we call
love to-day, what we call Christian love. There is to be a Beyond
Christianity. The new love will be as high above the old love as
Above-Man will be above man. Beyond-man means Beyond-love. How earnestly
and ominously does this preaching of a new love pierce like a sword into
the heart of our time! A new test of the worth or unworth of our moral
view of life! Were we even convinced that the best and purest features
of the old Christian love would re-appear in any new love, still the
question would not be elucidated—the question whether this old love
would thereby become new again, would become living again, save through
a storm of thunder and lightning that should purify the heavy, stuffy
atmosphere which has gathered about the word love itself.
You will know them by their fruits—of nothing is this so true as of
love. Where there is power, an effect must ensue, and in the effect, not
only the right of the power, but the kind as well, manifests itself.
Now, love wills to promote the life of another with its own life. Love
wills to do good to its object, to redress some wrong, supply some lack,
help some need, remedy some defect, and the like. Therefore, the fruits
of love are gifts—hence, _die schenkende Tugend_, the bestowing or the
giving virtue, of Nietzsche’s phrase. Accordingly, only a possessor can
give. Who possesses most—the rich—give most! Who needs gifts is poor,
and since poverty is great, becoming ever greater, gifts are needed to
meet the needs. Thus, human love has become the practice of
beneficence—the work of the rich by which they help the poor. The
greatness of benefactions, this becomes a criterion for the greatness of
love. We have but to think of the “foundations” and “benevolent funds”
and “charitable institutions” and “unions” for the care and keeping of
the poor, as well as of the incalculable sums which are given in private
for the relief of want, in order to be impressed with the “fruits” which
have grown on the tree of human love. How magnificent, how imposing
these “fruits” are! How much love there is in the world today, in this
world in which so much good is done! Who could doubt it? Who could deny
it? Who? Who but Friedrich Nietzsche!
The loathsome vanity and the refined hypocrisy with which this
beneficence is prosecuted, such obvious strictures as these, Nietzsche
passes over without a word. This genus “benefactor” that does what it
does just to benefit itself, is so lowdown to the Zarathustra-poet that
he will not honor it with a notice. He simply classed it with the gilded
and counterfeit rabble, _Pöbel_, with the culprits of wealth, who pick
their profits from sweepings. Then there is the criterion of the
numerical worth of the gift, not the ratio of the gift to the
possessions of the giver, this criterion for the evaluation of love was
so external, so deceptive, to Nietzsche, that he left it, too, out of
account. What impelled Nietzsche to his depreciation of this whole
species of beneficence was something different, something deeper. All
these gifts, great and numerical as they may be, are alms, and who has
only alms to give to man is a poor man, and Zarathustra feels—well,
listen to what he says to the saint!
Zarathustra answered: “I love men.”
“Why,” said the saint, “did I go to the forest and desert? Was it not
because I loved men greatly over-much? Now I love God: men I love not.
Man is a thing far too imperfect for me. Love of men would kill me.”
Zarathustra answered: “What did I say of love! I am bringing gifts to
men.”
“Do not give them anything,” said the saint. “Rather take something from
them and bear their burdens along with them—that will serve them best;
if it only serve thyself well! And if thou art going to give them aught,
give them no more than an alms, and let them beg even for that.”
“No,” said Zarathustra, “I do not give alms. I am not poor enough for
that.”
_I am not poor enough for that._ Priceless words! You read these words
and you think of truly kindhearted men who sigh: If I were only rich so
I could do good! They envy the rich their possessions, not for the sake
of the pleasures and comforts which possessions permit their possessors
to provide, but in the wholly honest feeling of the blessings which they
could scatter with their wealth. Then comes Nietzsche, and says to these
kindhearted men, You are only poor noodles, if you have nothing better
to bring the world and men than this blessing of wealth. Then he points
them to gifts the least of which outweighs a million donations.
Now, Nietzsche had no contempt of wealth with which to insult his
fellowmen’s intelligence. Nor was he a socialistic indicter of
beneficence. Nor was he even a rigorous critic of the doubtful
disposition, so often manifest in such benevolent activities. But
perhaps his plain words on the poverty of almsgiving seem so weighty
precisely because he must be acquitted without further ado of speaking
from contempt, from the standpoint of Christianity, or from the milieu
of poor folk. And yet it was this most soaring spirit of the nineteenth
century, this aristocrat from top to toe, compared with whom even a
Goethe seems like a plebeian, it was precisely he who—as from an aerie
up among the eagles—looked down with such abysmal contempt upon the
highest and noblest triumph of riches—namely, the ability to bestow
benefits—that he detected, even in this triumph, only testimony to the
poverty of riches. Along with this, at all events, Nietzsche passed
damnatory judgment upon a _Kultur_ which estimates the distances among
men, the measure of their greatness according to the distinctions of
possession, and therefore derives the right of the influence which it
accords the individual from the sums which he donates by way of alms.
Then, too, what has the man to do with his possession! It is not his
_personality_ which has assigned him a place in life where a confluence
of industrial goods crystallize around him! What does it signify as to
the worth of a man that he has cast his baited hook into the stream of
life just where a big hungry fish swims by and bites! And if, now, this
most contingent of all contingencies, that a man should get rich, is
considered by his generation as the peculiar deed of a hero, the deed
which he was in a position to compass in life,—if the mere fact that a
man releases, in the shape of benefits and alms, a part of this wealth
which he could not spend upon himself if he would is a phenomenon around
which the conversation of the day revolves, of which newspapers in
special articles and telegraphic dispatches have so much to say, then
this is a sign of the decay of our moral culture, and we cannot be
thankful enough to the man who has jolted us out of such aberration of
ideas and made us see with eyes no longer blinded by the glitter of
gold!
Aye, wealth a man does need who wants to give. Wealth he needs for the
sake of his giving love. But he must create this wealth himself. He must
wrest wealth from all values. He must coerce all things to himself and
into himself. All these things must stream back from the well of living
water within him as the gifts of his love. Insatiably does the soul seek
after treasures and gems because her virtue is insatiable in her will to
give. This is the soul’s thirst to be an offering and a gift, and hence
she thirsts to house all wealth in herself.
Vulgar souls give what they have, noble souls what they are—this is the
well known saying that mirrors the meaning of Nietzsche. Love’s highest
labor is to create something great out of its ownself, that it may be
able to give unceasingly out of its own fulness and yet never be
exhausted! No mountain is too steep and no valley too deep for love,
because love herself must know heights and depths that she may give to
others what she has seen and known there. Do we fear lest we succumb to
a weakness? Then we must force the weakness underneath our feet because
we need our strength to give strength to others. Would we say to virtue:
Thou art too hard for us; take thy laurel and let us sin? Now, the
hardest is spur to our love, to steel our wills, our courage, so that
courage may gush into the souls of others also. What we have made out of
our own selves, this, this alone, is our wealth, this is the gift by
whose bestowal men can become rich. A thought of our own which we have
acquired; a light of our own, which we have kindled in our innermost
being; a lofty enthusiasm for what is great; an energetic aversion to
all that is common and base,—this is our true wealth, the gift that
enriches us while it is given to others. Poor indeed are the people who
can give only alms; rich indeed are those who give themselves to men,
who proffer their most intimate gifts to men, who say to men’s hidden
hearts and hopes: Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I
give unto thee!
Why are we so deeply involved in hard necessity that our life can not
dispense with alms and therefore with the people who make a virtue out
of this giving of alms! Simply because we have so few such truly rich
men who thirst to become offerings and gifts for man! These men can we
have, can we become ourselves, only when duty and righteousness, and not
benevolence and inclination, shall decide in an ordering and helpful
way, as to the requirement of life. Behind every benefit which is
necessary there is concealed an unrighteousness of life which makes the
benefit necessary. All alms with which the world cannot dispense today
is an accusation against our culture, a confession of how poor we are in
the midst of all our wealth. It will be the first great step towards a
new culture when we first learn to measure the unworth of these benefits
by the eternal worths which alone are worthy of man, which man forms in
himself as new fructifying deeds, as the lightning of thought which
detonates from his soul, as living beauty to which he gives shape in his
own being.
Then if all duties which are based on right and law, shall cease to be
considered as something special, something great, if their fulfilment
shall be no longer marveled at as a feat of virtue, because these duties
shall have become self-evident and natural, then shall man be illumined
by new and greater duties which shall make him a debtor to life, then
shall he call his wealth and the fulness of his being his debt which he
can pay only in constant creation for man, in ceaseless giving to man!
“Therefore, nobler souls will it: they will to have nothing _gratis_,
least of all life! Whoever is of the _Pöbel_ wills to live _gratis_, but
we others to whom life gave itself—we ever meditate as to what we can
best give in return and, verily, that is a noble saying which says: what
life promises us, that will we keep for life!” In simpler language: Not
to merit a reward, heavenly or earthly, will we give, will we assemble
in ourselves the highest gifts, to lay them down as offerings upon the
altars of men, but we will give to return thanks for all that we have
undeservedly received. Bickering and calculating as to whether we have
had our just dues, haggling over hopes which have not done what they
promised, we will have none of this, but thanks, thanks, that as men we
have gained some material from the saddest life, created joys out of its
pains, wealth and worth out of its weakness and loss. This, this, in
Nietzsche’s immortal words, is _eine Umwertung der Werte_, a
transvaluation of values in the moral life, from which a new moral
culture can issue. In our labors we are ever shadowed by the still,
lurking thought of returns and rewards, we calculate, and calculate ever
in our own favor, that somewhere life has left us in the lurch. Could we
but once reverse this matter: It is not life that is obligated and
indebted to us—we are obligated and indebted to life! In the former way
of counting we always come out with a deficit, with a poverty: in the
later, with a balance, with a wealth: we still have something for which
we gave nothing, did nothing, with which we have done no good!
How would it do to put such thankfulness to the test? When the heart is
shaken with sorrow’s power—it is life’s gift to feel such shaking, in
such shaking love can feel the storm raging. Even such gift you would
not have _gratis_. You would make some return—the bravery with which you
settle for it. You come to know despondency, a new deed, and your thanks
therefor is that you have been permitted to overcome a paralysis of your
energy. If, with freer vision and with broader heart, your eye has
become alert and keen for human folly and lamentation, and these attack
you as cowardice and disgust of life, then you take this as a gift that
you will not have _gratis_, you will give something as counter-gift and
thanks: a more energetic will, that will go to the bottom of folly and
grief, with the fineness of feeling which has been bestowed upon you—you
will dig deeper, search out more earnestly the genuine values of life,
so that your cowardice and your _ennui_ at life may become a new
strength and a new joy for life. If you feel your hands tied, if the
world seems a prison at whose bars you lunge, but whose rods you cannot
break, if then a horrible feebleness befalls you, and your best will
confesses that you are too weak,—then take this, too, as a gift for
which you learn to give thanks, for even the restriction of your power
creates a new freedom, the pressure of the impossible ceases with your
learning, thus, the possible, the necessary, of your life. Poor? You may
be rich, immeasurably rich, not for yourself indeed, but for others,
that you may communicate to them, give to them and yet never give out!
Be debtor of life, that in your poverty you may make many rich. Be
debtor of love, that you may never be able to pay your great eternal
debt. Confessing and obligating yourself to such debt, your life gains
that eternal worth which increases the more you spend of it, which
receives, the more you give of it. Poor, yet having all things; poor,
yet making many rich—_also sprach Paulus-Nietzsche_.
After this Zarathustra went back into the mountains and the solitude of
his cave and withdrew from men, waiting like a sower who hath thrown out
his seed. But his soul was filled with impatience and longing for those
he loved; for he had still many gifts for them. For this is the hardest:
to shut one’s open hand because of love.
It is the business of the very few to be independent: it is the
privilege of the strong, and whoever attempts it, even with the
best regret but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is
probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He
enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand-fold the
dangers which life itself already brings with it; not the least
of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way,
becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of
conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far
from the comprehension of men that they can neither feel it nor
sympathize with it, and he cannot any longer go back! He cannot
ever go back again to the sympathies of men.—_Nietzsche._
Editorials and Announcements
_Mrs. Havelock Ellis_
Mrs. Ellis’s visit to Chicago has been a series of revelations. At first
she was a little disappointing: in her lecture on James Hinton and his
sex ethics—particularly in the discussion which followed it—Mrs. Ellis
did not loom as large as some of her more “destructive” contemporaries.
The thing was beautifully done, of course—a gorgeous bit of
interpretative art; for Mrs. Ellis chooses words with a poet’s care and
presents ideas with an economy that is invigorating and restful at the
same time. But in so far as the lecture reflected her own ideas it had
some of the limitations to which the eugenist point of view is always
open: the failure to go quite the whole distance. Compared with the
directness and honest thoroughness of the few pioneers who are
advocating birth control—like Margaret Sanger, whose little pamphlet on
the subject will cost her ten years imprisonment if the authorities can
get hold of her—the ideas of Mrs. Ellis came with a certain inadequacy.
But later she cleared herself of the charge of cultism by her laughing
remark to some one who discussed eugenics with her: “Eugenics? A mere
spoke in the wheel, and a very dogmatic spoke at that. Heaven knows we
don’t want a race of averages.” One of her most delightful afternoons
was given over to her Cornish stories. She read one called _The
Idealist_, which ought to be studied by all those who draw their rigid
distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal”. As Mrs. Ellis said, “This
story is an attempt to show that those people we so piously consider the
worst of us are sometimes the best of us.” And so this charming woman
with her simplicity, her humor, her frankness, her idealism, and her
fine boyishness is a personality one must not fail to know. She returns
to Chicago on February 4, to lecture on sex and eugenics in Orchestra
Hall. That lecture will be given exclusively to women and will include a
discussion of sex abnormalities, as well as a paper on the subject
written especially for the occasion by her husband, which Mrs. Ellis
will read.
_A Journal of Ideas_
The New Republic is the first weekly in America which has dared to
assert that ideas are interesting, even if they are new. We have had one
kind of weekly whose main purpose is to pay dividends to its owners.
Dividends demand advertising, advertising demands large circulation,
circulation demands pleasing as many people as possible, pleasing many
people has seemed to demand piffle and dishonesty. We have had another
kind of weekly which confines itself to academic criticism and frankly
gives up any attempt to speak to the nation. _The New Republic_ is run
neither for dividends nor for ancient prestige. It proceeds on the
assumption that we can find writers who are both honest enough and
intelligent enough to speak things of a value not determined either by
capital or by the mob. It hopes that their product may be so interesting
that the people who want to read it will be sufficiently numerous to
support the paper. It hopes vastly more that the ideas and opinions so
enunciated will introduce a powerful and much-needed element of
disinterested intelligence into American public life. The way in which
these hopes are put into print will have much to do with the success of
the attempt. But it is hopeful that somebody with adequate resources and
equipment is actually engaged in the attempt to relate honesty and
intelligence with the democracy.
_John Cowper Powys_
When the Welshman, John Cowper Powys, comes to the Chicago Little
Theatre for his lectures during January and February a great many people
ought to fall under the spell of this man whose methods spoil one for
almost all other lectures. Mr. Powys’s intellect has that emotional
character which is likely to be the quality of the man of genius rather
than the man of talent. He might be called the arch-appreciator: he
relies upon the inspiration of the moment, and when violently
enthusiastic or violently the reverse (he is usually one of the two) he
never stops with less than ten superbly-chosen adjectives to express his
emotion exactly. His subjects will be Dostoevsky, Wilde, Milton, Lamb,
Hardy, Henry James, Dante, Rabelais, Hugo, Verlaine, Goethe, and Heine.
The dates may be had at the Little Theatre.
Mrs. Havelock Ellis’s “The Love of Tomorrow”
HERMAN SCHUCHERT
One’s sense of the general or the particular fitness of things is
disturbed when an attempt is made to paraphrase or condense the spoken
words of Mrs. Ellis. It is seldom that this sense of fitness is at all
troubled, because it is a simple matter to extract from the average
lecture enough coherent material for second-hand purposes. On the
subject given above Mrs. Ellis compels continuous attention. It is not
enough to say that she steadily advances her ideas by means of careful
phrases, for every phrase seems to be an idea in itself. She is an
artist. Her words are like so many focussed lights, not one of which is
superfluous. And the illumination which she obtains is a grateful
brightness. In listening to her one’s powers of receptivity, while never
strained, are not for one moment allowed to rest. As she says, “It’s all
solid meat.” Hence, the feeling of futility in an attempt to present
justly her observations and schemes of social betterment.
What an absurdity might be suggested to the reader by the statement that
Mrs. Ellis advocates a form of “trial marriage” or a “probation for
engaged lovers”! And yet her plan of such a pre-ceremonial arrangement
is as practical as it is badly needed—practical and entirely reasonable,
in that she has apparently overlooked nothing, from the subtleties of
human nature to the future laws of the land. And how faddish might she
appear if one told of her attacks upon latter-day Puritanism, lust in
the guise of love, prostitution within marriage, the evils of both
repression and brutish or premature expression, the abomination of
smirking elders and cowardly guardians, and so forth. Truly, these
things constitute a fad of today, but—Mrs. Havelock Ellis was writing
and preaching these ideas longer than twenty-five years ago. In
questions of love, marriage, and the possible beauty of human relations,
she is a splendid, unhurrying pioneer. It would be impossible to measure
the courage, the fine perseverance, it has taken to work on patiently
and forcefully in the midst of leering society, infallible
misunderstanding, and a great ocean of evil-mindedness. What daring! to
speak plainly of the beauty of love-passion. And how hopeless! Here,
evolution endlessly proves itself a laggard process.