Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to
the people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately
to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place.
Par. 3.
Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people.
To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved,
provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that “Life per se is
precious” is the ruling maxim here.
Par. 4.
In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche’s elevation of
the virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he
tells higher men the class of courage he expects from them.
Pars. 5, 6.
These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end)
and LXXI.
Par. 7.
I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the
view that Nietzsche’s teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric
and for higher man alone.
Par. 9.
In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the
Immaculate Perception or so-called “pure objectivity” of the scientific
mind. “Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge.” Where a
man’s emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is
not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his
Autobiography:—“In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional
nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual
nature” (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., “Thoughts out of Season”).
Pars. 10, 11.
When we approach Nietzsche’s philosophy we must be prepared to be
independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is
perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one
of thinking alone, of scoring off one’s own bat, and of shifting
intellectually for oneself.
Par. 13.
“I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may
grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not.” These two paragraphs are an
exhortation to higher men to become independent.
Par. 15.
Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As,
however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed,
what he says is not without value.
A very important principle in Nietzsche’s philosophy is enunciated in
the first verse of this paragraph. “The higher its type, always the
seldomer doth a thing succeed” (see page 82 of “Beyond Good and Evil”).
Those who, like some political economists, talk in a business-like way
about the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook
the fact that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among
higher individuals. Economy was never precisely one of nature’s leading
principles. All this sentimental wailing over the larger proportion
of failures than successes in human life, does not seem to take into
account the fact that it is the rarest thing on earth for a highly
organised being to attain to the fullest development and activity of all
its functions, simply because it is so highly organised. The blind Will
to Power in nature therefore stands in urgent need of direction by man.
Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche’s protest against the democratic
seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. “All good things laugh,” he
says, and his final command to the higher men is, “LEARN, I pray you—to
laugh.” All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche’s sense, is cheerful. To be able
to crack a joke about one’s deepest feelings is the greatest test of
their value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make
faces, is already a buffoon at heart.
“What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the
word of him who said: ‘Woe unto them that laugh now!’ Did he himself
find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child
even findeth cause for it.”