Having endeavoured thus to dispose of the "ethically good" and
"ethically bad" by the theory that such ideas are merely distortions
of the ideas of "practically good and practically bad," Nietzsche in
the second essay of the Genealogy makes a similar effort to take the
sting out of the ideas of "Schuld" (guilt, debt), and "schlechtes
Gewissen" (bad conscience). But here, again, difficulties beset our
revolutionary. He approves of responsibility and the sacredness of the
promise, but disapproves of the bad conscience by which the individual
would enforce these things on himself. He blesses justice, but damns
the social system. We shall find it hard to follow him in his attempted
reconciliation of these divergent standpoints. When, for instance,
he alludes with almost paternal approbation to the savage mnemonics
by which the "conscience" (_per se_) was produced, and then proceeds
to an envenomed, if none the less brilliant polemic against the "bad
conscience," we see that in reality it is not so much the existence of
a conscience _quâ_ conscience, to which he objects, but the existence
of a conscience functioning on what he conceives to be a vicious
basis. Indeed, even the most faithful of our prophet's disciples would
admit that the Nietzschean teaching lays down as thorny and toilsome
a path for the "bold, bad man," or _übermensch_, as Christianity ever
decreed for the good man or weakling. The only difference, in fact,
between Nietzschean and Christian ethics is that between excessive
self-affirmation and excessive self-negation. But one has only to read
_Zarathustra_ to realise immediately that this self-affirmation is no
heedless hedonism, but a tense and chronic struggle of the ego against
the world, subject to as rigid rules and braving as intense martyrdoms
as does the Christian struggle of the spirit against the flesh. We may
say, in fact, that on an officially Nietzschean basis the "bad" man who
fails in being thoroughly and perfectly bad is, and apparently properly
so, subject to as poignant pangs as is the "good" man who fails in
being thoroughly and perfectly good.
Granted, however, that it is the content of the bad conscience rather
than the existence of a bad conscience _per se_, which provokes his
righteous indignation, let us make some attempt to see how far
Nietzsche is logical in condemning, as he does, existing ethics as the
bastard child of contract and revenge, thriving amid a civilisation
which has no real right to exist. Nietzsche starts off in fine
feather to prove that the word "Schuld" (guilt) is the same as the
word "Schuld" (debt), as though that momentous piece of philological
research crushed all ethics once and for all. We do not for a moment
dispute the philology. Moreover, as far as the general principle is
concerned, it had been previously pointed out by Maine that all crimes
were in their origin torts--that is to say, private wrongs against the
individual (though doubts as to how far this theory is to be carried
are raised by the universal execration which even in the most primitive
societies was visited on murderers like Cain or Orestes).
It may, moreover, be true that in many cases the local god is simply
a deceased ancestor promoted to a heavenly status, who requires
payment for protecting his descendants. But such arguments can at the
best merely have effect on the theological conception of morality
as a divine ordinance descending immediately from heaven. From the
sociological standpoint, indeed, to derive "ethics" from "contract"
is simply to consolidate one phase of the social instinct by deriving
it from another. As, however, has been hinted before, it was the
theological conception that was Nietzsche's main objective. So long
as he could kill that, he was indifferent to the price, if, indeed,
his morbidly classic and aristocratic standpoint did not hold that
the taint of the bourgeois and the _βάναυσος_ attached
automatically to everything commercial.
The shifts, however, to which Nietzsche is driven are well illustrated
when we come to that further stage in his evolution of the moral idea,
which consists in deriving modern ethics or the "bad conscience" from
the principle of "resentment" or "revenge," which is alleged to be
a totally distinct thing from the "active feeling" by which Justice
enforces its sanctions. But with all due respect to Nietzsche and his
official expounders, we find it hard to appreciate any real difference
in principle between the various drastic measures by which the social
organism enforces its decree. The punishment for murder, we suggest,
would be equally death both in a Nietzschean and in a non-Nietzschean
state, and how anything more than the merest verbal distinction is
achieved by labelling one sanction the "active emotion of justice" and
the other "the principle of resentment" we are frankly at a loss to
conceive. We can only say that the basing of the "bad conscience" on
the spirit of revenge is true in the sense that from one aspect the
function of the social organism is to protect the many against the few
by the enforcements of drastic punishments against its transgressors.
That, moreover, the strong are unduly restricted to pamper the weak is
an arguable proposition, how arguable, can be seen from the present
volubility of the financially strong when menaced nowadays with
taxation for the benefit of the financially weak. But to go to the
length of saying that the whole social fabric is a morbid distortion,
a thing intrinsically bad, a kind of quasi-theological fall from an
ideal state of primitive anarchy, is, at the most charitable estimate,
a mere piece of poetic extravagance. Yet to this length Nietzsche goes
when he pictures his blonde primæval beast swung into "new situations
and conditions of existence"; in other words, into the "pale of society
with a spring and rush." The apparent suddenness of the transition
strikes us, indeed, as naïf as the philosophy of Rousseau or of Hobbes,
who actually conceived the social contract as a specific bargain
entered into at a specific time.
One of the most interesting parts, however, of the whole essay is
Nietzsche's explanation of the "bad conscience" as the result of
the primitive energy of the savage venting itself in psychological
self-torture when debarred from its natural outlet of physical
violence. "All instincts which do not vent themselves without vent
themselves within," so runs the dictum of the prophet, a dictum
no doubt of great psychological truth, and capable of concrete
illustration when applied to nuns, monks, and other ascetics, or to
definite cases of neurotic introspection, but clearly not deserving to
be treated as the key to the whole social fabric.
We have already remarked that the real weakness of the Nietzschean
philosophy lay in the neglect of the Aristotelian theory that man was a
_ζῶον πολιτικον_ or a social animal. Let us resume this line
of inquiry. Nietzsche does, it is true, refer to the "herd instinct"
of the weak, but only to exhibit his very palpable contempt against
the weak who herd together so as to be able effectually to combat the
strong. A yet further proof of Nietzsche's bitter hatred of the social
organism is supplied by the celebrated phrases in _Zarathustra_, "as
little state as possible," and "the slow suicide which we call the
state." In our view, however, the real test of Nietzsche's position
is touched when we come to the position of the aristocratic strong
man. "Are they," one wonders, "tainted or untainted with the herd
instinct?" Nietzsche's answer to this question seems to be that, so
far as concerns the vast bulk of the herd, they are inimical to the
social instinct, but that none the less they find social organisation
(apparently that identical state which we have seen spoken of as
"slow suicide") necessary, not only for keeping the herd in proper
order, but for the purpose of "their own fight with other complexes
of power." Viewed impartially, however, it does not seem to us that
Nietzsche pays sufficient importance to the universality and value of
the social instinct. Perhaps the root of the whole matter lies in the
fact that Nietzsche fixes apparently the human unit as the individual,
whereas, in point of fact, it is that state in miniature, the family.
The origin of the family may no doubt be found in the primæval
instincts of sex and parentship. None the less, it is an indisputed
sociological fact that the family, or its larger manifestation the
tribe, is, as is evident from the slightest perusal of the works of
Darwin, Maine, or Westermarck, the primitive form of human life. It
would obviously be outside the scope of this preface to go in detail
into the whole question of the origin of society, but it would also
appear an indisputable platitude that man, _quâ_ man, thrives by
co-operation and association. In economical terminology this truth is
known as the division of labour, in sociology by our frequently quoted
Aristotelian dictum that man is a social animal. Nietzsche, it is
true, tries to evade, or at any rate minimise, the force of this fact
by treating law as the concrete exemplification of might is right.
This, of course, is true as far as it goes, but it is only one side
of the medal. All law is based on sovereignty, and all sovereignty is
in the last resort based on force. It is possible, no doubt, for this
force, this ultimate sanction to be exercised on approved Nietzschean
principles by the few against the many. To quote the words of Ihering,
the great Austrian jurist: "And so force, when it allies itself with
insight and self-control, produces law. It is the origin of law out
of the power of the stronger who stands in opposition to another,
of which we now begin to get a glimpse." Yet, even though for the
moment we confine ourselves to this aspect, it is obvious that while
such a law subjugates the weak to the strong, it also regulates and
curtails the rights of the strong among themselves, creating, as it
were, a state within a state, or, to use once again the language of
Ihering, "the self-limitation of force in its own interest." Equally
important, however, is the obverse side of the medal, on which appears
the exercise of the ultimate sanction by the many against the few.
To quote Ihering for the last time: "The crucial point in the whole
organisation of law is the preponderance of the common interests of
all over the particular interests of the individuals." The vice, then,
of Nietzsche's theory is that he bisects law into its two constituent
phases, ignores one phase and confines himself to the other, apparently
in blissful oblivion of the fact that even in the most aristocratic of
aristocracies there exists, even though in miniature, the "slow suicide
of the state."
There is a further criticism which seems to arise properly out of
Nietzsche's vehement denunciation of civilisation. The state and
civilisation are bad according to Nietzsche, because they take the
sting out of this struggle for existence, and cut the fangs of the
superman. But, according to Nietzschean principles, are they not
equally good in so far as they enable the superman to refine and
elaborate his scale of combat? It is, indeed, obvious that the
intellectualisation of the blonde beast of primitive times into the
newspaper proprietor, American financier, or revolutionary philosopher
of modernity would have been impossible but for the intervention of
a very highly developed social organism. Yet even the most confirmed
Nietzschean would admit that Mr. Rockefeller is, in spite of his
evangelistic proclivities, a more highly developed specimen of the
superman than Tamerlane, and Lord Northcliffe than, say, Cæsar Borgia.
One final observation: according to Nietzsche the test of merit is
efficiency and the test of efficiency is success. Supposing, however,
that a large number of individuals comparatively weak overpower through
sheer force of combination a small number of individuals comparatively
strong. Are not the weak changed into the strong, and conversely? We do
not say that this is necessarily so: we merely adduce the argument to
show how easily Nietzschean principles lend themselves to exploitation
at the hands of the Socialists.
Nietzsche's philosophy, however, was above all didactic, missionary.
He analysed contemporary morality, not by way of an academic or
scientific exercise, but with a view to striking, and striking hard,
at that aspect of it which he quite honestly believed to be vicious
and deleterious. Hence it is that having in his first two essays
dealt with the etymological and legal aspects of the question, he now
goes straight to the root of the whole matter. What is the practical
application of all these tendencies which he has analysed? The ascetic
ideal--and against this ideal our teacher proceeds to deliver as
tense and concentrated a sermon as ever fell from the lips of any
denouncer of the luxurious or non-ascetic ideal. We have not space,
unfortunately, to follow Nietzsche through his elaborate analysis both
of the ascetic ideal in its origin and in its eventual distortion and
corruption at the hands of the ascetic priest. We will only observe
that to grasp properly Nietzsche's position, stress should be laid
on the fact that in the same way in which it was not the conscience
_per se_, but the current content of the conscience, so it was not
asceticism _per se_, but the current content of asceticism to which
Nietzsche objected.
As he explains in drastic and elaborate style, the philosopher, like
the jockey or the athlete, would, through the simple exigencies of his
_métier_, live the ascetic life. In such cases asceticism is simply the
mechanical condition precedent of complete concentration. Similarly,
the _übermensch_ (superman) would no doubt be compelled to live the
ascetic life in his strenuous struggle with subsisting values. The
asceticism, however, to which Nietzsche in fact did object, was the
asceticism which was not like the philosopher's asceticism, a means to
creating or promoting actual human life, but was a means to destroying
and minimising actual human life, the asceticism which denied the right
to happiness, and which found in sin the solution to the riddle of the
human world.
Indeed, it is thoroughly characteristic of Nietzsche's whole attitude
that he demurs vigorously to almost any solution of the riddle of the
world. According to his reasoning, the need for any solution at all,
whether transcendental, after the pattern of Kant and the Idealists, or
quasi-transcendental, after the pattern of the pseudo-metaphysics of
the scientists, argues an inability to take life on its own merits and
on its own valuation.
Let us finally glance briefly at the practical application of the
Nietzschean philosophy, a course thoroughly consistent with the
intensely practical spirit of our prophet. We are at first almost
overwhelmed by the heterogeneous character of those who profess to be
the true disciples of the great master, a character so heterogeneous,
forsooth, that Nietzsche seems occasionally to be nothing but a
catch-word mouthed by every conceivable school of thought with
the rankest impunity. The Socialists, conveniently forgetting the
opprobrious designation by the sage as "spiders," and their apostolic
"Man is not equal," which he had thundered forth, find a bond of
sympathy in their common disapproval of Christianity, though even
here their standpoints are radically different, since while the
"tarantulæ" rebelled against it as being too narrow a prison, Nietzsche
scorns it as being too comfortable a lounge. Zarathustra, moreover,
showed himself truly Persian in his repudiation of the claims of
the child-bearing machine called woman to equal rights with the
warrior-man: "When thou goest with women," quoth the prophet, "forget
not the whip." Nothing daunted, however, the shrieking hordes of
the ultra-modern sisterhood, from the "Free Lover" to the "Ethical
Lifer," find in Nietzsche the most emphatic justification for alike
their theories and their practices. Does not _Es Lebe das Leben_, the
well-known drama of Sudermann, portray the philosophical dogma of
self-expression leading to highly unphilosophic applications? Does not
the Scandinavian writer and woman with a mission, Ella[1] Key, start
her book _Personality and Beauty_ with the following quotations from
Nietzsche: "Follow after thyself--what says thy conscience?--thou shalt
be that which thou art--let the highest self-expression be thy highest
expression." Truly the Nietzschean aphorisms seem caps guaranteed
to fit the most diverse heads so, but they show the slightest
disposition to tumidity. Young men and nations in a hurry, Socialists
and aristocrats, æsthetes and "woman's righters," all combine in a
cacophonous chorus well calculated to make the shade of Zarathustra,
should he visit Europe, hasten back in disgust to the mountain peaks of
his solitude.
Yet, however susceptible to abuse the Nietzschean philosophy may be,
such a multifarious exploitation, though repudiated from the official
standpoint, does not strike us as necessarily illogical. The doctrine
of the superman, indeed, has in Nietzsche two distinct meanings--the
evolution of generic man to his extreme limit, as exemplified in the
aphorism, "Man is a bridge between beast and superman," and secondly
the idealisation of the clash between the individual and society, the
apotheosis of the aggressive combatant element in man, the
_τὸ θυμοεῑδες_ of the Platonic trinity. Yet, whatever meaning may
be chosen, it is well-nigh impossible to prevent individuals from
cherishing the honest and sincere belief that in developing themselves
(whether with or without the rigid discipline incumbent upon the
orthodox superman), they are either helping the development of the
race, or providing a picturesque expression of a considerably altered,
but still authentic, "Athanasius contra mundum." With the present boom
no doubt Nietzscheanism may become a craze (in Germany, of course, it
is already _passé_ and has become academic and respectable), like the
æstheticism of the Wilde period and grown liable to equal if dissimilar
perversions.
Yet none the less, if taken very broadly and very sanely, Nietzsche
is capable of constituting a valuable modern bible for the
twentieth-century man who proposes to live vastly and to play for grand
stakes. It may no doubt be true that while Heine and Voltaire merely
shot poisoned arrows at Christianity, Nietzsche blew it clean away with
the giant salvos of his artillery; yet on the tremendous space that he
cleared he built a temple to Energy and Efficiency. And note, that he
worships these deities not for any ulterior advantage, but for their
own sake solely. His frenzy for life precludes him at once from being
a pessimist; it does not follow, however, that he is an optimist (in
the hedonistic sense of the word), for neither in his own life, nor in
his conception of that of others, do we find it clearly expressed that
the pleasures of life outweigh the pains. More accurate is it to say
that he is a philosophy transcending optimism. "On! On!! On!!! Live!
Live!! Live!!! whatever the result and whatever your fate. Fight life
and chance everything, for the fight's the thing rather than the mere
trumpery guerdon." So we would venture to phrase the true Nietzschean
spirit, or if an actual quotation is required, "_I say unto you it is
not the good cause which sanctifies the war, but the good war which
sanctifies the cause_."
The most marvellous thing, however, about this grim lust of life is
that it is absolutely insatiate, absolutely infinite. According to
the theory of the Eternal Return, the events of this life will repeat
and repeat with the tireless inevitability of a recurring decimal.
Taken literally, no doubt this theory is simply the mystical dance
of a Titanic mind striving to scale infinity. But the psychological
significance is none the less profound. Is it not turning the tables
with a vengeance on the Christian idea of a prospective non-earthly
existence, compared with which this existence is a mere shadowy
preparation, to pile future life on future life on future life, and
every one of them a repetition of man's life on earth? It is impossible
for the affirmation of human existence to be carried further. And
this human existence, what is its solution, None, or rather itself!
Existence is its own sanction, its own _raison d'être_, and he who
coldly ravishes the sphinx of life has found a drastic solution far
excelling that of any Œdipus.
[Footnote 1: transcriber's note: "Ella" (sic). Should be "Ellen" Key.
(M.D.)]