our social structure--is too easily mistaken by facile cavilers for the
ravings of an unsound and desperate mind. To a narrow and superficial
reading, it exhibits itself as a wholesale repudiation of all moral
responsibility and a maniacal attempt to subvert human civilization for
the exclusive benefit of the "glorious blonde brute, rampant with greed
for victory and spoil." Yet those who care to look more deeply will
detect beneath this chimerical contempt of conventional regulations no
want of a highminded philanthropic purpose, provided they have the
vision necessary to comprehend a love of man oriented by such extremely
distant perspectives. At all events they will discover that in this
rebellious propaganda an advancing line of life is firmly traced out.
The indolent and thoughtless may indeed be horrified by the appalling
dangers of the gospel according to Zarathustra. But in reality there is
no great cause for alarm. Society may amply rely upon its agencies, even
in these stupendous times of universal war, for protection from any
disastrous organic dislocations incited by the teachings of Zarathustra,
at least so far as the immediate future is concerned--in which alone
society appears to be interested. Moreover, our apprehensions are
appeased by the sober reflection that by its plain unfeasibleness the
whole supersocial scheme of Nietzsche is reduced to colossal absurdity.
Its limitless audacity defeats any formulation of its "war aims." For
what compels an ambitious imagination to arrest itself at the goal of
the superman? Why should it not run on beyond that first terminal? In
one of Mr. G. K. Chesterton's labored extravaganzas a grotesque sort of
super-overman _in spe_ succeeds in going beyond unreason when he
contrives this lucid self-definition: "I have gone where God has never
dared to go. I am above the silly supermen as they are above mere men.
Where I walk in the Heavens, no man has walked before me, and I am alone
in a garden." It is enough to make one gasp and then perhaps luckily
recall Goethe's consoling thought that under the care of Providence the
trees will not grow into the heavens. ("_Es ist dafür gesorgt, dass die
Bäume nicht in den Himmel wachsen._") As matter of fact, the ideas
promulgated in _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ need inspire no fear of their
winning the human race from its venerable idols, despite the fact that
the pull of natural laws and of elemental appetites seems to be on their
side. The only effect to be expected of such a philosophy is that it
will act as an antidote for moral inertia which inevitably goes with the
flock-instinct and the lazy reliance on the accustomed order of things.
Nietzsche's ethics are not easy to valuate, since none of their
standards are derived from the orthodox canon. His being a truly
personalized form of morality, his principles are strictly cognate to
his temperament. To his professed ideals there attaches a definite
theory of society. And since his philosophy is consistent in its
sincerity, its message is withheld from the man-in-the-street, deemed
unworthy of notice, and delivered only to the _élite_ that shall beget
the superman. To Nietzsche the good of the greatest number is no valid
consideration. The great stupid mass exists only for the sake of an
oligarchy by whom it is duly exploited under nature's decree that the
strong shall prey upon the weak. Let, then, this favored set further the
design of nature by systematically encouraging the elevation of their
own type.
* * * * *
We have sought to dispel the fiction about the shaping influence of
Nietzsche upon the thought and conduct of his nation, and have accounted
for the miscarriage of his ethics by their fantastic impracticability.
Yet it has been shown also that he fostered in an unmistakable fashion
the class-consciousness of the aristocrat, born or self-appointed. To
that extent his influence was certainly malign. Yet doubtless he did
perform a service to our age. The specific nature of this service,
stated in the fewest words, is that to his great divinatory gift are we
indebted for an unprecedented strengthening of our hold upon reality. In
order to make this point clear we have to revert once more to
Nietzsche's transient intellectual relation to pessimism.
We have seen that the illusionism of Schopenhauer and more particularly
of Wagner exerted a strong attraction on his high-strung artistic
temperament.
Nevertheless a certain realistic counter-drift to the ultra-romantic
tendency of Wagner's theory caused him in the long run to reject the
faith in the power of Art to save man from evil. Almost abruptly, his
personal affection for the "Master," to whom in his eventual mental
eclipse he still referred tenderly at lucid moments, changed to bitter
hostility. Henceforth he classes the glorification of Art as one of the
three most despicable attitudes of life: Philistinism, Pietism, and
Estheticism, all of which have their origin in _cowardice_, represent
three branches of the ignominious road of escape from the terrors of
living. In three extended diatribes Nietzsche denounces Wagner as the
archetype of modern decadence; the most violent attack of all is
delivered against the point of juncture in which Wagner's art gospel and
the Christian religion culminate: the promise of redemption through
pity. To Nietzsche's way of thinking pity is merely the coward's
acknowledgment of his weakness. For only insomuch as a man is devoid of
fortitude in bearing his own sufferings is he unable to contemplate with
equanimity the sufferings of his fellow creatures. Since religion
enjoins compassion with all forms of human misery, we should make war
upon religion. And for the reason that Wagner's crowning achievement,
his _Parsifal_, is a veritable sublimation of Mercy, there can be no
truce between its creator and the giver of the counsel: "Be hard!"
Perhaps this notorious advice is after all not as ominous as it sounds.
It merely expresses rather abruptly Nietzsche's confidence in the value
of self-control as a means of discipline. If you have learned calmly to
see others suffer, you are yourself able to endure distress with manful
composure. "Therefore I wash the hand which helped the sufferer;
therefore I even wipe my soul." But, unfortunately, such is the frailty
of human nature that it is only one step from indifference about the
sufferings of others to an inclination to exploit them or even to
inflict pain upon one's neighbors for the sake of personal gain of one
sort or another.
Why so hard? said once the charcoal unto the diamond, are we not
near relations?
Why so soft? O my brethren, thus I ask you. Are ye not my brethren?
Why so soft, so unresisting, and yielding? Why is there so much
disavowal and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate
in your looks?
And if ye are not willing to be fates, and inexorable, how could ye
conquer with me someday?
And if your hardness would not glance, and cut, and chip into
pieces--how could ye create with me some day?
For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness unto you to
press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,--
Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon
brass,--harder than brass, nobler than brass. The noblest only is
perfectly hard.
This new table, O my brethren, I put over you: Become hard!(22)
(22) "Thus Spake Zarathustra," p. 399, sec. 29.
The repudiation of Wagner leaves a tremendous void in Nietzsche's soul
by depriving his enthusiasm of its foremost concrete object. He loses
his faith in idealism. When illusions can bring a man like Wagner to
such an odious outlook upon life, they must be obnoxious in themselves;
and so, after being subjected to pitiless analysis, they are disowned
and turned into ridicule. And now, the pendulum of his zeal having swung
from one emotional extreme to the other, the great rhapsodist finds
himself temporarily destitute of an adequate theme. However, his fervor
does not long remain in abeyance, and soon it is absorbed in a new
object. Great as is the move it is logical enough. Since illusions are
only a hindrance to the fuller grasp of life which behooves all free
spirits, Nietzsche energetically turns from self-deception to its
opposite, self-realization. In this new spiritual endeavor he relies far
more on intuition than on scientific and metaphysical speculation. From
his own stand he is certainly justified in doing this. Experimentation
and ratiocination at the best are apt to disassociate individual
realities from their complex setting and then proceed to palm them off
as illustrations of life, when in truth they are lifeless, artificially
preserved specimens.
"Encheiresin naturae nennt's die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie."(23)
Nietzsche's realism, by contrast, goes to the very quick of nature,
grasps all the gifts of life, and from the continuous flood of phenomena
extracts a rich, full-flavored essence. It is from a sense of gratitude
for this boon that he becomes an idolatrous worshiper of experience,
"_der grosse Jasager_,"--the great sayer of Yes,--and the most
stimulating optimist of all ages. To Nietzsche reality is alive as
perhaps never to man before. He plunges down to the very heart of
things, absorbs their vital qualities and meanings, and having himself
learned to draw supreme satisfaction from the most ordinary facts and
events, he makes the common marvelous to others, which, as was said by
James Russell Lowell, is a true test of genius. No wonder that
deification of reality becomes the dominant _motif_ in his philosophy.
But again that onesided aristocratic strain perverts his ethics. To
drain the intoxicating cup at the feast of life, such is the divine
privilege not of the common run of mortals but only of the elect. They
must not let this or that petty and artificial convention, nor yet this
or that moral command or prohibition, restrain them from the exercise of
that higher sense of living, but must fully abandon themselves to its
joys. "Since man came into existence he hath had too little joy. That
alone, my brethren, is our original sin."(24) The "much-too-many" are
doomed to inanity by their lack of appetite at the banquet of life:
Such folk sit down unto dinner and bring nothing with them, not even
a good hunger. And now they backbite: "All is vanity!"
But to eat well and drink well, O my brethren, is, verily, no vain
art! Break, break the tables of those who are never joyful!(25)
(23) Goethe's _Faust_, II, ll. 1940-1. Bayard Taylor translates:
_Encheiresin naturae_, this Chemistry names, nor knows how herself she
banters and blames!
(24) "Thus Spake Zarathustra," p. 120.
(25) _Ibid._, p. 296, sec. 13.
The Will to Live holds man's one chance of this-worldly bliss, and
supersedes any care for the remote felicities of any problematic future
state. Yet the Nietzschean cult of life is not to be understood by any
means as a banal devotion to the pleasurable side of life alone. The
true disciple finds in every event, be it happy or adverse, exalting or
crushing, the factors of supreme spiritual satisfaction: joy and pain
are equally implied in experience, the Will to Live encompasses jointly
the capacity to enjoy and to suffer. It may even be paradoxically said
that since man owes some of his greatest and most beautiful achievements
to sorrow, it must be a joy and a blessing to suffer. The unmistakable
sign of heroism is _amor fati_, a fierce delight in one's destiny, hold
what it may.
Consequently, the precursor of the superman will be possessed, along
with his great sensibility to pleasure, of a capacious aptitude for
suffering. "Ye would perchance abolish suffering," exclaims Nietzsche,
"and we,--it seems that we would rather have it even greater and worse
than it has ever been. The discipline of suffering,--tragical
suffering,--know ye not that only this discipline has heretofore brought
about every elevation of man?" "Spirit is that life which cutteth into
life. By one's own pain one's own knowledge increaseth;--knew ye that
before? And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and
consecrated by tears as a sacrificial animal;--knew ye that before?" And
if, then, the tragical pain inherent in life be no argument against
Joyfulness, the zest of living can be obscured by nothing save the fear
of total extinction. To the disciple of Nietzsche, by whom every moment
of his existence is realized as a priceless gift, the thought of his
irrevocable separation from all things is unbearable. "'Was this life?'
I shall say to Death. 'Well, then, once more!'" And--to paraphrase
Nietzsche's own simile--the insatiable witness of the great
tragi-comedy, spectator and participant at once, being loath to leave
the theatre, and eager for a repetition of the performance, shouts his
endless _encore_, praying fervently that in the constant repetition of
the performance not a single detail of the action be omitted. The
yearning for the endlessness not of life at large, not of life on any
terms, but of _this my life_ with its ineffable wealth of rapturous
moments, works up the extreme optimism of Nietzsche to its stupendous _a
priori_ notion of infinity, expressed in the name _die ewige Wiederkehr_
("Eternal Recurrence"). It is a staggeringly imaginative concept, formed
apart from any evidential grounds, and yet fortified with a fair amount
of logical armament. The universe is imagined as endless in time,
although its material contents are not equally conceived as limitless.
Since, consequently, there must be a limit to the possible variety in
the arrangement and sequence of the sum total of data, even as in the
case of a kaleidoscope, the possibility of variegations is not infinite.
The particular co-ordination of things in the universe, say at this
particular moment, is bound to recur again and again in the passing of
the eons. But under the nexus of cause and effect the resurgence of the
past from the ocean of time is not accidental nor is the configuration
of things haphazard, as is true in the case of the kaleidoscope; rather,
history, in the most inclusive acceptation of the term, is predestined
to repeat itself; this happens through the perpetual progressive
resurrection of its particles. It is then to be assumed that any aspect
which the world has ever presented must have existed innumerable
millions of times before, and must recur with eternal periodicity. That
the deterministic strain in this tremendous _Vorstellung_ of a cyclic
rhythm throbbing in the universe entangles its author's fanatical belief
in evolution in a rather serious self-contradiction, does not detract
from its spiritual lure, nor from its wide suggestiveness, however
incapable it may be of scientific demonstration.
From unfathomed depths of feeling wells up the pæan of the prophet of
the life intense.
O Mensch! Gib Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
Ich schlief, ich schlief--,
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:--
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh--,
Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit--
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!(26)
(26)
O man! Lose not sight!
What saith the deep midnight?
"I lay in sleep, in sleep;
From deep dream I woke to light.
The world is deep,
And deeper than ever day though! it might.
Deep is its woe,--
And deeper still than woe--delight."
Saith woe: "Pass, go!
Eternity's sought by all delight,--
Eternity deep--by all delight.
"Thus Spake Zarathustra," The Drunken Song, p. 174.--The translation
but faintly suggests the poetic appeal of the original.
A timid heart may indeed recoil from the iron necessity of reliving _ad
infinitum_ its woeful terrestrial fate. But the prospect can hold no
terror for the heroic soul by whose fiat all items of experience have
assumed important meanings and values. He who has cast in his lot with
Destiny in spontaneous submission to all its designs, cannot but revere
and cherish his own fate as an integral part of the grand unalterable
fatality of things.
* * * * *
If this crude presentment of Friedrich Nietzsche's doctrine has not
entirely failed of its purpose, the _leitmotifs_ of that doctrine will
have been readily referred by the reader to their origin; they can be
subsumed under that temperamental category which is more or less
accurately defined as the _romantic_. Glorification of violent
passion,--quest of innermost mysteries,--boundless expansion of
self-consciousness,--visions of a future of transcendent magnificence,
and notwithstanding an ardent worship of reality a quixotically
impracticable detachment from the concrete basis of civic life,--these
outstanding characteristics of the Nietzschean philosophy give
unmistakable proof of a central, driving, romantic inspiration:
Nietzsche shifts the essence and principle of being to a new center of
gravity, by substituting the Future for the Present and relying on the
untrammeled expansion of spontaneous forces which upon closer
examination are found to be without definite aim or practical goal.
For this reason, critically to animadvert upon Nietzsche as a social
reformer would be utterly out of place; he is simply too much of a poet
to be taken seriously as a statesman or politician. The weakness of his
philosophy before the forum of Logic has been referred to before.
Nothing can be easier than to prove the incompatibility of some of his
theorems. How, for instance, can the absolute determinism of the belief
in Cyclic Recurrence be reconciled with the power vested in superman to
deflect by his autonomous will the straight course of history? Or, to
touch upon a more practical social aspect of his teaching,--if in the
order of nature all men are unequal, how can we ever bring about the
right selection of leaders, how indeed can we expect to secure the due
ascendancy of character and intellect over the gregarious grossness of
the demos?
Again, it is easy enough to controvert Nietzsche almost at any pass by
demonstrating his unphilosophic onesidedness. Were Nietzsche not
stubbornly onesided, he would surely have conceded--as any sane-minded
person must concede in these times of suffering and sacrifice--that
charity, self-abnegation, and self-immolation might be viewed, not as
conclusive proofs of degeneracy, but on the contrary as signs of growth
towards perfection. Besides, philosophers of the _métier_ are sure to
object to the haziness of Nietzsche's idea of Vitality which in truth is
oriented, as is his philosophy in general, less by thought than by
sentiment.
Notwithstanding his obvious connection with significant contemporaneous
currents, the author of "Zarathustra" is altogether too much _sui
generis_ to be amenable to any crude and rigid classification. He may
plausibly be labelled an anarchist, yet no definition of anarchism will
wholly take him in. Anarchism stands for the demolition of the extant
social apparatus of restraint. Its battle is for the free determination
of personal happiness. Nietzsche's prime concern, contrarily, is with
internal self-liberation from the obsessive desire for personal
happiness in any accepted connotation of the term; such happiness to him
does not constitute the chief object of life.
The cardinal point of Nietzsche's doctrine is missed by those who,
arguing retrospectively, expound the gist of his philosophy as an
incitation to barbarism. Nothing can be more remote from his intentions
than the transformation of society into a horde of ferocious brutes. His
impeachment of mercy, notwithstanding an appearance of reckless impiety,
is in the last analysis no more and no less than an expedient in the
truly romantic pursuit of a new ideal of Love. Compassion, in his
opinion, hampers the progress towards forms of living that shall be
pregnant with a new and superior type of perfection. And in justice to
Nietzsche it should be borne in mind that among the various
manifestations of that human failing there is none he scorns so deeply
as cowardly and petty commiseration of self. It also deserves to be
emphasized that he nowhere endorses selfishness when exercised for small
or sordid objects. "I love the brave. But it is not enough to be a
swordsman, one must also know against whom to use the sword. And often
there is more bravery in one's keeping quiet and going past, in order to
spare one's self for a worthier enemy: Ye shall have only enemies who
are to be hated, but not enemies who are to be despised."(27) Despotism
must justify itself by great and worthy ends. And no man must be
permitted to be hard towards others who lacks the strength of being even
harder towards himself.
(27) "Thus Spake Zarathustra," p. 304.
At all events it must serve a better purpose to appraise the practical
importance of Nietzsche's speculations than blankly to denounce their
immoralism. Nietzsche, it has to be repeated, was not on the whole a
creator of new ideas. His extraordinary influence in the recent past is
not due to any supreme originality or fertility of mind; it is
predominantly due to his eagle-winged imagination. In him the emotional
urge of utterance was, accordingly, incomparably more potent than the
purely intellectual force of opinion: in fact the texture of his
philosophy is woven of sensations rather than of ideas, hence its
decidedly ethical trend.
The latent value of Nietzsche's ethics in their application to specific
social problems it would be extremely difficult to determine. Their
successful application to general world problems, if it were possible,
would mean the ruin of the only form of civilization that signifies to
us. His philosophy, if swallowed in the whole, poisons; in large
potations, intoxicates; but in reasonable doses, strengthens and
stimulates. Such danger as it harbors has no relation to grossness. His
call to the Joy of Living and Doing is no encouragement of vulgar
hedonism, but a challenge to persevering effort. He urges the supreme
importance of vigor of body and mind and force of will. "O my brethren,
I consecrate you to be, and show unto you the way unto a new nobility.
Ye shall become procreators and breeders and sowers of the future.--Not
whence ye come be your honor in future, but whither ye go! Your will,
and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves, be that your new
honor!"(28)
(28) "Thus Spake Zarathustra," p. 294.
It would be a withering mistake to advocate the translation of
Nietzsche's poetic dreams into the prose of reality. Unquestionably his
Utopia if it were to be carried into practice would doom to utter
extinction the world it is devised to regenerate. But it is generally
acknowledged that "prophets have a right to be unreasonable," and so, if
we would square ourselves with Friedrich Nietzsche in a spirit of
fairness, we ought not to forget that the daring champion of reckless
unrestraint is likewise the inspired apostle of action, power,
enthusiasm, and aspiration, in fine, a prophet of Vitality and a
messenger of Hope.
IV
THE REVIVALISM OF LEO TOLSTOY
In the intellectual record of our times it is one of the oddest events
that the most impressive preacher who has taken the ear of civilized
mankind in this generation raised up his voice in a region which in
respect of its political, religious, and economic status was until
recently, by fairly common consent, ruled off the map of Europe. The
greatest humanitarian of his century sprang up in a land chiefly
characterized in the general judgment of the outside world by the
reactionism of its government and the stolid ignorance of its populace.
A country still teeming with analphabeticians and proverbial for its
dense medievalism gave to the world a writer who by the great quality of
his art and the lofty spiritualism of his teaching was able not only to
obtain a wide hearing throughout all civilized countries, but to become
a distinct factor in the moral evolution of the age. The stupefying
events that have recently revolutionized the Russian state have given
the world an inkling of the secrets of the Slavic type of temperament,
so mystifying in its commixture of simplicity and strength on the one
hand with grossness and stupidity, and on the other hand with the
highest spirituality and idealism. For such people as in these
infuriated times still keep up some objective and judicious interest in
products of the literary art, the volcanic upheaval in the social life
of Russia has probably thrown some of Tolstoy's less palpable figures
into a greater plastic relief. Tolstoy's own character, too, has become
more tangible in its curious composition. The close analogy between his
personal theories and the dominant impulses of his race has now been
made patent. We are better able to understand the people of whom he
wrote because we have come to know better the people for whom he wrote.