Nietzsche is far from regarding his philosophy as timely. He was
a proud and aristocratic character, spoiled from childhood by an
unfaltering admiration on the part of both his mother and sister.
It was unfortunate for him that his father had died before he could
influence the early years of his son through wholesome discipline.
Not enjoying a vigorous constitution Nietzsche was greatly impressed
with the thought that a general decadence was overshadowing mankind.
The truth was that his own bodily system was subject to many ailments
which hampered his mental improvement. He was hungering for health, he
envied the man of energy, he longed for strength and vigor, but all
this was denied him, and so these very shortcomings of his own bodily
strength--his own decadence--prompted in him a yearning for bodily
health, for an unbounded exercise of energy, and for success. These
were his dearest ideals, and his desire for power was his highest
ambition. He saw in the history of human thought, the development of
the notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective
phantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied
that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying
the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of
the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his
own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the
common people would become subservient.
Nietzsche's philosophy forms a strange contrast to his own habits of
life. A model of virtue, he made himself the advocate of vice, and
gloried in it. He encouraged the robber[1] to rob, but he himself was
honesty incarnate; he incited the people to rebel against authority of
all kinds, but he himself was a "model child" in the nursery, a "model
scholar" in school, and a "model soldier" while serving in the German
army. His teachers as well as the officers of his regiment fail to find
words enough to _praise Nietzsche's obedience_.[2]
Nietzsche's professors declare that he distinguished himself "_durch
pünktlichen Gehorsam_" (p. 3); his sister tells us that she and her
brother were "_ungeheuer artig, wahre Musterkinder_" (p. 36). He makes
a good soldier, and, in spite of his denunciations of posing, displays
theatrical vanity in having himself photographed with drawn sword (the
scabbard is missing). His martial mustache almost anticipates the
tonsorial art of the imperial barber of the present Kaiser; and yet
his spectacled eyes and good-natured features betray the peacefulness
of his intentions. He plays the soldier only, and would have found
difficulty in killing even a fly.
Nietzsche disclaims ever having learned anything in any school, but
there never was a more grateful German pupil in Germany. He composed
fervid poems on his school--the well known institution Schulpforta,
which on account of its severe discipline he praises, not in irony but
seriously, as the "narrow gate."[3]
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS A VOLUNTEER IN THE GERMAN
ARTILLERY, 1868.]
Nietzsche denounces the German character, German institutions, and
the German language, his mother-tongue, and is extremely unfair in
his denunciations. He takes pleasure in the fact that _Deutsch_ (see
Ulfila's Bible translation) originally means "pagans or heathen," and
hopes that the dear German people will earn the honor of being called
pagans. (_La Gaya Scienza_, p. 176.) A reaction against his patriotism
set in immediately after the war, when he became acquainted with the
brutality of some vulgar specimens of the victorious nation,--most of
them non-combatants.[4]
Nietzsche not only wrote in German and made the most involved
constructions, but when the war broke out he asked his adopted country
Switzerland, in which he had acquired citizenship after accepting
a position as professor of classical languages at the University
of Basel, for leave of absence to join the German army. In the
Franco-Prussian war he might have had a chance to live up to his
theories of struggle, but unfortunately the Swiss authorities did
not allow him to join the army, and granted leave of absence only on
condition that he would serve as a nurse. Such is the irony of fate.
While Nietzsche stood up for a ruthless assertion of strength and for
a suppression of sympathy which he denounced as a relic of the ethics
of a negation of life, his own tender soul was so over-sensitive that
his sister feels justified in tracing his disease back to the terrible
impressions he received during the war.
Nietzsche speaks of the king as "the dear father of the country."[5]
If there was a flaw in Nietzsche's moral character, it was
goody-goodyness; and his philosophy is a protest against the principles
of his own nature. While boldly calling himself "the first unmoralist,"
justifying even license itself and defending the coarsest lust,[6] his
own life might have earned him the name of sissy, and he shrank in
disgust from moral filth wherever he met with it in practical life.
Nietzsche denounced pessimism, and yet his philosophy was, as he
himself confesses, the last consequence of pessimism. Hegel declared
(says Nietzsche in _Morgenröthe_, p. 8), "Contradiction moves the
world, all things are self-contradictory"; "we (adds Nietzsche) carry
pessimism even into logic." He proposes to vivisect morality; "but
(adds he) you cannot vivisect a thing without killing it." Thus his
"unmoralism" is simply an expression of his earnestness to investigate
the moral problem, and he expresses the result in the terse sentence;
_Moral ist Nothlüge_ (_Menschliches_, p. 63.)
He preached struggle and hatred, and yet was so tender-hearted that
in an hour of dejection he confessed to his sister with a sigh: "I
was not at all made to hate or be an enemy."[7] The decadence which
he imputes to mankind is a mere reflection of his own state of mind,
and the strength which he praises is that quality in which he is most
sorely lacking. Nietzsche himself had the least possible connection
with active life. He was unmarried, had no children, nor any interests
beyond his ambition, and having served as professor of the classical
languages for some time at the small university of Basel, he was for
the greater part of his life without a calling, without duties, without
aims. He never ventured to put his own theories into practice. He did
not even try to rise as a prophet of his own philosophy, and remained
in isolation to the very end of his life.
Nietzsche must have felt the contradiction between his theories and
his habits of life, and it appears that he suffered under it more than
can be estimated by an impartial reader of his books. He was like the
bird in the cage who sings of liberty, or an apoplectic patient who
dreams of deeds of valor as a knight in tournament or as a wrestler in
the prize ring. Never was craving for power more closely united with
impotence!
It is characteristic of him that he said, "If there were a God, how
should I endure not to be God?" and so his ambition impelled him at
least to prophesy the coming of his ideal, i. e., robust health, full
of bodily vigor and animal spirits, unchecked by any rule of morality,
and an unstinted use of power.
Nietzsche had an exaggerated conception of his vocation and he saw
in himself the mouthpiece of that grandest and deepest truth, viz.,
that man should dare to be himself without any regard of morality
or consideration for his fellow beings. And here we have the tragic
element of his life. Nietzsche, the atheist, deemed himself a God
incarnate, and the despiser of the Crucified, suffered a martyr's fate
in offering his own life to the cause of his hope. The earnestness
with which he preached his wild and untenable doctrines appeals to
us and renders his figure sympathetic, which otherwise would be
grotesque. Think of a man who in his megalomania preaches a doctrine
that justifies an irresponsible desire for power! Would he not be
ridiculous in his impotence to actualize his dream? and on the other
hand, if he were strong enough to practice what he preached, if like
another Napoleon, he would make true his dreams of enslaving the world,
would not mankind in self-defense soon rise in rebellion and treat
him as a criminal, rendering him and his followers incapable of doing
harm? But Nietzsche's personality, weak and impotent and powerless to
appear as the overman and to subjugate the world to his will, suffered
excruciating pains in his soul and tormented himself to death, which
came to him in the form of decadence--a softening of the brain.
Poor Nietzsche! what a bundle of contradictions! None of these
contradictions are inexplicable. All of them are quite natural. They
are the inevitable reactions against a prior enthusiasm, and he swings,
according to the law of the pendulum, to the opposite extreme of his
former position.
How did Nietzsche develop into an unmoralist? Simply by way of
reaction against the influence of Schopenhauer in combination with the
traditional Christianity.
Nietzsche passed through three periods in his development. He was
first a follower of Schopenhauer and an admirer of Wagner, but he
shattered his idols and became a convert to Auguste Comte's positivism.
Schopenhauer was the master at whose feet Nietzsche sat; from him
he learned boldness of thought and atheism, that this world is a
world of misery and struggle. He accepted for a time Schopenhauer's
pessimism but rebelled in his inmost soul against the ethical doctrine
of the negation of the will. He retained Schopenhauer's contempt for
previous philosophers (presumably he never tried to understand them)
yet he resented the thought of a negation of life and replaced it by
a most emphatic assertion. He thus recognized the reactionary spirit
of Schopenhauer, whose system is a Christian metaphysics. Nietzsche
denounces the ethics of a negation of the will as a disease, and since
nature in the old system is regarded as the source of moral evil the
idea dawns on him that he himself, trying to establish a philosophy of
nature, is an immoralist. He now questions morality itself from the
standpoint of an affirmation of the will, and at last goes so far as to
speak of ideals as a symptom of shallowness.[8]
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS PROFESSOR AT BASLE.]
Nietzsche argued that our conception of truth and our ideal world
is but a phantasmagoria, and the picture of the universe in our
consciousness a distorted image of real life. Our pleasures and pains,
too, are both transient and subjective. Accordingly it would be a gross
mistake for us to exaggerate their importance. What does it matter if
we endure a little more or less pain, or of what use are the pleasures
in which we might indulge? The realities of life consist in power, and
in our dominion over the forces that dominate life. Knowledge and truth
are of no use unless they become subservient to this realistic desire
for power. They are mere means to an end which is the superiority of
the overman, the representative of Nietzsche's philosophy by whom
the mass of mankind are to be enslaved. This view constitutes his
third period, in which he wrote those works that are peculiarly
characteristic of his own philosophy.
Nietzsche must not be taken too seriously. He was engaged with the
deepest problems of life, and published his opinions as to their
solution before he had actually attempted to investigate them. He
criticised and attacked like the Irishman who hits a head wherever he
sees it. Here are the first three rules of his philosophical warfare:
"First: I attack only those causes which are victorious, sometimes I
wait till they are victorious. Secondly: I attack them only when I
would find no allies, when I stand isolated, when I compromise myself
alone. Thirdly: I have never taken a step in public which did not
compromise me. That is my criterion of right action."
A man who adopts this strange criterion of right conduct must produce
a strange philosophy. His soul is in an uproar against itself. Says
Nietzsche in his _Götzendämmerung_, Aphorism 45:
"Almost every genius knows as one phase of his development
the 'Catilinary existence,' so-called, which is a feeling
of hatred, of vengeance, of revolution against everything
that is, which no longer needs to become ... Catiline--the
form of Cæsar's pre-existence."
Nietzsche changed his views during his life-time, and the unmoralist
Nietzsche originated in contradiction to his habitual moralism. He was
a man of extremes. As soon as a new thought dawned on him, it took
possession of his soul to the exclusion of his prior views, and his
later self contradicts his former self.
Nietzsche says:
"The serpent that cannot slough must die. In the same way, the spirits
which are prevented from changing their opinions cease to be spirits."
So we must expect that if Nietzsche had been permitted to continue
longer in health, he would have cast off the slough of his immoralism
and the negative conceptions of his positivism. His _Zarathustra_ was
the last work of his pen, but it is only the most classical expression
of the fermentation of his soul, not the final purified result of his
philosophy; it is not the solution of the problem that stirred his
heart.
While writing his _Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_, Nietzsche
characterizes his method of work thus:
"That I proceed with my outpourings considerably like a
dilettante and in an immature manner, I know very well,
but I am anxious first of all to get rid of the whole
polemico-negative material. I wish undisturbedly to sing
off, up and down and truly dastardly, the whole gamut
of my hostile feelings, 'that the vaults shall echo
back.'[9] Later on, i. e., within five years, I shall
discard all polemics and bethink myself of a really 'good
work,' But at present my breast is oppressed with disgust
and tribulation. I must expectorate, decorously and
indecorously, but radically and for good" [_endgültig_].
The writings of Nietzsche will make the impression of a youthful
immaturity upon any half-way serious reader. There is a hankering
after originality which of necessity leads to aberrations and a
sovereign contempt for the merits of the past. The world seems
endangered, and yet any one who would seriously try to live up to
Nietzsche's ideal must naturally sober down after a while, and we may
apply to him what Mephistopheles says of the baccalaureus:
"Yet even from him we're not in special peril
He will, ere long, to other thoughts incline.
The must may foam absurdly in the barrel.
Nathless, it turns at last to wine."
_Tr. by Bayard Taylor._
Nietzsche did not live long enough to experience a period of matured
thought. He died before the fermentation of his mind had come to its
normal close, and so his life will remain forever a great torso,
without intrinsic worth, but suggestive and appealing only to the
immature, including the "herd animal" who would like to be an overman.
The very immaturity of Nietzsche's view becomes attractive to
immature minds. He wrote while his thoughts were still in a state of
fermentation, and he died before the wine of his soul was clarified.
Nietzsche is an almost tragic figure that will live in art as a
brooding thinker, a representative of the dissatisfied, a man of an
insatiable love of life, with wild and unsteady looks, proud in his
indomitable self-assertion, but broken in body and spirit. Such he was
in his last disease when his mind was wrapt in the eternal night of
dementia, the oppressive consciousness of which made him exclaim in
lucid moments the pitiable complaint. "_Mutter, ich bin dumm_" As such
he is represented in Klein's statue,[10] which in its pathetic posture
is a psychological masterpiece.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE--THE LATEST PORTRAIT, AFTER AN OIL
PAINTING BY C. STOEVING.]
Nietzsche's works are poetic effusions more than philosophical
expositions and yet we would hesitate to call him a poet. His poems are
not poetical in the usual sense. They lack poetry and yet they appeal
not only to his admirers, but also to his critics and enemies. Most
of them are artificial yet they are so characteristic that they are
interesting specimens of a peculiar kind of taste. They strike us as
ingenious, because they reflect his eccentricities.
In a poem entitled "Ecce Homo"[11] he characterizes himself:
"Yea, I know from whence I came!
Never satiate, like the flame
Glow I and consume me too
Into light turns what I find,
Cinders do I leave behind,
Flame am I, 'tis surely true."
[1] E.g.:
"Bitte nie! Lass dies Gewimmer!
Nimm, ich bitte dich, nimm immer!"
[2] Compare _Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's_ by his sister, Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche.
[3] Leben, pp. 90-97.
[4] (See, e. g., Leben, II., 1, pp. 108-111.) "Nach dem Kriege missfiel
mir der Luxus, die Franzosenverachtung," etc., p. 108. "Ich halte
das jetzige Preussen für eine der Cultur höchst gefährliche Macht."
Nietzsche ridicules the German language as barbarous in sound (_La
Gaya Scienza_, pp. 138-140), "wälderhaft, heiser, wie aus räucherigen
Stuben und unhöflichen Gegenden." Unique is the origin of the standard
style of modern high German from the bureaucratic slang, "kanzleimässig
schreiben, das war etwas Vornehmes" (_La Gaya Scienza_, p. 138), and
at present the German changes into an "Offizierdeutsch" (ibid., p.
139). Nietzsche suspects, "the German depth," "die deutsche Tiefe," to
be a mere mental dyspepsia (see "Jenseits von Gut und Böse," p. 211),
saying, "Der Deutsche verdaut seine Ereignisse schlecht, or wird nie
damit fertig; die deutsche Tiefe ist oft nur eine schwere, zögernde
Verdauung." Nevertheless, he holds that the old-fashioned German depth
is better than modern Prussian "Schneidigkeit und Berliner Witz und
Sand." He prefers the company of the Swiss to that of his countrymen.
(See also "Was den Deutschen abgeht," Vol. 8, p. 108.)
[5] "Unser lieber König," "der Landesvater," etc. See _Leben_, I., p.
24, and IL, 1, p. 248, "Unser lieber alter Kaiser Wilhelm," and "wir
Preussen waren wirklich stolz." These expressions occur in Nietzsche's
description of the Emperor's appearance at Bayreuth.
[6] _E.g._, "Auch der schädlichste Mensch ist vielleicht immer noch
der allernützlichste in Hinsicht auf Erhaltung der Art," etc. _La Gaya
Scienza_, p. 3 ff.
[7] "Ich bin so gar nicht zum Hassen und zum Feind sein gemacht!"
[8] See, e. g., _Leben_, I., p. 135, where he speaks of a new
"Freigeisterei," denouncing the "libres penseurs" as "unverbesserliche
Flachköpfe und Hanswürste," adding, "Sie glauben allesammt noch an's
'Ideal.'"
[9] "Dass das Gewölbe wiederhallt,"--a quotation from Goethe's "Faust."
[10] Reproduced as the frontispiece of this book.
[11]
"Ja, ich weiss woher ich stamme!
Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme,
Glühe und verzehr ich mich,
licht wird alles was ich fasse,
Kohle alles was ich lasse:
Flamme bin ich sicherlich!"