The assertion of selfhood and the hankering after originality make
Nietzsche the exponent of the absolute uniqueness of everything
particular, and he goes to the extreme of denying all kinds of
universality--even that of formal laws (the so-called uniformities
of nature), reason, and especially its application in the field of
practical life, morality. His ideal is "Be thyself! Be unique! Be
original!" Properly speaking, we should not use the term ideal when
speaking of Nietzsche's maxims of life, for the conception of an
ideal is based upon a recognition of some kind of universality, and
Nietzsche actually sneers at any one having ideals. The adherents of
Nietzsche speak of their master as "_der Einzige_," i. e., "the unique
one," and yet (in spite of the truth that every thing particular is in
its way unique) the uniformities of nature are so real and unfailing
that Nietzsche is simply the representative of a type which according
to the laws of history and mental evolution naturally and inevitably
appears whenever the philosophy of nominalism reaches its climax. He
would therefore not be unique even if he were the only one that aspires
after a unique selfhood; but the fact is that there are a number of
Nietzsches, he happening to be the best known of his type. Other
advocates of selfhood, of course, will be different from Nietzsche in
many unimportant details, but they will be alike in all points that
are essential and characteristic. One of these Nietzsches is George
Moore, a Britain who is scarcely familiar with the writings of his
German double, but a few quotations from his book, _Confessions of a
Young Man_, will show that he can utter thoughts which might have been
written by Friedrich Nietzsche himself. George Moore says:
"I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal" (p. 18).
"I was a model young man indeed" (p. 20).
"I boasted of dissipations" (p. 19).
"I say again, let general principles be waived; it
will suffice for the interest of these pages if it be
understood that brain-instincts have always been, and
still are, the initial and the determining powers of my
being" (p. 47).
George Moore, like Nietzsche, is one of Schopenhauer's disciples who
has become sick of pessimism. He says:
"That odious pessimism! How sick I am of it" (p. 310).
When George Moore speaks of God he thinks of him in the old-fashioned
way as a big self, an individual and particular being. Hence he denies
him. God is as dead as any pagan deity. George Moore says:
"To talk to us, the legitimate children of the nineteenth
century, of logical proofs of the existence of God,
strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof of
the existence of Jupiter Ammon" (p. 137).
George Moore is coarse in comparison with Nietzsche. Nietzsche is no
cynic; he is pure-hearted and noble by nature. Moore is voluptuous
and vulgar. Both are avowed immoralists, and if the principle of an
unrestrained egotism be right, George Moore is as good as Nietzsche,
and any criminal given to the most abominable vices would not be worse
than either.
Nietzsche feels the decadence of the age and longs for health; but he
attributes the cause of his own decadence to the Christian ideals of
virtue, love, and sympathy with others. George Moore cherishes the same
views; he says:
"We are now in a period of decadence, growing steadily
more and more acute" (p. 239).
"Respectability ... continues to exercise a meretricious
and enervating influence on literature" (p. 240).
"Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been
known to me. The great pagan world I love knew it not" (p.
200).
"The philanthropist is the Nero of modern times" (p. 185).
Both Nietzsche and Moore long for limitless freedom; but Moore seems
more consistent, for he lacks the ideal of the overman and extends
freedom to the sex relation, saying:
"Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not
marriage...freedom limitless" (p. 168-169).
Moore loves art, but his view of art is cynical, and here too he is
unlike Nietzsche; he says:
"Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. Art is a
sublime excrement" (p. 178).
Both believe in the coming of a great social deluge. George Moore says:
"The French revolution will compare with the revolution
that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a
puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will
hang like pears on every lamp-post, in every great quarter
of London, there will be an electric guillotine that will
decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago" (p. 343).
Ideals are regarded as superstitions, and belief in ideas is deemed
hypocritical. George Moore says:
"In my heart of hearts I think myself a cut above you,
because I do not believe in leaving the world better than
I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader,
think that you are a cut above me because you say you
would leave the world better than you found it" (p. 354).
The deeds of a man, his thoughts and aspirations, which constitute his
spiritual self, count for nothing; the body alone is supposed to be
real, and thus after death a pig is deemed more useful than a Socrates.
Continues Moore:
"The pig that is being slaughtered as I write this line
will leave the world better than it found it, but you will
leave only a putrid carcass fit for nothing but the grave"
(p. 353).
Wrong is idealized:
"Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the
miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice.
"Man would not be man but for injustice" (p. 203).
"Again I say that all we deem sublime in the world's
history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if
mankind does not relinquish at once and for ever, its
vain, mad, and frantic dream of justice, the world will
lapse into barbarism" (p. 205).
George Moore gives a moment's thought to the ideal of "a new art, based
upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based
on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace
modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be it, as it
were, a new creed in a new civilization ... that would continue to a
more glorious and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets have
begun"; but he turns his back upon it. It would be after all a product
of development; it would be the tyranny of a past age, and he says, "as
well drink the dregs of yesterday's champagne" (p. 128).