FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
BY
GEORGE BRANDES
AUTHOR OF "WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE," ETC.
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1914
[Illustration: Sculptor: J. Davidson.--Photo: A. Langdon Coburn.]
I
AN ESSAY ON
ARISTOCRATIC RADICALISM[1]
(1889)
Friedrich Nietzsche appears to me the most interesting writer in German
literature at the present time. Though little known even in his own
country, he is a thinker of a high order, who fully deserves to be
studied, discussed, contested and mastered. Among many good qualities
he has that of imparting his mood to others and setting their thoughts
in motion.
During a period of eighteen years Nietzsche has written a long series
of books and pamphlets. Most of these volumes consist of aphorisms,
and of these the greater part, as well as the more original, are
concerned with moral prejudices. In this province will be found his
lasting importance. But besides this he has dealt with the most varied
problems; he has written on culture and history, on art and women,
on companionship and solitude, on the State and society, on life's
struggle and death.
He was born on October 15, 1844; studied philology; became in 1869
professor of philology at Basle; made the acquaintance of Richard
Wagner and became warmly attached to him, and associated also with
the distinguished historian of the Renaissance, Jakob Burkhardt.
Nietzsche's admiration and affection for Burkhardt were lasting. His
feeling for Wagner, on the other hand, underwent a complete revulsion
in the course of years. From having been Wagner's prophet he developed
into his most passionate opponent.
Nietzsche was always heart and soul a musician; he even tried his
hand as a composer in his _Hymn to Life_ (for chorus and orchestra,
1888), and his intercourse with Wagner left deep traces in his earliest
writings. But the opera of Parsifal, with its tendency to Catholicism
and its advancement of the ascetic ideals which had previously been
entirely foreign to Wagner, caused Nietzsche to see in the great
composer a danger, an enemy, a morbid phenomenon, since this last work
showed him all the earlier operas in a new light.
During his residence in Switzerland Nietzsche came to know a large
circle of interesting people. He suffered, however, from extremely
severe headaches, so frequent that they incapacitated him for about two
hundred days in the year and brought him to the verge of the grave.
In 1879 he resigned his professorship. From 1882 to 1888 his state of
health improved, though extremely slowly. His eyes were still so weak
that he was threatened with blindness. He was compelled to be extremely
careful in his mode of life and to choose his place of residence in
obedience to climatic and meteorological conditions. He usually spent
the winter at Nice and the summer at Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine.
The years 1887 and 1888 were astonishingly rich in production; they
saw the publication of the most remarkable works of widely different
nature and the preparation of a whole series of new books. Then, at
the close of the latter year, perhaps as the result of overstrain, a
violent attack of mental disorder occurred, from which Nietzsche never
recovered.
As a thinker his starting-point is Schopenhauer; in his first books
he is actually his disciple. But, after several years of silence,
during which he passes through his first intellectual crisis, he
reappears emancipated from all ties of discipleship. He then undergoes
so powerful and rapid a development--less in his thought itself than
in the courage to express his thoughts--that each succeeding book
marks a fresh stage, until by degrees he concentrates himself upon
a single fundamental question, the question of moral values. On his
earliest appearance as a thinker he had already entered a protest,
in opposition to David Strauss, against any moral interpretation of
the nature of the Cosmos and assigned to our morality its place in
the world of phenomena, now as semblance or error, now as artificial
arrangement. And his literary activity reached its highest point in an
investigation of the origin of the moral concepts, while it was his
hope and intention to give to the world an exhaustive criticism of
moral values, an examination of the value of these values (regarded as
fixed once for all). The first book of his work, _The Transvaluation of
all Values_, was completed when his malady declared itself.
[1] "The expression 'aristocratic radicalism,' which you employ, is
very good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read
about myself,"--Nietzsche, Dec. 2, 1887.
I.
Nietzsche first received a good deal of notice, though not much
commendation, for a caustic and juvenile polemical pamphlet against
David Strauss, occasioned by the latter's book, _The Old Faith and
the New_. His attack, irreverent in tone, is directed not against the
first, warlike section of the book, but against the constructive and
complementary section. The attack, however, is less concerned with the
once great critic's last effort than with the mediocracy in Germany,
to which Strauss's last word represented the last word of culture in
general.
A year and a half had elapsed since the close of the Franco-German War.
Never had the waves of German self esteem run so high. The exultation
of victory had passed into a tumultuous self-glorification. The
universal view was that German culture had vanquished French. Then this
voice made itself heard, saying--
Admitting that this was really a conflict between two civilisations,
there would still be no reason for crowning the victorious one; we
should first have to know what the vanquished one was worth; if its
value was very slight--and this is what is said of French culture--then
there was no great honour in the victory. But in the next place there
can be no question at all in this case of a victory of German culture;
partly because French culture still persists, and partly because
the Germans, now as heretofore, are dependent on it. It was military
discipline, natural bravery, endurance, superiority on the part of the
leaders and obedience on the part of the led, in short, _factors that
have nothing to do with culture_, which gave Germany the victory. But
finally and above all, German culture was not victorious for the good
reason that Germany as yet has nothing that can be called culture.
It was then only a year since Nietzsche himself had formed the greatest
expectations of Germany's future, had looked forward to her speedy
liberation from the leading-strings of Latin civilisation, and heard
the most favourable omens in German music.[2] The intellectual decline,
which seemed to him--rightly, no doubt--to date indisputably from the
foundation of the Empire, now made him oppose a ruthless defiance to
the prevailing popular sentiment.
He maintains that culture shows itself above all else in a unity of
artistic style running through every expression of a nation's life. On
the other hand, the fact of having learnt much and knowing much is,
as he points out, neither a necessary means to culture nor a sign of
culture; it accords remarkably well with barbarism, that is to say,
with want of style or a motley hotchpotch of styles. And his contention
is simply this, that with a culture consisting of hotchpotch it is
impossible to subdue any enemy, above all an enemy like the French,
who have long possessed a genuine and productive culture, whether we
attribute a greater or a lesser value to it.
He appeals to a saying of Goethe to Eckermann: "We Germans are of
yesterday. No doubt in the last hundred years we have been cultivating
ourselves quite diligently, but it may take a few centuries yet before
our countrymen have absorbed sufficient intellect and higher culture
for it to be said of them that it is a long time since they were
barbarians."
To Nietzsche, as we see, the concepts of culture and homogeneous
culture are equivalent. In order to be homogeneous a culture must
have reached a certain age and have become strong enough in its
peculiar character to have penetrated all forms of life. Homogeneous
culture, however, is of course not the same thing as native culture.
Ancient Iceland had a homogeneous culture, though its flourishing
was brought about precisely by active intercourse with Europe; a
homogeneous culture existed in Italy at the time of the Renaissance, in
England in the sixteenth, in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, although Italy built up her culture of Greek, Roman and
Spanish impressions, France hers of classical, Celtic, Spanish and
Italian elements, and although the English are the mixed race beyond
all others. True, it is only a century and a half since the Germans
began to liberate themselves from French culture, and hardly more
than a hundred years since they entirely escaped from the Frenchmen's
school, whose influence may nevertheless be traced even to-day: but
still no one can justly deny the existence of a German culture, even if
it is yet comparatively young and in a state of growth. Nor will any
one who has a sense for the agreement between German music and German
philosophy, an ear for the harmony between German music and German
lyrical poetry, an eye for the merits and defects of German painting
and sculpture, which are the outcome of the same fundamental tendency
that is revealed in the whole intellectual and emotional life of
Germany, be disposed in advance to deny Germany a homogeneous culture.
More precarious will be the state of such smaller countries whose
dependence on foreign nations has not unfrequently been a dependence
raised to the second power.
To Nietzsche, however, this point is of relatively small importance.
He is convinced that the last hour of national cultures is at hand,
since the time cannot be far off when it will only be a question of a
European or European-American culture. He argues from the fact that
the most highly developed people in every country already feel as
Europeans, as fellow-countrymen, nay, as confederates, and from the
belief that the twentieth century must bring with it the war for the
dominion of the world.
When, therefore, from the result of this war a tempestuous wind sweeps
over all national vanities, bending and breaking them, what will then
be the question?
The question will then be, thinks Nietzsche, in exact agreement with
the most eminent Frenchmen of our day, whether by that time it has been
possible to train or rear a sort of caste of pre-eminent spirits who
will be able to grasp the central power.
The real misfortune is, therefore, not that a country is still without
a genuine, homogeneous and perfected culture, but that it thinks
itself cultured. And with his eye upon Germany Nietzsche asks how it
has come about that so prodigious a contradiction can exist as that
between the lack of true culture and the self-satisfied belief in
actually possessing the only true one--and he finds the answer in
the circumstance that a class of men has come to the front which no
former century has known, and to which (in 1873) he gave the name of
"Culture-Philistines."
The Culture-Philistine regards his own impersonal education as the real
culture; if he has been told that culture presupposes a homogeneous
stamp of mind, he is confirmed in his good opinion of himself, since
everywhere he meets with educated people of his own sort, and since
schools, universities and academies are adapted to his requirements
and fashioned on the model corresponding to his cultivation. Since
he finds almost everywhere the same tacit conventions with respect
to religion, morality and literature, with respect to marriage, the
family, the community and the State, he considers it demonstrated that
this imposing homogeneity is culture. It never enters his head that
this systematic and well-organised philistinism, which is set up in
all high places and installed at every editorial desk, is not by any
means made culture just because its organs are in concert. It is not
even bad culture, says Nietzsche; it is barbarism fortified to the best
of its ability, but entirely lacking the freshness and savage force of
original barbarism; and he has many graphic expressions to describe
Culture-Philistinism as the morass in which all weariness is stuck
fast, and in the poisonous mists of which all endeavour languishes.
All of us are now born into the society of cultured philistinism, in
it we all grow up. It confronts us with prevailing opinions, which we
unconsciously adopt; and even when opinions are divided, the division
is only into party opinions--public opinions.
An aphorism of Nietzsche's reads: "What is public opinion? It is
private indolence." The dictum requires qualification. There are cases
where public opinion is worth something: John Morley has written a good
book on the subject. In the face of certain gross breaches of faith
and law, certain monstrous violations of human rights, public opinion
may now and then assert itself as a power worthy to be followed.
Otherwise it is as a rule a factory working for the benefit of
Culture-Philistinism.
On entering life, then, young people meet with various collective
opinions, more or less narrow-minded. The more the individual has it
in him to become a real personality, the more he will resist following
a herd. But even if an inner voice says to him: "Become thyself! Be
thyself!" he hears its appeal with despondency. Has he a self? He does
not know; he is not yet aware of it.
He therefore looks about for a teacher, an educator, one who will teach
him, not something foreign, but how to become his own individual self.
We had in Denmark a great man who with impressive force exhorted his
contemporaries to become individuals. But Sören Kierkegaard's appeal
was not intended to be taken so unconditionally as it sounded. For
the goal was fixed. They were to become individuals, not in order to
develop into free personalities, but in order by this means to become
true Christians. Their freedom was only apparent; above them was
suspended a "Thou shalt believe!" and a "Thou shalt obey!" Even as
individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther
side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was
driven, the herd awaited them again--one flock, one shepherd.
It is not with this idea of immediately resigning his personality again
that the young man in our day desires to become himself and seeks an
educator. He will not have a dogma set up before him, at which he is
expected to arrive. But he has an uneasy feeling that he is packed with
dogmas. How is he to find himself in himself, how is he to dig himself
out of himself? This is where the educator should help him. An educator
can only be a liberator.
It was a liberating educator of this kind that Nietzsche as a young man
looked for and found in Schopenhauer. Such a one will be found by every
seeker in the personality that has the most liberating effect on him
during his period of development. Nietzsche says that as soon as he had
read a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of
him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every
intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this
way.
It is true that for Nietzsche, as for any other aspirant, there
remained one more step to be taken, that of liberating himself from
the liberator. We find in his earliest writings certain favourite
expressions of Schopenhauer's which no longer appear in his later
works. But the liberation is here a tranquil development to
independence, throughout which he retains his deep gratitude; not, as
in his relations with Wagner, a violent revulsion which leads him to
deny any value to the works he had once regarded as the most valuable
of all.
He praises Schopenhauer's lofty honesty, beside which he can only
place Montaigne's, his lucidity, his constancy, and the purity of his
relations with society, State and State-religion, which are in such
sharp contrast with those of Kant. With Schopenhauer there is never a
concession, never a dallying.
And Nietzsche is astounded by the fact that Schopenhauer could endure
life in Germany at all. A modern Englishman has said: "Shelley could
never have lived in England: a race of Shelleys would have been
impossible." Spirits of this kind are early broken, then become
melancholy, morbid or insane. The society of the Culture-Philistines
makes life a burden to exceptional men. Examples of this occur in
plenty in the literature of every country, and the trial is constantly
being made. We need only think of the number of talented men who sooner
or later make their apologies and concessions to philistinism, so
as to be permitted to exist. But even in the strongest the vain and
weary struggle with Culture-Philistinism shows itself in lines and
wrinkles. Nietzsche quotes the saying of the old diplomatist, who had
only casually seen and spoken to Goethe: "_Voilà un homme qui a eu
de grands chagrins_," and Goethe's comment, when repeating it to his
friends: "If the traces of our sufferings and activities are indelible
even in our features, it is no wonder that all that survives of us and
our struggles should bear the same marks." And this is Goethe, who is
looked upon as the favourite of fortune!
Schopenhauer, as is well known, was until his latest years a solitary
man. No one understood him, no one read him. The greater part of the
first edition of his work, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, had to
be sold as waste paper.
In our day Taine's view has widely gained ground, that the great man is
entirely determined by the age whose child he is, that he unconsciously
sums it up and ought consciously to give it expression.[3] But
although, of course, the great man does not stand outside the course of
history and must always depend upon predecessors, an idea nevertheless
always germinates in a single individual or in a few individuals; and
these individuals are not scattered points in the low-lying mass, but
highly gifted ones who draw the mass to them instead of being drawn by
it. What is called the spirit of the age originates in quite a small
number of brains.
Nietzsche who, mainly no doubt through Schopenhauer's influence, had
originally been strongly impressed by the dictum that the great man is
not the child of his age but its step-child, demands that the educator
shall help the young to educate themselves _in opposition to the age_.
It appears to him that the modern age has produced for imitation three
particular types of man, one after the other. First Rousseau's man; the
Titan who raises himself, oppressed and bound by the higher castes, and
in his need calls upon holy Nature. Then Goethe's man; not Werther or
the revolutionary figures related to him, who are still derived from
Rousseau, nor the original Faust figure, but Faust as he gradually
develops. He is no liberator, but a spectator, of the world. He is not
the man of action. Nietzsche reminds us of Jarno's words to Wilhelm
Meister: "You are vexed and bitter, that is a very good thing. If you
could be thoroughly angry for once, it would be better still."
To become thoroughly angry in order to make things better, this,
in the view of the Nietzsche of thirty, will be the exhortation of
Schopenhauer's man. This man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of
telling the truth. His fundamental idea is this: A life of happiness is
impossible; the highest a man can attain to is a heroic life, one in
which he fights against the greatest difficulties for something which,
in one way or another, will be for the good of all. To what is truly
human, only true human beings can raise us; those who seem to have
come into being by a leap in Nature; thinkers and educators, artists
and creators, and those who influence us more by their nature than by
their activity: the noble, the good in a grand style, those in whom the
genius of good is at work.
These men are the aim of history.
Nietzsche formulates this proposition: "Humanity must work unceasingly
for the production of solitary great men--this and nothing else is its
task." This is the same formula at which several aristocratic spirits
among his contemporaries have arrived. Thus Renan says, almost in the
same words: "In fine, the object of humanity is the production of great
men ... nothing but great men; salvation will come from great men." And
we see from Flaubert's letters to George Sand how convinced he was of
the same thing. He says, for instance: "The only rational thing is and
always will be a government of mandarins, provided that the mandarins
can do something, or rather, can do much.... It matters little whether
a greater or smaller number of peasants are able to read instead of
listening to their priest, but it is infinitely important that many men
like Renan and Littré may live and be heard. Our salvation now lies in
a real aristocracy."[4] Both Renan and Flaubert would have subscribed
to Nietzsche's fundamental idea that a nation is the roundabout way
Nature goes in order to produce a dozen great men.
Yet, although the idea does not lack advocates, this does not make it
a dominant thought in European philosophy. In Germany, for instance,
Eduard von Hartmann thinks very differently of the aim--of history. His
published utterances on the subject are well known. In conversation he
once hinted how his idea had originated in his mind: "It was clear to
me long ago," he said, "that history, or, to use a wider expression,
the world process, must have an aim, and that this aim could only be
negative. For a golden age is too foolish a figment." Hence his visions
of a destruction of the world voluntarily brought about by the most
gifted men. And connected with this is his doctrine that humanity has
now reached man's estate, that is, has passed the stage of development
in which geniuses were necessary.
In the face of all this talk of the world process, the aim of which is
annihilation or deliverance--deliverance even of the suffering godhead
from existence--Nietzsche takes a very sober and sensible stand with
his simple belief that the goal of humanity is not to be infinitely
deferred, but must be found in the highest examples of humanity itself.
And herewith he has arrived at his final answer to the question, What
is culture? For upon this relation depend the fundamental idea of
culture and the duties culture imposes. It imposes on me the duty of
associating myself by my own activity with the great human ideals. Its
fundamental idea is this: it assigns to every individual who wishes to
work for it and participate in it, the task of striving to produce,
within and without himself, the thinker and artist, the lover of truth
and beauty, the pure and good personality, and thereby striving for the
perfection of Nature, towards the goal of a perfected Nature.
When does a state of culture prevail? When the men of a community are
steadily working for the production of single great men. From this
highest aim all the others follow. And what state is farthest removed
from a state of culture? That in which men energetically and with
united forces resist the appearance of great men, partly by preventing
the cultivation of the soil required for the growth of genius, partly
by obstinately opposing everything in the shape of genius that appears
amongst them. Such a state is more remote from culture than that of
sheer barbarism.
But does such a state exist? perhaps some one will ask. Most of the
smaller nations will be able to read the answer in the history of their
native land. It will there be seen, in proportion as "refinement"
grows, that the refined atmosphere is diffused, which is unfavourable
to genius. And this is all the more serious, since many people think
that in modern times and in the races which now share the dominion of
the world among them, a political community of only a few millions is
seldom sufficiently numerous to produce minds of the very first order.
It looks as if geniuses could only be distilled from some thirty or
forty millions of people. Norway with Ibsen, Belgium with Maeterlinck
and Verhaeren are exceptions. All the more reason is there for the
smaller communities to work at culture to their utmost capacity.
In recent times we have become familiar with the thought that the goal
to be aimed at is happiness, the happiness of all, or at any rate of
the greatest number. Wherein happiness consists is less frequently
discussed, and yet it is impossible to avoid the question, whether a
year, a day, an hour in Paradise does not bring more happiness than a
lifetime in the chimney-corner. But be that as it may: owing to our
familiarity with the notion of making sacrifices for a whole country,
a multitude of people, it appears unreasonable that a man should exist
for the sake of a few other men, that it should be his duty to devote
his life to them in order thereby to promote culture. But nevertheless
the answer to the question of culture--how the individual human life
may acquire its highest value and its greatest significance--must be:
By being lived for the benefit of the rarest and most valuable examples
of the human race. This will also be the way in which the individual
can best impart a value to the life of the greatest number.
In our day a so-called cultural institution means an organisation in
virtue of which the "cultured" advance in serried ranks and thrust
aside all solitary and obstinate men whose efforts are directed to
higher ends; therefore even the learned are as a rule lacking in any
sense for budding genius and any feeling for the value of struggling
contemporary genius. Therefore, in spite of the indisputable and
restless progress in all technical and specialised departments, the
conditions necessary to the appearance of great men are so far from
having improved, that dislike of genius has rather increased than
diminished.
From the State the exceptional individual cannot expect much. He is
seldom benefited by being taken into its service; the only certain
advantage it can give him is complete independence. Only real culture
will prevent his being too early tired out or used up, and will spare
him the exhausting struggle against Culture-Philistinism.
Nietzsche's value lies in his being one of these vehicles of culture:
a mind which, itself independent, diffuses independence and may become
to others a liberating force, such as Schopenhauer was to Nietzsche
himself in his younger days.
[2] _The Birth of Tragedy_, p. 150 ff. (English edition).
[3] The author of these lines has not made himself the advocate of this
view, as has sometimes been publicly stated, but on the contrary has
opposed it. After some uncertainty I pronounced against it as early
as 1870, in _Den franske Æsthetik i vore Dage_, pp. 105, 106, and
afterwards in many other places.
[4] Nietzsche; _Thoughts out of Season_, II., p. 155 f. (English
edition). Renan: _Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques_, p. 103.
Flaubert: _Lettres à George Sand_, p. 139 ff.
2.
Four of Nietzsche's early works bear the collective title, _Thoughts
out of Season_ (_Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_), a title which is
significant of his early-formed determination to go against the stream.
One of the fields in which he opposed the spirit of the age in Germany
is that of education, since he condemns in the most uncompromising
fashion the entire historical system of education of which Germany is
proud, and which as a rule is everywhere regarded as desirable.
His view is that what keeps the race from breathing freely and
willing boldly is that it drags far too much of its past about with
it, like a round-shot chained to a convict's leg. He thinks it is
historical education that fetters the race both in enjoyment and in
action, since he who cannot concentrate himself on the moment and live
entirely in it, can neither feel happiness himself nor do anything
to make others happy. Without the power of feeling unhistorically,
there is no happiness. And in the same way, forgetfulness, or rather,
non-knowledge of the past is essential to all action. Forgetfulness,
the unhistorical, is as it were the enveloping air, the atmosphere,
in which alone life can come into being. In order to understand it,
let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or
a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. In both cases what
lies behind them has ceased to exist--and yet this state (the most
unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every
great deed is conceived and accomplished. Now answering to this, says
Nietzsche, there exists a certain degree of historical knowledge which
is destructive of a man's energy and fatal to the productive powers of
a nation.
In this reasoning we can hear the voice of the learned German
philologist, whose observations have mostly been drawn from German
scholars and artists. For it would be unreasonable to suppose that the
commercial or peasant class, the soldiers or manufacturers of Germany
suffered from an excess of historical culture. But even in the case of
German savants, authors and artists the evil here pointed out may be of
such a nature as not to admit of remedy by simply abolishing historical
education. Those men whose productive impulse has been checked or
killed by historical studies were already so impotent and ineffective
that the world would not have been enriched by their productions. And
moreover, what paralyses is not so much the heterogeneous mass of
dead historical learning (about the actions of governments, political
chess-moves, military achievements, artistic styles, etc.), as the
knowledge of certain great minds of the past, by the side of whose
production anything that can be shown by a man now living appears so
insignificant as to make it a matter of indifference whether his
work sees the light or not. Goethe alone is enough to reduce a young
German poet to despair. But a hero-worshipper like Nietzsche cannot
consistently desire to curtail our knowledge of the greatest.
The want of artistic courage and intellectual boldness has certainly
deeper-lying causes; above all, the disintegration of the individuality
which the modern order of society involves. Strong men can carry a
heavy load of history without becoming incapacitated for living.
But what is interesting and significant of Nietzsche's whole
intellectual standpoint is his inquiry as to how far life is able
to make use of history. History, in his view, belongs to him who
is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and
comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without
history the mountain chain of great men's great moments, which runs
through milleniums, could not stand clearly and vividly before me. When
one sees, that it only took about a hundred men to bring in the culture
of the Renaissance; it may easily be supposed, for example, that a
hundred productive minds, trained in a new style, would be enough to
make an end of Culture-Philistinism. On the other hand, history may
have pernicious effects in the hands of unproductive men. Thus young
artists are driven into galleries instead of out into nature, and are
sent, with minds still unformed, to centres of art, where they lose
courage. And in all its forms history may render men unfit for life;
in its _monumental_ form by evoking the illusion that there are such
things as fixed, recurring historical conjunctions, so that what has
once been possible is now, in entirely altered conditions, possible
again; in its _antiquarian_ form by awakening a feeling of piety for
ancient, bygone things, which paralyses the man of action, who must
always outrage some piety or other; finally in its _critical_ form
by giving rise to the depressing feeling that the very errors of the
past, which we are striving to overcome, are inherited in our blood
and impressed on our childhood, so that we live in a continual inner
conflict between an old and a new nature.
On this point, as on others already alluded to, Nietzsche's quarrel is
ultimately with the broken-winded education of the present day. That
_education_ and _historical education_ have in our time almost become
synonymous terms, is to him a mournful sign. It has been irretrievably
forgotten that culture ought to be what it was with the Greeks: a
motive, a prompting to resolution; nowadays culture is commonly
described as inwardness, because it is a dead internal lump, which
does not stir its possessor. The most "educated" people are walking
encyclopædias. When they act, they do so in virtue of a universally
approved, miserable convention, or else from simple barbarism.
With this reflection, no doubt of general application, is connected a
complaint which was bound to be evoked by modern literary Germany in
particular; the complaint of the oppressive effect of the greatness
of former times, as shown in the latter-day man's conviction that he
is a latecomer, an after-birth of a greater age, who may indeed teach
himself history, but can never produce it.
Even philosophy, Nietzsche complains, with a side-glance at the German
universities, has been more and more transformed into the history of
philosophy, a teaching of what everybody has thought about everything;
"a sort of harmless gossip between academic grey-beards and academic
sucklings." It is boasted as a point of honour that freedom of thought
exists in various countries. In reality it is only a poor sort of
freedom. One may think in a hundred ways, but one may only act in one
way--and that is the way that is called "culture" and is in reality
"only a form, and what is more a bad form, a uniform."
Nietzsche attacks the view which regards the historically cultured
person as the justest of all. We honour the historian who aims at pure
knowledge, from which nothing follows. But there are many trivial
truths, and it is a misfortune that whole battalions of inquirers
should fling themselves upon them, even if these narrow minds belong to
honest men. The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures
the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when
he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best
fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected
by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future
can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work
of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.
As historical education is now conducted, the mass of impressions
communicated is so great as to produce numbness, a feeling of being
born old of an old stock--although less than thirty human lives,
reckoned at seventy years each, divide us from the beginning of our
era. And with this is connected the immense superstition of the
value and significance of universal history. Schiller's phrase is
everlastingly repeated: "The history of the world is the tribunal of
the world," as though there could be any other historical tribunal
than thought; and the Hegelian view of history as the ever-clearer
self-revelation of the godhead has obstinately held its own, only that
it has gradually passed into sheer admiration of success, an approval
of any and every fact, be it never so brutal. But greatness has nothing
to do with results or with success. Demosthenes, who spoke in vain, is
greater than Philip, who was always victorious. Everything in our day
is thought to be in order, if only it be an accomplished fact; even
when a man of genius dies in the fulness of his powers, proofs are
forthcoming that he died at the right time. And the fragment of history
we possess is entitled "the world process"; men cudgel their brains,
like Eduard von Hartmann, in trying to find out its origin and final
goal--which seems to be a waste of time. Why you exist, says Nietzsche
with Sören Kierkegaard, nobody in the world can tell you in advance;
but since you do exist, try to give your existence a meaning by setting
up for yourself as lofty and noble a goal as you can.
Significant of Nietzsche's aristocratic tendency, so marked later, is
his anger with the deference paid by modern historians to the masses.
Formerly, he argues, history was written from the standpoint of the
rulers; it was occupied exclusively with them, however mediocre or
bad they might be. Now it has crossed over to the standpoint of the
masses. But the masses--they are only to be regarded as one of three
things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily
produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally
as their tools. Otherwise they are matter for statisticians to deal
with, who find so-called historical laws in the instincts of the
masses--aping, laziness, hunger and sexual impulse. What has set the
mass in motion for any length of time is then called great. It is given
the name of a historical power. When, for example, the vulgar mob has
appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has defended
it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator
of that idea is called great. There is the testimony of thousands of
years for it, we are told. But--this is Nietzsche's and Kierkegaard's
idea--the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either
at the moment or later. Therefore the historical success of a religion,
its toughness and persistence, witness against its founder's greatness
rather than for it.
When an instance is required of one of the few enterprises in history
that have been completely successful, the Reformation is commonly
chosen. Against the significance of this success Nietzsche does not
urge the facts usually quoted: its early secularisation by Luther;
his compromises with those in power; the interest of princes in
emancipating themselves from the mastery of the Church and laying
hands on its estates, while at the same time securing a submissive and
dependent clergy instead of one independent of the State. He sees the
chief cause of the success of the Reformation in the uncultured state
of the nations of northern Europe. Many attempts at founding new Greek
religions came to naught in antiquity. Although men like Pythagoras,
Plato, perhaps Empedocles, had qualifications as founders of religions,
the individuals they had to deal with were far too diversified in their
nature to be helped by a common doctrine of faith and hope. In contrast
with this, the success of Luther's Reformation in the North was an
indication that northern culture was behind that of southern Europe.
The people either blindly obeyed a watchword from above, like a flock
of sheep; or, where conversion was a matter of conscience, it revealed
how little individuality there was among a population which was found
to be so homogeneous in its spiritual needs. In the same way, too, the
original conversion of pagan antiquity was only successful on account
of the abundant intermixture of barbarian with Roman blood which had
taken place. The new doctrine was forced upon the masters of the world
by barbarians and slaves.
The reader now has examples of the arguments Nietzsche employs
in support of his proposition that history is not so sound and
strengthening an educational factor as is thought: only he who has
learnt to know life and is equipped for action has use for history and
is capable of applying it; others are oppressed by it and rendered
unproductive by being made to feel themselves late-comers, or are
induced to worship success in every field.
Nietzsche's contribution to this question is a plea against every sort
of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary
pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts--of
decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a
_tragic_ culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in
which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the
pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but
he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from
exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks. He has
developed this view in the learned and profound work of his youth, _The
Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism_, in which he introduced
two new terms, _Apollonian_ and _Dionysian_. The two Greek deities of
art, Apollo and Dionysus, denote the antithesis between plastic art and
music. The former corresponds to dreaming, the latter to drunkenness.
In dreams the forms of the gods first appeared to men; dreams are the
world of beauteous appearance. If, on the other hand, we look down into
man's lowest depths, below the spheres of thought and imagination, we
come upon a world of terror and rapture, the realm of Dionysus. Above
reign beauty, measure and proportion; but underneath the profusion of
Nature surges freely in pleasure and pain. Regarded from Nietzsche's
later standpoint, the deeper motive of this searching absorption in
Hellenic antiquity becomes apparent. Even at this early stage he
suspects, in what passes for morality, a disparaging principle directed
against Nature; he looks for its essential antithesis, and finds it
in the purely artistic principle, farthest removed from Christianity,
which he calls Dionysian.
Our author's main psychological features are now clearly apparent. What
kind of a nature is it that carries this savage hatred of philistinism
even as far as to David Strauss? An artist's nature, obviously. What
kind of a writer is it who warns us with such firm conviction against
the dangers of historical culture? A philologist obviously, who has
experienced them in himself, has felt himself threatened with becoming
a mere aftermath and tempted to worship historical success. What kind
of a nature is it that so passionately defines culture as the worship
of genius? Certainly no Eckermann-nature, but an enthusiast, willing
at the outset to obey where he cannot command, but quick to recognise
his own masterful bias, and to see that humanity is far from having
outgrown the ancient antithetical relation of commanding and obeying.
The appearance of Napoleon is to him, as to many others, a proof of
this; in the joy that thrilled thousands, when at last they saw one who
knew how to command.
But in the sphere of ethics he is not disposed to preach obedience. On
the contrary, constituted as he is, he sees the apathy and meanness of
our modern morality in the fact that it still upholds obedience as the
highest moral commandment, instead of the power of dictating to one's
self one's own morality.
His military schooling and participation in the war of 1870-71 probably
led to his discovery of a hard and manly quality in himself, and imbued
him with an extreme abhorrence of all softness and effeminacy. He
turned aside with disgust from the morality of pity in Schopenhauer's
philosophy and from the romantic-catholic element in Wagner's music,
to both of which he had previously paid homage. He saw that he had
transformed both masters according to his own needs, and he understood
quite well the instinct of self preservation that was here at work.
The aspiring mind creates the helpers it requires. Thus he afterwards
dedicated his book, Human, all-too-Human, which was published on
Voltaire's centenary, to the "free spirits" among his contemporaries;
his dreams created the associates that he had not yet found in the
flesh.
The severe and painful illness, which began in his thirty-second
year and long made him a recluse, detached him from all romanticism
and freed his heart from all bonds of piety. It carried him far away
from pessimism, in virtue of his proud thought that "a sufferer has
no right to pessimism." This illness made a philosopher of him in a
strict sense. His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths:
This thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This
is regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?--Is not God refuted? But
can we say as much of the devil?--Are we not deceived? and deceived
deceivers, all of us?...
And then out of this long sickliness arises a passionate desire for
health, the joy of the convalescent in life, in light, in warmth, in
freedom and ease of mind, in the range and horizon of thought, in
"visions of new dawns," in creative capacity, in poetical strength.
And he enters upon the lofty self-confidence and ecstasy of a long
uninterrupted production.
3.
It is neither possible nor necessary to review here the long series of
his writings. In calling attention to an author who is still unread,
one need only throw his most characteristic thoughts and expressions
into relief, so that the reader with little trouble may form an idea
of his way of thinking and quality of mind. The task is here rendered
difficult by Nietzsche's thinking in aphorisms, and facilitated by
his habit of emphasising every thought in such a way as to give it a
startling appearance.
English utilitarianism has met with little acceptance in Germany;
among more eminent contemporary thinkers Eugen Dühring is its chief
advocate; Friedrich Paulsen also sides with the Englishmen. Eduard
von Hartmann has attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of
simultaneously promoting culture and happiness. Nietzsche finds new
difficulties in an analysis of the concept of happiness. The object of
utilitarianism is to procure humanity as much pleasure and as little
of the reverse as possible. But what if pleasure and pain are so
intertwined that he who wants all the pleasure he can get must take a
corresponding amount of suffering into the bargain? Clärchen's song
contains the words: "_Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt_" Who
knows whether the latter is not the condition of the former? The Stoics
believed this, and, wishing to avoid pain, asked of life the minimum
of pleasure. Probably it is equally unwise in our day to promise men
intense joys, if they are to be insured against great sufferings.
We see that Nietzsche transfers the question to the highest spiritual
plane, without regard to the fact that the lowest and commonest
misfortunes, such as hunger, physical exhaustion, excessive and
unhealthy labour, yield no compensation in violent joys. Even if
all pleasure be dearly bought, it does not follow that all pain is
interrupted and counterbalanced by intense enjoyment.
In accordance with his aristocratic bias he then attacks Bentham's
proposition: the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible
number. The ideal was, of course, to procure happiness for everybody;
as this could not be done, the formula took the above shape. But why
happiness for the greatest number? We might imagine it for the best,
the noblest, the most gifted; and we may be permitted to ask whether
moderate prosperity and moderate well-being are preferable to the
inequality of lot which acts as a goad, forcing culture ever upward.
Then there is the doctrine of unselfishness. To be moral is to be
unselfish. It is good to be so, we are told. But what does that
mean--good? Good for whom? Not for the self-sacrificer, but for
his neighbour. He who praises the virtue of unselfishness, praises
something that is good for the community but harmful to the
individual. And the neighbour who wants to be loved unselfishly is not
himself unselfish. The fundamental contradiction in this morality is
that it demands and commends a renunciation of the ego, for the benefit
of another ego.
At the outset the essential and invaluable element of all morality is,
in Nietzsche's view, simply this, that it is a prolonged constraint. As
language gains in strength and freedom by the constraint of verse, and
as all the freedom and delicacy to be found in plastic art, music and
dancing is the result of arbitrary laws, so also does human nature only
attain its development under constraint. No violence is thereby done to
Nature; this is the very nature of things.