and in the same direction. Thou shalt obey, some one or something, and
for a long time--otherwise thou wilt come to grief; this seems to be
the moral imperative of Nature, which is certainly neither categorical
(as Kant thought), nor addressed to the individual (Nature does not
trouble about the individual), but seems to be addressed to nations,
classes, periods, races--in fact, to mankind. On the other hand, all
the morality that is addressed to the individual for his own good, for
the sake of his own welfare, is reduced in this view to mere household
remedies and counsels of prudence, recipes for curbing passions that
might want to break out; and all this morality is preposterous in form,
because it addresses itself to all and generalises what does not admit
of generalisation. Kant gave us a guiding rule with his categorical
imperative. But this rule has failed us. It is of no use saying to us:
Act as others ought to act in this case. For we know that there are not
and cannot be such things as identical actions, but that every action
is unique in its nature, so that any precept can only apply to the
rough outside of actions.
But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is
that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual
one behind the moral. We can tell that the judgment of So-and-So's
conscience has a past history in his instincts, his original
sympathies or antipathies, his experience or want of experience. We
can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our
moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we
must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for
ourselves new tables of values.
And as regards the ethical teachers' preaching of morality for all,
this is every bit as empty as the gossip of individual society people
about each other's morals. Nietzsche gives the moralists this good
advice: that, instead of trying to educate the human race, they should
imitate the pedagogues of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who
concentrated their efforts on the education of a single person. But as
a rule the moral ranters are themselves quite uneducated persons, and
their children seldom rise above moral mediocrity.
He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with
others, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give
style to one's character. This art is practised by him who, with an
eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one
quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit
replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other
words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend
his nature entirely to his own law. Only thus does a man arrive at
satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to
others. For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge
themselves on others. They absorb poison from everything, from their
own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they
live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they
suspect harmony. Such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips;
the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of
life; and their hearts ever bum with envy of those who have become well
balanced and can therefore enjoy life.
For millenniums morality meant obedience to custom, respect for
inherited usage. The free, exceptional man was immoral, because he
broke with the tradition which the others regarded with superstitious
fear. Very commonly he took the same view and was himself seized by the
terror he inspired. Thus a popular morality of custom was unconsciously
elaborated by all who belonged to the tribe; since fresh examples and
proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and
punishment--if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with
you. Now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly
confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudoscience on a level with
popular medicine, continually gained ground.
Manners and customs represented the experiences of bygone generations
concerning what was supposed to be useful or harmful; the sense of
morality, however, does not attach to these experiences as such, but
only to their age, their venerability and consequent incontestability.
In the state of war in which a tribe existed in old times, threatened
on every side, there was no greater gratification, under the sway of
the strictest morality of custom, than cruelty. Cruelty is one of the
oldest festal and triumphal joys of mankind. It was thought that the
gods, too, might be gratified and festively disposed by offering them
the sight of cruelties--and thus the idea insinuated itself into the
world that voluntary self-torture, mortification and abstinence are
also of great value, not as discipline, but as a sweet savour unto the
Lord.
Christianity as a religion of the past unceasingly practised and
preached the torture of souls. Imagine the state of the mediæval
Christian, when he supposed he could no longer escape eternal torment.
Eros and Aphrodite were in his imagination powers of hell, and death
was a terror.
To the morality of cruelty has succeeded that of pity. The morality of
pity is lauded as unselfish, by Schopenhauer in particular.
Eduard von Hartmann, in his thoughtful work, _Phänomenologie des
sittlichen Bewusstseins_ (pp. 217-240), has already shown the
impossibility of regarding pity as the most important of moral
incentives, to say nothing of its being the only one, as Schopenhauer
would have it. Nietzsche attacks the morality of pity from other
points of view. He shows it to be by no means unselfish. Another's
misfortune affects us painfully and offends us--perhaps brands us as
cowards if we do not go to his aid. Or it contains a hint of a possible
danger to ourselves; moreover, we feel joy in comparing our own state
with that of the unfortunate, joy when we can step in as the stronger,
the helper. The help we afford gives us a feeling of happiness, or
perhaps it merely rescues us from boredom.
Pity in the form of actual fellow-suffering would be a weakness, nay,
a misfortune, since it would add to the world's suffering. A man who
seriously abandoned himself to sympathy with all the misery he found
about him, would simply be destroyed by it.
Among savages the thought of arousing pity is regarded with horror.
Those who do so are despised. According to savage notions, to feel pity
for a person is to despise him; but they find no pleasure in seeing a
contemptible person suffer. On the other hand, the sight of an enemy's
suffering, when his pride does not forsake him in the midst of his
torment--that is enjoyment, that excites admiration.
The morality of pity is often preached in the formula, love thy
neighbour.
Nietzsche in the interests of his attack seizes upon the word
_neighbour_. Not only does he demand, with Kierkegaard, a setting-aside
of morality for the sake of the end in view, but he is exasperated
that the true nature of morality should be held to consist in a
consideration of the immediate results of our actions, to which we
are to conform. To what is narrow and pettifogging in this morality
he opposes another, which looks beyond these immediate results and
aspires, even by means that cause our neighbour pain, to more distant
objects; such as the advancement of knowledge, although this will lead
to sorrow and doubt and evil passions in our neighbour. We need not on
this account be without pity, but we may hold our pity captive for the
sake of the object.
And as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to
consecrate it, it is equally so to hand over a series of actions
to the evil conscience, merely because they have been maligned as
egotistical. What has happened in recent times in this connection
is that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice, everything
altruistic, has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of
morality.
The English moralists, who at present dominate Europe, explain
the origin of ethics in the following way: Unselfish actions were
originally called _good_ by those who were their objects and who
benefited by them; afterwards this original reason for praising them
was forgotten, and unselfish actions came to be regarded as good in
themselves.
According to a statement of Nietzsche himself it was a work by a
German author with English leanings, Dr. Paul Rée's _Der Ursprung der
moralischen Empfindungen_ (Chemnitz, 1877), which provoked him to such
passionate and detailed opposition that he had to thank this book for
the impulse to clear up and develop his own ideas on the subject.
The surprising part of it, however, is this: Dissatisfaction with his
first book caused Rée to write a second and far more important work on
the same subject--_Die Entstehung des Gewissens_ (Berlin, 1885)--in
which the point of view offensive to Nietzsche is abandoned and several
of the leading ideas advanced by the latter against Rée are set forth,
supported by a mass of evidence taken from various authors and races of
men.
The two philosophers were personally acquainted. I knew them both,
but had no opportunity of questioning either on this matter. It is
therefore impossible for me to say which of the two influenced the
other, or why Nietzsche in 1887 alludes to his detestation of the
opinions put forward by Rée in 1877, without mentioning how near
the latter had come to his own view in the work published two years
previously.
Rée had already adduced a number of examples to show that the most
diverse peoples of antiquity knew no other moral classification of men
than that of nobles and common people, powerful and weak; so that the
oldest meaning of good both in Greece and Iceland was noble, mighty,
rich. Nietzsche builds his whole theory on this foundation. His train
of thought is this--
The critical word _good_ is not due to those to whom goodness has
been shown. The oldest definition was this: the noble, the mightier,
higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be
_good_--of the first rank--in contradistinction to everything low and
low-minded. Noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher
caste, is the primary concept from which develops _good_ in the sense
of spiritually aristocratic. The lowly are designated as _bad_ (not
evil). Bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till
much later. In the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the
German word _schlecht_ is identical with _schlicht_ (cf. _schlechtweg_
and _schlechterdings_).
The ruling caste call themselves sometimes simply the Mighty,
sometimes the Truthful; like the Greek nobility, whose mouthpiece
Theognis was. With him beautiful, good and noble always have the
sense of aristocratic. The aristocratic moral valuation proceeds
from a triumphant affirmation, a yea-saying, which we find in the
Homeric heroes: We, the noble, beautiful and brave--we are the good,
the beloved of the gods. These are strong men, charged with force,
who delight in warlike deeds, to whom, in other words, happiness is
activity.
It is of course unavoidable that these nobles should misjudge and
despise the plebeian herd they dominate. Yet as a rule there may be
traced in them a pity for the downtrodden caste, for the drudge and
beast of burden, an indulgence towards those to whom happiness is rest,
the Sabbath of inactivity.
Among the lower orders, on the other hand, an image of the ruling
caste distorted by hatred and spite is necessarily current. In this
distortion there lies a revenge.[5]
In opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful,
happy, favoured by the gods) the slave morality then is this: The
wretched alone are the _good_; those who suffer and are heavy laden,
the sick and the ugly, they are the only pious ones. On the other
hand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the _evil_, the
cruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. Whereas
noble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem, a continual
yea-saying, slave morality is a continual Nay, a _Thou shalt not_, a
negation.
To the noble valuation _good--bad_ (bad = worthless) corresponds the
antithesis of slave morality, _good--evil_. And who are the evil in
this morality of the oppressed? Precisely the same who in the other
morality were the good.
Let any one read the Icelandic sagas and examine the morality of the
ancient Northmen, and then compare with it the complaints of other
nations about the vikings' misdeeds. It will be seen that these
aristocrats, whose conduct in many ways stood high, were no better
than beasts of prey in dealing with their enemies. They fell upon the
inhabitants of Christian shores like eagles upon lambs. One may say
they followed an eagle ideal. But then we cannot wonder that those
who were exposed to such fearful attacks gathered round an entirely
opposite moral ideal, that of the lamb.
In the third chapter of his _Utilitarianism_, Stuart Mill attempts to
prove that the sense of justice has developed from the animal instinct
of making reprisal for an injury or a loss. In an essay on "the
transcendental satisfaction of the feeling of revenge" (supplement to
the first edition of the _Werth des Lebens_) Eugen Dühring has followed
him in trying to establish the whole doctrine of punishment upon the
instinct of retaliation. In his _Phänomenologie_ Eduard von Hartmann
shows how this instinct strictly speaking never does more than involve
a new suffering, a new offence, to gain external satisfaction for the
old one, so that the principle of requital can never be any distinct
principle.
Nietzsche makes a violent, passionate attempt to refer the sum total
of false modern morality, not to the instinct of requital or to the
feeling of revenge in general, but to the narrower form of it which
we call spite, envy and _rancune_. What he calls slave morality is to
him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to
all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness;
craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared
became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance
to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies.
Misery became a distinction; God chastens whom he loves. Or it became
a preparation, a trial and a training; even more--something that
will one day be made good with interest, paid back in bliss. And the
vilest underground creatures, swollen with hate and spite, were heard
to say: We, the good, we are the righteous. They did not hate their
enemies--they hated injustice, ungodliness. What they hoped for was not
the sweets of revenge, but the victory of righteousness. Those they had
left to love on earth were their brothers and sisters in hatred, whom
they called their brothers and sisters in love. The future state they
looked for was called the coming of their kingdom, of God's kingdom.
Until it arrives they live on in faith, hope and love.
If Nietzsche's design in this picture was to strike at historical
Christianity, he has given us--as any one may see--a caricature in the
spirit and style of the eighteenth century. But that his description
hits off a certain type of the apostles of spite-morality cannot be
denied, and rarely has all the self-deception that may lurk beneath
moral preaching been more vigorously unmasked. (Compare _Beyond Good
and Evil_ and _The Genealogy of Morals_.)[6]
[5] Nietzsche supports his hypothesis by derivations, some doubtful,
others incorrect; but their value is immaterial.
[6] Where Nietzsche's words are quoted, in the course of this essay,
considerable use has been made of the complete English translation of
his works, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.--Tr.
4.
Nietzsche would define man as an animal that can make and keep promises.
He sees the real nobility of man in his capacity for
promising something, answering for himself and undertaking a
responsibility--since man, with the mastery of himself which this
capacity implies, necessarily acquires in addition a mastery over
external circumstances and over other creatures, whose will is not so
lasting.
The consciousness of this responsibility is what the sovereign man
calls his conscience.
What, then, is the past history of this responsibility, this
conscience? It is a long and bloody one. Frightful means have been
used in the course of history to train men to remember what they have
once promised or willed, tacitly or explicitly. For milleniums man was
confined in the strait-jacket of the morality of custom, and by such
punishments as stoning, breaking on the wheel or burning, by burying
the sinner alive, tearing him asunder with horses, throwing him into
the water with a stone on his neck or in a sack, by scourging, flaying
and branding--by all these means a long memory for what he had promised
was burnt into that forgetful animal, man; in return for which he was
permitted to enjoy the advantages of being a member of society.
According to Nietzsche's hypothesis, the consciousness of guilt
originates simply as consciousness of a debt. The relation of contract
between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the earliest primitive
forms of human intercourse in buying, selling, bartering, etc.--this
is the relation that underlies it. The debtor (in order to inspire
confidence in his promise of repayment) pledges something he possesses:
his liberty, his woman, his life; or he gives his creditor the right of
cutting a larger or smaller piece of flesh from his body, according to
the amount of the debt. (The Roman Code of the Twelve Tables; again in
_The Merchant of Venice_.)
The logic of this, which has become somewhat strange to us, is as
follows: as compensation for his loss the creditor is granted a kind of
voluptuous sensation, the delight of being able to exercise his power
upon the powerless.
The reader may find evidence in Rée (_op. cit_., p. 13 ff.) for
Nietzsche's dictum, that for milleniums this was the view of mankind:
The sight of suffering does one good.
The infliction of suffering on another is a feast at which the
fortunate one swells with the joy of power. We may also find evidence
in Rée that the instincts of pity, fairness and clemency, which were
afterwards glorified as virtues, were originally regarded almost
everywhere as morally worthless, nay, as indications of weakness.
Buying and selling, as well as everything psychologically connected
therewith and older than any form of social organisation, contain the
germs, in Nietzsche's view, of compensation, assessing, justice and
duty. Man soon became proud of himself as a being who measures values.
One of the earliest generalisations was this: Everything has its price.
And the thought that everything can be paid for was the oldest and most
naïve canon of justice.
Now the whole of society, as it gradually develops, stands in the same
relation to its members as the creditor to the debtor. Society protects
its members; they are assured against the state of outlawry--on
condition that they do not break their pledges to the community. He who
breaks his word--the criminal--is relegated to the outlawry involved in
exclusion from society.
As Nietzsche, who is so exclusively taken up by the psychological
aspect, discards all accessories of scholarship, it is impossible to
examine directly the accuracy of his assertions. The historical data
will be found collected in Rée's paragraphs on resentment and the sense
of justice, and in his section on the buying-off of revenge, i. e.
settlement by fines.
Other thinkers besides Nietzsche (such as E. von Hartmann and Rée) have
combated the view that the idea of justice has its origin in a state of
resentment, and Nietzsche has scarcely brought to light any fresh and
convincing proof; but what is characteristic of him as a writer is the
excess of personal passion with which he attacks this view, obviously
because it is connected with the reasoning of modern democracy.
In many a modern cry for justice there rings a note of plebeian spite
and envy. Involuntarily many a modern savant of middle-class or lower
middle-class origin has attributed an unwarrantable importance to the
atavistic emotions prevalent among those who have been long oppressed:
hatred and rancour, spite and thirst for revenge.
Nietzsche does not occupy himself for an instant with the state of
things in which revenge does duty as the sole punitive justice; for
the death feud is not a manifestation of the thrall's hatred of his
master, but of ideas of honour among equals. He dwells exclusively on
the contrast between a ruling caste and a caste of slaves, and shows
a constantly recurring indignation with doctrines which have caused
the progressive among his contemporaries to look with indulgence on
the instincts of the populace and with suspicion or hostility on
master spirits. His purely personal characteristic, however, the
unphilosophical and temperamental in him, is revealed in the trait
that, while he has nothing but scorn and contempt for the down-trodden
class or race, for the _slave morality_ resulting from its suppressed
rancour, he positively revels in the ruling caste's delight in its
power, in the atmosphere of healthiness, freedom, frankness and
truthfulness in which it lives. Its acts of tyranny he defends or
excuses. The image it creates for itself of the slave caste is to him
far less falsified than that which the latter forms of the master caste.
Nor can there be serious question of any real injustice committed by
this caste. For there is no such thing as right or wrong in itself.
The infliction of an injury, forcible subjection, exploitation or
annihilation is not in itself a wrong, cannot be such, since life in
its essence, in its primary functions, is nothing but oppression,
exploitation and annihilation. Conditions of justice can never be
anything but exceptional conditions, that is, as limitations of the
real desire of life, the object of which is power.
Nietzsche replaces Schopenhauer's _Will to Life_ and Darwin's _Struggle
for Existence_ by the _Will to Power_. In his view the fight is not
for life--bare existence--but for power. And he has a great deal to
say--somewhat beside the mark--of the mean and paltry conditions those
Englishmen must have had in view who set up the modest conception of
the struggle for life. It appears to him as if they had imagined a
world in which everybody is glad if he can only keep body and soul
together. But life is only an expression for the minimum. In itself
life seeks, not self-preservation alone, but self-increase, and this
is precisely the "will to power." It is therefore obvious that there
is no difference of principle between the new catchword and the old;
for the struggle for existence necessarily leads to the conflict of
forces and the fight for power. Now a system of justice, seen from
this standpoint, is a factor in the conflict of forces. Conceived
as supreme, as a remedy for every kind of struggle, it would be a
principle hostile to life and destructive of the future and progress of
humanity.