the charcoal to the diamond; are we not near of kin? The creators are
hard. Their blessedness it is to press their hand upon future centuries
as upon wax.
No doctrine revolts Zarathustra more than that of the vanity and
senselessness of life. This is in his eyes ancient babbling, old
wives' babbling. And the pessimists who sum up life with a balance of
aversion, and assert the badness of existence, are the objects of his
positive loathing. He prefers pain to annihilation.
The same extravagant love of life is expressed in the _Hymn to Life_,
written by his friend, Lou von Salomé, which Nietzsche set for chorus
and orchestra. We read here--
"So truly loves a friend his friend
As I love thee, O Life in myst'ry hidden!
If joy or grief to me thou send;
If loud I laugh or else to weep am bidden,
Yet love I thee with all thy changeful faces;
And should'st thou doom me to depart,
So would I tear myself from thy embraces,
As comrade from a comrade's heart."
And the poem concludes--
"And if thou hast now left no bliss to crown me.
Lead on I thou hast thy sorrow still!"[8]
When Achilles chose to be a day-labourer on earth rather than a king in
the realm of the shades, the expression was a weak one in comparison
with this passionate outburst, which paradoxically thirsts even for the
cup of pain.
Eduard von Hartmann believes in a beginning and end of the "world
process." He concludes that no eternity can lie behind us; otherwise
everything possible must already have happened, which--according to
his contention--is not the case. In sharp contrast to him, on this
point as on others, Zarathustra teaches, with, be it said, a somewhat
shallow mysticism--which is derived from the ancient Pythagoreans'
idea of the circular course of history and is influenced by Cohelet's
Hebrew philosophy of life--the eternal recurrence; that is to say,
that all things eternally return and we ourselves with them, that
we have already existed an infinite number of times and all things
with us. The great clock of the universe is to him an hour-glass,
which is constantly turned and runs out again and again. This is the
direct antithesis of Hartmann's doctrine of universal destruction,
and curiously enough it was put forward at about the same time by two
French thinkers: by Blanqui in _L'Éternité par les Astres_ (1871), and
by Gustave Le Bon in _L'Homme et les Sociétés_ (1881).
At his death Zarathustra will say: Now I disappear and die; in a moment
I shall be nothing, for the soul is mortal as the body; but the complex
of causes in which I am involved will return, and it will continually
reproduce me.
At the close of the third part of _Zarathustra_ there is a chapter
headed "The Second Dance Song." Dance, in Nietzsche's language, is
always an expression for the lofty lightness of mind, which is exalted
above the gravity of earth and above all stupid seriousness. This song,
extremely remarkable in its language, is a good specimen of the style
of the work, when it soars into its highest flights of poetry. Life
appears to Zarathustra as a woman; she strikes her castanets and he
dances with her, flinging out all his wrath with life and all his love
of life.
"Lately looked I into thine eyes, O Life! Gold saw
I gleaming in thy night-eye--my heart stood still with
the joy of it.
"A golden skiff saw I gleaming upon shadowy waters,
a sinking, drinking, reblinking, golden swinging-skiff.
"At my foot, dancing-mad, didst thou cast a glance,
a laughing, questioning, melting, swinging-glance.
"Twice only did thy little hands strike the castanets
--then was my foot swinging in the madness of the dance.
*********************************************************
"I fear thee near, I love thee far; thy flight allureth
me, thy seeking secureth me; I suffer, but for thee, what
would I not gladly bear!
"For thee, whose coldness inflameth, whose hatred mis-leadeth,
whose flight enchaineth, whose mockery pleadeth!
"Who would not hate thee, thou great bindress, inwindress,
temptress, seekress, findress! Who would not love thee,
thou innocent, impatient, wind-swift, child-eyed sinner!"
In this dialogue between the dancers, Life and her lover, these words
occur: O Zarathustra, thou art far from loving me as dearly as thou
sayest; thou art not faithful enough to me. There is an old, heavy
booming-clock; it boometh by night up to thy cave. When thou hearest
this clock at midnight, then dost thou think until noon that soon thou
wilt forsake me.
And then follows, in conclusion, the song of the old midnight clock.
But in the fourth part of the work, in the section called "The
Sleepwalker's Song," this short strophe is interpreted line by line;
in form half like a mediæval watchman's chant, half like the hymn of
a mystic, it contains the mysterious spirit of Nietzsche's esoteric
doctrine concentrated in the shortest formula--
Midnight is drawing on, and as mysteriously, as terribly,
and as cordially as the midnight bell speaketh to
Zarathustra, so calleth he to the higher men: At midnight
many a thing is heard which may not be heard by day; and
the midnight speaketh: _O man, take heed_!
Whither hath time gone? Have I not sunk into deep wells?
The world sleepeth. And shuddering it asketh: Who is to be
master of the world? _What saith the deep midnight_?
The bell boometh, the wood-worm burroweth, the heart-worm
gnaweth: _Ah! the world is deep_.
But the old bell is like a sonorous instrument; all pain
hath bitten into its heart, the pain of fathers and
forefathers; and all joy hath set it swinging, the joy of
fathers and forefathers--there riseth from the bell an
odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, golden-wine perfume
of old happiness, and this song: The world is deep, _and
deeper than the day had thought_.
I am too pure for the rude hands of the day. The purest
shall be masters of the world, the unacknowledged, the
strongest, the midnight-souls, who are brighter and deeper
than any day. _Deep is its woe_.
But joy goeth deeper than heart's grief. For grief saith:
Break, my heart! Fly away, my pain! _Woe saith: Begone_!
But, ye higher men, said ye ever Yea to a single joy, then
said ye also Yea unto all woe. For joy and woe are linked,
enamoured, inseparable. And all beginneth again, all is
eternal. _All joys desire eternity, deep, deep, eternity_.
This, then, is the midnight song--
"Oh Mensch! Gieb Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
'Ich schlief, ich schlief--
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:--
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh--
Lust--tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit--
--will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!'"
[8] Translated by Herman Scheffauer. Text and pianoforte score are
given in Vol. XVII (_Ecce Homo_) of the English edition of Nietzsche's
works.
6.
Such is he, then, this warlike mystic, poet and thinker, this
immoralist who is never tired of preaching. Coming to him fresh from
the English philosophers, one feels transported to another world. The
Englishmen are all patient spirits, whose natural bent is towards
the accumulation and investigation of a mass of small facts in order
thereby to discover a law. The best of them are Aristotelian minds.
Few of them fascinate us personally or seem to be of very complex
personality. Their influence lies more in what they do than in what
they are. Nietzsche, on the other hand, like Schopenhauer, is a
guesser, a seer, an artist, less interesting in what he does than in
what he is.
Little as he feels himself a German, he nevertheless continues the
metaphysical and intuitive tradition of German philosophy and has the
German thinker's profound dislike of any utilitarian point of view.
In his passionate aphoristical form he is unquestionably original; in
the substance of his thought he reminds one here and there of many
another writer, both of contemporary Germany and of France; but he
evidently regards, it as perfectly absurd that he should have to thank
a contemporary for anything, and storms like a German at all those who
resemble him in any point.
I have already mentioned how strongly he reminds one of Ernest Renan
in his conception of culture and in his hope of an aristocracy of
intellect that could seize the dominion of the world. Nevertheless he
has not one appreciative word to say for Renan.
I have also alluded to the fact that Eduard von Hartmann was his
predecessor in his fight against Schopenhauer's morality of pity. In
this author, whose talent is indisputable, even though his importance
may not correspond with his extraordinary reputation, Nietzsche, with
the uncritical injustice of a German university professor, would
only see a charlatan. Hartmann's nature is of heavier stuff than
Nietzsche's. He is ponderous, self-complacent, fundamentally Teutonic,
and, in contrast to Nietzsche, entirely unaffected by French spirit and
southern sunshine. But there are points of resemblance between them,
which are due to historical conditions in the Germany that reared them
both.
In the first place, there was something analogous in their positions
in life, since both as artillerymen had gone through a similar
schooling; and in the second place, in their culture, inasmuch as the
starting-point of both is Schopenhauer and both nevertheless retain
a great respect for Hegel, thus uniting these two hostile brothers
in their veneration. They are further in agreement in their equally
estranged attitude to Christian piety and Christian morality, as well
as in their contempt, so characteristic of modern Germany, for every
kind of democracy.
Nietzsche resembles Hartmann in his attacks on socialists and
anarchists, with the difference that Hartmann's attitude is here more
that of the savant, while Nietzsche has the bad taste to delight in
talking about "anarchist dogs," expressing in the same breath his own
loathing of the State. Nietzsche further resembles Hartmann in his
repeated demonstration of the impossibility of the ideals of equality
and of peace, since life is nothing but inequality and war: "What is
good? To be brave is good. I do not say, the good cause sanctifies war,
but the good war sanctifies every cause." Like his predecessor, he
dwells on the necessity of the struggle for power and on the supposed
value of war to culture.
In both these authors, comparatively independent as they are, the
one a mystical natural philosopher, the other a mystical immoralist,
is reflected the all-dominating militarism of the new German Empire.
Hartmann approaches on many points the German snobbish national
feeling. Nietzsche is opposed to it on principle, as he is to the
statesman "who has piled up for the Germans a new tower of Babel, a
monster in extent of territory and power and for that reason called
great," but something of Bismarck's spirit broods nevertheless over
the works of both. As regards the question of war, the only difference
between them is that Nietzsche does not desire war for the sake of a
fantastic redemption of the world, but in order that manliness may not
become extinct.
In his contempt for woman and his abuse of her efforts for emancipation
Nietzsche again agrees with Hartmann, though only in so far as both
here recall Schopenhauer, whose echo Hartmann is in this connection.
But whereas Hartmann is here only a moralising doctrinaire with a
somewhat offensive dash of pedantry, one can trace beneath Nietzsche's
attacks on the female sex that subtle sense of woman's dangerousness
which points to painful experience. He does not seem to have known
many women, but those he did know, he evidently loved and hated, but
above all despised. Again and again he returns to the unfitness of the
free and great spirit for marriage. In many of these utterances there
is a strongly personal note, especially in those which persistently
assert the necessity of a solitary life for a thinker. But as regards
the less personal arguments about woman, old-world Germany here speaks
through the mouth of Nietzsche, as through that of Hartmann; the
Germany whose women, in contrast to those of France and England, have
for centuries been relegated to the domestic and strictly private life.
We may recognise in these German writers generally that they have an
eye for the profound antagonism and perpetual war between the sexes,
which Stuart Mill neither saw nor understood. But the injustice to
man and the rather tame fairness to woman, in which Mill's admirable
emancipatory attempt occasionally results, is nevertheless greatly to
be preferred to Nietzsche's brutal unfairness, which asserts that in
our treatment of women we ought to return to "the vast common sense of
old Asia."
Finally, in his conflict with pessimism Nietzsche had Eugen Dühring
(especially in his _Werth des Lebens_) as a forerunner, and this
circumstance seems to have inspired him with so much ill-will, so much
exasperation indeed, that in a polemic now open, now disguised, he
calls Dühring his ape. Dühring is a horror to him as a plebeian, as
an Antisemite, as the apostle of revenge, and as the disciple of the
Englishmen and of Comte; but Nietzsche has not a word to say about
Dühring's very remarkable qualities, to which such epithets as these
do not apply. But we can easily understand, taking Nietzsche's own
destiny into consideration, that Dühring, the blind man, the neglected
thinker who despises official scholars, the philosopher who teaches
outside the universities, who, in spite of being so little pampered by
life, loudly proclaims his love of life--should appear to Nietzsche as
a caricature of himself. This was, however, no reason for his now and
then adopting Dühring's abusive tone. And it must be confessed that,
much as Nietzsche wished to be what, for that matter, he was--a Polish
_szlachcic_, a European man of the world and a cosmopolitan thinker--in
one respect he always remained the German professor: in the rude abuse
in which his uncontrolled hatred of rivals found vent; and, after
all, his only rivals as a modern German philosopher were Hartmann and
Dühring.
It is strange that this man, who learned such an immense amount from
French moralists and psychologists like La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort
and Stendhal, was able to acquire so little of the self-control of
their form. He was never subjected to the restraint which the literary
tone of France imposes upon every writer as regards the mention and
exhibition of his own person. For a long time he seems to have striven
to discover himself and to become completely himself. In order to find
himself he crept into his solitude, as Zarathustra into his cave. By
the time he had succeeded in arriving at full independent development
and felt the rich flow of individual thought within him, he had lost
all external standards for measuring his own value; all bridges to the
world around him were broken down. The fact that no recognition came
from without only aggravated his self-esteem. The first glimmer of
recognition further exalted this self-esteem. At last it closed above
his head and darkened this rare and commanding intellect.
As he stands disclosed in his incompleted life-work, he is a writer
well worth studying.
My principal reason for calling attention to him is that Scandinavian
literature appears to me to have been living quite long enough on the
ideas that were put forward and discussed in the last decade. It looks
as though the power of conceiving great ideas were on the wane, and
even as though receptivity for them were fast vanishing; people are
still busy with the same doctrines, certain theories of heredity, a
little Darwinism, a little emancipation of woman, a little morality of
happiness, a little freethought, a little worship of democracy, etc.
And as to the culture of our "cultured" people, the level represented
approximately by the Revue des Deux Mondes threatens to become the
high-water mark of taste. It does not seem yet to have dawned on the
best among us that the finer, the only true culture begins on the far
side of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ in the great personality, rich in
ideas.
The intellectual development of Scandinavia has advanced comparatively
rapidly in its literature. We have seen great authors rise above
all orthodoxy, though they began by being perfectly simple-hearted
believers. This is very honourable, but in the case of those who cannot
rise higher still, it is nevertheless rather meagre. In the course of
the 'seventies it became clear to almost all Scandinavian authors that
it would no longer do to go on writing on the basis of the Augsburg
Confession. Some quietly dropped it, others opposed it more or less
noisily; while most of those who abandoned it entrenched themselves
against the public, and to some extent against the bad conscience of
their own childhood, behind the established Protestant morality; now
and then, indeed, behind a good, everyday soup-stock morality--I call
it thus because so many a soup has been served from it.
But be that as it may, attacks on existing prejudices and defence of
existing institutions threaten at present to sink into one and the same
commonplace familiarity.
Soon, I believe, we shall once more receive a lively impression
that art cannot rest content with ideas and ideals for the average
mediocrity, any more than with remnants of the old' catechisms; but
that great art demands intellects that stand on a level with the most
individual personalities of contemporary thought, in exceptionality, in
independence, in defiance and in aristocratic self-supremacy.
II
DECEMBER 1899
More than ten years have gone by since I first called attention to
Friedrich Nietzsche. My essay on "Aristocratic Radicalism" was the
first study of any length to be devoted, in the whole of Europe, to
this man, whose name has since flown round the world and is at this
moment one of the most famous among our contemporaries. This thinker,
then almost unknown and seldom mentioned, became, a few years later,
the fashionable philosopher in every country of Europe, and this while
the great man, to whose lot had suddenly fallen the universal fame he
had so passionately desired, lived on without a suspicion of it all, a
living corpse cut off from the world by incurable insanity.
Beginning with his native land, which so long as he retained his powers
never gave him a sign of recognition, his writings have now made their
way in every country. Even in France, usually so loth to admit foreign,
and especially German, influence, his character and his doctrine have
been studied and expounded again and again. In Germany, as well as
outside it, a sort of school has been formed, which appeals to his
authority and not unfrequently compromises him, or rather itself, a
good deal. The opposition to him is conducted sometimes (as by Ludwig
Stein) on serious and scientific lines, although from narrow pedagogic
premises; sometimes (as by Herr Max Nordau) with sorry weapons and with
the assumed superiority of presumptuous mediocrity.
Interesting articles and books on Nietzsche have been written by Peter
Gast and Lou von Salomé in German and by Henri Lichtenberger in French;
and in addition Nietzsche's sister, Frau Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche,
has not only published an excellent edition of his collected works
(including his youthful sketches), but has written his Life (and
published his Correspondence).
My old essay on Nietzsche has thus long ago been outstripped by
later works, the writers of which were able to take a knowledge of
Nietzsche's work for granted and therefore to examine his writings
without at the same time having to acquaint the reader with their
contents. That essay, it may be remembered, occasioned an exchange
of words between Prof. Höffding and myself, in the course of which I
had the opportunity of expressing my own views more clearly and of
showing what points they had in common with Nietzsche's, and where they
diverged from his.[1] As, of course, these polemical utterances of mine
were not translated into foreign languages, no notice was taken of them
anywhere abroad.
The first essay itself, on the other hand, which was soon translated,
brought me in a number of attacks, which gradually acquired a perfectly
stereotyped formula. In an article by a Germanised Swede, who wanted to
be specially spiteful, I was praised for having in that essay broken
with my past and resolutely renounced the set of liberal opinions
and ideas I had hitherto championed. Whatever else I might be blamed
for, it had to be acknowledged that twice in my life I had been the
spokesman of German ideas, in my youth of Hegel's and in my maturer
years of Nietzsche's. In a book by a noisy German charlatan living in
Paris, Herr Nordau, it was shortly afterwards asserted that if Danish
parents could guess what I was really teaching their children at the
University of Copenhagen, they would kill me in the street--a downright
incitement to murder, which was all the more comic in its pretext,
as admission to my lectures has always been open to everybody, the
greater part of these lectures has appeared in print, and, finally,
twenty years ago the parents used very frequently to come and hear
me. It was repeated in the same quarter that after being a follower
of Stuart Mill, I had in that essay turned my back on my past, since
I had now appeared as an adherent of Nietzsche. This last statement
was afterwards copied in a very childish book by a Viennese lady who,
without a notion of the actual facts, writes away, year in, year out,
on Scandinavian literature for the benefit of the German public. This
nonsense was finally disgorged once more in 1899 by Mr. Alfred Ipsen,
who contributed to the London _Athenæum_ surveys of Danish literature,
among the virtues of which impartiality did not find a place.
In the face of these constantly repeated assertions from abroad, I may
be permitted to make it clear once more--as I have already shown in
_Tilskueren_ in 1890 (p. 259)--that my principles have not been in the
slightest way modified through contact with Nietzsche. When I became
acquainted with him I was long past the age at which it is possible
to change one's fundamental view of life. Moreover, I maintained many
years ago, in reply to my Danish opponents, that my first thought with
regard to a philosophical book was by no means to ask whether what
it contains is right or wrong: "I go straight through the book to
the man behind it. And my first question is this: What is the value
of this man, is he interesting, or not? If he is, then his books are
undoubtedly worth knowing. Questions of right or wrong are seldom
applicable in the highest intellectual spheres, and their answering
is not unfrequently of relatively small importance. The first lines I
wrote about Nietzsche were therefore to the effect that he deserved to
be studied and _contested_. I rejoiced in him, as I rejoice in every
powerful and uncommon individuality." And three years later I replied
to the attack of a worthy and able Swiss professor, who had branded
Nietzsche as a reactionary and a cynic, in these words, amongst others:
"No mature reader studies Nietzsche with the latent design of adopting
his opinions, still less with that of propagating them. We are not
children in search of instruction, but sceptics in search of men, and
we rejoice when we have found a man--the rarest thing there is."
It seems to me that this is not exactly the language of an adherent,
and that my critics might spare some of their powder and shot as
regards my renunciation of ideas. It is a nuisance to be forced now and
then to reply in person to all the allegations that are accumulated
against one year by year in the European press; but when others never
write a sensible word about one, it becomes an obligation at times to
stand up for one's self.