the impudent youth of Pforta and the academic free lance of Bonn and
Leipsic had become merged into a man sure of himself and contemptuous
of all whose search for the truth was hampered or hedged about by
any respect for statute or precedent. He saw that the philosophers
and sages of the day, in many of their most gorgeous flights of
logic, started from false premises, and he observed the fact that
certain of the dominant moral, political and social maxims of the
time were mere foolishness. It struck him, too, that all of this
faulty ratiocination--all of this assumption of outworn doctrines and
dependence upon exploded creeds--was not confined to the confessedly
orthodox. There was fallacy no less disgusting in the other camp. The
professed apostles of revolt were becoming as bad as the old crusaders
and apologists.
Nietzsche harbored a fevered yearning to call all of these false
prophets to book and to reduce their fine axioms to absurdity.
Accordingly, he planned a series of twenty-four pamphlets and decided
to call them "_Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_" which may be translated as
"Inopportune Speculations," or more clearly, "Essays in Sham-Smashing."
In looking about for a head to smash in essay number one, his eye,
naturally enough, alighted upon that of David Strauss, the favorite
philosopher and fashionable iconoclast of the day. Strauss had been a
preacher but had renounced the cloth and set up shop as a critic of
Christianity.[1] He had labored with good intentions, no doubt, but the
net result of all his smug agnosticism was that his disciples were as
self-satisfied, bigoted and prejudiced in the garb of agnostics as they
had been before as Christians. Nietzsche's clear eye saw this and in
the first of his little pamphlets, "_David Strauss, der Bekenner und
der Schriftsteller_" ("David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer"),
he bore down upon Strauss' _bourgeoise_ pseudo-skepticism most
savagely. This was in 1873.
"Strauss," he said, "utterly evades the question, What is the meaning
of life? He had an opportunity to show courage, to turn his back
upon the Philistines, and to boldly deduce a new morality from that
constant warfare which destroys all but the fittest, but to do this
would have required a love of truth infinitely higher than that which
spends itself in violent invectives against parsons, miracles and the
historical humbug of the resurrection. Strauss had no such courage.
Had he worked out the Darwinian doctrine to its last decimal he would
have had the Philistines against him to a man. As it is, they are with
him. He has wasted his time in combatting Christianity's nonessentials.
For the idea at the bottom of it he has proposed no substitute. In
consequence, his philosophy is stale."[2]
As a distinguished critic has pointed out, Nietzsche's attack was
notable, not only for its keen analysis and ruthless honesty, but also
for its courage. It required no little bravery, three years after
Sedan, to tell the Germans that the new culture which constituted their
pride was rotten, and that, unless it were purified in the fire of
absolute truth, it might one day wreck their civilization.
In the year following Nietzsche returned to the attack with a criticism
of history, which was then the fashionable science of the German
universities, on account, chiefly, of its usefulness in exploding
the myths of Christianity. He called his essay _"Vom Nutzen und
Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben_" ("On the Good and Bad Effects
of History upon Human Life") and in it he took issue with the reigning
pedagogues and professors of the day. There was much hard thinking
and no little good writing in this essay and it made its mark. The
mere study of history, argued Nietzsche, unless some definite notion
regarding the destiny of man were kept ever in mind, was misleading
and confusing. There was great danger in assuming that everything
which happened was part of some divine and mysterious plan for the
ultimate attainment of perfection. As a matter of fact, many historical
events were meaningless, and this was particularly true of those
expressions of "governments, public opinion and majorities" which
historians were prone to accentuate. To Nietzsche the ideas and doings
of peoples seemed infinitely less important than the ideas and doings
of exceptional individuals. To put it more simply, he believed that
one man, Hannibal, was of vastly more importance to the world than all
the other Carthaginians of his time taken together. Herein we have a
reappearance of Dionysus and a foreshadowing of the _herrenmoral_ and
superman of later days.
Nietzsche's next essay was devoted to Schopenhauer and was printed
in 1874. He called it "_Schopenhauer als Erzieher_" ("Schopenhauer
as a Teacher") and in it he laid his burnt offering upon the altar
of the great pessimist, who was destined to remain his hero, if no
longer his god, until the end. Nietzsche was already beginning to read
rebellious ideas of his own into "The World as Will and Idea," but in
two things--the theory of will and the impulse toward truth--he and
Schopenhauer were ever as one. He preached a holy war upon all those
influences which had made the apostle of pessimism, in his life-time,
an unheard outcast. He raged against the narrowness of university
schools of philosophy and denounced all governmental interference
in speculation--whether it were expressed crudely, by inquisitorial
laws and the _Index_, or softly and insidiously, by the bribery of
comfortable berths and public honors.
"Experience teaches us," he said, "that nothing stands so much in the
way of developing great philosophers as the custom of supporting bad
ones in state universities.... It is the popular theory that the posts
given to the latter make them 'free' to do original work; as a matter
of fact, the effect is quite the contrary.... No state would ever dare
to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. And why? Because the
state is always afraid of them.... It seems to me that there is need
for a higher tribunal outside the universities to critically examine
the doctrines they teach. As soon as philosophers are willing to resign
their salaries, they will constitute such a tribunal. Without pay and
without honors, it will be able to free itself from the prejudices
of the age. Like Schopenhauer, it will be the judge of the so-called
culture around it."[3]
Years later Nietzsche denied that, in this essay, he committed himself
irretrievably to the whole philosophy of Schopenhauer and a fair
reading bears him out. He was not defending Schopenhauer's doctrine
of renunciation, but merely asking that he be given a hearing. He was
pleading the case of foes as well as of friends: all he asked was that
the forum be opened to every man who had something new to say.
Nietzsche regarded Schopenhauer as a king among philosophers because
he shook himself entirely free of the dominant thought of his time. In
an age marked, beyond everything, by humanity's rising reliance upon
human reason, he sought to show that reason was a puny offshoot of
an irresistible natural law--the law of self-preservation. Nietzsche
admired the man's courage and agreed with him in his insistence that
this law was at the bottom of all sentient activity, but he was never
a subscriber to Schopenhauer's surrender and despair. From the very
start, indeed, he was a prophet of defiance, and herein his divergence
from Schopenhauer was infinite. As his knowledge broadened and his
scope widened, he expanded and developed his philosophy, and often he
found it necessary to modify it in detail. But that he ever turned
upon himself in fundamentals is untrue. Nietzsche at 40 and Nietzsche
at 25 were essentially the same. The germ of practically all his
writings lies in his first book--nay, it is to be found further back:
in the wild speculations of his youth.
The fourth of the "_Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_" (and the last, for
the original design of the series was not carried out) was "Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth."[4] This was published in 1876 and neither it
nor the general subject of Nietzsche's relations with Wagner need be
considered here. In a subsequent chapter the whole matter will be
discussed. For the present, it is sufficient to say that Nietzsche met
Wagner through the medium of Ritschl's wife; that they became fast
friends; that Nietzsche hailed the composer as a hero sent to make the
drama an epitome of the life unfettered and unbounded, of life defiant
and joyful; that Wagner, after starting from the Schopenhauer base,
travelled toward St. Francis rather than toward Dionysus, and that
Nietzsche, after vain expostulations, read the author of "Parsifal"
out of meeting and pronounced him anathema. It was all a case of
misunderstanding. Wagner was an artist, and not a philosopher. Right or
wrong, Christianity was beautiful, and as a thing of beauty it called
aloud to him. To Nietzsche beauty seemed a mere phase of truth.
It was during this period of preliminary skirmishing that Nietzsche's
ultimate philosophy began to formulate itself. He saw clearly that
there was something radically wrong with the German culture of the
day--that many things esteemed right and holy were, in reality,
unspeakable, and that many things under the ban of church and state
were far from wrong in themselves. He saw, too, that there had grown
up a false logic and that its taint was upon the whole of contemporary
thought. Men maintained propositions plainly erroneous and excused
themselves by the plea that ideals were greater than actualities. The
race was subscribing to one thing and practicing another. Christianity
was official, but not a single real Christian was to be found in all
Christendom. Thousands bowed down to men and ideas that they despised
and denounced things that every sane man knew were necessary and
inevitable. The result was a flavor of dishonesty and hypocrisy in all
human affairs. In the abstract the laws--of the church, the state and
society--were looked upon as impeccable, but every man, in so far as
they bore upon him personally, tried his best to evade them.
Other philosophers, in Germany and elsewhere, had made the same
observation and there was in progress a grand assault-at-arms upon
old ideas. Huxley and Spencer, in England, were laboring hard in the
vineyard planted by Darwin; Ibsen, in Norway, was preparing for his
epoch-making life-work, and in far America Andrew D. White and others
were battling to free education from the bonds of theology. Thus it
will be seen that, at the start, Nietzsche was no more a pioneer than
any one of a dozen other men. Some of these other men, indeed, were
far better equipped for the fray than he, and their services, for a
long while, seemed a great deal more important. But it was his good
fortune, before his working days were over, to press the conflict much
further afield than the others. Beginning where they ended, he fought
his way into the very citadel of the enemy.
His attack upon Christianity, which is described at length later on,
well exemplifies this uncompromising thoroughness. Nietzsche saw
that the same plan would have to be pursued in examining all other
concepts--religious, political or social. It would be necessary to pass
over surface symptoms and go to the heart of things: to tunnel down
deep into ideas; to trace out their history and seek out their origins.
There were no willing hands to help him in this: it was, in a sense,
a work new to the world. In consequence Nietzsche perceived that he
would have to go slowly and that it would be needful to make every step
plain. It was out of the question to expect encouragement: if the task
attracted notice at all, this notice would probably take the form of
blundering opposition. But Nietzsche began his clearing and his road
cutting with a light heart. The men of his day might call him accursed,
but in time his honesty would shame all denial. This was his attitude
always: he felt that neglect and opprobrium were all in his day's work
and he used to say that if ever the generality of men endorsed any idea
that he had advanced he would be convinced at once that he had made an
error.
In his preliminary path-finding Nietzsche concerned himself much with
the history of specific ideas. He showed how the thing which was a sin
in one age became the virtue of the next. He attacked hope, faith and
charity in this way, and he made excursions into nearly every field
of human thought--from art to primary education. All of this occupied
the first half of the 70's. Nietzsche was in indifferent health and
his labors tired him so greatly that he thought more than once of
giving up his post at Basel, with its dull round of lecturing and
quizzing. But his private means at this time were not great enough
to enable him to surrender his salary and so he had to hold on. He
thought, too, of going to Vienna to study the natural sciences so that
he might attain the wide and certain knowledge possessed by Spencer,
but the same considerations forced him to abandon the plan. He spent
his winters teaching and investigating and his summers at various
watering-places--from Tribschen, in Switzerland, where the Wagners were
his hosts, to Sorrento, in Italy.
At Sorrento he happened to take lodgings in a house which also
sheltered Dr. Paul Rée, the author of "Psychological Observations,"
"The Origin of Moral Feelings," and other metaphysical works. That
Rée gave him great assistance he acknowledged himself in later years,
but that his ideas were, in any sense, due to this chance meeting (as
Max Nordau would have us believe) is out of the question, for, as we
have seen, they were already pretty clear in his mind a long while
before. But Rée widened his outlook a great deal, it is evident,
and undoubtedly made him acquainted with the English naturalists
who had sprung up as spores of Darwin, and with a number of great
Frenchmen--Montaigne, Larochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Fontenelle,
Vauvenargues and Chamfort.
Nietzsche had been setting down his thoughts and conclusions in the
form of brief memoranda and as he grew better acquainted with the
French philosophers, many of whom published their works as collections
of aphorisms, he decided to employ that form himself. Thus he began to
arrange the notes which were to be given to the world as "_Menschliches
allzu Menschliches_" ("Human, All-too Human"). In 1876 he got leave
from Basel and gave his whole time to the work. During the winter of
1876-7, with the aid of a disciple named Bernhard Cron (better known as
Peter Gast) he prepared the first volume for the press. Nietzsche was
well aware that it would make a sensation and while it was being set up
his courage apparently forsook him and he suggested to his publisher
that it be sent forth anonymously. But the latter would not hear of it
and so the first part left the press in 1878.
As the author had expected, the book provoked a fine frenzy of horror
among the pious. The first title chosen for it, "_Die Pflugschar_"
("The Plowshare"), and the one finally selected, "Human, All-too
Human," indicate that it was an attempt to examine the underside of
human ideas. In it Nietzsche challenged the whole of current morality.
He showed that moral ideas were not divine, but human, and that, like
all things human, they were subject to change. He showed that good
and evil were but relative terms, and that it was impossible to say,
finally and absolutely, that a certain action was right and another
wrong. He applied the acid of critical analysis to a hundred and one
specific ideas, and his general conclusion, to put it briefly, was that
no human being had a right, in any way or form, to judge or direct the
actions of any other being. Herein we have, in a few words, that gospel
of individualism which all our sages preach today.[5]
Nietzsche sent a copy of the book to Wagner and the great composer was
so appalled that he was speechless. Even the author's devoted sister,
who worshipped him as an intellectual god, was unable to follow him.
Germany, in general, pronounced the work a conglomeration of crazy
fantasies and wild absurdities--and Nietzsche smiled with satisfaction.
In 1879 he published the second volume, to which he gave the sub-title
of "_Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche_" ("Miscellaneous Opinions and
Aphorisms") and shortly thereafter he finally resigned his chair at
Basel. The third part of the book appeared in 1880 as "_Der Wanderer
und sein Schatten_" ("The Wanderer and His Shadow"). The three volumes
were published as two in 1886 as "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_"
with the explanatory sub-title, "_Ein Buch für Freie Geister_" ("A Book
for Free Spirits").
[1] David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) sprang into fame with his "_Das
Leben Jesu,_" 1835 (Eng. tr. by George Eliot, 1846), but the book which
served as Nietzsche's target was "_Der alte und der neue Glaube_" ("The
Old Faith and the New"), 1872.
[2] "_David Strauss, der Bekenner und der Schriftsteller_," § 7.
[3] "_Schopenhauer als Erzieher,_" § 8.
[4] According to Nietzsche's original plan the series was to have
included pamphlets on "Literature and the Press," "Art and Painters,"
"The Higher Education," "German and Counter-German," "War and the
Nation," "The Teacher," "Religion," "Society and Trade," "Society and
Natural Science," and "The City," with an epilogue entitled "The Way to
Freedom."
[5] It must be remembered, in considering all of Nietzsche's writings,
that when he spoke of a human being, he meant a being of the higher
sort--_i.e._ one capable of clear reasoning. He regarded the drudge
class, which is obviously unable to think for itself, as unworthy of
consideration. Its highest mission, he believed, was to serve and
obey the master class. But he held that there should be no artificial
barriers to the rise of an individual born to the drudge class who
showed an accidental capacity for independent reasoning. Such an
individual, he believed, should be admitted, _ipso facto_, to the
master class. Naturally enough, he held to the converse too. _Vide_ the
chapter on "Civilization."
IV
THE PROPHET OF THE SUPERMAN
Nietzsche spent the winter of 1879-80 at Naumburg, his old home. During
the ensuing year he was very ill, indeed, and for awhile he believed
that he had but a short while to live. Like all such invalids he
devoted a great deal of time to observing and discussing his condition.
He became, indeed, a hypochondriac of the first water and began to take
a sort of melancholy pleasure in his infirmities. He sought relief
at all the baths and cures of Europe: he took hot baths, cold baths,
salt-water baths and mud baths. Every new form of pseudo-therapy found
him in its freshman class. To owners of sanatoria and to inventors of
novel styles of massage, irrigation, sweating and feeding he was a joy
unlimited. But he grew worse instead of better.
After 1880, his life was a wandering one. His sister, after her
marriage, went to Paraguay for a while, and during her absence
Nietzsche made his progress from the mountains to the sea, and then
back to the mountains again. He gave up his professorship that he might
spend his winters in Italy and his summers in the Engadine. In the
face of all this suffering and travelling about, close application, of
course, was out of the question. So he contented himself with working
whenever and however his headaches, his doctors and the railway
time-tables would permit--on hotel verandas, in cure-houses and in
the woods. He would take long, solitary walks and struggle with his
problems by the way. He swallowed more and more pills; he imbibed
mineral waters by the gallon; he grew more and more moody and ungenial.
One of his favorite haunts, in the winter time, was a verdant little
neck of land that jutted out into Lake Maggiore. There he could think
and dream undisturbed. One day, when he found that some one had placed
a rustic bench on the diminutive peninsula, that passersby might rest,
he was greatly incensed.
Nietzsche would make brief notes of his thoughts during his daylight
rambles, and in the evenings would polish and expand them. As we have
seen, his early books were sent to the printer as mere collections of
aphorisms, without effort at continuity. Sometimes a dozen subjects are
considered in two pages, and then again, there is occasionally a little
essay of three or four pages. Nietzsche chose this form because it had
been used by the French philosophers he admired, and because it well
suited the methods of work that a pain-racked frame imposed upon him.
He was ever in great fear that some of his precious ideas would be lost
to posterity--that death, the ever-threatening, would rob him of his
rightful immortality and the world of his stupendous wisdom--and so he
made efforts, several times, to engage an amanuensis capable of jotting
down, after the fashion of Johnson's Boswell, the chance phrases that
fell from his lips. His sister was too busy to undertake the task:
whenever she was with him her whole time was employed in guarding him
from lion-hunters, scrutinizing his daily fare and deftly inveigling
him into answering his letters, brushing his clothes and getting his
hair cut. Finally, Paul Rée and another friend, Fräulein von Meysenbug,
brought to his notice a young Russian woman, Mlle. Lou Salomé, who
professed vast interest in his work and offered to help him. But this
arrangement quickly ended in disaster, for Nietzsche fell in love with
the girl--she was only 20--and pursued her over half of Europe when she
fled. To add to the humors of the situation Rée fell in love with her
too, and the two friends thus became foes and there was even some talk
of a duel. Mlle. Salomé, however, went to Rée, and with his aid she
later wrote a book about Nietzsche.[1] Frau Förster-Nietzsche sneers
at that book, but the fact is not to be forgotten that she was very
jealous of Mlle. Salomé, and gave constant proof of it by unfriendly
word and act. In the end, the latter married one Prof. Andreas and
settled down in Göttingen.
Early in 1881 Nietzsche published "_Morgenröte_" ("The Dawn of
Day"). It was begun at Venice in 1880 and continued at Marienbad,
Lago Maggiore and Genoa. It was, in a broad way, a continuation of
_"Menschliches allzu Menschliches_." It dealt with an infinite variety
of subjects, from matrimony to Christianity, and from education to
German patriotism. To all the test of fundamental truth was applied: of
everything Nietzsche asked, not, Is it respectable or lawful? but, Is
it essentially true? These early works, at best, were mere note-books.
Nietzsche saw that the ground would have to be plowed, that people
would have to grow accustomed to the idea of questioning high and holy
things, before a new system of philosophy would be understandable or
possible. In "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_" and in _"Morgenröte_"
he undertook this preparatory cultivation.
The book which followed, "_Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_" ("The Joyful
Science") continued the same task. The first edition contained four
parts and was published in 1882. In 1887 a fifth part was added.
Nietzsche had now completed his plowing and was ready to sow his crop.
He had demonstrated, by practical examples, that moral ideas were
vulnerable, and that the Ten Commandments might be debated. Going
further, he had adduced excellent historical evidence against the
absolute truth of various current conceptions of right and wrong, and
had traced a number of moral ideas back to decidedly lowly sources. His
work so far had been entirely destructive and he had scarcely ventured
to hint at his plans for a reconstruction of the scheme of things.
As he himself says, he spent the four years between 1878 and 1882 in
preparing the way for his later work.
"I descended," he says, "into the lowest depths, I searched to the
bottom, I examined and pried into an old faith on which, for thousands
of years, philosophers had built as upon a secure foundation. The old
structures came tumbling down about me. I undermined our old faith in
morals."[2]