of all the world's humanitarians, but empiric experiment has more
than once proved its truth. The history of the hopelessly futile and
fatuous effort to improve the negroes of the Southern United States by
education affords one such proof. It is apparent, on brief reflection,
that the negro, no matter how much he is educated, must remain, as a
race, in a condition of subservience; that he must remain the inferior
of the stronger and more intelligent white man so long as he retains
racial differentiation. Therefore, the effort to educate him has
awakened in his mind ambitions and aspirations which, in the very
nature of things, must go unrealized, and so, while gaining nothing
whatever materially, he has lost all his old contentment, peace of mind
and happiness. Indeed, it is a commonplace of observation in the United
States that the educated and refined negro is invariably a hopeless,
melancholy, embittered and despairing man.
Nietzsche, to resume, regarded it as absolutely essential that there
be a class of laborers or slaves--his "third caste"--and was of the
opinion that such a class would exist upon earth so long as the human
race survived. Its condition, compared to that of the ruling class,
would vary but slightly, he thought, with the progress of the years. As
man's mastery of nature increased, the laborer would find his task less
and less painful, but he would always remain a fixed distance behind
those who ruled him. Therefore, Nietzsche, in his philosophy, gave no
thought to the desires and aspirations of the laboring class, because,
as we have just seen, he held that a man could not properly belong to
this class unless his desires and aspirations were so faint or so well
under the control of the ruling class that they might be neglected.
All of the Nietzschean doctrines and ideas apply only to the ruling
class. It was at the top, he argued, that mankind grew. It was only in
the ideas of those capable of original thought that progress had its
source. William the Conqueror was of far more importance, though he was
but a single man, than all the other Normans of his generation taken
together.
Nietzsche was well aware that his "first caste" was necessarily small
in numbers and that there was a strong tendency for its members to drop
out of it and seek ease and peace in the castes lower down. "Life,"
he said, "is always hardest toward the summit--the cold increases,
the responsibility increases."[3] But to the truly efficient man
these hardships are but spurs to effort. His joy is in combating and
in overcoming--in pitting his will to power against the laws and
desires of the rest of humanity. "I do not advise you to labor," says
Zarathustra, "but to fight. I do not advise you to compromise and
make peace, but to conquer. Let your labor be fighting and your peace
victory.... You say that a good cause will hallow even war? I tell you
that a good war hallows every cause. War and courage have done more
great things than charity. Not your pity, but your bravery lifts up
those about you. Let the little girlies tell you that 'good' means
'sweet' and 'touching.' I tell you that 'good' means 'brave.'... The
slave rebels against hardships and calls his rebellion superiority. Let
your superiority be an acceptance of hardships. Let your commanding be
an obeying.... Let your highest thought be: 'Man is something to be
surpassed.'... I do not advise you to love your neighbor--the nearest
human being. I advise you rather to flee from the nearest and love the
furthest human being. Higher than love to your neighbor is love to the
higher man that is to come in the future.... Propagate yourself upward.
Thus live your life. What are many years worth? I do not spare you....
Die at the right time!"[4]
The average man, said Nietzsche, is almost entirely lacking in this
gorgeous, fatalistic courage and sublime egotism. He is ever reluctant
to pit his private convictions and yearnings against those of the mass
of men. He is either afraid to risk the consequences of originality or
fearful that, since the majority of his fellows disagree with him, he
must be wrong. Therefore, no matter how strongly an unconventional idea
may possess a man, he commonly seeks to combat it and throttle it, and
the ability to do this with the least possible expenditure of effort we
call self-control. The average man, said Nietzsche, has the power of
self-control well developed, and in consequence he seldom contributes
anything positive to the thought of his age and almost never attempts
to oppose it.
We have seen in the preceding chapter that if every man, without
exception, were of this sort, all human progress would cease, because
the ideas of one generation would be handed down unchanged to the
next and there would be no effort whatever to improve the conditions
of existence by the only possible method--constant experiment with
new ideas. Therefore, it follows that the world must depend for its
advancement upon those revolutionists who, instead of overcoming their
impulse to go counter to convention, give it free rein. Of such is
Nietzsche's "first caste" composed. It is plain that among the two
lower castes, courage of this sort is regarded, not as an evidence of
strength, but as a proof of weakness. The man who outrages conventions
is a man who lacks self-control, and the majority, by a process we
have examined in our consideration of slave-morality, has exalted
self-control, which, at bottom, is the antithesis of courage, into a
place of honor higher than that belonging, by right, to courage itself.
But Nietzsche pointed out that the act of denying or combating accepted
ideas is a thing which always tends to inspire other acts of the same
sort. It is true enough that a revolutionary idea, so soon as it
replaces an old convention and obtains the sanction of the majority,
ceases to be revolutionary and becomes itself conventional, but all the
same the mere fact that it has succeeded gives courage to those who
harbor other revolutionary ideas and inspires them to give these ideas
voice. Thus, it happens that courage breeds itself, and that, in times
of great conflict, of no matter what sort, the world produces more than
an average output of originality, or, as we more commonly denominate
it, genius. In this manner Nietzsche accounted for a fact that had been
noticed by many men before him: that such tremendous struggles as the
French Revolution and the American Civil War are invariably followed by
eras of diligent inquiry, of bold overturning of existing institutions
and of marked progress. People become accustomed to unrestrained combat
and so the desirability of self-control becomes less insistent.
Nietzsche had a vast contempt for what he called "the green-grazing
happiness of the herd." Its strong morality and its insistence upon
the doctrine that whatever is, is right--that "God's in his heaven;
all's well with the world"--revolted him. He held that the so-called
rights of the masses had no justifiable existence, since everything
they asserted as a right was an assertion, more or less disguised, of
the doctrine that the unfit should survive. "There are," he said, "only
three ways in which the masses appear to me to deserve a glance: first,
as blurred copies of their betters, printed on bad paper and from worn
out plates; secondly, as a necessary opposition to stimulate the master
class, and thirdly, as instruments in the hands of the master class.
Further than this I hand them over to statistics--and the devil."[5]
Kant's proposal that the morality of every contemplated action be
tested by the question, "Suppose everyone did as I propose to do?"
seemed utterly ridiculous to Nietzsche because he saw that "everyone"
always opposed the very things which meant progress; and Kant's
corollary that the sense of duty contemplated in this dictum was "the
obligation to act in reverence for law," proved to Nietzsche merely
that both duty and law were absurdities. "Contumely," he said, "always
falls upon those who break through some custom or convention. Such men,
in fact, are called criminals. Everyone who overthrows an existing law
is, at the start, regarded as a wicked man. Long afterward, when it
is found that this law was bad and so cannot be re-established, the
epithet is changed. All history treats almost exclusively of wicked men
who, in the course of time, have come to be looked upon as good men.
All progress is the result of successful crimes."[6]
Dr. Turck,[7] Miss Paget, M. Nordau and other critics see in all this
good evidence that Nietzsche was a criminal at heart. At the bottom of
all philosophies, says Miss Paget,[8] there is always one supreme idea.
Sometimes it is a conception of nature, sometimes it is a religious
faith and sometimes it is a theory of truth. In Nietzsche's case it is
"my taste." He is always irritated: "_I_ dislike," "_I_ hate," "_I_
want to get rid of" appear on every page of his writings. He delights
in ruthlessness, his fellow men disgust him, his physical senses are
acute, he has a sick ego. For that reason he likes singularity, the
lonely Alps, classic literature and Bizet's "clear yellow" music.
Turck argues that Nietzsche was a criminal because he got pleasure out
of things which outraged the majority of his fellow men, and Nordau, in
supporting this idea, shows that it is possible for a man to experience
and approve criminal impulses and still never act them: that there are
criminals of the chair as well as of the dark lantern and sandbag. The
answer to all of this, of course, is the fact that the same method of
reasoning would convict every original thinker the world has ever known
of black felony: that it would make Martin Luther a criminal as well
as Jack Sheppard, John the Baptist as well as the Borgias, and Galileo
as well as Judas Iscariot; that it would justify the execution of all
the sublime company of heroes who have been done to death for their
opinions, from Jesus Christ down the long line.
[1] "_Der Antichrist_," § 57.
[2] In "The Governance of England," (London: 1904) Sidney Low points
out (chap. X) that, despite the rise of democracy, the government of
Great Britain is still entirely in the hands of the landed gentry
and nobility. The members of this class plainly owe their power to
the military prowess of their ancestors, and their identity with the
present military and judicial class is obvious. The typical M.P., in
fact, also writes "J.P." after his name and "Capt." or "Col." before
it. The examples of Russia, Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain and
the Latin-American republics scarcely need be mentioned. In China the
military, judicial and legislative-executive functions are always
combined, and in the United States, while the military branch of the
second caste is apparently impotent, it is plain that the balance of
legislative power in every state and in the national legislature is
held by lawyers, just as the final determination of all laws rests with
judges.
[3] "_Der Antichrist_," § 55.
[4] The quotations are from various chapters in the first part of
"_Also sprach Zarathustra_."
[5] "_Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben_."
[6] "_Morgenröte_," § 20.
[7] "_Friedrich Nietzsche und seine philosophische Irrwege_," Leipsic,
1891.
[8] _North American Review_, Dec., 1904.
IX
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE
Nietzsche's faithful sister, with almost comical and essentially
feminine disgust, bewails the fact that, as a very young man, the
philosopher became acquainted with the baleful truths set forth in
Schopenhauer's immortal essay "On Women." That this daring work greatly
influenced him is true, and that he subscribed to its chief arguments
all the rest of his days is also true, but it is far from true to say
that his view of the fair sex was borrowed bodily from Schopenhauer or
that he would have written otherwise than as he did if Schopenhauer
had never lived. Nietzsche's conclusions regarding women were the
inevitable result, indeed, of his own philosophical system. It is
impossible to conceive a man who held his opinions of morality and
society laying down any other doctrines of femininity and matrimony
than those he scattered through his books.
Nietzsche believed that there was a radical difference between the
mind of man and the mind of woman and that the two sexes reacted in
diametrically different ways to those stimuli which make up what might
be called the clinical picture of human society. It is the function of
man, he said, to wield a sword in humanity's battle with everything
that makes life on earth painful or precarious. It is the function of
woman, not to fight herself, but to provide fresh warriors for the
fray. Thus the exercise of the will to exist is divided between the
two: the man seeking the welfare of the race as he actually sees it and
the woman seeking the welfare of generations yet unborn. Of course, it
is obvious that this division is by no means clearly marked, because
the man, in struggling for power over his environment, necessarily
improves the conditions under which his children live, and the woman,
working for her children, often benefits herself. But all the same the
distinction is a good one and empiric observation bears it out. As
everyone who has given a moment's thought to the subject well knows,
a man's first concern in the world is to provide food and shelter for
himself and his family, while a woman's foremost duty is to bear and
rear children. "Thus," said Nietzsche, "would I have man and woman: the
one fit for warfare, the other fit for giving birth; and both fit for
dancing with head and legs"[1]--that is to say: both capable of doing
their share of the race's work, mental and physical, with conscious and
superabundant efficiency.
Nietzsche points out that, in the racial economy, the place of woman
may be compared to that of a slave-nation, while the position of man
resembles that of a master-nation. We have seen how a weak nation,
unable, on account of its weakness, to satisfy its will to survive and
thirst for power by forcing its authority upon other nations, turns
to the task of keeping these other nations, as much as possible, from
enforcing their authority upon it. Realizing that it cannot rule, but
must serve, it endeavors to make the conditions of its servitude as
bearable as possible. This effort is commonly made in two ways: first
by ostensibly renouncing its desire to rule, and secondly, by attempts
to inoculate its powerful neighbors with its ideas in subterranean
and round-about ways, so as to avoid arousing their suspicion and
opposition. It becomes, in brief, humble and cunning, and with its
humility as a cloak, it seeks to pit its cunning against the sheer
might of those it fears.
The position of women in the world is much the same. The business
of bearing and rearing children is destructive to their physical
strength, and in consequence makes it impossible for them to prevail
by force when their ideas and those of men happen to differ. To take
away the sting of this incapacity, they make a virtue of it, and it
becomes modesty, humility, self-sacrifice and fidelity; to win in
spite of it they cultivate cunning, which commonly takes the form of
hypocrisy, cajolery, dissimulation and more or less masked appeals to
the masculine sexual instinct. All of this is so often observed in
every-day life that it has become commonplace. A woman is physically
unable to force a man to do as she desires, but her very inability to
do so becomes a sentimental weapon against him, and her blandishments
do the rest. The spectacle of a strong man ruled by a weak woman is no
rare one certainly, and Samson was neither the first nor last giant to
fall before a Delilah. There is scarcely a household in all the world,
in truth, in which the familiar drama is not being acted and reacted
day after day.
Now, it is plain from the foregoing that, though women's business in
the world is of such a character that it inevitably leads to physical
degeneration, her constant need to overcome the effects of this
degeneration by cunning produces constant mental activity, which, by
the law of exercise, should produce, in turn, great mental efficiency.
This conclusion, in part, is perfectly correct, for women, as a sex,
are shrewd, resourceful and acute; but the very fact that they are
always concerned with imminent problems and that, in consequence, they
are unaccustomed to dealing with the larger riddles of life, makes
their mental attitude essentially petty. This explains the circumstance
that despite their mental suppleness, they are not genuinely strong
intellectually. Indeed, the very contrary is true. Women's constant
thought is, not to lay down broad principles of right and wrong; not to
place the whole world in harmony with some great scheme of justice; not
to consider the future of nations; not to make two blades of grass grow
where one grew before; but to deceive, influence, sway and please men.
Normally, their weakness makes masculine protection necessary to their
existence and to the exercise of their overpowering maternal instinct,
and so their whole effort is to obtain this protection in the easiest
way possible. The net result is that feminine morality is a morality
of opportunism and imminent expediency, and that the normal woman has
no respect for, and scarcely any conception of abstract truth. Thus is
proved the fact noted by Schopenhauer and many other observers: that a
woman seldom manifests any true sense of justice or of honor.
It is unnecessary to set forth this idea in greater detail, because
everyone is familiar with it and proofs of its accuracy are supplied
in infinite abundance by common observation. Nietzsche accepted it
as demonstrated. When he set out to pursue the subject further, he
rejected entirely the Schopenhauerean corollary that man should ever
regard woman as his enemy, and should seek, by all means within his
power, to escape her insidious influence. Such a notion naturally
outraged the philosopher of the superman. He was never an advocate
of running away: to all the facts of existence he said "yes." His
ideal was not resignation or flight, but an intelligent defiance and
opposition. Therefore, he argued that man should accept woman as a
natural opponent arrayed against him for the benevolent purpose of
stimulating him to constant efficiency. Opposition, he pointed out,
was a necessary forerunner of function, and in consequence the fact
that woman spent her entire effort in a ceaseless endeavor to undermine
and change the will of man, merely served to make this will alert and
strong, and so increased man's capacity for meeting and overcoming the
enemies of his existence.
A man conscious of his strength, observes Nietzsche, need have no
fear of women. It is only the man who finds himself utterly helpless
in the face of feminine cajolery that must cry, "Get thee behind me,
Satan!" and flee. "It is only the most sensual men," he says, "who
have to shun women and torture their bodies." The normal, healthy man,
despite the strong appeal which women make to him by their subtle
putting forward of the sexual idea--visually as dress, coquetry and
what not--still keeps a level head. He is strong enough to weather the
sexual storm. But the man who cannot do this, who experiences no normal
reaction in the direction of guardedness and caution and reason, must
either abandon himself utterly as a helpless slave to woman's instinct
of race-preservation, and so become a bestial voluptuary, or avoid
temptation altogether and so become a celibate.[2]
There is nothing essentially evil in woman's effort to combat and
control man's will by constantly suggesting the sexual idea to him,
because it is necessary, for the permanence of the race, that this
idea be presented frequently and powerfully. Therefore, the conflict
between masculine and feminine ideals is to be regarded, not as a
lamentable battle, in which one side is right and the other wrong, but
a convenient means of providing that stimulation-by-opposition without
which all function, and in consequence all progress, would cease. "The
man who regards women as an enemy to be avoided," says Nietzsche,
"betrays an unbridled lust which loathes not only itself, but also its
means."[3]
There are, of course, occasions when the feminine influence, by
its very subtlety, works harm to the higher sort of men. It is
dangerous for a man to love too violently and it is dangerous, too,
for him to be loved too much.' "The natural inclination of women
to a quiet, uniform and peaceful existence "--that is to say, to a
slave-morality--"operates adversely to the heroic impulse of the
masculine free spirit. Without being aware of it, women act like a
person who would remove stones from the path of a mineralogist, lest
his feet should come in contact with them--forgetting entirely that he
is faring forth for the very purpose of coming in contact with them....
The wives of men with lofty aspirations cannot resign themselves to
seeing their husbands suffering, impoverished and slighted, even
though it is apparent that this suffering proves, not only that its
victim has chosen his attitude aright, but also that his aims--some
day, at least--will be realized. Women always intrigue in secret
against the higher souls of their husbands. They seek to cheat the
future for the sake of a painless and agreeable present."[4] In other
words, the feminine vision is ever limited in range. Your typical woman
cannot see far ahead; she cannot reason out the ultimate effect of a
complicated series of causes; her eye is always upon the present or
the very near future. Thus Nietzsche reaches, by a circuitous route,
a conclusion supported by the almost unanimous verdict of the entire
masculine sex, at all times and everywhere.
Nietzsche quite agrees with Schopenhauer (and with nearly everyone
else who has given the matter thought) that the thing we call love is
grounded upon physical desire, and that all of those arts of dress
and manner in which women excel are mere devices for arousing this
desire in man, but he points out, very justly, that a great many other
considerations also enter into the matter. Love necessarily presupposes
a yearning to mate, and mating is its logical consequence, but the
human imagination has made it more than that. The man in love sees
in his charmer, not only an attractive instrument for satisfying his
comparatively rare and necessarily brief impulses to dalliance, but
also a worthy companion, guide, counsellor and friend. The essence of
love is confidence--confidence in the loved one's judgment, honesty
and fidelity and in the persistence of her charm. So large do
these considerations loom among the higher classes of men that they
frequently obscure the fundamental sexual impulse entirely. It is a
commonplace, indeed, that in the ecstasies of amorous idealization, the
notion of the function itself becomes obnoxious. It may be impossible
to imagine a man loving a woman without having had, at some time,
conscious desire for her, but all the same it is undoubtedly true that
the wish for marriage is very often a wish for close and constant
association with the one respected, admired and trusted rather than a
yearning for the satisfaction of desire.