interpreted as confidence, which, in turn, is faith. Now, faith is
essentially unreasonable, and in the great majority of cases, is
the very antithesis of reason. Therefore, a man in love commonly
endows the object of his affection with merits which, to the eye of
a disinterested person, she obviously lacks. "Love ... has a secret
craving to discover in the loved one as many beautiful qualities as
possible and to raise her as high as possible." "Whoever idolizes a
person tries to justify himself by idealizing; and thus becomes an
artist (or self-deceiver) in order to have a clear conscience." Again
there is a tendency to illogical generalization. "Everything which
pleases me once, or several times, is pleasing of and in itself." The
result of this, of course, is quick and painful disillusion. The loved
one is necessarily merely human and when the ideal gives way to the
real, reaction necessarily follows. "Many a married man awakens one
morning to the consciousness that his wife is far from attractive."[5]
And it is only fair to note that the same awakening is probably the
bitter portion of most married women, too.
In addition, it is plain that the purely physical desire which lies
at the bottom of all human love, no matter how much sentimental
considerations may obscure it, is merely a passion and so, in the very
nature of things, is intermittent and evanescent. There are moments
when it is overpowering, but there are hours, days, weeks and months
when it is dormant. Therefore, we must conclude with Nietzsche, that
the thing we call love, whether considered from its physical or
psychical aspect, is fragile and short-lived.
Now, inasmuch as marriage, in the majority of cases, is a permanent
institution (as it is, according to the theory of our moral code, in
_all_ cases), it follows that, in order to make the relation bearable,
something must arise to take the place of love. This something, as we
know, is ordinarily tolerance, respect, _camaraderie_, or a common
interest in the well-being of the matrimonial firm or in the offspring
of the marriage. In other words, the discovery that many of the ideal
qualities seen in the life-companion through the rosy glasses of love
do not exist is succeeded by a common-sense and unsentimental decision
to make the best of those real ones which actually do exist.
From this it is apparent that a marriage is most apt to be successful
when the qualities imagined in the beloved are all, or nearly all,
real: that is to say, when the possibility of disillusion is at an
irreducible minimum. This occurs sometimes by accident, but Nietzsche
points out that such accidents are comparatively rare. A man in love,
indeed, is the worst possible judge of his _inamorata's_ possession
of those traits which will make her a satisfactory wife, for, as we
have noted, he observes her through an ideal haze and sees in her
innumerable merits which, to the eye of an unprejudiced and accurate
observer, she does not possess. Nietzsche, at different times, pointed
out two remedies for this. His first plan proposed that marriages for
love be discouraged, and that we endeavor to insure the permanence of
the relation by putting the selection of mates into the hands of third
persons likely to be dispassionate and far-seeing: a plan followed
with great success, it may be recalled, by most ancient peoples and in
vogue, in a more or less disguised form, in many European countries
today. "It is impossible," he said, "to found a permanent institution
upon an idiosyncrasy. Marriage, if it is to stand as the bulwark of
civilization, cannot be founded upon the temporary and unreasonable
thing called love. To fulfil its mission, it must be founded upon the
impulse to reproduction, or race permanence; the impulse to possess
property (women and children are property); and the impulse to rule,
which constantly organizes for itself the smallest unit of sovereignty,
the family, and which needs children and heirs to maintain, by physical
force, whatever measure of power, riches and influence it attains."
Nietzsche's second proposal was nothing more or less than the
institution of trial marriage, which, when it was proposed years
later by an American sociologist,[6] caused all the uproar which
invariably rises in the United States whenever an attempt is made
to seek absolute truth. "Give us a term," said Zarathustra, "and a
small marriage, that we may see whether we are fit for the great
marriage."[7] The idea here, of course, is simply this: that, when a
man and a woman find it utterly impossible to live in harmony, it is
better for them to separate at once than to live on together, making
a mock of the institution they profess to respect, and begetting
children who, in Nietzsche's phrase, cannot be regarded other than as
mere "scapegoats of matrimony." Nietzsche saw that this notion was so
utterly opposed to all current ideals and hypocrisies that it would
be useless to argue it, and so he veered toward his first proposal.
The latter, despite its violation of one of the most sacred illusions
of the Anglo-Saxon race, is by no means a mere fantasy of the chair.
Marriages in which love is subordinated to mutual fitness and material
considerations are the rule in many countries today, and have been so
for thousands of years, and if it be urged that, in France, their fruit
has been adultery, unfruitfulness and degeneration, it may be answered
that, in Turkey, Japan and India, they have become the cornerstones of
quite respectable civilizations.
Nietzsche believed that the ultimate mission and function of human
marriage was the breeding of a race of supermen and he saw very clearly
that fortuitous pairing would never bring this about. "Thou shalt not
only propagate thyself," said Zarathustra, "but propagate thyself
upward. Marriage should be the will of two to create that which is
greater than either. But that which the many call marriage--alas! what
call I that? Alas I that soul-poverty of two! Alas! that soul-filth
of two! Alas! that miserable dalliance of two! Marriage they call
it--and they say that marriages are made in heaven. I like them not:
these animals caught in heavenly nets.... Laugh not at such marriages!
What child has not reason to weep over its parents?" It is the old
argument against haphazard breeding. We select the sires and dams of
our race-horses with most elaborate care, but the strains that mingle
in our children's veins get there by chance. "Worthy and ripe for
begetting the superman this man appeared to me, but when I saw his
wife earth seemed a madhouse. Yea, I wish the earth would tremble in
convulsions when such a saint and such a goose mate! This one fought
for truth like a hero--and then took to heart a little dressed-up
lie. He calls it his marriage. That one was reserved in intercourse
and chose his associates fastidiously--and then spoiled his company
forever. He calls it his marriage. A third sought for a servant with
an angel's virtues. Now he is the servant of a woman. Even the most
cunning buys his wife in a sack."[8]
As has been noted, Nietzsche was by no means a declaimer against women.
A bachelor himself and constitutionally suspicious of all who walked
in skirts, he nevertheless avoided the error of damning the whole sex
as a dangerous and malignant excrescence upon the face of humanity. He
saw that woman's mind was the natural complement of man's mind; that
womanly guile was as useful, in its place, as masculine truth; that
man, to retain those faculties which made him master of the earth,
needed a persistent and resourceful opponent to stimulate them and so
preserve and develop them. So long as the institution of the family
remained a premise in every sociological syllogism, so long as mere
fruitfulness remained as much a merit among intelligent human beings
as it was among peasants and cattle--so long, he saw, it would be
necessary for the stronger sex to submit to the parasitic opportunism
of the weaker.
But he was far from exalting mere women into goddesses, after the
sentimental fashion of those virtuosi of illusion who pass for
law-givers in the United States, and particularly in the southern
part thereof. Chivalry, with its ridiculous denial of obvious facts,
seemed to him unspeakable and the good old sub-Potomac doctrines that
a woman who loses her virtue is, _ipso facto_, a victim and not a
criminal or _particeps criminis_, and that a "lady," by virtue of being
a "lady," is necessarily a reluctant and helpless quarry in the hunt
of love--these ancient and venerable fallacies would have made him
laugh. He admitted the great and noble part that woman had to play in
the world-drama, but he saw clearly that her methods were essentially
deceptive, insincere and pernicious, and so he held that she should be
confined to her proper role and that any effort she made to take a hand
in other matters should be regarded with suspicion, and when necessary,
violently opposed. Thus Nietzsche detested the idea of women's suffrage
almost as much as he detested the idea of chivalry. The participation
of women in large affairs, he argued, could lead to but one result:
the contamination of the masculine ideals of justice, honor and truth
by the feminine ideals of dissimulation, equivocation and intrigue.
In women, he believed, there was an entire absence of that instinctive
liking for a square deal and a fair fight which one finds in all
men--even the worst.
Hence, Nietzsche believed that, in his dealings with women, man should
be wary and cautious. "Let men fear women when she loveth: for she
sacrificeth all for love and nothing else hath value to her.... Man
is for woman a means: the end is always the child.... Two things are
wanted by the true man: danger and play. Therefore he seeketh woman as
the most dangerous toy within his reach.... Thou goest to women? _Don't
forget thy whip!_"[9] This last sentence has helped to make Nietzsche
a stench in the nostrils of the orthodox, but the context makes his
argument far more than a mere effort at sensational epigram. He is
pointing out the utter unscrupulousness which lies at the foundation of
the maternal instinct: an unscrupulousness familiar to every observer
of humanity.[10] Indeed, it is so potent a factor in the affairs of the
world that we have, by our ancient device of labelling the inevitable
the good, exalted it to the dignity and estate of a virtue. But all
the same, we are instinctively conscious of its inherent opposition
to truth and justice, and so our law books provide that a woman who
commits a crime in her husband's presence is presumed to have been led
to it by her desire to work what she regards as his good, which means
her desire to retain his protection and good will. "Man's happiness
is: 'I will.' Woman's happiness is: 'He will.'"[11]
Maternity, thought Nietzsche, was a thing even more sublime
than paternity, because it produced a more keen sense of race
responsibility. "Is there a state more blessed," he asked, "than that
of a woman with child?... Even worldly justice does not allow the
judge and hangman to lay hold on her."[12] He saw, too, that woman's
insincere masochism[13] spurred man to heroic efforts and gave vigor
and direction to his work by the very fact that it bore the outward
aspect of helplessness. He saw that the resultant stimulation of the
will to power was responsible for many of the world's great deeds,
and that, if woman served no other purpose, she would still take an
honorable place as the most splendid reward--greater than honors or
treasures--that humanity could bestow upon its victors. The winning
of a beautiful and much-sought woman, indeed, will remain as great an
incentive to endeavor as the conquest of a principality so long as
humanity remains substantially as it is today.
It is unfortunate that Nietzsche left us no record of his notions
regarding the probable future of matrimony as an institution. We have
reason to believe that he agreed with Schopenhauer's analysis of the
"lady," _i.e._ the woman elevated to splendid, but complete parasitism.
Schopenhauer showed that this pitiful creature was the product of
the monogamous ideal, just as the prostitute was the product of the
monogamous actuality. In the United States and England, unfortunately,
it is impossible to discuss such matters with frankness, or to apply to
them the standards of absolute truth, on account of the absurd axiom
that monogamy is ordained of God,--with which maxim there appears
the equally absurd corollary: that the civilization of a people is
to be measured by the degree of dependence of its women. Luckily for
posterity this last revolting doctrine is fast dying, though its
decadence is scarcely noticed and wholly misunderstood. We see about us
that women are becoming more and more independent and self-sufficient
and that, as individuals, they have less and less need to seek and
retain the good will and protection of individual men, but we overlook
the fact that this tendency is fast undermining the ancient theory
that the family is a necessary and impeccable institution and that
without it progress would be impossible. As a matter of fact, the idea
of the family, as it exists today, is based entirely upon the idea of
feminine helplessness. So soon as women are capable of making a living
for themselves and their children, without the aid of the fathers of
the latter, the old cornerstone of the family--the masculine defender
and bread-winner--will find his occupation gone, and it will become
ridiculous to force him, by law or custom, to discharge duties for
which there is no longer need. Wipe out your masculine defender, and
your feminine parasite-_haus-frau_--and where is your family?
This tendency is exhibited empirically by the rising revolt against
those fetters which the family idea has imposed upon humanity: by
the growing feeling that divorce should be a matter of individual
expedience; by the successful war of cosmopolitanism upon insularity
and clannishness and upon all other costly outgrowths of the old idea
that because men are of the same blood they must necessarily love
one another; and by the increasing reluctance among civilized human
beings to become parents without some reason more logical than the
notion that parenthood, in itself, is praiseworthy. It seems plain,
in a word, that so soon as any considerable portion of the women of
the world become capable of doing men's work and of thus earning a
living for themselves and their children without the aid of men, there
will be in full progress a dangerous, if unconscious, war upon the
institution of marriage. It may be urged in reply that this will never
happen, because of the fact that women are physically unequal to men,
and that in consequence of their duty of child-bearing, they will ever
remain so, but it may be answered to this that use will probably vastly
increase their physical fitness; that science will rob child-bearing
of most of its terrors within a comparatively few years; and that the
woman who seeks to go it alone will have only herself and her child to
maintain, whereas, the man of today has not only himself and his child,
but also the woman. Again, it is plain that the economic handicap
of child-bearing is greatly overestimated. At most, the business of
maternity makes a woman utterly helpless for no longer than three
months, and in the case of a woman who has three children, this means
nine months in a life time. It is entirely probable that alcohol
alone, not to speak of other enemies of efficiency, robs the average
man of quite that much productive activity during his three score years
and ten.
[1] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," III.
[2] Nietzsche saw, of course ("The Genealogy of Morals," III), that
temporary celibacy was frequently necessary to men with peculiarly
difficult and vitiating tasks ahead of them. The philosopher who sought
to solve world riddles, he said, had need to steer clear of women, for
reasons which appealed, with equal force, to the athlete who sought to
perform great feats of physical strength. It is obvious, however, that
this desire to escape distraction and drain differs vastly from ethical
celibacy.
[3] "_Morgenröte_," § 346.
[4] "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_," § 431, 434.
[5] All of these quotations are from "_Morgenröte_."
[6] Elsie Clews Parsons: "The Family," New York, 1906. Mrs. Parsons is
a doctor of philosophy, a Hartley house fellow and was for six years a
lecturer on sociology at Barnard College.
[7] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," III.
[8] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I.
[9] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I.
[10] Until quite recently it was considered indecent and indefensible
to mention this fact, despite its obviousness. But it is now discussed
freely enough and in Henry Arthur Jones' play, "The Hypocrites," it is
presented admirably in the character of the mother whose instinctive
effort to protect her son makes her a scoundrel and the son a cad.
[11] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I.
[12] "_Morgenröte_," § 552.
[13] Prof. Dr. R. von Krafft Ebing: "Masochism is ... a peculiar
perversion ... consisting in this, that the individual seized with
it is dominated by the idea that he is wholly and unconditionally
subjected to the will of a person of the opposite sex, who treats him
imperiously and humiliates and maltreats him."
X
GOVERNMENT
Like Spencer before him, Nietzsche believed, as we have seen,
that the best possible system of government was that which least
interfered with the desires and enterprises of the efficient and
intelligent individual. That is to say, he held that it would be well
to establish, among the members of his first caste of human beings,
a sort of glorified anarchy. Each member of this caste should be at
liberty to work out his own destiny for himself. There should be no
laws regulating and circumscribing his relations to other members of
his caste, except the easily-recognizable and often-changing laws of
common interest, and above all, there should be no laws forcing him
to submit to, or even to consider, the wishes and behests of the two
lower castes. The higher man, in a word, should admit no responsibility
whatever to the lower castes. The lowest of all he should look upon
solely as a race of slaves bred to work his welfare in the most
efficient and uncomplaining manner possible, and the military caste
should seem to him a race designed only to carry out his orders and so
prevent the slave caste marching against him.
It is plain from this that Nietzsche stood squarely opposed to both of
the two schemes of government which, on the surface, at least, seem
to prevail in the western world today. For the monarchial ideal and
for the democratic ideal he had the same words of contempt. Under an
absolute monarchy, he believed, the military or law-enforcing caste was
unduly exalted, and so its natural tendency to permanence was increased
and its natural opposition to all experiment and progress was made well
nigh irresistible. Under a communistic democracy, on the other hand,
the mistake was made of putting power into the hands of the great,
inert herd, which was necessarily and inevitably ignorant, credulous,
superstitious, corrupt and wrong. The natural tendency of this herd,
said Nietzsche, was to combat change and progress as bitterly and as
ceaselessly as the military-judicial caste, and when, by some accident,
it rose out of its rut and attempted experiments, it nearly always
made mistakes, both in its premises and its conclusions and so got
hopelessly bogged in error and imbecility. Its feeling for truth seemed
to him to be almost _nil_; its mind could never see beneath misleading
exteriors. "In the market place," said Zarathustra, "one convinces by
gestures, but real reasons make the populace distrustful."[1]
That this natural incompetence of the masses is an actual fact was
observed by a hundred philosophers before Nietzsche, and fresh proofs
of it are spread copiously before the world every day. Wherever
universal suffrage, or some close approach to it, is the primary
axiom of government, the thing known in the United States as "freak
legislation" is a constant evil. On the statute books of the great
majority of American states there are laws so plainly opposed to all
common-sense that they bear an air of almost pathetic humor. One
state legislature,[2] in an effort to prevent the corrupt employment
of insurance funds, passes laws so stringent that, in the face of
them, it is utterly impossible for an insurance company to transact
a profitable business. Another considers an act contravening rights
guaranteed specifically by the state and national constitutions;[3]
yet another[4] passes a law prohibiting divorce under any circumstances
whatever. And the spectacle is by no means confined to the American
states. In the Australian Commonwealth, mob-rule has burdened the
statutes with regulations which make difficult, if not impossible,
the natural development of the country's resources and trade. If, in
England and Germany, the effect of universal suffrage has been less
apparent, it is because in these countries the two upper castes have
solved the problem of keeping the proletariat, despite its theoretical
sovereignty, in proper leash and bounds.
The possibility of exercising this control seemed to Nietzsche to
be the saving grace of all modern forms of government, just as
their essential impossibility appeared as the saving grace alike of
Christianity and of communistic civilization. In England, as we have
seen,[5] the military-judicial caste, despite the Reform Act of 1867,
has retained its old dominance, and in Germany, despite the occasional
success of the socialists, it is always possible for the military
aristocracy, by appealing to the vanity of the _bourgeoisie_, to win in
a stand-up fight. In America, the proletariat, when it is not engaged
in functioning in its own extraordinary manner, is commonly the tool,
either of the first of Nietzsche's castes or of the second. That is to
say, the average legislature has its price, and this price is often
paid by those who believe that old laws, no matter how imperfect they
may be, are better than harum-scarum new ones. Naturally enough, the
most intelligent and efficient of Americans--members of the first
caste--do not often go to a state capital with corruption funds and
openly buy legislation, but nevertheless their influence is frequently
felt. President Roosevelt, for one, has more than once forced his
views upon a reluctant proletariat and even enlisted it under his
banner--as in his advocacy of centralization, a truly dionysian idea,
for example--and in the southern states the educated white class--which
there represents, though in a melancholy fashion, the Nietzschean first
caste--has found it easy to take from the black masses their very right
to vote, despite the fact that they are everywhere in a great majority
numerically, and so, by the theory of democracy, represent whatever
power lies in the state. Thus it is apparent that Nietzsche's argument
against democracy, like his argument against brotherhood, is based upon
the thesis that both are rejected instinctively by all those men whose
activity works for the progress of the human race.[6]