Nietzsche differs vastly from the beery, collarless anarchy preached
by Herr Most and his unwashed followers. The latter contemplates a
suspension of all laws in order that the unfit may escape the natural
and rightful exploitation of the fit, whereas the former reduces
the unfit to _de facto_ slavery and makes them subject to the laws
of a master class, which, in so far as the relations of its own
members, one to the other, are concerned, recognizes no law but that
of natural selection. To the average American or Englishman the very
name of anarchy causes a shudder, because it invariably conjures up
a picture of a land terrorized by low-browed assassins with matted
beards, carrying bombs in one hand and mugs of beer in the other. But
as a matter of fact, there is no reason whatever to believe that, if
all laws were abolished tomorrow, such swine would survive the day.
They are incompetents under our present paternalism and they would be
incompetents under dionysian anarchy. The only difference between the
two states is that the former, by its laws, protects men of this sort,
whereas the latter would work their speedy annihilation. In a word,
the dionysian state would see the triumph, not of drunken loafers, but
of the very men whose efforts are making for progress today: those
strong, free, self-reliant, resourceful men whose capacities are so
much greater than the mob's that they are often able to force their
ideas upon it despite its theoretical right to rule them and its actual
endeavor so to do. Nietzschean anarchy would create an aristocracy of
efficiency. The strong man--which means the intelligent, ingenious and
far-seeing man--would acknowledge no authority but his own will and no
morality but his own advantage. As we have seen in previous chapters,
this would re-establish the law of natural selection firmly upon its
disputed throne, and so the strong would grow ever stronger and more
efficient, and the weak would grow ever more obedient and tractile.
It may be well at this place to glance briefly at an objection that
has been urged against Nietzsche's argument by many critics, and
particularly by those in the socialistic camp. Led to it, no doubt,
by their too literal acceptance of Marx's materialistic conception of
history, they have assumed that Nietzsche's higher man must necessarily
belong to the class denominated, by our after-dinner speakers and
leader writers, "captains of industry," and to this class alone.
That is to say, they have regarded the higher man as identical with
the pushing, grasping buccaneer of finance, because this buccaneer
has seemed to them to be the only man of today who is truly "strong,
free, self-reliant and resourceful" and the only one who actually
"acknowledges no authority but his own will." As a matter of fact,
all of these assumptions are in error. For one thing, the "captain of
industry" is not uncommonly the reverse of a dionysian, and without
the artificial aid of our permanent laws, he might often perish in
the struggle for existence. For another thing, it is an obvious fact
that the men who go most violently counter to the view of the herd,
and who battle most strenuously to prevail against it--our true
criminals and transvaluers and breakers of the law--are not such men
as Rockefeller, but men such as Pasteur; not such men as Morgan and
Hooley, but sham-smashers and truth-tellers and mob-fighters after the
type of Huxley, Lincoln, Bismarck, Darwin, Virchow, Haeckel, Hobbes,
Macchiavelli, Harvey and Jenner, the father of vaccination.
Jenner, to choose one from the long list, was a real dionysian, because
he boldly pitted his own opinion against the practically unanimous
opinion of all the rest of the human race. Among those members of
the ruling class in England who came after him--those men, that is,
who made vaccination compulsory--the dionysian spirit was still more
apparent. The masses themselves did not want to be vaccinated, because
they were too ignorant to understand the theory of inoculation and
too stupid to be much impressed by its unvisualized and--for years,
at least--impalpable benefits. Yet their rulers forced them, against
their will, to bare their arms. And why was this done? Was it because
the ruling class was possessed by a boundless love for humanity and
so yearned to lavish upon it a wealth of Christian devotion? Not
at all. The real motive of the law makers was to be found in two
considerations. In the first place, a proletariat which suffered
from epidemics of small-pox was a crippled mob whose capacity for
serving its betters, in the fields and factories of England, was sadly
decreased. In the second place experience proved that when smallpox
raged in the slums, it had an unhappy habit of stretching out its arms
in the direction of mansion and castle, too. Therefore, the proletariat
was vaccinated and small-pox was stamped out--not because the ruling
class loved the workers, but because it wanted to make them work for
it as continuously as possible and to remove or reduce their constant
menace to its life and welfare. In so far as it took the initiative in
these proceedings, the military ruling-class of England raised itself
to the eminence of Nietzsche's first caste. That Jenner himself, when
he put forward his idea and led the military caste to carry it into
execution, was an ideal member of the first caste, is plain. The goal
before him was fame everlasting--and he gained it.
I have made this rather long digression because the opponents of
Nietzsche have voiced their error a thousand times and have well-nigh
convinced a great many persons of its truth. It is apparent enough,
of course, that a great many men whose energy is devoted to the
accumulation of money are truly dionysian in their methods and aims,
but it is apparent, too, that a great many others are not. Nietzsche
himself was well aware of the dangers which beset a race enthralled
by commercialism, and he sounded his warning against them. Trade,
being grounded upon security, tends to work for permanence in laws and
customs, even after the actual utility of these laws and customs is
openly questioned. This is shown by the persistence of free trade in
England and of protectionism in the United States, despite the fact
that the conditions of existence, in both countries, have materially
changed since the two systems were adopted, and there is now good
ground, in each, for demanding reform. So it is plain that Nietzsche
did not cast his higher man in the mold of a mere millionaire. It
is conceivable that a careful analysis might prove Mr. Morgan to be
a dionysian, but it is certain that his character as such would not
be grounded upon his well-known and oft-repeated plea that existing
institutions be permitted to remain as they are.
Yet again, a great many critics of Nietzsche mistake his criticism of
existing governmental institutions for an argument in favor of their
immediate and violent abolition. When he inveighs against monarchy or
democracy, for instance, it is concluded that he wants to assassinate
all the existing rulers of the world, overturn all existing governments
and put chaos, carnage, rapine and anarchy in their place. Such a
conclusion, of course, is a grievous error. Nietzsche by no means
believed that reforms could be instituted in a moment or that the
characters and habits of thought of human beings could be altered
by a lightning stroke. His whole philosophy, in truth, was based
upon the idea of slow evolution, through infinitely laborious and
infinitely protracted stages. All he attempted to do was to indicate
the errors that were being made in his own time and to point out the
probable character of the truths that would be accepted in the future.
He believed that it was only by constant skepticism, criticism and
opposition that progress could be made, and that the greatest of all
dangers was inanition. Therefore, when he condemned all existing
schemes of government, it meant no more than that he regarded them as
based upon fundamental errors, and that he hoped and believed that, in
the course of time, these errors would be observed, admitted and swept
away, to make room for other errors measurably less dangerous, and in
the end for truths. Such was his mission, as he conceived it: to attack
error wherever he saw it and to proclaim truth whenever he found it.
It is only by such iconoclasm and proselyting that humanity can be
helped. It is only after a mistake is perceived and admitted that it
can be rectified.
Nietzsche's argument for the "free spirit" by no means denies the
efficacy of co-operation in the struggle upward, but neither does
it support that blind fetishism which sees in co-operation the sole
instrument of human progress. In one of his characteristic thumb-nail
notes upon evolution he says: "The most important result of progress in
the past is the fact that we no longer live in constant fear of wild
beasts, barbarians, gods and our own dreams."[7] It may be argued, in
reference to this, that organized government is to be thanked for our
deliverance, but a moment's thought will show the error of the notion.
Humanity's war upon wild beasts was fought and won by individualists,
who had in mind no end but their personal safety and that of their
children, and the subsequent war upon barbarians would have been
impossible, or at least unsuccessful, had it not been for the weapons
invented and employed during the older fight against beasts. Again, it
is apparent that our emancipation from the race's old superstitions
regarding gods and omens has been achieved, not by communal effort,
but by individual effort. Knowledge and not government brought us the
truth that made us free. Government, in its very essence, is opposed
to all increase of knowledge. Its tendency is always toward permanence
and against change. It is unthinkable without some accepted scheme of
law or morality, and such schemes, as we have seen, stand in direct
antithesis to every effort to find the absolute truth. Therefore, it
is plain that the progress of humanity, far from being the result of
government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face of
its constant and bitter opposition. The code of Hammurabi, the laws
of the Medes and Persians, the Code Napoleon and the English common
law have retarded the search for the ultimate verities almost as much,
indeed, as the Ten Commandments.
Nietzsche denies absolutely that there is inherent in mankind a
yearning to gather into communities. There is, he says, but one primal
instinct in human beings (as there is in all other animals), and that
is the desire to remain alive. All those systems of thought which
assume the existence of a "natural morality" are wrong. Even the
tendency to tell the truth, which seems to be inborn in every civilized
white man, is not "natural," for there have been--and are today--races
in which it is, to all intents and purposes, entirely absent.[8] And so
it is with the so-called social instinct. Man, say the communists, is
a gregarious animal and can be happy only in company with his fellows,
and in proof of it they cite the fact that loneliness is everywhere
regarded as painful and that, even among the lower animals, there is an
impulse toward association. The facts set forth in the last sentence
are indisputable, but they by no means prove the existence of an
elemental social feeling sufficiently strong to make its satisfaction
an end in itself. In other words, while it is plain that men flock
together, just as birds flock together, it is going too far to say
that the mere joy of flocking--the mere desire to be with others--is
at the bottom of the tendency. On the contrary, it is quite possible
to show that men gather in communities for the same reason that deer
gather in herds: because each individual realizes (unconsciously,
perhaps) that such a combination materially aids him in the business of
self-protection. One deer is no match for a lion, but fifty deer make
him impotent.[9]
Nietzsche shows that, even after communities are formed, the strong
desire of every individual to look out for himself, regardless of
the desires of others, persists, and that, in every herd there are
strong members and weak members. The former, whenever the occasion
arises, sacrifice the latter: by forcing the heavy, killing drudgery
of the community upon them or by putting them, in time of war, into
the forefront of the fray. The result is that the weakest are being
constantly weeded out and the strongest are always becoming stronger
and stronger. "Hence," says Nietzsche, "the first 'state' made its
appearance in the form of a terrible tyranny, a violent and unpitying
machine, which kept grinding away until the primary raw material, the
man-ape, was kneaded and fashioned into alert, efficient man."
Now, when a given state becomes appreciably more efficient than the
states about it, it invariably sets about enslaving them. Thus larger
and larger states are formed, but always there is a ruling master-class
and a serving slave-class. "This," says Nietzsche, "is the origin of
the state on earth, despite the fantastic theory which would found it
upon some general agreement among its members. He who can command,
he who is a master by nature, he who, in deed and gesture, behaves
violently--what need has he for agreements? Such beings come as fate
comes, without reason or pretext.... Their work is the instinctive
creation of forms: they are the most unconscious of all artists;
wherever they appear, something new is at once created--a governmental
organism which lives; in which the individual parts and functions are
differentiated and brought into correlation, and in which nothing at
all is tolerable unless some utility with respect to the whole is
implanted in it. They are innocent of guilt, of responsibility, of
charity--these born rulers. They are ruled by that terrible art-egotism
which knows itself to be justified by its work, as the mother knows
herself to be justified by her child."
Nietzsche points out that, even after nations have attained some
degree of permanence and have introduced ethical concepts into their
relations with one another, they still give evidence of that same
primary will to power which is responsible, at bottom, for every act
of the individual man. "The masses, in any nation," he says, "are ready
to sacrifice their lives, their goods and chattels, their consciences
and their virtue, to obtain that highest of pleasures: the feeling that
they rule, either in reality or in imagination, over others. On these
occasions they make virtues of their instinctive yearnings, and so they
enable an ambitious or wisely provident prince to rush into a war with
the good conscience of his people as his excuse. The great conquerors
have always had the language of virtue on their lips: they have always
had crowds of people around them who felt exalted and would not listen
to any but the most exalted sentiments.... When man feels the sense
of power, he feels and calls himself good, and at the same time those
who have to endure the weight of his power call him evil. Such is the
curious mutability of moral judgments!... Hesiod, in his fable of the
world's ages, twice pictured the age of the Homeric heroes and made
two out of one. To those whose ancestors were under the iron heel of
the Homeric despots, it appeared evil; while to the grandchildren of
these despots it appeared good. Hence the poet had no alternative but
to do as he did: his audience was composed of the descendants of both
classes."[10]
Nietzsche saw naught but decadence and illusion in humanitarianism
and nationalism. To profess a love for the masses seemed to him to
be ridiculous and to profess a love for one race or tribe of men, in
preference to all others, seemed to him no less so. Thus he denied the
validity of two ideals which lie at the base of all civilized systems
of government, and constitute, in fact, the very conception of the
state. He called himself, not a German, but "a good European."
"We good Europeans," he said, "are not French enough to 'love mankind.'
A man must be afflicted by an excess of Gallic eroticism to approach
mankind with ardour. Mankind! Was there ever a more hideous old woman
among all the old women? No, we do not love mankind!... On the other
hand, we are not German enough to advocate nationalism and race-hatred,
or to take delight in that national blood-poisoning which sets up
quarantines between the nations of Europe. We are too unprejudiced
for that--too perverse, too fastidious, too well-informed, too much
travelled. We prefer to live on mountains--apart, unseasonable.... We
are too diverse and mixed in race to be patriots. We are, in a word,
good Europeans--the rich heirs of millenniums of European thought....
"We rejoice in everything, which like ourselves, loves danger, war and
adventure--which does not make compromises, nor let itself be captured,
conciliated or faced.... We ponder over the need of a new order of
things--even of a new slavery, for the strengthening and elevation of
the human race always involves the existence of slaves...."[11]
"The horizon is unobstructed.... Our ships can start on their voyage
once more in the face of danger.... The sea--our sea!--lies before
us!"[12]
[1] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," IV.
[2] That of Wisconsin at the 1907 session.
[3] This has been done, time and again, by the legislature of every
state in the Union, and the overturning of such legislation occupies
part of the time of all the state courts of final judicature year after
year.
[4] That of South Carolina.
[5] _Vide_ the chapter on "Civilization."
[6] Said the Chicago _Tribune_, "the best all-round newspaper in the
United States," in a leading article, June 10, 1907: "Jeremy Bentham
speaks of 'an incoherent and undigested mass of law, shot down, as
from a rubbish cart, upon the heads of the people.' This is a fairly
accurate summary of the work of the average American legislature,
from New York to Texas.... Bad, crude and unnecessary laws make up
a large part of the output of every session.... Roughly speaking,
the governor who vetoes the most bills is the best governor. When a
governor vetoes none the legitimate presumption is, not that the work
of the legislature was flawless, but that he was timid, not daring to
oppose ignorant popular sentiment ... or that he had not sense enough
to recognize a bad measure when he saw it."
[7] "_Morgenröte_," § 5.
[8] "The word 'honesty' is not to be found in the code of either the
Socratic or the Christian virtues. It represents a new virtue, not
quite ripened, frequently misunderstood and hardly conscious of itself.
It is yet something in embryo, which we are at liberty either to foster
or to check."--"_Morgenröte_," § 456.
[9] An excellent discussion of this subject, by Prof. Warner Fite, of
Indiana University, appeared in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology
and Scientific Methods_ of July 18, 1907. Prof. Fite's article is
called "The Exaggeration of the Social," and is a keen and sound
criticism of "the now popular tendency to regard the individual as
the product of society." As he points out, "any consciousness of
belonging to one group rather than another must involve some sense of
individuality." In other words, gregariousness is nothing more than an
instinctive yearning to profit personally by the possibility of putting
others, to some measurable extent, in the attitude of slaves.
[10] "_Morgenröte_," § 189.
[11] "_Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_," § 377.
[12] "_Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_," § 343.
XI
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Nietzsche says that the thing which best differentiates man from the
other animals is his capacity for making and keeping a promise. That
is to say, man has a trained and efficient memory and it enables him
to project an impression of today into the future. Of the millions of
impressions which impinge upon his consciousness every day, he is able
to save a chosen number from the oblivion of forgetfulness. An animal
lacks this capacity almost entirely. The things that it remembers are
far from numerous and it is devoid of any means of reinforcing its
memory. But man has such a means and it is commonly called conscience.
At bottom it is based upon the principle that pain is always more
enduring than pleasure. Therefore, "in order to make an idea stay
it must be burned into the memory; only that which never ceases to
hurt remains fixed."[1] Hence all the world's store of tortures and
sacrifices. At one time they were nothing more than devices to make man
remember his pledges to his gods. Today they survive in the form of
legal punishments, which are nothing more, at bottom, than devices to
make a man remember his pledges to his fellow men.
From all this Nietzsche argues that our modern law is the outgrowth
of the primitive idea of barter--of the idea that everything has an
equivalent and can be paid for--that when a man forgets or fails
to discharge an obligation in one way he may wipe out his sin by
discharging it in some other way. "The earliest relationship that ever
existed," he says, "was the relationship between buyer and seller,
creditor and debtor. On this ground man first stood face to face
with man. No stage of civilization, however inferior, is without the
institution of bartering. To fix prices, to adjust values, to invent
equivalents, to exchange things--all this has to such an extent
preoccupied the first and earliest thought of man, that it may be said
to constitute thinking itself. Out of it sagacity arose, and out of
it, again, arose man's first pride--his first feeling of superiority
over the animal world. Perhaps, our very word man (_manus_) expresses
something of this.[2] Man calls himself the being who weighs and
measures."[3]
Now besides the contract between man and man, there is also a contract
between man and the community. The community agrees to give the
individual protection and the individual promises to pay for it in
labor and obedience. Whenever he fails to do so, he violates his
promise, and the community regards the contract as broken. Then "the
anger of the outraged creditor--or community--withdraws its protection
from the debtor--or law-breaker--and he is laid open to all the dangers
and disadvantages of life in a state of barbarism. Punishment, at this
stage of civilization, is simply the image of a man's normal conduct
toward a hated, disarmed and cast-down enemy, who has forfeited not
only all claims to protection, but also all claims to mercy. This
accounts for the fact that war (including the sacrificial cult of war)
has furnished all the forms in which punishment appears in history."[4]
It will be observed that this theory grounds all ideas of justice and
punishment upon ideas of expedience. The primeval creditor forced his
debtor to pay because he knew that if the latter didn't pay he (the
creditor) would suffer. In itself, the debtor's effort to get something
for nothing was not wrong, because, as we have seen in previous
chapters, this is the ceaseless and unconscious endeavor of every
living being, and is, in fact, the most familiar of all manifestations
of the primary will to live, or more understandably, of the will to
acquire power over environment. But when the machinery of justice
was placed in the hands of the state, there came a transvaluation of
values. Things that were manifestly costly to the state were called
wrong, and the old individualistic standards of good and bad--_i.e._
beneficial and harmful--became the standards of good and evil--_i.e._
right and wrong.
In this way, says Nietzsche, the original purpose of punishment
has become obscured and forgotten. Starting out as a mere means of
adjusting debts, it has become a machine for enforcing moral concepts.
Moral ideas came into the world comparatively late, and it was not
until man had begun to be a speculative being that he invented gods,
commandments and beatitudes. But the institution of punishment was in
existence from a much earlier day. Therefore, it is apparent that the
moral idea,--the notion that there is such a thing as good and such
a thing as evil,--far from being the inspiration of punishment, was
engrafted upon it at a comparatively late period. Nietzsche says that
man, in considering things as they are today, is very apt to make this
mistake about their origins. He is apt to conclude, because the human
eye is used for seeing, that it was created for that purpose, whereas
it is obvious that it may have been created for some other purpose
and that the function of seeing may have arisen later on. In the same
way, man believes that punishment was invented for the purpose of
enforcing moral ideas, whereas, as a matter of fact, it was originally
an instrument of expediency only, and did not become a moral machine
until a code of moral laws was evolved.[5]