culture, this _Friedrich Nietzsche_, is he not, then, precisely the
apostle of this man of might and mastery, of ill-famed _Herrnmoral_,
master’s morality, especially? Napoleon, his Messiah—do you think? Did
he not gloat and glory over the time when the wild roving _blonde
Bestie_ was still alive in the old Germans? Did he not worship the beast
of prey, memorialize the murderer, stigmatize the morality of
Christianity as a crime against life, because of its saying, Blessed are
the poor and the sick, the peaceable and the meek? If, now, the word of
this new prophet should make disciples, should even revolutionize the
times, should we close our churches and stop our preaching, as the first
thing to be done? For the churches preach goodness and love, not might
and dominion; see in man child of God, not beast of prey.
If all this were a partisan matter—for or against Nietzsche—I would have
nothing to do with it. To join in the damnatory fulminations against
this man, or to advertise mitigating circumstances for his thought, and
to re-interpret the whole from such a standpoint, until the whole should
seem less brutal and less dangerous—to do either the one or the other is
not for me, but for those polemicists and irenicists who are adding to
the gayety of nations in these otherwise heartbreaking times, by the
high debate as to whether Nietzsche be both the efficient and the final
cause of our present world war. Not to defend Nietzsche, not to condemn
him, but to wrestle for a firm, clear, moral view of life in our
seething times, this alone is most worth while, and this too is my task.
But for all that, I do believe we must penetrate much, much deeper into
this new prophet’s spirit than either friend or foe has yet done, if we
are to win from Nietzsche a deepening of our own and our time’s moral
view of life.
Would that we might forget, for a moment at least, all that partisan
praise and blame have scraped together respecting this most modern of
all philosophers; would that we might accompany him into the most hidden
workshop of his own thoughts and hearken to the personal confessions of
his wonderful soul! And what would we hear there? This preacher of crash
and catastrophe and cataclysm, temporal and eternal, speaking of
“thoughts which come with dove’s feet and steer and pilot the world”; of
“the stillest hours which bring the storm.” Zarathustra-Nietzsche hears
the _Höllenlärm_, the hellish alarum, that men make in life, that life
itself makes; he observes how men lend their ears to this noise, how
they are frightened by it, or exult over it, how they think that the
truth is the truer where the noise is the louder, how the howling of the
storm signifies to men that something good and great must be taking
place, some great event of history must be under way. Then Nietzsche
sets himself like a flint against this evaluation of things: “The
greatest experiences, these are not our noisiest, but our stillest
hours. It is not around the inventor of new noise, it is around the
inventor of new values that the world revolves, inaudibly revolves.” I
speak for myself alone, but these are words, Nietzsche words, for which
I would gladly sacrifice whole volumes of moral and theological works.
These words sharpen the eye and the ear for life-values which the
majority of men today pass by—pass by more heedlessly perhaps than ever.
These great words supply us with a criterion for the evaluation of
questions of the moral life, a criterion that no one will cast aside who
once comes to see what it means. It is a criterion without which we do
not yet comprehend life in its depths, because we so constantly
contemplate things from a false angle of vision. Something of the men
who are carried away by “hellish alarum” lives in all of us. Let there
be stillness without, and we think that there is nothing going on. Let
nature peal and groan outside there, so that all gigantic forces seem to
be released; then we have respect for her, we discern in such over-power
even a divine creative force or a divine destructive will. Let people
collide, the earth quake from thunder of cannon, and we signalize such a
day in our history, pass it down from child to child, and we call such
and such a battle a world-historical event.
But we forget the best. A blustering and brewing pervades nature when
Spring comes over the land to conquer Winter. When we hear the conflict
we cry: “Spring has come!” Not so. The true, genuine Spring-life,
nascent underneath the fury, makes no noise at all, weaves away
inaudibly, invisibly, in tiny seeds, and conceals in itself the
noiseless new germs of life.
Thomas Carlyle, though a trifle noisy himself at times, could finely
write: “Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves
together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into
the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.” Wordsworth,
not unmindful of
“The silence that is in the starry sky”
yet, gazing on the earth about him, sang
“No sound is uttered,—but a deep
And solemn harmony pervades
The hollow vale from steep to steep
And penetrates the glades.”
And for Longfellow there is
“Hoeder, the blind old god
Whose feet are shod with silence.”
But the chief study of mankind is still man, not nature and the gods.
Man’s silences! Yes, amid the smoke of powder and clink of swords,
peoples slash each other; and the men who make such uproar the people
call great. But the might and work of a people are to be found in that
quiet heroism, of which no one can discern anything outwardly—that quiet
heroism to which no one can unveil monuments in our cities. It is the
inaudible battles of the heart that this heroism fights; and the quieter
it is, the more gloriously it shines. Men with big voices and mighty
lungs we hear. Their words excite, move to tears, arouse boisterous and
voluble antagonisms. These who assemble about them such billowy mobs, we
are tempted to think that they are the leading spirits, that a vast
power must live in them, since they are so able to move inert men. But
another prophet, modern also, has said to these bawlers in market
places: “Do you think that he who stirs up scandal moves the world?”
Nothing easier than to start a scandal! Also, nothing jollier for
numerous men, to say nothing of women. But scandal is a roaring in the
ears. It does not reach the heart. It irritates, over-irritates the
nerves. It creates no blessings, no life. A tiny word that sinks down
into the deep of the soul, and quietly does its work there of
germinating and sprouting—this means infinitely more for the world than
the “alarum” of all the professional and unprofessional bawlers. Deep
rivers make least din. Light cares speak; mighty griefs are dumb. A
heart must be profane indeed, in which there is nothing sacred to
silence and the solemn sea. Once more, to quote Carlyle: “Under all
speech that is good for anything lies a silence that is better. Silence
is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.”
It were well to begin at home, and learn to evaluate experience aright
in our own being. There are moments in our lives when everything that we
encounter disconcerts us; nay, when our whole being seems to be off the
hinges, out of joint. Pain plows up our innermost selves. We could
shriek from heartbreak and woe. We stand there undone. And men who see
us and hear us moaning so piteously, groaning so painfully, have the
feeling: “No pain like this!” But how mistaken they are! For there is a
cry of the soul, heard of no one, more painful than all that can be
pitied or lamented. There are labors and battles of the soul wherein
nothing is hammered and driven, and yet _something new_ is formed. It is
never so still in a man as when he makes up his mind to have done
inwardly with some experience. As long as there is foaming and
blustering within, we accomplish nothing. True work tolerates no
tempest. We must be still. And when old values are broken, when we must
lead life to new goals, the quiet hour must come in which a divine child
of the spirit is conceived by the holy spirit; and the brightest light
which we can kindle within will burn so quietly and clearly that no
cloud of smoke shall ascend therefrom, and there shall be no flickering
to bear witness of contact with the restless world. “There the true
Silence is, self-conscious and alone.”
Behold, then, this Nietzsche, who flees all “alarum” and execrates all
din as a falsification of the moral values of life; who lives preferably
thousands of feet above the world there below, who lingers on the
loftiest lands of life whither no whirring rattle of the day could rise!
Could this Nietzsche find joy in men mauling and making a mess of each
other? Could this Nietzsche preach a culture in which battalions in
uniform should line up against those in blouse to see who knew best how
to deal the deadly blow? Could he gloat over the field where the thunder
of battle thundered the loudest? “Inventor” Krupp’s “new noise”—would
that appeal to Nietzsche who wanted all silent save the dripping rain,
and who worshipped sunshine alone? One might answer these questions in
the light of one’s own experience. Let us suppose that we comprehend the
meaning of the _stillsten Stunden_, the quietest hours, and the worth of
those great happenings of which nothing reaches the newspapers, and
which no _avant-coureur_ trumpets. Tell me, could we then detect even
the slightest inclination to be our own heralds, and to sacrifice our
quietest hours to the gaping and squabbling of men? Men—so the old
gospels say—ought not to cast their pearls before swine, or give that
which is holy to the dogs. But what is pearl, what is holy, if not what
the Nietzschean still hour contains and produces? There is something so
tender and beautiful in that hour that we shrink from expressing it,
from translating it into thought, lest word and thought tincture its
best perfume. Silence is sweeter than speech, more musical than song.
Whoever has a deep in himself into which he alone descends and
penetrates, a _plus_ of his life that remains after we have known and
weighed all his words and deeds, protects this deep and this _plus_ from
everything that could make a noise, from all mere words, from all
intrusive and obtrusive tittle-tattle. _Sich eine Oberfläche
anheucheln_, to feign a surface, to wear a mask, this is the original
and fine insight into such psychology. Man envelops himself in
unneighborliness, not to hold haughtily other men away from him, but to
save himself from them, so that they may not clumsily finger some pearl
which could not stand so rude a touch. Why speak in parables? Because it
is not given unto them to know the mystery of the kingdom, said the
Nazarene. Parables were a protecting shell encasing the most intimate
kernel, which ignorance or awkwardness might otherwise corrupt or
destroy. Nietzsche and the Nazarene held a deep and a _plus_ so uniquely
their own that they intentionally sought, not to be understood, but to
be misunderstood, with reference thereto.
Yes, there is a “surface” which only the man knows and uses who bears
about a deep in his own being. There, hypocrisy becomes a protection of
truthfulness; surface a protection of depth. Whoever “feigns such
surface,” wears such mask, is infinitely more honest and veracious than
he who has no silence in his deep which cannot be speech on his tongue—a
speech which is often only motions and noises of the tongue of him who
pries curiously into what he is inwardly incompetent to understand, or
offers a superficial and voluble sympathy for griefs of which he is as
innocent as a babe unborn, or a jaunty appreciation of values and
verities and virtues for which he has never sweat even a drop of blood.
To wear a mask, to lie, lie, lie,—that is the _truth_ of the soul as it
hides its treasures and its sanctities from vulgarity and volubility!
‘The suitor of _truth_? Thou?’ Thus they mocked.
‘Nay! Merely a poet!
An animal, a cunning, preying, stealing one,
Which must lie,
Which must lie, consciously, voluntarily,
Longing for prey,
_Disguised in many colours,_
_A mask unto itself,_
_A prey unto itself._
_That_—the suitor of truth?
Only a fool! a poet!
Only a speaker in many colours
Speaking in many colours out of fools’ masks,
Stalking about on deceitful word bridges,
On deceitful rain-bows,
Between false heavens
Wandering, stealing about—
_Only_ a fool! a poet!
(_Italics_ mine.)
Thus, it is the Deep, the Unique, the Abyss within, that is the great
Isolator. Nietzsche was indeed “the eagle that long, long gazeth
benumbed into abysses, into _its own_ abysses!”
And he spoke in parables. Give heed—so Zarathustra counsels his
disciples—to the times when your spirits speak in parables, for in these
times is the origin of your virtue.
I said I would not vindicate Nietzsche. But what if his deification of
force-humanity, of master-humanity, were _Oberfläche_, “surface,” mask,
which he “feigned” or wore, in order to protect his pearls from sows,
his holy of holies from hounds? What if _this_—scandalizing the
scandalous!—were but picture and parable which Nietzsche flaunted to the
people that they might wreak their vengeance thereupon? And the parable
is so pertinently chosen that it says everything to men of sense and
seriousness, hides everything from fools; that the pearls can be
recognized if right eyes behold, but protectingly concealed from rude
eyes and awkward hands.
Of course, Nietzsche was a homicide! So must we be! If thy right eye
offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; if thy right hand
offend thee, hew it off, and cast it from thee. And there are things
more offensive than an eye or a hand! These are the weaknesses which we
pamper and grow in ourselves: thought-lessness which we wink at; old pet
habits which have come to be just too dear for anything, especially for
us to knife; above all, sickly sentiments, self-pity, from which even
all our joys cannot rescue us—so that we do not have the courage to join
those warriors who turn their weapons against their own selves, and to
swear an “_I will_,” that is hard as steel, against all these softnesses
and humors and self-commiserations. Surely, it were well to be
force-men, master-men, so that we would not coddle our impotency or
carry on a pleasure-pain play with our weakness.
Yes, in these “stillest hours” there is also a “still” homicide and
interment, a plucking out and a hacking off, and the warrior-hero does
not betray the least pathos as he does this—there is no plaintive note
in his voice. The greatest thing about the dying Socrates, sipping away
at his cup of hemlock, was the total absence of pathos and self-pity.
Ah, if we but took half the pains to marshal forces of will in
ourselves, that we now devote to conserving our weak wills, and to
adducing all sorts of plausible reasons for their impuissance! If we but
actually learned _Herrenmoral_, master-morality, that were indeed
masterful and understood mastership! We are called to be masters by our
creator, not only masters of the earth, but also masters of the spirit.
And mastership is a great sacred thing, which we ought to learn from
world-masters. We ought to be hammers in life and not anvils. The great
calamity among men is that they shrink from being hammers, and call the
virtue of the anvil that lets itself be struck by the name of
“patience.”
It is just not true that Christianity abhors master-morality and
preaches a _Sclavenmoral_, a slave-morality. Yes it _is_ true of the
cowardly and inert thing that men call Christianity, this religion of
the study-chair and the barracks which can make use of no master,
because it summons just those powers to rule whose whole strength
consists only in the weakness of others. But there _is_ a Christianity
which has been outright mighty force, outright master-instinct, this
kingly Christianity, in whose presence a Pilate, and a Herod, with the
entire host of their war-slaves, were feeble folk indeed; a Christianity
of love and gentleness and meekness,—aye, aye, sir! But one can have
gentleness in the heart,—and yet lay on with a club! That was indeed
master-morality when the Son of Man made himself master of the Sabbath;
when he with a whip of cords scourged the money-changers and mammonists
out of the Temple! That was a force-man and a master-man who hurled his,
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” against the weak heart of Peter.
How would it do for our churches to have a new festival, a festival of
“the stillest hour,” memorializing the “invention of new values, around
which the world revolves, noiselessly revolves”? Noises enough, often
enough _Höllenlärm_, have there been in our churches, are yet, God
knows! But it is not noise that rules the world. It is stillness which
ultimately is the spiritual and moral might of the men who will possess
the kingdom of earth. What if even the history of peoples “feigns a
surface,” wears a mask, for those who having eyes see not, having ears
hear not? What if men mistake _Höllenlärm_ for messages of great
occurrences in history, and on this account hold themselves aloof from
those phenomena and experiences in which _something new_, a life of the
heart, presses on to its birth-hour? Yet the human race will not always
need or require noise and masks as its history rolls on. The more men
kill what is really worthy of death, the less will they set out to kill
each other. The more powerfully the will becomes conscious of its
calling to master, the more strenuously men strive after greatness,
human greatness, the more ridiculous will it come to seem to them in the
course of time that the force of man should be sought in the force of
his muscles, the mastership of man in the hoarded prerogative of powder
and lead. The day will yet come—as come it shall—when we will estimate
our life, not according to its noisiest, but according to its stillest
hours. And then a great and pure life will be created by what is done in
the heart of man.
The Birth of a Poem
(_Translated from the Russian of Maximilian Voloshin by A. S. K._)
In my soul is a fragrant dusk of coming thunder...
Heat-lightnings coil there like blue-birds...
Lighted windows burn...
And fibres, long,
Slow-singing,
Grow in the gloom...
O the odor of flowers that reaches a scream!
Lo! lightning in a white zig-zag...
And at once all became bright and great...
How radiant is the night!
Words dance, then flash in couples
In an enamored harmony.
Out of the womb of consciousness, from the bottom of the labyrinth—
Visions crowd in a quailing host...
And the verse blossoms into a hyacinth-flower,
Cold, fragrant, white.
Editorials
_Why Socialists Went to War_
We have listened with much interest to the excuses for the German
Socialists who went to war, as well as to the attacks on them for doing
so. Now, though hesitating to obtrude our ignorance into the muddle of a
complicated discussion, we can’t refrain from offering a suggestion.
The bottom reason for sudden activity under the stress of unusual
circumstances is to be found, not in a conscious mental decision, but in
the previously-formed habits of the individual mind. We are referring
partly to the mob-emotion which has swept away so many even of the
greatest souls of Europe. We are thinking more of the essence of
Socialism, and the sort of emotional method which has been produced
among its adherents—the material upon which mob-psychology had to work.
There is no essential difference between the method of German
Imperialism and the method of German Socialism; the only difference lies
in the objectives. Both insist on the supreme importance of the state,
both work through cohesive organization and the almost unquestioning
following of leaders. The habit of obedience, the instinct for
organization, the gregarious mode of action—these are the very qualities
of the individual German which have made it possible for the German
Social Democratic Party to grow to such size and strength. What more
inevitable, when the mobilization order went up, when flags flew and
drums beat, than that the individual German Socialist should in his
excitement shoulder his gun and march to war?
Of course, we don’t really know anything about it, and we haven’t the
resources to make anything like a scientific investigation. But we
strongly suspect that the morals of organized humanity will remain
inferior to the morals of the individual until the individual habit of
mind becomes one which denies to organized humanity supreme authority
over the will.
G. H. S.
_Even Galsworthy!_
In _Scribner’s Magazine_ for November, Mr. Galsworthy has a stunning
article on the War. And then at its close:—“Your Prussian supermen of
Nietzsche’s cult...!”
_Another New Poet_
Mr. Scharmel Iris is a young Italian poet, born in Florence, who at the
tender age of ten, and later, was praised by Ruskin, Swinburne, Francis
Thompson, Edmund Gosse, and other men who may be assumed to know what
good poetry is. Ruskin wrote: “He is a youth of genius and his poems are
marvelously beautiful. His heart has felt the pathos of life and he has
set this pathos to music.” Swinburne said: “He writes with imaginative
ardor, and impassioned is the word which best illustrates his utterance.
He is genuine and sincere, and his lovely poems display energy of
emotion and a true sense of poetic restraint.” Thompson was more
superlative: “I believe Scharmel Iris to be a poet of the first rank,”
he stated. “His poems are sublime in conception, rich in splendid
imagery, full of remarkable metaphors and new figures, and musical in
expression.” Of course it has been difficult for a young man of such
talent to find a publisher or a public; but at last a volume of his work
is to be brought out by the Ralph Fletcher Seymour Company. The book
will be called _Lyrics of a Lad_, and will be ready about Christmas
time. Beside a preface by Maurice Francis Egan and an interesting
title-page decoration by Michele Greco, it will have a frontispiece
portrait by Eugene R. Hutchinson, the photographer who should never be
referred to by any noun except “artist.” Personally, we love Mr. Iris’s
work; we use the verb thoughtfully, because his poetry is not merely the
sort which interests or attracts; it remains in your mind as part of
that art treasure-house which is your religion and your life.
_Prizes for Poetry_
An interesting announcement comes from _Poetry_ in regard to two prize
offers. One—the Helen Haire Levinson prize of two hundred dollars for
the best poetry by a citizen of the United States published in the
magazine during its second year—has been awarded to Mr. Carl Sandburg
for his _Chicago Poems_. This is a particularly gratifying decision, for
Mr. Sandburg’s is a new voice which must be reckoned with in American
poetic production. The second is a one hundred dollar offer for the best
war or peace poem on the present European situation, and has been given
to Miss Louise Driscoll of Catskill, New York, for a poem called _Metal
Checks_, which appears in the November issue.
My Friend, the Incurable
At dusk I pass an ugly red building with shrieking fat black letters on
its façade—Home for Incurables. Shrill grass, narcotic carnations, hazy
figures in rocking chairs and on the balconies, melting in the liquid
gold of autumn twilight—a harmony of discord that screams for the
spiritual brush of Kandinsky. There are no signs of pain or grief on the
faces of the doomed: a profound calmness they bear, a resolute
quiescence, reminding us of Dante after he had seen hell or of
Andreyev’s resurrected Lazarus. “To be sure, they are quite happy,”
explained the obliging Doctor. “These men and women have come to be free
of struggles, of doubts, and of the anguish of hopes. The knowledge of
their fate, the ultimate, irrevocable truth, is a relieving balm for the
tired spirits—nay, even for the hopeless bodies, for as soon as they
cease fighting their disease they learn to adapt themselves to that
disease, to consider it an inseparable part of their existence. I can
show you a number of patients who are actually in love with their
affliction, who would resent the idea of being turned normal. Look at
the hilarious face of that fellow yonder at the fountain; he is
intoxicated with sunset, and appears to be the happiest of mortals,
despite his terrible disease. A queer case, an un-American case.”