When the magician
retaliates
by saying that the
spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song,
the latter replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from
thyself.
spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song,
the latter replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from
thyself.
Thus Spake Zarathustra- A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
" It is the kings
who tell Zarathustra: "There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny
than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There
everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous. " The kings are
also asked by Zarathustra to accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon
he proceeds on his way.
Chapter LXIV. The Leech.
Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the
scientific specialist--the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his
investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. "I love
him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the
Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going. "
"The spiritually conscientious one," he is called in this discourse.
Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding
from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task,
speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge--his little hand's
breadth of ground on Zarathustra's territory, philosophy. "Where mine
honesty ceaseth," says the true scientific specialist, "there am I blind
and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want
I also to be honest--namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel, and
inexorable. " Zarathustra greatly respecting this man, invites him too to
the cave, and then vanishes in answer to another cry for help.
Chapter LXV. The Magician.
The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche's intimate knowledge
of perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of
Wagner, as the type in this discourse, almost inevitable. Most readers
will be acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche's and Wagner's
friendship and ultimate separation. As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had
shown such a remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at
one time whether he should not perhaps give up everything else in order
to develop this gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although
he never entirely gave up composing, and playing the piano. While
still in his teens, he became acquainted with Wagner's music and
grew passionately fond of it. Long before he met Wagner he must have
idealised him in his mind to an extent which only a profoundly artistic
nature could have been capable of. Nietzsche always had high ideals for
humanity. If one were asked whether, throughout his many changes, there
was yet one aim, one direction, and one hope to which he held fast,
one would be forced to reply in the affirmative and declare that aim,
direction, and hope to have been "the elevation of the type man. "
Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting about for an
incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have only to
remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to Wagner),
his love of Wagner's music, and the undoubted power of the great
musician's personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his
attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm. Again,
when the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the
younger man, being anything less than intoxicated by his senior's
attention and love, and we are therefore not surprised to find him
pressing Wagner forward as the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind.
"Wagner in Bayreuth" (English Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof
of Nietzsche's infatuation, and although signs are not wanting in this
essay which show how clearly and even cruelly he was sub-consciously
"taking stock" of his friend--even then, the work is a record of what
great love and admiration can do in the way of endowing the object
of one's affection with all the qualities and ideals that a fertile
imagination can conceive.
When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe. Nietzsche
at length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard
Wagner--the composer of Parsifal--were not one; the fact dawned
upon him slowly; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after
revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best
instincts were naturally opposed to it at first, the revulsion of
feeling at last became too strong to be ignored, and Nietzsche was
plunged into the blackest despair. Years after his break with Wagner,
he wrote "The Case of Wagner", and "Nietzsche contra Wagner", and these
works are with us to prove the sincerity and depth of his views on the
man who was the greatest event of his life.
The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner's own
poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written
subsequent to Nietzsche's final break with his friend. The dialogue
between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it
was that Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,--viz. , his
pronounced histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate
vanity, his equivocalness, his falseness. "It honoureth thee," says
Zarathustra, "that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee
also. Thou art not great. " The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest
to Zarathustra's cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the
end that the Magician was a higher man broken by modern values.
Chapter LXVI. Out of Service.
Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get
Nietzsche's description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued
before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and
the like. The God of a strong, warlike race--the God of Israel--is a
jealous, revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured
only by a hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and
to lose in sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people
that appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love--"soft and
mellow," a lower middle-class deity, who is "pitiful. " He can no longer
be a God who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich
enough for that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must
sacrifice to us. His pity becomes so great that he actually does
sacrifice something to us--His only begotten Son. Such a process
carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own
destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day
suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough.
Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him
too as a guest to the cave.
Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche's suggestions
concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon
the sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature
sitting on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only
correct feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great
misery--that is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche
detested the obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without
a blush either on its cheek or in its heart--the pity which is only
another form of self-glorification. "Thank God that I am not like
thee! "--only this self-glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted
man the impudence to SHOW his pity for the cripple and the
ill-constituted. In the presence of the ugliest man Nietzsche
blushes,--he blushes for his race; his own particular kind of
altruism--the altruism that might have prevented the existence of this
man--strikes him with all its force. He will have the world otherwise.
He will have a world where one need not blush for one's fellows--hence
his appeal to us to love only our children's land, the land undiscovered
in the remotest sea.
Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this
is one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism--the Atheism of the man who
reveres beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages
him, must be concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as
Zarathustra respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His
pity must be foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore,
for the really GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. "Their pity IS it from
which I flee away," he says--that is to say: "It is from their want of
reverence and lack of shame in presence of my great misery! " The ugliest
man despises himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: "I love
the great despisers because they are the great adorers, and arrows of
longing for the other shore. " He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees
height in his self-contempt, and invites him to join the other higher
men in the cave.
Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not
Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism,
and almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of
praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for
decadents, its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in
Christianity, from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of "The
Antichrist", he compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and
the result of his investigation is very much in favour of the older
religion. Still, he recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence
in Christ's teaching, and the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very
reminiscent of his views in regard to the Christian Savior.
The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and
many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own
lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft
of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has
attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been
taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ
was "le grand maitre en ironie"; in Aphorism 31 of "The Antichrist",
he says that he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble
Nazarene of all those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of
the struggle the first Christians went through, may very well have been
added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at
that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points,
seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive
deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of
the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche
always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man
with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and
in presenting us with this new portrait of the Saviour, purged of all
impurities, Nietzsche rendered military honours to a foe, which far
exceed in worth all that His most ardent disciples have ever claimed for
Him. In verse 26 we are vividly reminded of Herbert Spencer's words "'Le
mariage de convenance' is legalised prostitution. "
Chapter LXIX. The Shadow.
Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that
literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great
leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes,
and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and
most broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring
movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely
lose their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a
way, a goal, or a home. "On every surface have I already sat! . . . I become
thin, I am almost equal to a shadow! " At last, in despair, such men
do indeed cry out: "Nothing is true; all is permitted," and then they
become mere wreckage. "Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing
mattereth to me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how
should I still love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home? "
Zarathustra realises the danger threatening such a man. "Thy danger is
not small, thou free spirit and wanderer," he says. "Thou hast had a bad
day. See that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee! " The danger
Zarathustra refers to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a
blessing to such a man. At least the bars keep him in a place of rest;
a place of confinement, at its worst, is real. "Beware lest in the end
a narrow faith capture thee," says Zarathustra, "for now everything that
is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee. "
Chapter LXX. Noontide.
At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him
man came of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old
guardians, the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and
fears of our childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we
lived through our morning with but one master--chance--; let us see to
it that we MAKE our afternoon our own (see Note XLIX. , Part III. ).
Chapter LXXI. The Greeting.
Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and
aim of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning
of my Notes on Part IV. ) is completely upheld. He fought for "all who
do not want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE--unless THEY learn
(from him) the GREAT hope! " Zarathustra's address to his guests shows
clearly enough how he wished to help them: "I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS
INDULGENTLY," he says: "how then could ye be fit for MY warfare? " He
rebukes and spurns them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere
he says a man should be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be
of use to him. Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men. He would
make them harder; for, in order to be a law unto himself, man must
possess the requisite hardness. "I wait for higher ones, stronger ones,
more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in
body and soul. " He says in par. 6 of "Higher Man":--
"Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you
sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and
easier footpaths? "
"Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb--for ye shall always have it worse and harder. "
Chapter LXXII. The Supper.
In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing
a gentle allusion to Schopenhauer's habits as a bon-vivant. For a
pessimist, be it remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary
life. He ate well, loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he
smoked the best cigars. What follows is clear enough.
Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to
the people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately
to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place.
Par. 3.
Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people.
To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved,
provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that "Life per se is
precious" is the ruling maxim here.
Par. 4.
In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche's elevation of
the virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he
tells higher men the class of courage he expects from them.
Pars. 5, 6.
These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end)
and LXXI.
Par. 7.
I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the
view that Nietzsche's teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric
and for higher man alone.
Par. 9.
In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the
Immaculate Perception or so-called "pure objectivity" of the scientific
mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge. " Where a
man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is
not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his
Autobiography:--"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional
nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual
nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I. , "Thoughts out of Season").
Pars. 10, 11.
When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be
independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is
perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one
of thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting
intellectually for oneself.
Par. 13.
"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may
grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not. " These two paragraphs are an
exhortation to higher men to become independent.
Par. 15.
Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As,
however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed,
what he says is not without value.
A very important principle in Nietzsche's philosophy is enunciated in
the first verse of this paragraph. "The higher its type, always the
seldomer doth a thing succeed" (see page 82 of "Beyond Good and Evil").
Those who, like some political economists, talk in a business-like way
about the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook
the fact that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among
higher individuals. Economy was never precisely one of nature's leading
principles. All this sentimental wailing over the larger proportion
of failures than successes in human life, does not seem to take into
account the fact that it is the rarest thing on earth for a highly
organised being to attain to the fullest development and activity of all
its functions, simply because it is so highly organised. The blind Will
to Power in nature therefore stands in urgent need of direction by man.
Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche's protest against the democratic
seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. "All good things laugh," he
says, and his final command to the higher men is, "LEARN, I pray you--to
laugh. " All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche's sense, is cheerful. To be able
to crack a joke about one's deepest feelings is the greatest test of
their value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make
faces, is already a buffoon at heart.
"What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the
word of him who said: 'Woe unto them that laugh now! ' Did he himself
find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child
even findeth cause for it. "
Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the
open to recover himself. Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the
opportunity in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the
Song of Melancholy.
Chapter LXXV. Science.
The only one to resist the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is
the spiritually conscientious one--the scientific specialist of whom we
read in the discourse entitled "The Leech". He takes the harp from the
magician and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style
of "The Case of Wagner".
When the magician retaliates by saying that the
spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song,
the latter replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from
thyself. " The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is
well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to
the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the
only one who can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's
music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra
and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the
question of the proper place of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche
avails himself of the opportunity in order to restate his views
concerning the relation of courage to humanity. It is precisely because
courage has played the most important part in our development that
he would not see it vanish from among our virtues to-day. ". . . courage
seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man. "
Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert.
This tells its own tale.
Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening.
In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning.
He thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent,
that new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their
arms and legs. But he mistakes the nature of the change. True, he has
helped them, he has given them back what they most need, i. e. , belief in
believing--the confidence in having confidence in something, but how
do they use it? This belief in faith, if one can so express it without
seeming tautological, has certainly been restored to them, and in
the first flood of their enthusiasm they use it by bowing down and
worshipping an ass! When writing this passage, Nietzsche was obviously
thinking of the accusations which were levelled at the early Christians
by their pagan contemporaries. It is well known that they were supposed
not only to be eaters of human flesh but also ass-worshippers, and among
the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one found on the Palatino,
showing a man worshipping a cross on which is suspended a figure
with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, "Octavius" IX. ; Tacitus,
"Historiae" v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia", etc. ). Nietzsche's obvious
moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they have
reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to
recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually
manifest the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest
and most superstitious of creeds. So much for the introduction of the
ass as an object of worship.
Now, with regard to the actual service and Ass-Festival, no reader who
happens to be acquainted with the religious history of the Middle Ages
will fail to see the allusion here to the asinaria festa which were by
no means uncommon in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe during the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.
Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.
At length, in the middle of their feast, Zarathustra bursts in upon
them and rebukes them soundly. But he does not do so long; in the
Ass-Festival, it suddenly occurs to him, that he is concerned with a
ceremony that may not be without its purpose, as something foolish but
necessary--a recreation for wise men. He is therefore highly pleased
that the higher men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require
new festivals,--"A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and
ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow
their souls bright. "
He tells them not to forget that night and the ass-festival, for "such
things only the convalescent devise! And should ye celebrate it again,"
he concludes, "do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to
me! And in remembrance of ME! "
Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song.
It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix any particular
interpretation of my own to the words of this song. With what has gone
before, the reader, while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek
and find his own meaning in it. The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence
appears for the last time here, in an art-form. Nietzsche lays stress
upon the fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetitions,
and just as a child cries "Again! Again! " to the adult who happens to
be amusing him; so the man who sees a meaning, and a joyful meaning, in
existence must also cry "Again! " and yet "Again! " to all his life.
Chapter LXXX. The Sign.
In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself finally from the
higher men, and by the symbol of the lion, wishes to convey to us that
he has won over and mastered the best and the most terrible in nature.
That great power and tenderness are kin, was already his belief in
1875--eight years before he wrote this speech, and when the birds and
the lion come to him, it is because he is the embodiment of the two
qualities. All that is terrible and great in nature, the higher men are
not yet prepared for; for they retreat horror-stricken into the cave
when the lion springs at them; but Zarathustra makes not a move towards
them. He was tempted to them on the previous day, he says, but "That
hath had its time! My suffering and my fellow suffering,--what matter
about them! Do I then strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my work!
Well! the lion hath come, my children are nigh. Zarathustra hath grown
ripe. MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONDAY! "
. . .
The above I know to be open to much criticism. I shall be grateful to
all those who will be kind enough to show me where and how I have gone
wrong; but I should like to point out that, as they stand, I have not
given to these Notes by any means their final form.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
London, February 1909.
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who tell Zarathustra: "There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny
than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There
everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous. " The kings are
also asked by Zarathustra to accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon
he proceeds on his way.
Chapter LXIV. The Leech.
Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the
scientific specialist--the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his
investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. "I love
him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the
Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going. "
"The spiritually conscientious one," he is called in this discourse.
Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding
from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task,
speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge--his little hand's
breadth of ground on Zarathustra's territory, philosophy. "Where mine
honesty ceaseth," says the true scientific specialist, "there am I blind
and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want
I also to be honest--namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel, and
inexorable. " Zarathustra greatly respecting this man, invites him too to
the cave, and then vanishes in answer to another cry for help.
Chapter LXV. The Magician.
The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche's intimate knowledge
of perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of
Wagner, as the type in this discourse, almost inevitable. Most readers
will be acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche's and Wagner's
friendship and ultimate separation. As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had
shown such a remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at
one time whether he should not perhaps give up everything else in order
to develop this gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although
he never entirely gave up composing, and playing the piano. While
still in his teens, he became acquainted with Wagner's music and
grew passionately fond of it. Long before he met Wagner he must have
idealised him in his mind to an extent which only a profoundly artistic
nature could have been capable of. Nietzsche always had high ideals for
humanity. If one were asked whether, throughout his many changes, there
was yet one aim, one direction, and one hope to which he held fast,
one would be forced to reply in the affirmative and declare that aim,
direction, and hope to have been "the elevation of the type man. "
Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting about for an
incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have only to
remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to Wagner),
his love of Wagner's music, and the undoubted power of the great
musician's personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his
attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm. Again,
when the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the
younger man, being anything less than intoxicated by his senior's
attention and love, and we are therefore not surprised to find him
pressing Wagner forward as the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind.
"Wagner in Bayreuth" (English Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof
of Nietzsche's infatuation, and although signs are not wanting in this
essay which show how clearly and even cruelly he was sub-consciously
"taking stock" of his friend--even then, the work is a record of what
great love and admiration can do in the way of endowing the object
of one's affection with all the qualities and ideals that a fertile
imagination can conceive.
When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe. Nietzsche
at length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard
Wagner--the composer of Parsifal--were not one; the fact dawned
upon him slowly; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after
revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best
instincts were naturally opposed to it at first, the revulsion of
feeling at last became too strong to be ignored, and Nietzsche was
plunged into the blackest despair. Years after his break with Wagner,
he wrote "The Case of Wagner", and "Nietzsche contra Wagner", and these
works are with us to prove the sincerity and depth of his views on the
man who was the greatest event of his life.
The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner's own
poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written
subsequent to Nietzsche's final break with his friend. The dialogue
between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it
was that Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,--viz. , his
pronounced histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate
vanity, his equivocalness, his falseness. "It honoureth thee," says
Zarathustra, "that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee
also. Thou art not great. " The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest
to Zarathustra's cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the
end that the Magician was a higher man broken by modern values.
Chapter LXVI. Out of Service.
Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get
Nietzsche's description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued
before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and
the like. The God of a strong, warlike race--the God of Israel--is a
jealous, revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured
only by a hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and
to lose in sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people
that appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love--"soft and
mellow," a lower middle-class deity, who is "pitiful. " He can no longer
be a God who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich
enough for that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must
sacrifice to us. His pity becomes so great that he actually does
sacrifice something to us--His only begotten Son. Such a process
carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own
destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day
suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough.
Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him
too as a guest to the cave.
Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche's suggestions
concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon
the sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature
sitting on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only
correct feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great
misery--that is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche
detested the obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without
a blush either on its cheek or in its heart--the pity which is only
another form of self-glorification. "Thank God that I am not like
thee! "--only this self-glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted
man the impudence to SHOW his pity for the cripple and the
ill-constituted. In the presence of the ugliest man Nietzsche
blushes,--he blushes for his race; his own particular kind of
altruism--the altruism that might have prevented the existence of this
man--strikes him with all its force. He will have the world otherwise.
He will have a world where one need not blush for one's fellows--hence
his appeal to us to love only our children's land, the land undiscovered
in the remotest sea.
Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this
is one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism--the Atheism of the man who
reveres beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages
him, must be concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as
Zarathustra respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His
pity must be foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore,
for the really GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. "Their pity IS it from
which I flee away," he says--that is to say: "It is from their want of
reverence and lack of shame in presence of my great misery! " The ugliest
man despises himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: "I love
the great despisers because they are the great adorers, and arrows of
longing for the other shore. " He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees
height in his self-contempt, and invites him to join the other higher
men in the cave.
Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not
Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism,
and almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of
praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for
decadents, its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in
Christianity, from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of "The
Antichrist", he compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and
the result of his investigation is very much in favour of the older
religion. Still, he recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence
in Christ's teaching, and the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very
reminiscent of his views in regard to the Christian Savior.
The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and
many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own
lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft
of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has
attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been
taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ
was "le grand maitre en ironie"; in Aphorism 31 of "The Antichrist",
he says that he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble
Nazarene of all those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of
the struggle the first Christians went through, may very well have been
added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at
that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points,
seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive
deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of
the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche
always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man
with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and
in presenting us with this new portrait of the Saviour, purged of all
impurities, Nietzsche rendered military honours to a foe, which far
exceed in worth all that His most ardent disciples have ever claimed for
Him. In verse 26 we are vividly reminded of Herbert Spencer's words "'Le
mariage de convenance' is legalised prostitution. "
Chapter LXIX. The Shadow.
Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that
literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great
leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes,
and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and
most broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring
movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely
lose their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a
way, a goal, or a home. "On every surface have I already sat! . . . I become
thin, I am almost equal to a shadow! " At last, in despair, such men
do indeed cry out: "Nothing is true; all is permitted," and then they
become mere wreckage. "Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing
mattereth to me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,--how
should I still love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home? "
Zarathustra realises the danger threatening such a man. "Thy danger is
not small, thou free spirit and wanderer," he says. "Thou hast had a bad
day. See that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee! " The danger
Zarathustra refers to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a
blessing to such a man. At least the bars keep him in a place of rest;
a place of confinement, at its worst, is real. "Beware lest in the end
a narrow faith capture thee," says Zarathustra, "for now everything that
is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee. "
Chapter LXX. Noontide.
At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him
man came of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old
guardians, the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and
fears of our childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we
lived through our morning with but one master--chance--; let us see to
it that we MAKE our afternoon our own (see Note XLIX. , Part III. ).
Chapter LXXI. The Greeting.
Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and
aim of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning
of my Notes on Part IV. ) is completely upheld. He fought for "all who
do not want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE--unless THEY learn
(from him) the GREAT hope! " Zarathustra's address to his guests shows
clearly enough how he wished to help them: "I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS
INDULGENTLY," he says: "how then could ye be fit for MY warfare? " He
rebukes and spurns them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere
he says a man should be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be
of use to him. Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men. He would
make them harder; for, in order to be a law unto himself, man must
possess the requisite hardness. "I wait for higher ones, stronger ones,
more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in
body and soul. " He says in par. 6 of "Higher Man":--
"Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you
sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and
easier footpaths? "
"Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb--for ye shall always have it worse and harder. "
Chapter LXXII. The Supper.
In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing
a gentle allusion to Schopenhauer's habits as a bon-vivant. For a
pessimist, be it remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary
life. He ate well, loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he
smoked the best cigars. What follows is clear enough.
Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to
the people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately
to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place.
Par. 3.
Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people.
To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved,
provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that "Life per se is
precious" is the ruling maxim here.
Par. 4.
In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche's elevation of
the virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he
tells higher men the class of courage he expects from them.
Pars. 5, 6.
These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end)
and LXXI.
Par. 7.
I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the
view that Nietzsche's teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric
and for higher man alone.
Par. 9.
In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the
Immaculate Perception or so-called "pure objectivity" of the scientific
mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge. " Where a
man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is
not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his
Autobiography:--"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional
nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual
nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I. , "Thoughts out of Season").
Pars. 10, 11.
When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be
independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is
perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one
of thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting
intellectually for oneself.
Par. 13.
"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may
grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not. " These two paragraphs are an
exhortation to higher men to become independent.
Par. 15.
Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As,
however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed,
what he says is not without value.
A very important principle in Nietzsche's philosophy is enunciated in
the first verse of this paragraph. "The higher its type, always the
seldomer doth a thing succeed" (see page 82 of "Beyond Good and Evil").
Those who, like some political economists, talk in a business-like way
about the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook
the fact that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among
higher individuals. Economy was never precisely one of nature's leading
principles. All this sentimental wailing over the larger proportion
of failures than successes in human life, does not seem to take into
account the fact that it is the rarest thing on earth for a highly
organised being to attain to the fullest development and activity of all
its functions, simply because it is so highly organised. The blind Will
to Power in nature therefore stands in urgent need of direction by man.
Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche's protest against the democratic
seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. "All good things laugh," he
says, and his final command to the higher men is, "LEARN, I pray you--to
laugh. " All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche's sense, is cheerful. To be able
to crack a joke about one's deepest feelings is the greatest test of
their value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make
faces, is already a buffoon at heart.
"What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the
word of him who said: 'Woe unto them that laugh now! ' Did he himself
find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child
even findeth cause for it. "
Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the
open to recover himself. Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the
opportunity in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the
Song of Melancholy.
Chapter LXXV. Science.
The only one to resist the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is
the spiritually conscientious one--the scientific specialist of whom we
read in the discourse entitled "The Leech". He takes the harp from the
magician and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style
of "The Case of Wagner".
When the magician retaliates by saying that the
spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song,
the latter replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from
thyself. " The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is
well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to
the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the
only one who can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's
music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra
and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the
question of the proper place of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche
avails himself of the opportunity in order to restate his views
concerning the relation of courage to humanity. It is precisely because
courage has played the most important part in our development that
he would not see it vanish from among our virtues to-day. ". . . courage
seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man. "
Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert.
This tells its own tale.
Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening.
In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning.
He thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent,
that new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their
arms and legs. But he mistakes the nature of the change. True, he has
helped them, he has given them back what they most need, i. e. , belief in
believing--the confidence in having confidence in something, but how
do they use it? This belief in faith, if one can so express it without
seeming tautological, has certainly been restored to them, and in
the first flood of their enthusiasm they use it by bowing down and
worshipping an ass! When writing this passage, Nietzsche was obviously
thinking of the accusations which were levelled at the early Christians
by their pagan contemporaries. It is well known that they were supposed
not only to be eaters of human flesh but also ass-worshippers, and among
the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one found on the Palatino,
showing a man worshipping a cross on which is suspended a figure
with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, "Octavius" IX. ; Tacitus,
"Historiae" v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia", etc. ). Nietzsche's obvious
moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they have
reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to
recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually
manifest the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest
and most superstitious of creeds. So much for the introduction of the
ass as an object of worship.
Now, with regard to the actual service and Ass-Festival, no reader who
happens to be acquainted with the religious history of the Middle Ages
will fail to see the allusion here to the asinaria festa which were by
no means uncommon in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe during the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.
Chapter LXXVIII. The Ass-Festival.
At length, in the middle of their feast, Zarathustra bursts in upon
them and rebukes them soundly. But he does not do so long; in the
Ass-Festival, it suddenly occurs to him, that he is concerned with a
ceremony that may not be without its purpose, as something foolish but
necessary--a recreation for wise men. He is therefore highly pleased
that the higher men have all blossomed forth; they therefore require
new festivals,--"A little valiant nonsense, some divine service and
ass-festival, some old joyful Zarathustra fool, some blusterer to blow
their souls bright. "
He tells them not to forget that night and the ass-festival, for "such
things only the convalescent devise! And should ye celebrate it again,"
he concludes, "do it from love to yourselves, do it also from love to
me! And in remembrance of ME! "
Chapter LXXIX. The Drunken Song.
It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix any particular
interpretation of my own to the words of this song. With what has gone
before, the reader, while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek
and find his own meaning in it. The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence
appears for the last time here, in an art-form. Nietzsche lays stress
upon the fact that all happiness, all delight, longs for repetitions,
and just as a child cries "Again! Again! " to the adult who happens to
be amusing him; so the man who sees a meaning, and a joyful meaning, in
existence must also cry "Again! " and yet "Again! " to all his life.
Chapter LXXX. The Sign.
In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself finally from the
higher men, and by the symbol of the lion, wishes to convey to us that
he has won over and mastered the best and the most terrible in nature.
That great power and tenderness are kin, was already his belief in
1875--eight years before he wrote this speech, and when the birds and
the lion come to him, it is because he is the embodiment of the two
qualities. All that is terrible and great in nature, the higher men are
not yet prepared for; for they retreat horror-stricken into the cave
when the lion springs at them; but Zarathustra makes not a move towards
them. He was tempted to them on the previous day, he says, but "That
hath had its time! My suffering and my fellow suffering,--what matter
about them! Do I then strive after HAPPINESS? I strive after my work!
Well! the lion hath come, my children are nigh. Zarathustra hath grown
ripe. MY day beginneth: ARISE NOW, ARISE, THOU GREAT NOONDAY! "
. . .
The above I know to be open to much criticism. I shall be grateful to
all those who will be kind enough to show me where and how I have gone
wrong; but I should like to point out that, as they stand, I have not
given to these Notes by any means their final form.
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.
London, February 1909.
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