" He says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the
true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power.
true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power.
Thus Spake Zarathustra- A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
.
PART III.
This is perhaps the most important of all the four parts. If it
contained only "The Vision and the Enigma" and "The Old and New Tables"
I should still be of this opinion; for in the former of these discourses
we meet with what Nietzsche regarded as the crowning doctrine of his
philosophy and in "The Old and New Tables" we have a valuable epitome of
practically all his leading principles.
Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.
"The Vision and the Enigma" is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his
most obscure vein. We must know how persistently he inveighed against
the oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and
consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this
discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and
Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men. What were
once but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of
humanity, had now passed into man's blood and had become instincts. This
oppressive and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche
refers to when he speaks of "the spirit of gravity. " This creature
half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his
climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is
nothing more than the heavy millstone "guilty conscience," together with
the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men. To rise
above it--to soar--is the most difficult of all things to-day. Nietzsche
is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility of
life in this world recurring again and again, when he has once cast the
dwarf from his shoulders, and he announces his doctrine of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small to his arch-enemy and in
defiance of him.
That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the
literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a
very daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect,
as a dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche
ever properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII. ).
What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd
struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his
throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the
young man's mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls
at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in
despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man's will. Knowing full well
what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries,
"Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite! " as the only possible solution of the
difficulty. The young shepherd bites, and far away he spits the
snake's head, whereupon he rises, "No longer shepherd, no longer man--a
transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on
earth laughed a man as he laughed! "
In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the
snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social
values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite! Bite! "
is but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values
before it is too late.
Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.
This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages
in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean
outlook on life.
Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise.
Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the
important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" (verse 27). Those
who are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy will not require to be told
what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching.
The Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet "man,"--this is
the fact he cannot contemplate with equanimity. Man shall now exploit
chance, he says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before
him! (See verse 33 in "On the Olive Mount", and verses 9-10 in "The
Bedwarfing Virtue").
Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.
This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and
his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the
discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the
great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):--"At present
nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of
domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,--FOR
PATHOS OF DISTANCE. . . Our politics are MORBID from this want of
courage! --The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily
by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege
of the many,' makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is
Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which
translate every revolution merely into blood and crime! " (see also
"Beyond Good and Evil", pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a
bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of
their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great's power and
distinguished gifts should have been able to say: "Ich bin der erste
Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of the State. ) To this
utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers.
"Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," are the names with which he labels modern
notions of virtue and moderation.
In Part III. , we get the sentiments of the discourse "In the Happy
Isles", but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche
thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with
vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse
20, Zarathustra makes yet another attempt at defining his entirely
anti-anarchical attitude, and unless such passages have been completely
overlooked or deliberately ignored hitherto by those who will persist in
laying anarchy at his door, it is impossible to understand how he ever
became associated with that foul political party.
The last verse introduces the expression, "THE GREAT NOONTIDE! " In the
poem to be found at the end of "Beyond Good and Evil", we meet with
the expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in
Nietzsche's works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part
of "The Twilight of the Idols"; but for those who cannot refer to
this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present
period--our period--the noon of man's history. Dawn is behind us. The
childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any
excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man.
"With respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning
ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control. . . But my
feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern
period, OUR period. Our age KNOWS. . . " (See Note on Chapter LXX. ).
Chapter LI. On Passing-by.
Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with
him therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary.
"Zarathustra's ape" he is called in the discourse. He is one of those
at whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and
at whose hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this
respect it may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but
it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and
word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and
"business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large
portion of the public, not knowing of these things,--not knowing perhaps
that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore
creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and
revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,--are
prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type.
If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of
speech he has borrowed from him: if we carefully follow the attitude
he assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him.
"Stop this at once," Zarathustra cries, "long have thy speech and
thy species disgusted me. . . Out of love alone shall my contempt and my
warning bird take wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP! " It were well if
this discourse were taken to heart by all those who are too ready to
associate Nietzsche with lesser and noiser men,--with mountebanks and
mummers.
Chapter LII. The Apostates.
It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters
of everything," who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent
thought and "heresy," and who, having miscalculated their strength, find
it impossible to keep their head above water. "A little older, a little
colder," says Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of
the age they intended reforming. The French then say "le diable se fait
hermite," but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither
do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some
strength and deep breathing is required. Those who are more interested
in supporting orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of
support they give it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour
of the true faith.
Chapter LIII. The Return Home.
This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too
lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From
first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The
inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful
and profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint
concerning Nietzsche's fundamental passion--the main force behind all
his new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30
we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the
law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted
by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for
the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had
suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not
only for himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see
Note B. , where "pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later
in the book we shall see how his profound compassion leads him into
temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31
and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order
to be endured by his fellows whom he loved (see also verse 12 in "Manly
Prudence"). Nietzsche's great love for his fellows, which he confesses
in the Prologue, and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems
rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and
modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that
sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting
posterity, completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche's
philosophy, because it declares Christian values to be a danger to the
future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal, cold, and hard (see
Note on Chapter XXXVI. ). Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men;
he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in the Return Home he
describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in order to recover
from the effects of his experiment.
Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things.
Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto
best-cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be
weighed. Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,--the three
forces in humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and
besmirch,--Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of
honour. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to
discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded,
however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure
sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we
join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites
and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that
the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health
itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting
their inability to partake of this world's goods, cried like St Paul:
"I would that all men were even as I myself. " Now Nietzsche's philosophy
might be called an attempt at giving back to healthy and normal men
innocence and a clean conscience in their desires--NOT to applaud the
vulgar sensualists who respond to every stimulus and whose passions are
out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish individual, whose selfishness
is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, "Twilight of the Idols"), that he is
right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the crippled, that the
thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the happier and
healthier individuals, is justified;--but to save the clean healthy man
from the values of those around him, who look at everything through the
mud that is in their own bodies,--to give him, and him alone, a clean
conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. "Do I counsel
you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your instincts. "
In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in
"The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional
obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have already pointed
out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the
ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any
doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where
he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save
higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too
strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a
"Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions. The
only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is
by means of exceptional freedom--the freedom which assists him in
experiencing HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to
Nietzsche's description of the attitude of the noble type towards the
slaves in Aphorism 260 of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" (see also Note
B. )
Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity.
(See Note on Chapter XLVI. ) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with
a doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;--I refer to the
doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before
proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having
been cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as
internal evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche's
philosophy. Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season"
Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: ". . . these modern creatures
wish rather to be hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to
live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself! --this
thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one
ghastly fear" (English Edition, page 141). In his feverish scurry to
find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a
play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in
his heart of hearts he despises himself. One cannot change a condition
of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner
transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost ourselves in our
friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at
another's bidding. "And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and
to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest,
subtlest, last, and patientest. "
In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is
the right way. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he
overpersuade; he simply says: "I am a law only for mine own, I am not a
law for all. This--is now MY way,--where is yours? "
Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2.
Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of
the whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a sort of epitome of his
leading doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he
himself would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had
he not known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of
surviving, nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some
kind of art-form. Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have
recourse to the mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those
who did not and could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for
existence among opinions and values is so great, that an art-form
is practically the only garb in which a new philosophy can dare to
introduce itself to us.
Pars. 3 and 4.
Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former
discourses. For instance, par. 3 recalls "Redemption". The last verse
of par. 4 is important. Freedom which, as I have pointed out before,
Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or
unworthy hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum.
In the first Part we read under "The Way of the Creating One", that
freedom as an end in itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. He says
there: "Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly,
however, shall thine eye answer me: free FOR WHAT? " And in "The
Bedwarfing Virtue": "Ah that ye understood my word: 'Do ever what ye
will--but first be such as CAN WILL. '"
Par. 5.
Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted
from higher men. It is really a comment upon "The Bestowing Virtue" (see
Note on Chapter XXII. ).
Par. 6.
This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp
meet with at the hands of their contemporaries.
Par. 8.
Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,--not even values,--not
even the concepts good and evil. He likens life unto a stream. But
foot-bridges and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand
firm. Many will be reminded of good and evil when they look upon these
structures; for thus these same values stand over the stream of life,
and life flows on beneath them and leaves them standing. When, however,
winter comes and the stream gets frozen, many inquire: "Should not
everything--STAND STILL? Fundamentally everything standeth still. " But
soon the spring cometh and with it the thaw-wind. It breaks the ice, and
the ice breaks down the foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything
is swept away. This state of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now
been reached. "Oh, my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX?
Have not all railings and foot-bridges fallen into the water? Who would
still HOLD ON to 'good' and 'evil'? "
Par. 9.
This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2.
Par. 10.
So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest
against reading a moral order of things in life. "Life is something
essentially immoral! " Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the
"Birth of Tragedy". Even to call life "activity," or to define it
further as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations," as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic
idiosyncracy.
" He says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the
true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power. . . Life is
ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak,
suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and
at least, putting it mildest, exploitation. " Adaptation is merely a
secondary activity, a mere re-activity (see Note on Chapter LVII. ).
Pars. 11, 12.
These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence
upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great
work, "L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the
evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone
would suffice to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are
opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have
saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and
which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the
world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED
types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings
Gobineau support from the realm of biology.
The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.
Par. 13.
This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference
to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.
Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.
These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".
Par. 18.
We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the
previous four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism
here; but it is the pessimism of the hero--the man most susceptible of
all to desperate views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed
against him in a world where men of his kind are very rare and are
continually being sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche
wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until
the last, is at length overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle
for sleep. This is not the natural or constitutional pessimism which
proceeds from an unhealthy body--the dyspeptic's lack of appetite; it
is rather the desperation of the netted lion that ultimately stops all
movement, because the more it moves the more involved it becomes.
Par. 20.
"All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is
bad. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our
charity. And one shall also help them thereto. " Nietzsche partly divined
the kind of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at
the hands of the effeminate manhood of Europe. Here we see that he had
anticipated the most likely form their criticism would take (see also
the last two verses of par. 17).
Par. 21.
The first ten verses, here, are reminiscent of "War and Warriors" and
of "The Flies in the Market-place. " Verses 11 and 12, however, are
particularly important. There is a strong argument in favour of the
sharp differentiation of castes and of races (and even of sexes; see
Note on Chapter XVIII. ) running all through Nietzsche's writings.
But sharp differentiation also implies antagonism in some form or
other--hence Nietzsche's fears for modern men. What modern men desire
above all, is peace and the cessation of pain. But neither great races
nor great castes have ever been built up in this way. "Who still wanteth
to rule? " Zarathustra asks in the "Prologue". "Who still wanteth to
obey? Both are too burdensome. " This is rapidly becoming everybody's
attitude to-day. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together
with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by
Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the
reverse of that bounding and irresponsible healthiness in which harder
and more tragic values rule.
Par. 24.
This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage". In the
fifth verse we shall recognise our old friend "Marriage on the ten-years
system," which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however,
must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest
views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at
all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his
sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the
reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just
now.
Pars. 26, 27.
See Note on "The Prologue".
Par. 28.
Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or
empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and
against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what
these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the
task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what
modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see--namely, that man is in
danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken.
I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of
the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to
reconsider our position. The lines in this paragraph are evidence enough
of his earnestness.
Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.
We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the
advocate of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he
calls this doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the
first paragraph, however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries:
"Disgust, disgust, disgust! " We know Nietzsche's ideal man was that
"world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only
learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes
to have it again, AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling
out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play" (see
Note on Chapter XLII. ). But if one ask oneself what the conditions to
such an attitude are, one will realise immediately how utterly different
Nietzsche was from his ideal. The man who insatiably cries da capo to
himself and to the whole of his mise-en-scene, must be in a position to
desire every incident in his life to be repeated, not once, but
again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche's life had been too full of
disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles, and snubs, to allow of
his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without loathing--hence probably
the words of the last verse.
In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist
in the broadest sense--that is to say, that he believes in the
Development Hypothesis as the description of the process by which
species have originated. Now, to understand his position correctly
we must show his relationship to the two greatest of modern
evolutionists--Darwin and Spencer. As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche
does not stand or fall by his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian
cosmogony. He never laid claim to a very profound knowledge of biology,
and his criticism is far more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind
than as that of a specialist towards the question. Moreover, in his
objections many difficulties are raised which are not settled by an
appeal to either of the men above mentioned. We have given Nietzsche's
definition of life in the Note on Chapter LVI. , par. 10. Still, there
remains a hope that Darwin and Nietzsche may some day become reconciled
by a new description of the processes by which varieties occur. The
appearance of varieties among animals and of "sporting plants" in
the vegetable kingdom, is still shrouded in mystery, and the question
whether this is not precisely the ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche
will meet, is an interesting one. The former says in his "Origin of
Species", concerning the causes of variability: ". . . there are two
factors, namely, the nature of the organism, and the nature of the
conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics
are mine. ), for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as
far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand,
dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be
nearly uniform. " Nietzsche, recognising this same truth, would ascribe
practically all the importance to the "highest functionaries in the
organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative
principle," and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone
are concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence
of environment. Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary
activity, a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to
Spencer's definition: "Life is the continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations. " Again in the motive force behind
animal and plant life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin. He
transforms the "Struggle for Existence"--the passive and involuntary
condition--into the "Struggle for Power," which is active and creative,
and much more in harmony with Darwin's own view, given above, concerning
the importance of the organism itself. The change is one of such
far-reaching importance that we cannot dispose of it in a breath, as a
mere play upon words. "Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the
living one. " Nietzsche says that to speak of the activity of life as a
"struggle for existence," is to state the case inadequately. He warns us
not to confound Malthus with nature. There is something more than
this struggle between the organic beings on this earth; want, which is
supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as is supposed;
some other force must be operative. The Will to Power is this force,
"the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most
frequent results thereof. " A certain lack of acumen in psychological
questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin
wrote, may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned
naturalist to describe the forces of nature as he did in his "Origin of
Species".
In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet
with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely "le manoir
a l'envers," indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche,
that "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is no more than a compendium of modern
views and maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox
pronouncements a little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive
their truth. Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it
stands to reason that what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative
to a certain environment, may actually be good if not highly virtuous
in him relative to a certain other environment. If this hypothetical man
represent the ascending line of life--that is to say, if he promise all
that which is highest in a Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that
he will be condemned as wicked if introduced into the society of men
representing the opposite and descending line of life.
By depriving a man of his wickedness--more particularly nowadays--
therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him.
It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a
leg would be. Fortunately, the natural so-called "wickedness" of higher
men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process
which successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not
wanting which show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from
society--the wickedness of courage and determination--and that Nietzsche
had good reasons for crying: "Ah, that (man's) baddest is so very small!
Ah, that his best is so very small. What is good? To be brave is good!
It is the good war which halloweth every cause! " (see also par. 5,
"Higher Man").
Chapter LX. The Seven Seals.
This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the
marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.
. . .
PART IV.
In my opinion this part is Nietzsche's open avowal that all his
philosophy, together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts,
blasphemies, prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts
laid at the feet of higher men. He had no desire to save the world. What
he wished to determine was: Who is to be master of the world? This is
a very different thing. He came to save higher men;--to give them that
freedom by which, alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see
Note on Chapter LIV. , end). It has been argued, and with considerable
force, that no such philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a
matter of fact, higher men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do
stand Beyond Good and Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the
way of their complete growth. Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so
confident about this. He would probably have argued that we only see the
successful cases. Being a great man himself, he was well aware of the
dangers threatening greatness in our age. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he
writes: "There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined,
or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated. . . " He knew "from his painfullest recollections on what
wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have
hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible. " Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest
temptation to descend to the feeling of "pity" for his contemporaries,
is the "cry for help" which he hears from the lips of the higher men
exposed to the dreadful danger of their modern environment.
Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn
duty he imposed upon himself: "Become what thou art. " Surely the
criticism which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to
the ground when it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche's
teaching was never intended to be other than an esoteric one. "I am a
law only for mine own," he says emphatically, "I am not a law for
all. " It is of the greatest importance to humanity that its highest
individuals should be allowed to attain to their full development; for,
only by means of its heroes can the human race be led forward step by
step to higher and yet higher levels. "Become what thou art" applied
to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim; it is to be hoped, however,
that we may learn in time that the same action performed by a given
number of men, loses its identity precisely that same number of
times. --"Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. "
At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In
England we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at
anything save sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader
should not be hilarious. --A certain greatness is requisite, both in
order to be sublime and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche
earnestly believed that the Zarathustra-kingdom--his dynasty of a
thousand years--would one day come; if he had not believed it so
earnestly, if every artist in fact had not believed so earnestly in
his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred, or a thousand years, we
should have lost all our higher men; they would have become pessimists,
suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and philosopher has made us
shy of the prophetic seriousness which characterized an Isaiah or a
Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor poet's gain.
Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress.
We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances. He is
confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit
the sin of pity. "I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin! "
says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra. It will be remembered that in
Schopenhauer's ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the
virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is
a pessimistic one. Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche's deepest and
strongest sentiment--his sympathy for higher men. "Why dost thou conceal
thyself? " he cries. "It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee! "
Zarathustra is almost overcome by the Soothsayer's pleading, as he
had been once already in the past, but he resists him step by step. At
length he can withstand him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher
man is on his ground and therefore under his protection, Zarathustra
departs in search of him, leaving Schopenhauer--a higher man in
Nietzsche's opinion--in the cave as a guest.
Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two
kings cross his path. They are above the average modern type; for their
instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery
which they have been taught to call "Reigning. " "We ARE NOT the first
men," they say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this
imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted. " 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.
PART III.
This is perhaps the most important of all the four parts. If it
contained only "The Vision and the Enigma" and "The Old and New Tables"
I should still be of this opinion; for in the former of these discourses
we meet with what Nietzsche regarded as the crowning doctrine of his
philosophy and in "The Old and New Tables" we have a valuable epitome of
practically all his leading principles.
Chapter XLVI. The Vision and the Enigma.
"The Vision and the Enigma" is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his
most obscure vein. We must know how persistently he inveighed against
the oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and
consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this
discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and
Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men. What were
once but expedients devised for the discipline of a certain portion of
humanity, had now passed into man's blood and had become instincts. This
oppressive and paralysing sense of guilt and of sin is what Nietzsche
refers to when he speaks of "the spirit of gravity. " This creature
half-dwarf, half-mole, whom he bears with him a certain distance on his
climb and finally defies, and whom he calls his devil and arch-enemy, is
nothing more than the heavy millstone "guilty conscience," together with
the concept of sin which at present hangs round the neck of men. To rise
above it--to soar--is the most difficult of all things to-day. Nietzsche
is able to think cheerfully and optimistically of the possibility of
life in this world recurring again and again, when he has once cast the
dwarf from his shoulders, and he announces his doctrine of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small to his arch-enemy and in
defiance of him.
That there is much to be said for Nietzsche's hypothesis of the Eternal
Recurrence of all things great and small, nobody who has read the
literature on the subject will doubt for an instant; but it remains a
very daring conjecture notwithstanding and even in its ultimate effect,
as a dogma, on the minds of men, I venture to doubt whether Nietzsche
ever properly estimated its worth (see Note on Chapter LVII. ).
What follows is clear enough. Zarathustra sees a young shepherd
struggling on the ground with a snake holding fast to the back of his
throat. The sage, assuming that the snake must have crawled into the
young man's mouth while he lay sleeping, runs to his help and pulls
at the loathsome reptile with all his might, but in vain. At last, in
despair, Zarathustra appeals to the young man's will. Knowing full well
what a ghastly operation he is recommending, he nevertheless cries,
"Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite! " as the only possible solution of the
difficulty. The young shepherd bites, and far away he spits the
snake's head, whereupon he rises, "No longer shepherd, no longer man--a
transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that LAUGHED! Never on
earth laughed a man as he laughed! "
In this parable the young shepherd is obviously the man of to-day; the
snake that chokes him represents the stultifying and paralysing social
values that threaten to shatter humanity, and the advice "Bite! Bite! "
is but Nietzsche's exasperated cry to mankind to alter their values
before it is too late.
Chapter XLVII. Involuntary Bliss.
This, like "The Wanderer", is one of the many introspective passages
in the work, and is full of innuendos and hints as to the Nietzschean
outlook on life.
Chapter XLVIII. Before Sunrise.
Here we have a record of Zarathustra's avowal of optimism, as also the
important statement concerning "Chance" or "Accident" (verse 27). Those
who are familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy will not require to be told
what an important role his doctrine of chance plays in his teaching.
The Giant Chance has hitherto played with the puppet "man,"--this is
the fact he cannot contemplate with equanimity. Man shall now exploit
chance, he says again and again, and make it fall on its knees before
him! (See verse 33 in "On the Olive Mount", and verses 9-10 in "The
Bedwarfing Virtue").
Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.
This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and
his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the
discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche's powerful indictment of the
great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):--"At present
nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of
domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,--FOR
PATHOS OF DISTANCE. . . Our politics are MORBID from this want of
courage! --The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily
by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the 'privilege
of the many,' makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is
Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which
translate every revolution merely into blood and crime! " (see also
"Beyond Good and Evil", pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a
bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of
their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great's power and
distinguished gifts should have been able to say: "Ich bin der erste
Diener des Staates" (I am the first servant of the State. ) To this
utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers.
"Cowardice" and "Mediocrity," are the names with which he labels modern
notions of virtue and moderation.
In Part III. , we get the sentiments of the discourse "In the Happy
Isles", but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche
thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with
vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse
20, Zarathustra makes yet another attempt at defining his entirely
anti-anarchical attitude, and unless such passages have been completely
overlooked or deliberately ignored hitherto by those who will persist in
laying anarchy at his door, it is impossible to understand how he ever
became associated with that foul political party.
The last verse introduces the expression, "THE GREAT NOONTIDE! " In the
poem to be found at the end of "Beyond Good and Evil", we meet with
the expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in
Nietzsche's works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part
of "The Twilight of the Idols"; but for those who cannot refer to
this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present
period--our period--the noon of man's history. Dawn is behind us. The
childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any
excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man.
"With respect to what is past," he says, "I have, like all discerning
ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control. . . But my
feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern
period, OUR period. Our age KNOWS. . . " (See Note on Chapter LXX. ).
Chapter LI. On Passing-by.
Here we find Nietzsche confronted with his extreme opposite, with
him therefore for whom he is most frequently mistaken by the unwary.
"Zarathustra's ape" he is called in the discourse. He is one of those
at whose hands Nietzsche had to suffer most during his life-time, and
at whose hands his philosophy has suffered most since his death. In this
respect it may seem a little trivial to speak of extremes meeting; but
it is wonderfully apt. Many have adopted Nietzsche's mannerisms and
word-coinages, who had nothing in common with him beyond the ideas and
"business" they plagiarised; but the superficial observer and a large
portion of the public, not knowing of these things,--not knowing perhaps
that there are iconoclasts who destroy out of love and are therefore
creators, and that there are others who destroy out of resentment and
revengefulness and who are therefore revolutionists and anarchists,--are
prone to confound the two, to the detriment of the nobler type.
If we now read what the fool says to Zarathustra, and note the tricks of
speech he has borrowed from him: if we carefully follow the attitude
he assumes, we shall understand why Zarathustra finally interrupts him.
"Stop this at once," Zarathustra cries, "long have thy speech and
thy species disgusted me. . . Out of love alone shall my contempt and my
warning bird take wing; BUT NOT OUT OF THE SWAMP! " It were well if
this discourse were taken to heart by all those who are too ready to
associate Nietzsche with lesser and noiser men,--with mountebanks and
mummers.
Chapter LII. The Apostates.
It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty "tasters
of everything," who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent
thought and "heresy," and who, having miscalculated their strength, find
it impossible to keep their head above water. "A little older, a little
colder," says Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of
the age they intended reforming. The French then say "le diable se fait
hermite," but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither
do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some
strength and deep breathing is required. Those who are more interested
in supporting orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of
support they give it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour
of the true faith.
Chapter LIII. The Return Home.
This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too
lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From
first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The
inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful
and profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint
concerning Nietzsche's fundamental passion--the main force behind all
his new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30
we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the
law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted
by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for
the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had
suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not
only for himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see
Note B. , where "pity" is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later
in the book we shall see how his profound compassion leads him into
temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31
and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order
to be endured by his fellows whom he loved (see also verse 12 in "Manly
Prudence"). Nietzsche's great love for his fellows, which he confesses
in the Prologue, and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems
rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and
modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that
sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting
posterity, completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche's
philosophy, because it declares Christian values to be a danger to the
future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal, cold, and hard (see
Note on Chapter XXXVI. ). Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men;
he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in the Return Home he
describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in order to recover
from the effects of his experiment.
Chapter LIV. The Three Evil Things.
Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto
best-cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be
weighed. Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,--the three
forces in humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and
besmirch,--Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of
honour. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to
discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded,
however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure
sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we
join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites
and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that
the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health
itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting
their inability to partake of this world's goods, cried like St Paul:
"I would that all men were even as I myself. " Now Nietzsche's philosophy
might be called an attempt at giving back to healthy and normal men
innocence and a clean conscience in their desires--NOT to applaud the
vulgar sensualists who respond to every stimulus and whose passions are
out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish individual, whose selfishness
is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, "Twilight of the Idols"), that he is
right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the crippled, that the
thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the happier and
healthier individuals, is justified;--but to save the clean healthy man
from the values of those around him, who look at everything through the
mud that is in their own bodies,--to give him, and him alone, a clean
conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. "Do I counsel
you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your instincts. "
In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in
"The Old and New Tables") Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional
obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of "Poets"). As I have already pointed
out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the
ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any
doubt that Nietzsche's only object, in that part of his philosophy where
he bids his friends stand "Beyond Good and Evil" with him, was to save
higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too
strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a
"Compromise" between their own genius and traditional conventions. The
only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is
by means of exceptional freedom--the freedom which assists him in
experiencing HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to
Nietzsche's description of the attitude of the noble type towards the
slaves in Aphorism 260 of the work "Beyond Good and Evil" (see also Note
B. )
Chapter LV. The Spirit of Gravity.
(See Note on Chapter XLVI. ) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with
a doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;--I refer to the
doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before
proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having
been cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as
internal evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche's
philosophy. Already in the last of the "Thoughts out of Season"
Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: ". . . these modern creatures
wish rather to be hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to
live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself! --this
thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one
ghastly fear" (English Edition, page 141). In his feverish scurry to
find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a
play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in
his heart of hearts he despises himself. One cannot change a condition
of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner
transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost ourselves in our
friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at
another's bidding. "And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and
to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest,
subtlest, last, and patientest. "
In the last verse Nietzsche challenges us to show that our way is
the right way. In his teaching he does not coerce us, nor does he
overpersuade; he simply says: "I am a law only for mine own, I am not a
law for all. This--is now MY way,--where is yours? "
Chapter LVI. Old and New Tables. Par. 2.
Nietzsche himself declares this to be the most decisive portion of
the whole of "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a sort of epitome of his
leading doctrines. In verse 12 of the second paragraph, we learn how he
himself would fain have abandoned the poetical method of expression had
he not known only too well that the only chance a new doctrine has of
surviving, nowadays, depends upon its being given to the world in some
kind of art-form. Just as prophets, centuries ago, often had to have
recourse to the mask of madness in order to mitigate the hatred of those
who did not and could not see as they did; so, to-day, the struggle for
existence among opinions and values is so great, that an art-form
is practically the only garb in which a new philosophy can dare to
introduce itself to us.
Pars. 3 and 4.
Many of the paragraphs will be found to be merely reminiscent of former
discourses. For instance, par. 3 recalls "Redemption". The last verse
of par. 4 is important. Freedom which, as I have pointed out before,
Nietzsche considered a dangerous acquisition in inexperienced or
unworthy hands, here receives its death-blow as a general desideratum.
In the first Part we read under "The Way of the Creating One", that
freedom as an end in itself does not concern Zarathustra at all. He says
there: "Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra? Clearly,
however, shall thine eye answer me: free FOR WHAT? " And in "The
Bedwarfing Virtue": "Ah that ye understood my word: 'Do ever what ye
will--but first be such as CAN WILL. '"
Par. 5.
Here we have a description of the kind of altruism Nietzsche exacted
from higher men. It is really a comment upon "The Bestowing Virtue" (see
Note on Chapter XXII. ).
Par. 6.
This refers, of course, to the reception pioneers of Nietzsche's stamp
meet with at the hands of their contemporaries.
Par. 8.
Nietzsche teaches that nothing is stable,--not even values,--not
even the concepts good and evil. He likens life unto a stream. But
foot-bridges and railings span the stream, and they seem to stand
firm. Many will be reminded of good and evil when they look upon these
structures; for thus these same values stand over the stream of life,
and life flows on beneath them and leaves them standing. When, however,
winter comes and the stream gets frozen, many inquire: "Should not
everything--STAND STILL? Fundamentally everything standeth still. " But
soon the spring cometh and with it the thaw-wind. It breaks the ice, and
the ice breaks down the foot-bridges and railings, whereupon everything
is swept away. This state of affairs, according to Nietzsche, has now
been reached. "Oh, my brethren, is not everything AT PRESENT IN FLUX?
Have not all railings and foot-bridges fallen into the water? Who would
still HOLD ON to 'good' and 'evil'? "
Par. 9.
This is complementary to the first three verses of par. 2.
Par. 10.
So far, this is perhaps the most important paragraph. It is a protest
against reading a moral order of things in life. "Life is something
essentially immoral! " Nietzsche tells us in the introduction to the
"Birth of Tragedy". Even to call life "activity," or to define it
further as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations," as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic
idiosyncracy.
" He says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the
true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power. . . Life is
ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak,
suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and
at least, putting it mildest, exploitation. " Adaptation is merely a
secondary activity, a mere re-activity (see Note on Chapter LVII. ).
Pars. 11, 12.
These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence
upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great
work, "L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the
evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone
would suffice to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are
opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have
saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and
which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the
world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED
types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings
Gobineau support from the realm of biology.
The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.
Par. 13.
This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference
to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.
Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.
These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".
Par. 18.
We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the
previous four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism
here; but it is the pessimism of the hero--the man most susceptible of
all to desperate views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed
against him in a world where men of his kind are very rare and are
continually being sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche
wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until
the last, is at length overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle
for sleep. This is not the natural or constitutional pessimism which
proceeds from an unhealthy body--the dyspeptic's lack of appetite; it
is rather the desperation of the netted lion that ultimately stops all
movement, because the more it moves the more involved it becomes.
Par. 20.
"All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is
bad. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our
charity. And one shall also help them thereto. " Nietzsche partly divined
the kind of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at
the hands of the effeminate manhood of Europe. Here we see that he had
anticipated the most likely form their criticism would take (see also
the last two verses of par. 17).
Par. 21.
The first ten verses, here, are reminiscent of "War and Warriors" and
of "The Flies in the Market-place. " Verses 11 and 12, however, are
particularly important. There is a strong argument in favour of the
sharp differentiation of castes and of races (and even of sexes; see
Note on Chapter XVIII. ) running all through Nietzsche's writings.
But sharp differentiation also implies antagonism in some form or
other--hence Nietzsche's fears for modern men. What modern men desire
above all, is peace and the cessation of pain. But neither great races
nor great castes have ever been built up in this way. "Who still wanteth
to rule? " Zarathustra asks in the "Prologue". "Who still wanteth to
obey? Both are too burdensome. " This is rapidly becoming everybody's
attitude to-day. The tame moral reading of the face of nature, together
with such democratic interpretations of life as those suggested by
Herbert Spencer, are signs of a physiological condition which is the
reverse of that bounding and irresponsible healthiness in which harder
and more tragic values rule.
Par. 24.
This should be read in conjunction with "Child and Marriage". In the
fifth verse we shall recognise our old friend "Marriage on the ten-years
system," which George Meredith suggested some years ago. This, however,
must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche's profoundest
views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at
all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his
sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the
reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just
now.
Pars. 26, 27.
See Note on "The Prologue".
Par. 28.
Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or
empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and
against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what
these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the
task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what
modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see--namely, that man is in
danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken.
I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of
the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to
reconsider our position. The lines in this paragraph are evidence enough
of his earnestness.
Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.
We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the
advocate of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he
calls this doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the
first paragraph, however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries:
"Disgust, disgust, disgust! " We know Nietzsche's ideal man was that
"world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only
learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes
to have it again, AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling
out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play" (see
Note on Chapter XLII. ). But if one ask oneself what the conditions to
such an attitude are, one will realise immediately how utterly different
Nietzsche was from his ideal. The man who insatiably cries da capo to
himself and to the whole of his mise-en-scene, must be in a position to
desire every incident in his life to be repeated, not once, but
again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche's life had been too full of
disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles, and snubs, to allow of
his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without loathing--hence probably
the words of the last verse.
In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist
in the broadest sense--that is to say, that he believes in the
Development Hypothesis as the description of the process by which
species have originated. Now, to understand his position correctly
we must show his relationship to the two greatest of modern
evolutionists--Darwin and Spencer. As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche
does not stand or fall by his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian
cosmogony. He never laid claim to a very profound knowledge of biology,
and his criticism is far more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind
than as that of a specialist towards the question. Moreover, in his
objections many difficulties are raised which are not settled by an
appeal to either of the men above mentioned. We have given Nietzsche's
definition of life in the Note on Chapter LVI. , par. 10. Still, there
remains a hope that Darwin and Nietzsche may some day become reconciled
by a new description of the processes by which varieties occur. The
appearance of varieties among animals and of "sporting plants" in
the vegetable kingdom, is still shrouded in mystery, and the question
whether this is not precisely the ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche
will meet, is an interesting one. The former says in his "Origin of
Species", concerning the causes of variability: ". . . there are two
factors, namely, the nature of the organism, and the nature of the
conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics
are mine. ), for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as
far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand,
dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be
nearly uniform. " Nietzsche, recognising this same truth, would ascribe
practically all the importance to the "highest functionaries in the
organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative
principle," and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone
are concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence
of environment. Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary
activity, a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to
Spencer's definition: "Life is the continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations. " Again in the motive force behind
animal and plant life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin. He
transforms the "Struggle for Existence"--the passive and involuntary
condition--into the "Struggle for Power," which is active and creative,
and much more in harmony with Darwin's own view, given above, concerning
the importance of the organism itself. The change is one of such
far-reaching importance that we cannot dispose of it in a breath, as a
mere play upon words. "Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the
living one. " Nietzsche says that to speak of the activity of life as a
"struggle for existence," is to state the case inadequately. He warns us
not to confound Malthus with nature. There is something more than
this struggle between the organic beings on this earth; want, which is
supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as is supposed;
some other force must be operative. The Will to Power is this force,
"the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most
frequent results thereof. " A certain lack of acumen in psychological
questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin
wrote, may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned
naturalist to describe the forces of nature as he did in his "Origin of
Species".
In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet
with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely "le manoir
a l'envers," indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche,
that "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is no more than a compendium of modern
views and maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox
pronouncements a little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive
their truth. Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it
stands to reason that what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative
to a certain environment, may actually be good if not highly virtuous
in him relative to a certain other environment. If this hypothetical man
represent the ascending line of life--that is to say, if he promise all
that which is highest in a Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that
he will be condemned as wicked if introduced into the society of men
representing the opposite and descending line of life.
By depriving a man of his wickedness--more particularly nowadays--
therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him.
It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a
leg would be. Fortunately, the natural so-called "wickedness" of higher
men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process
which successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not
wanting which show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from
society--the wickedness of courage and determination--and that Nietzsche
had good reasons for crying: "Ah, that (man's) baddest is so very small!
Ah, that his best is so very small. What is good? To be brave is good!
It is the good war which halloweth every cause! " (see also par. 5,
"Higher Man").
Chapter LX. The Seven Seals.
This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the
marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.
. . .
PART IV.
In my opinion this part is Nietzsche's open avowal that all his
philosophy, together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts,
blasphemies, prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts
laid at the feet of higher men. He had no desire to save the world. What
he wished to determine was: Who is to be master of the world? This is
a very different thing. He came to save higher men;--to give them that
freedom by which, alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see
Note on Chapter LIV. , end). It has been argued, and with considerable
force, that no such philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a
matter of fact, higher men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do
stand Beyond Good and Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the
way of their complete growth. Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so
confident about this. He would probably have argued that we only see the
successful cases. Being a great man himself, he was well aware of the
dangers threatening greatness in our age. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he
writes: "There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined,
or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated. . . " He knew "from his painfullest recollections on what
wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have
hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible. " Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest
temptation to descend to the feeling of "pity" for his contemporaries,
is the "cry for help" which he hears from the lips of the higher men
exposed to the dreadful danger of their modern environment.
Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn
duty he imposed upon himself: "Become what thou art. " Surely the
criticism which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to
the ground when it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche's
teaching was never intended to be other than an esoteric one. "I am a
law only for mine own," he says emphatically, "I am not a law for
all. " It is of the greatest importance to humanity that its highest
individuals should be allowed to attain to their full development; for,
only by means of its heroes can the human race be led forward step by
step to higher and yet higher levels. "Become what thou art" applied
to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim; it is to be hoped, however,
that we may learn in time that the same action performed by a given
number of men, loses its identity precisely that same number of
times. --"Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. "
At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In
England we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at
anything save sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader
should not be hilarious. --A certain greatness is requisite, both in
order to be sublime and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche
earnestly believed that the Zarathustra-kingdom--his dynasty of a
thousand years--would one day come; if he had not believed it so
earnestly, if every artist in fact had not believed so earnestly in
his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred, or a thousand years, we
should have lost all our higher men; they would have become pessimists,
suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and philosopher has made us
shy of the prophetic seriousness which characterized an Isaiah or a
Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor poet's gain.
Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress.
We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances. He is
confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit
the sin of pity. "I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin! "
says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra. It will be remembered that in
Schopenhauer's ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the
virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is
a pessimistic one. Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche's deepest and
strongest sentiment--his sympathy for higher men. "Why dost thou conceal
thyself? " he cries. "It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee! "
Zarathustra is almost overcome by the Soothsayer's pleading, as he
had been once already in the past, but he resists him step by step. At
length he can withstand him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher
man is on his ground and therefore under his protection, Zarathustra
departs in search of him, leaving Schopenhauer--a higher man in
Nietzsche's opinion--in the cave as a guest.
Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two
kings cross his path. They are above the average modern type; for their
instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery
which they have been taught to call "Reigning. " "We ARE NOT the first
men," they say, "and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this
imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted. " 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.
