No More Learning

The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche's Chapter LXV.
intimate knowledge of perhaps the greatest artist ofThe Magician,
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


## p. 446 (#668) ############################################

446 APPENDIX.
how very uncritical his attitude must have been in the
first flood of his enthusiasm. Again, when the friend-
ship 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 com-
poser of Parsifal—were not one; the fact dawned
upon him slowly; disappointment upon disappoint-
ment, 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


## p. 447 (#669) ############################################

NOTES. 447
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 great-
ness, 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.
Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a Chapter
poetical form, we get Nietzsche's description of the LXVL
course Judaism and Christianity pursued before they _ u .
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 destruc-
tion, 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.


## p. 448 (#670) ############################################

448 APPENDIX.
Chapter This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of
LXVII. Nietzsche's suggestions concerning Atheism, as well
The Ugliest u 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, embarrass-
ment. 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! »
"N


## p. 449 (#671) ############################################

NOTES. 449
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.
In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Chapter
Buddhist, if not Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche LXVIII.
had the greatest respect for Buddhism, and almost ^he
wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of B ary
praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is un-
doubtedly 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 recog-
nised 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
Saviour.
The figure of Christ has been introduced often
enough into fiction, and many scholars have under-
taken 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 maltre 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 out-
bursts which, in view of the struggle the first Christians
went through, may very well have been added to the
2 F


## p. 450 (#672) ############################################

450 APPENDIX.
original character by Apologists and Sectarians who,
at that time, could ill afford to consider nice psycho-
logical points, seeing that what they needed, above all,
was a wrangling and abusive deity. These two con-
flicting 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 some-
times 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 convenatue' is
legalised prostitution. "
Chapter 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 liter-
ally 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
The Shadow.


## p. 451 (#673) ############################################

NOTES. 451
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. "
At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the Chapter
world; with him man came of age. We are now LXX.
held responsible for our actions; our old guardians, Noon-tlde-
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. ).
Here I think I may claim that my contention in Chapter
regard to the purpose and aim of the whole of LXXI.
Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning 0f The Greeting,
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:
"/ 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


## p. 452 (#674) ############################################

452
APPENDIX.
Chapter
LXXII.
The Supper.
Chapter
LXXIII.
The Higher
Man.
Par. I.
Par. 3.
Par. 4.
built squarely in body and soaL" He says in par.
6 of "Higher Man":—
"Ye higher men, thiuk 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, rriisclimbing
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. "
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.
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.
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.
In the Note on Chap. 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.


## p. 453 (#675) ############################################

NOTES. 453
These have already been referred to in the Notes Pars. 5. 6.
on Chaps. LVII. (end) and LXXI.
I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph Par. 7.
strongly confirms the view that Nietzsche's teaching
was always meant by him to be esoteric and for
higher man alone.
In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is Par. 9.
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 pp. 134, 141 of Vol. L,
"Thoughts out of Season," in this edition).
When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must Pars. 10, 11.
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.
"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is Par. 13.
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.
Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the import- Par. 15.
ance 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 philo-
sophy is enunciated in the first verse of this para-
graph. "The higher its type, always the seldomer
doth a thing succeed" (see p. 82 of "Beyond Good


## p. 454 (#676) ############################################

454
APPENDIX.
Pars. 16, 17,
18, 19, 20.
Chapter
LXXIV.
The Song of
Melancholy.
Chapter
LXXV.
Science,
and Evil," in this edition). Those who, like some
political economists, talk in a business-like way about
the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliber-
ately 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 there-
fore stands in urgent need of direction by man.
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. "
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. The only one to resist
the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is the
spiritually conscientious one—the scientific specialist


## p. 455 (#677) ############################################

NOTES.
455
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 primi-
tive history of man. " chapter
This tells its own tale. LXXVI.
In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his Among
followers a warning. He thinks he has so far helped Daughters of
them that they have become convalescent, that new Desert-
desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are Chapter
LXXVI I
in their arms and legs. But he mistakes the nature -.
of the change. True, he has helped them, he has Awakening.
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 tauto-


## p. 456 (#678) ############################################

456
APPENDIX.
Chapter
LXXVIII.
The Ass-
Festival.
logical, has certainly been restored to them, and in
the f1rst 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, "His-
toriae," v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia," &c). 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, four-
teenth, and fifteenth centuries.
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


## p. 457 (#679) ############################################

NOTES. 457
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 I"
It were the height of presumption to attempt to fix Chapter
any particular interpretation of my own to the words LXXIX.
of this song. With what has gone before, the reader, The Drunken
while reading it as poetry, should be able to seek and ong-
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.
In this discourse, Nietzsche disassociates himself Chapter
finally from the higher men, and by the symbol of the LXXX.
lion, wishes to convey to us that he has won over and The SiBn-
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,
2 G


## p. 458 (#680) ############################################

458
APPENDIX.
but “That hath had its time! My suffering and my
fellow suffering,—what matter about then! Do I
then strive after happiness? I strive after m work!
Well! the lion hath come, my children are nigh.
Zarathustra hath grown ripe. My day begi. seth:
arise now, arise, thou great noonday ! ”
The above I know to be open to much crit 'ism.
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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