V.
The same fundamental instinct or principle, the same defiant optimism, the same exultation in the pride of life, which makes Nietzsche into an opponent of Christianity, also makes him into an opponent of democracy. The same belief in force, in the will to power, which makes Nietzsche into a pagan, also makes him into an aristocrat. For the political expression of Christianity must needs be democracy. We are democrats because we are Christians, because we believe in the essential dignity of man. On the contrary, the political outcome of paganism must needs be despotism and aristocracy. We believe in despotism and aristocracy because we believe in the natural inequality of man, because we believe in force and pride and self-assertion, in the power of the strong to oppress the weak. Nietzsche is against the oppressed and for the oppressor; for the Superman against humanity. For in Nietzsche’s view an aristocracy is the ultimate purpose of life.
But Nietzsche is not an aristocrat, like the ordinary Darwinian. He does not believe in the survival of the fittest, like the typical evolutionist. He does not believe that a survival of the fittest will come about mechanically by the mere play of blind forces. Regression is as natural as progression. No one has pointed this out more convincingly than Huxley in his “Evolution and Ethics.” The progress of the race is not natural, but artificial and accidental and precarious. Therefore Nietzsche believes in artificial selection. The Superman is not born, he must be bred. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and forerunner of the Eugenists.
And he is also the spiritual father of the Imperialists and latter-day Militarists. The gospel of the inequality of the individual implies the gospel of the inequality of race. The gospel of Nietzsche has not only been anticipated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, but by his much more influential German namesake, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the author whose books the Kaiser liberally distributed amongst his Generals and advisers. The doctrine of force, the belief in the German people as the salt of the earth, the self-gratification of the modern Teuton, can be traced directly to the influence of Zarathustra, and it is significant that the latest German exponent of Imperialism, General von Bernhardi, should have selected an aphorism of Nietzsche as the quintessence of his political philosophy:
“War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has hitherto saved the shipwrecked of existence.
“‘What is good?’ you ask. ‘To be braced is good.’”[13]