Certainly, from the dawn of his literary career, Art seems to have been one of Nietzsche's most constant preoccupations. Even the general argument of his last work, The Will to Power, is an entirely artistic one; while his hatred of Christianity was the hatred of an artist long before it became the hatred of an aristocratic moralist, or of a prophet of Superman.
In The Birth of Tragedy, a book in which, by the bye, he declares that there can be but one justification of the world, and that is as an æsthetic phenomenon,[5] we find the following words—
"To the purely æsthetic world interpretation ... taught in this book, there is no greater antithesis than the Christian dogma, which is only and will be only moral, and which, with its absolute standards, for instance, its truthfulness of God, relegates—that is, disowns, convicts, condemns—Art, all Art, to the realm of falsehood. Behind such a mode of thought and valuation, which, if at all genuine, must be hostile to Art, I always experienced what was hostile to life, the wrathful vindictive counter will to life itself: for all life rests on appearance, Art, illusion, optics, and necessity of perspective and error."[6]
Nietzsche's works are, however, full of the evidences of an artistic temperament.
Who but an artist, knowing the joy of creating, for instance, could have laid such stress upon the creative act as the great salvation from suffering and an alleviation of life?[7] Who but an artist could have been an atheist out of his lust to create?
"For what could be created, if there were Gods!" cries Zarathustra.(7)
But, above all, who save an artist could have elevated taste to such a high place as a criterion of value, and have made his own personal taste the standard for so many grave valuations?
"And ye tell me, my friends," says Zarathustra, "that there is to be no dispute about taste and tasting? But all life is a dispute about taste and tasting!
"Taste: that is weight at the same time, and scales and weigher; and alas for every living thing that would live without dispute about weight and scales and weighing!"[8]
But it is more particularly in Nietzsche's understanding of the instinct which drove him to expression, and in his attitude towards those whom he would teach, that we recognize the typical artist, in the highest acceptation of the word—that is to say, as a creature of abundance, who must give thereof or perish. Out of plenitude and riches only, do his words come to us. With him there can be no question of eloquence as the result of poverty, vindictiveness, spite, resentment, or envy; for such eloquence is of the swamp.[9] Where he is wrath, he speaks from above, where he despises his contempt is prompted by love alone, and where he annihilates he does so as a creator.[10]