[Chapter IV]
Nietzsche the Evolutionist
"Transvalue your values or perish!" This was the message of the hermit Nietzsche to the people inhabiting the valley into which he had descended. "Transvalue your values!"—that is to say, make them what they once were, noble, life-approving, virile! For two thousand years the roll of the world-wheel had been reversed—Stendhal had said that many years before Nietzsche lived—but it was left to Nietzsche, Stendhal's admirer and pupil, to teach and prove this fact. Stendhal, too, had cried out against the tameness, the lukewarmness, the effeminacy of society; but Nietzsche took up this cry with a voice more brazen than Stendhal's at a time when mankind was in much greater need of it. Stendhal had pointed enthusiastically to the sun and to the passion of the south, and had donned a moral respirator whenever he turned to face the grey and depressing atmosphere of northern ideas and northern tepidness. Nietzsche follows his master's hint with alacrity, but in doing so converts Stendhal's clarion notes into thunder, and the glint of Stendhal's rapier into strokes of lightning.[1]
When Nietzsche began to write Europe was suffering from the worst kind of spiritual illness—weakness of will. Everywhere comfort and freedom from danger were becoming the highest ideals; everywhere, too, virtue was being confounded with those qualities which led to the highest possible amount of security and tame, back-parlour pleasures; and man was gradually developing into a harmless domesticated type of animal, capable of performing a host of charming little drawing-room tricks which rejoiced the hearts of his womenfolk.
Sleep seemed to be the greatest accomplishment. It had become all important to have a good night's rest, and everything was done to achieve this end. A man no longer asked his heart what it dictated, when he stood irresolute before a daring deed, he simply consulted Morpheus, who warned him that he could not promise him a soft pillow if he did anything that was ever so slightly naughty. In the end, Morpheus would prevail, and thus all Europe was beginning to snore peacefully the whole night through, with marvellous regularity, while manliness rotted and danger dwindled.[2]
Nietzsche protested against this state of affairs:—"What is good? ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little schoolgirls say: To be good is sweet and touching at the same time. Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war? I say unto you: a good war halloweth every cause. War and courage have done greater things than love!"[3]
"I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they have become smaller, and ever become smaller: the reason thereof is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.
"For they are moderate also in virtue—because they want comfort. With comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible.
"Of man there is little here: therefore do their women make themselves manly. For only he who is man enough, will save the woman in woman.
"In their hearts, they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them.