The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

by H. L. Mencken

Nietzsche points out that, in the racial economy, the place of woman may be compared to that of a slave-nation, while the position of man resembles that of a master-nation. We have seen how a weak nation, unable, on account of its weakness, to satisfy its will to survive and thirst for power by forcing its authority upon other nations, turns to the task of keeping these other nations, as much as possible, from enforcing their authority upon it. Realizing that it cannot rule, but must serve, it endeavors to make the conditions of its servitude as bearable as possible. This effort is commonly made in two ways: first by ostensibly renouncing its desire to rule, and secondly, by attempts to inoculate its powerful neighbors with its ideas in subterranean and round-about ways, so as to avoid arousing their suspicion and opposition. It becomes, in brief, humble and cunning, and with its humility as a cloak, it seeks to pit its cunning against the sheer might of those it fears.

The position of women in the world is much the same. The business of bearing and rearing children is destructive to their physical strength, and in consequence makes it impossible for them to prevail by force when their ideas and those of men happen to differ. To take away the sting of this incapacity, they make a virtue of it, and it becomes modesty, humility, self-sacrifice and fidelity; to win in spite of it they cultivate cunning, which commonly takes the form of hypocrisy, cajolery, dissimulation and more or less masked appeals to the masculine sexual instinct. All of this is so often observed in every-day life that it has become commonplace. A woman is physically unable to force a man to do as she desires, but her very inability to do so becomes a sentimental weapon against him, and her blandishments do the rest. The spectacle of a strong man ruled by a weak woman is no rare one certainly, and Samson was neither the first nor last giant to fall before a Delilah. There is scarcely a household in all the world, in truth, in which the familiar drama is not being acted and reacted day after day.

Now, it is plain from the foregoing that, though women's business in the world is of such a character that it inevitably leads to physical degeneration, her constant need to overcome the effects of this degeneration by cunning produces constant mental activity, which, by the law of exercise, should produce, in turn, great mental efficiency. This conclusion, in part, is perfectly correct, for women, as a sex, are shrewd, resourceful and acute; but the very fact that they are always concerned with imminent problems and that, in consequence, they are unaccustomed to dealing with the larger riddles of life, makes their mental attitude essentially petty. This explains the circumstance that despite their mental suppleness, they are not genuinely strong intellectually. Indeed, the very contrary is true. Women's constant thought is, not to lay down broad principles of right and wrong; not to place the whole world in harmony with some great scheme of justice; not to consider the future of nations; not to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before; but to deceive, influence, sway and please men. Normally, their weakness makes masculine protection necessary to their existence and to the exercise of their overpowering maternal instinct, and so their whole effort is to obtain this protection in the easiest way possible. The net result is that feminine morality is a morality of opportunism and imminent expediency, and that the normal woman has no respect for, and scarcely any conception of abstract truth. Thus is proved the fact noted by Schopenhauer and many other observers: that a woman seldom manifests any true sense of justice or of honor.

It is unnecessary to set forth this idea in greater detail, because everyone is familiar with it and proofs of its accuracy are supplied in infinite abundance by common observation. Nietzsche accepted it as demonstrated. When he set out to pursue the subject further, he rejected entirely the Schopenhauerean corollary that man should ever regard woman as his enemy, and should seek, by all means within his power, to escape her insidious influence. Such a notion naturally outraged the philosopher of the superman. He was never an advocate of running away: to all the facts of existence he said "yes." His ideal was not resignation or flight, but an intelligent defiance and opposition. Therefore, he argued that man should accept woman as a natural opponent arrayed against him for the benevolent purpose of stimulating him to constant efficiency. Opposition, he pointed out, was a necessary forerunner of function, and in consequence the fact that woman spent her entire effort in a ceaseless endeavor to undermine and change the will of man, merely served to make this will alert and strong, and so increased man's capacity for meeting and overcoming the enemies of his existence.

A man conscious of his strength, observes Nietzsche, need have no fear of women. It is only the man who finds himself utterly helpless in the face of feminine cajolery that must cry, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" and flee. "It is only the most sensual men," he says, "who have to shun women and torture their bodies." The normal, healthy man, despite the strong appeal which women make to him by their subtle putting forward of the sexual idea—visually as dress, coquetry and what not—still keeps a level head. He is strong enough to weather the sexual storm. But the man who cannot do this, who experiences no normal reaction in the direction of guardedness and caution and reason, must either abandon himself utterly as a helpless slave to woman's instinct of race-preservation, and so become a bestial voluptuary, or avoid temptation altogether and so become a celibate.[2]

There is nothing essentially evil in woman's effort to combat and control man's will by constantly suggesting the sexual idea to him, because it is necessary, for the permanence of the race, that this idea be presented frequently and powerfully. Therefore, the conflict between masculine and feminine ideals is to be regarded, not as a lamentable battle, in which one side is right and the other wrong, but a convenient means of providing that stimulation-by-opposition without which all function, and in consequence all progress, would cease. "The man who regards women as an enemy to be avoided," says Nietzsche, "betrays an unbridled lust which loathes not only itself, but also its means."[3]

There are, of course, occasions when the feminine influence, by its very subtlety, works harm to the higher sort of men. It is dangerous for a man to love too violently and it is dangerous, too, for him to be loved too much.' "The natural inclination of women to a quiet, uniform and peaceful existence "—that is to say, to a slave-morality—"operates adversely to the heroic impulse of the masculine free spirit. Without being aware of it, women act like a person who would remove stones from the path of a mineralogist, lest his feet should come in contact with them—forgetting entirely that he is faring forth for the very purpose of coming in contact with them.... The wives of men with lofty aspirations cannot resign themselves to seeing their husbands suffering, impoverished and slighted, even though it is apparent that this suffering proves, not only that its victim has chosen his attitude aright, but also that his aims—some day, at least—will be realized. Women always intrigue in secret against the higher souls of their husbands. They seek to cheat the future for the sake of a painless and agreeable present."[4] In other words, the feminine vision is ever limited in range. Your typical woman cannot see far ahead; she cannot reason out the ultimate effect of a complicated series of causes; her eye is always upon the present or the very near future. Thus Nietzsche reaches, by a circuitous route, a conclusion supported by the almost unanimous verdict of the entire masculine sex, at all times and everywhere.

Nietzsche quite agrees with Schopenhauer (and with nearly everyone else who has given the matter thought) that the thing we call love is grounded upon physical desire, and that all of those arts of dress and manner in which women excel are mere devices for arousing this desire in man, but he points out, very justly, that a great many other considerations also enter into the matter. Love necessarily presupposes a yearning to mate, and mating is its logical consequence, but the human imagination has made it more than that. The man in love sees in his charmer, not only an attractive instrument for satisfying his comparatively rare and necessarily brief impulses to dalliance, but also a worthy companion, guide, counsellor and friend. The essence of love is confidence—confidence in the loved one's judgment, honesty and fidelity and in the persistence of her charm. So large do these considerations loom among the higher classes of men that they frequently obscure the fundamental sexual impulse entirely. It is a commonplace, indeed, that in the ecstasies of amorous idealization, the notion of the function itself becomes obnoxious. It may be impossible to imagine a man loving a woman without having had, at some time, conscious desire for her, but all the same it is undoubtedly true that the wish for marriage is very often a wish for close and constant association with the one respected, admired and trusted rather than a yearning for the satisfaction of desire.

All of this admiration, respect and trust, as we have seen, may be interpreted as confidence, which, in turn, is faith. Now, faith is essentially unreasonable, and in the great majority of cases, is the very antithesis of reason. Therefore, a man in love commonly endows the object of his affection with merits which, to the eye of a disinterested person, she obviously lacks. "Love ... has a secret craving to discover in the loved one as many beautiful qualities as possible and to raise her as high as possible." "Whoever idolizes a person tries to justify himself by idealizing; and thus becomes an artist (or self-deceiver) in order to have a clear conscience." Again there is a tendency to illogical generalization. "Everything which pleases me once, or several times, is pleasing of and in itself." The result of this, of course, is quick and painful disillusion. The loved one is necessarily merely human and when the ideal gives way to the real, reaction necessarily follows. "Many a married man awakens one morning to the consciousness that his wife is far from attractive."[5] And it is only fair to note that the same awakening is probably the bitter portion of most married women, too.

In addition, it is plain that the purely physical desire which lies at the bottom of all human love, no matter how much sentimental considerations may obscure it, is merely a passion and so, in the very nature of things, is intermittent and evanescent. There are moments when it is overpowering, but there are hours, days, weeks and months when it is dormant. Therefore, we must conclude with Nietzsche, that the thing we call love, whether considered from its physical or psychical aspect, is fragile and short-lived.