The concept of the Overman rests, as has been shown, upon a fairly solid substructure of plausibility, since at the bottom of the author's reasoning lies the notion that mankind is destined to outgrow its current status; the thought of a humanity risen to new and wondrous heights of power over nature is not necessarily unscientific for being supremely imaginative. The Overman, however, cannot be produced ready made, by any instantaneous process; he must be slowly and persistently willed into being, through love of the new ideal which he is to embody: “All great Love,” speaketh Zarathustra, “seeketh to create what it loveth. Myself I sacrifice into my love, and my neighbor as myself, thus runneth the speech of all creators.” Only the fixed conjoint purpose of many generations of aspiring men will be able to create the Overman. “Could you create a God?—Then be silent concerning all gods! But ye could very well create Beyond-man. Not yourselves perhaps, my brethren! But ye could create yourselves into fathers and fore-fathers of Beyond-man; and let this be your best creating. But all creators are hard.”
Nietzsche's startlingly heterodox code of ethics coheres organically with the Overman hypothesis, and so understood is certain to lose some of its aspect of absurdity. The racial will, as we have seen, must be taught to aim at the Overman. But the volitional faculty of the generation, according to Nietzsche, is so debilitated as to be utterly inadequate to its office. Hence, advisedly to stimulate and strengthen the enfeebled will power of his fellow men is the most imperative and immediate task of the radical reformer. Once the power of willing, as such, shall have been,—regardless of the worthiness of its object,—brought back to active life, it will be feasible to give the Will to Might a direction towards objects of the highest moral grandeur.
Unfortunately for the race as a whole, the throng is ineligible for partnership in the auspicious scheme of co-operative procreation: which fact necessitates a segregative method of breeding. The Overman can only be evolved by an ancestry of master-men, who must be secured to the race by a rigid application of eugenic standards, particularly in the matter of mating. Of marriage, Nietzsche has this definition: “Marriage, so call I the will of two to create one who is more than they who created him.” For the bracing of the weakened will-force of the human breed it is absolutely essential that master-men, the potential progenitors of the superman, be left unhampered to the impulse of “living themselves out” (sich auszuleben),—an opportunity of which under the regnant code of morals they are inconsiderately deprived. Since, then, existing dictates and conventions are a serious hindrance to the requisite autonomy of the master-man, their abolishment might be well. Yet on the other hand, it is convenient that the Vielzuviele, the “much-too-many,” i. e. the despised generality of people, should continue to be governed and controlled by strict rules and regulations, so that the will of the master-folk might the more expeditiously be wrought. Would it not, then, be an efficacious compromise to keep the canon of morality in force for the general run, but suspend it for the special benefit of master-men, prospective or full-fledged? From the history of the race Nietzsche draws a warrant for the distinction. His contention is that masters and slaves have never lived up to a single code of conduct. Have not civilizations risen and fallen according as they were shaped by this or that class of nations? History also teaches what disastrous consequences follow the loss of caste. In the case of the Jewish people, the domineering type or morals gave way to the servile as a result of the Babylonian captivity. So long as the Jews were strong, they extolled all manifestations of strength and energy. The collapse of their own strength turned them into apologists of the so-called “virtues” of humility, long-suffering, forgiveness,—until, according to the Judæo-Christian code of ethics, being good came to mean being weak. So races may justly be classified into masters and slaves, and history proves that to the strong goes the empire. The ambitions of a nation are a sure criterion of its worth.
“I walk through these folk and keep mine eyes open. They have become smaller and are becoming ever smaller. And the reason of that is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.
For they are modest even in their virtue; for they are desirous of ease. But with ease only modest virtue is compatible.
True, in their fashion they learn how to stride and to stride forward. That I call their hobbling. Thereby they become an offense unto every one who is in a hurry.
And many a one strideth on and in doing so looketh backward, with a stiffened neck. I rejoice to run against the stomachs of such.
Foot and eyes shall not lie, nor reproach each other for lying. But there is much lying among small folk.
Some of them will, but most of them are willed merely. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
There are unconscious actors among them, and involuntary actors. The genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.
Here is little of man; therefore women try to make themselves manly. For only he who is enough of a man will save the woman in woman.
And this hypocrisy I found to be worst among them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.
‘I serve, thou servest, we serve.’ Thus the hypocrisy of the rulers prayeth. And, alas, if the highest lord be merely the highest servant!
Alas! the curiosity of mine eye strayed even unto their hypocrisies, and well I divined all their fly-happiness and their humming round window panes in the sunshine.
So much kindness, so much weakness see I. So much justice and sympathy, so much weakness.
Round, honest, and kind are they towards each other, as grains of sand are round, honest, and kind unto grains of sand.
Modestly to embrace a small happiness—they call ‘submission’! And therewith they modestly look sideways after a new small happiness.
At bottom they desire plainly one thing most of all: to be hurt by nobody. Thus they oblige all and do well unto them.
But this is cowardice; although it be called ‘virtue.’
And if once they speak harshly, these small folk,—I hear therein merely their hoarseness. For every draught of air maketh them hoarse.
Prudent are they; their virtues have prudent fingers. But they are lacking in clenched fists; their fingers know not how to hide themselves behind fists.
For them virtue is what maketh modest and tame. Thereby they have made the wolf a dog and man himself man's best domestic animal.
‘We put our chair in the midst’—thus saith their simpering unto me—‘exactly as far from dying gladiators as from happy swine.’
This is mediocrity; although it be called moderation.”[(21)]
The only law acknowledged by him who would be a master is the bidding of his own will. He makes short work of every other law. Whatever clogs the flight of his indomitable ambition must be ruthlessly swept aside. Obviously, the enactment of this law that would render the individual supreme and absolute would strike the death-knell for all established forms and institutions of the social body. But such is quite within Nietzsche's intention. They are noxious agencies, ingeniously devised for the enslavement of the will, and the most pernicious among them is the Christian religion, because of the alleged divine sanction conferred by it upon subserviency. Christianity would thwart the supreme will of nature by curbing that lust for domination which the laws of nature as revealed by science sanction, nay prescribe. Nietzsche's ideas on this subject are loudly and over-loudly voiced in Der Antichrist (“The Anti-Christ”), written in September 1888 as the first part of a planned treatise in four instalments, entitled Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwertung aller Werte. (“The Will to Power. An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values”.)
The master-man's will, then, is his only law. That is the essence of Herrenmoral. And so the question arises, Whence shall the conscience of the ruler-man derive its distinctions between the Right and the Wrong? The arch-iconoclast brusquely stifles this naïve query beforehand by assuring us that such distinctions in their accepted sense do not exist for personages of that grander stamp. Heedless of the time-hallowed concepts that all men share in common, he enjoins mastermen to take their position uncompromisingly outside the confining area of conventions, in the moral independence that dwells “beyond good and evil.” Good and Evil are mere denotations, devoid of any real significance. Right and Wrong are not ideals immutable through the ages, nor even the same at any time in all states of society. They are vague and general notions, varying more or less with the practical exigencies under which they were conceived. What was right for my great-grandfather is not ipso facto right for myself. Hence, the older and better established a law, the more inapposite is it apt to be to the living demands. Why should the ruler-man bow down to outworn statutes or stultify his self-dependent moral sense before the artificial and stupidly uniform moral relics of the dead past? Good is whatever conduces to the increase of my power,—evil is whatever tends to diminish it! Only the weakling and the hypocrite will disagree.
Unmistakably this is a straightout application of the “pragmatic” criterion of truth. Nietzsche's unconfessed and cautious imitators, who call themselves pragmatists, are not bold enough to follow their own logic from the cognitive sphere to the moral. They stop short of the natural conclusion to which their own premises lead. Morality is necessarily predicated upon specific notions of truth. So if Truth is an alterable and shifting concept, must not morality likewise be variable? The pragmatist might just as well come out at once into the broad light and frankly say: “Laws do not interest me in the abstract, or for the sake of their general beneficence; they interest me only in so far as they affect me. Therefore I will make, interpret, and abolish them to suit myself.”
To Nietzsche the “quest of truth” is a palpable evasion. Truth is merely a means for the enhancement of my subjective satisfaction. It makes not a whit of difference whether an opinion or a judgment satisfies this or that scholastic definition. I call true and good that which furthers my welfare and intensifies my joy in living; and,—to vindicate my self-gratification as a form, indeed the highest, of “social service,”—the desirable thing is that which matters for the improvement of the human stock and thereby speeds the advent of the Superman. “Oh,” exclaims Zarathustra, “that ye would understand my word: Be sure to do whatever ye like,—but first of all be such as can will! Be sure to love your neighbor as yourself,—but first of all be such as love themselves,—as love themselves with great love, with contempt. Thus speaketh Zarathustra, the ungodly.”
By way of throwing some light upon this phase of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, it may be added that ever since 1876 he was an assiduous student of Herbert Spencer, with whose theory of social evolution he was first made acquainted by his friend, Paul Rée, who in two works of his own, “Psychologic Observations,” (1875), and “On the Origin of Moral Sentiments,” (1877), had elaborated upon the Spencerian theory about the genealogy of morals.