And naked shingles of the world.”
The human spirit urged a new, mightier protest against the “It is written,” which was said to put an end to all doubt. The new doubt, as free inquiry, as protestant science, flung down the gauntlet to the bible faith. No page of the sacred book remained untouched. Only one certainty sprang from this new doubt—the certainty that the sacred book was a human book. Therefore it had no right to rule over man. Man was its judge; it was not man’s judge. It must be measured by man’s truth, man’s conscience.
How, now, should the timorous heart of man be quieted in the presence of this new doubt? At once new props were offered him—truth and the state. What science recognized as “true,” what morals and bourgeoise customs and civil law sanctioned as “good”—these were now proffered man, that he might brace up his tottering life thereby. “Trust the light of science, and you shall indeed have the light of life; do what is ‘good,’ and you shall be crowned with the crown of life.” This was the watchword. Then there stirred in the womb of present-day humanity the last, ultimate, uncanniest doubt. If we doubt the Church, why not doubt the state, too? If we doubt faith, why not doubt science, too? If we doubt the bible, why not doubt reason, doubt knowledge, doubt morality? Even if what we call “true” be really true, can it make us happy? Can the men who have all the knowledge of our time at their disposal, can the scholars, can the cultivated, really become fit leaders of humanity through life’s little day? Is not that which is called “good” grievous impediment in our pilgrimage? Law, morals—are not these perhaps a blunder of history, an old hereditary woe with which humanity is weighted down?
This doubt—long and ominously maturing throughout the spiritual evolution of our new time—finds its most radical, most conscious, and most eloquent expression in Friedrich Nietzsche. He launches this doubt not only against all that has been believed and thought and done, but against all that men believe and think and do today. He shakes every position which men have held to be unshakable. An irresistible, diabolical curiosity impels him to transvalue all values with which men have reckoned, and to inquire whether they are values at all; whether “good” must not be called evil, “truth” error. As Nietzsche ventures upon this experiment of his curiosity, as he advances farther and farther with it, suddenly he laughs with an ironic, uproarious laughter. The experiment is a success! In the new illumination all the colors of life change. Light is dark, dark is light. What men had appraised as food, as medicine, evinced itself to be dangerous poison, miserably encompassing their doom. And since men believed that all the forces present, dying, poisoned culture, were resident in their “morals” and their “Christianity,” it was necessary to smash the tables of these old values. In full consciousness of his calling as destroyer of these old tables, Nietzsche called himself the immoralist, the anti-Christ. Morals and Christianity signified to him the most dangerous maladies with which men were suffering. He considered it to be his high calling as savior to heal men of these maladies. He sprang into the breach as anti-Christ. Like Voltaire, he was the apostle and genius of disrespect—respectability was the only disgrace, popularity the only perdition.
Nietzsche the Immoralist, Nietzsche the Antichrist! Dare we write his name and name his writings without calling down upon our much-pelted heads the wrath of the gods? Does he not blaspheme what is sacred, and must we not, then, give him a wide berth? There are the familiar words concerning false prophets in sheep’s clothing, but ravening wolves within. Such wolves there are—smooth, sleek men, paragons of “virtue,” and “morals,” and “faith,” but revolting enough in their inner rawness as soon as you get a glimpse of their true disposition. Conversely, might there not be men who come to us in wolves’ clothing, but whose hearts are tender and rich and intimate with a pure and noble humanity? We know such men. Friedrich Nietzsche was one of them. He was a true prophet. All his transvaluations dealt deadly blows at the old, false, man-poisoning prophetism. What if more morals matured in this immoralist, more Christianity in this anti-Christ, more divinity in this atheist, than in all the pronouncements of all those who today still are so swift to despise and damn what they do not understand?
Even Christianity, at its origin, in its young and heroic militancy, was not so amiable and harmless as we are wont to think. It, too, was born of the doubt of that whole old culture; of the most radical protest again status quo. It, too, leagued with all the revolutionary spirits of humanity. And it, too, revalued all the values of “faith” and “morals.” What if this new Nietzschean spirit of life’s universal reform, this creative, forward-striving genius of humanity, be once yet again embodiment and representative of life’s essential element of rejuvenescence and growth? What if true prophets are always men of Sturm und Drang, men of divine discontent, fellow-conspirators with the Future? Anti-Christs? These are they who blaspheme the holy spirit of humanity. Immoralists? These are they who say that life is good as it is, and therefore should stay as it “is” forever. Faith? This is directed, not to the past, but to the future; not to the certain, but to the uncertain. Faith is the venturesomeness of moral knighthood. Nietzsche was a Knight of the Future.
Why, then, should not a magazine of the Future interpret Nietzsche the prophet of a new culture? Man as the goal, beauty as the form, life as the law, eternity as the content of our new day—this is Nietzsche’s message to the modern man. In such an interpretation, Man and Superman should be the subject of the next article.
How a Little Girl Danced
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay
Being a Reminiscence of Certain Private Theatricals