Are we moving toward such a consummation? Can we detect about us any signs of this ascending movement of life? Not signs of “progress”; that is another narcotic, like Christianity,—good for slaves, but to be avoided by those who rule. Man as a species is not progressing; the general level of the species is not raised. But humanity as mass sacrificed to the prosperity of the one stronger type of Man,—that would be a progress.[259]
Progress of this kind, to some degree, there has always been. The ruling class in Greece, as seen in Homer and even in Thucydides (though with Socrates degeneration begins), is an example of this kind of progress or attainment. Imagine this culture, which has its poet in Sophocles, its statesman in Pericles, its physician in Hippocrates, its natural philosopher in Democritus; here is a yea-saying, a gratitude, to life in all its manifestations; here life is understood, and covered with art that it may be borne; here men are frivolous so that they may forget for a moment the arduousness and perilousness of their task; they are superficial, but from profundity; they exalt philosophers who preach moderation, because they themselves are so immoderate, so instinctive, so hilariously wild; they are great, they are elevated above any ruling class before or after them because here the morals of the governing caste have grown up among the governing caste, and not among the herd.[260]
We catch some of the glory of these Greeks in the men of the Renaissance: men perfect in their immorality, terrible in their demands; we should not dare to stand amid the conditions which produced these men and which these men produced; we should not even dare to imagine ourselves in those conditions: our nerves would not endure that reality,—not to speak of our muscles. One man of their type, continuator and development of their type, brother (as Taine most rightly says) of Dante and Michelangelo,—one such man we have known with less of the protection of distance; and he was too hard to bear. That Ens Realissimum, synthesis of monster and superman, surnamed Napoleon! The first man, and the man of greatest initiative and developed views, of modern times; a man of tolerance, not out of weakness, but out of strength, able to risk the full enjoyment of naturalness and be strong enough for this freedom. In such a man we see something in the nature of “disinterestedness” in his work on his marble, whatever be the number of men that are sacrificed in the process. Men were glad to serve him; as most normal men are glad to serve the great man; the crowd was tired of “equal rights,” tired of being masterless; it longed to worship genius again. What was the excuse for that terrible farce, the French Revolution? It made men ready for Napoleon.[261]
When shall we produce another superman? Let us go back to our question: Can we detect about us any signs of strength?
Yes. We are learning to get along without God. We are recovering from the noble sentiments of Rousseau. We are giving the body its due; physiology is overcoming theology. We are less hungry for lies,—we are facing squarely some of the ugliness of life,—prostitution, for example. We speak less of “duty” and “principles”; we are not so enamored of bourgeois conventions. We are less ashamed of our instincts; we no longer believe in a right which proceeds from a power that is unable to uphold it. There is an advance towards “naturalness”: in all political questions, even in the relations between parties, even in merchants’, workmen’s circles only questions of power come into play; what one can do is the first question, what one ought to do is a secondary consideration. There is a certain degree of liberal-mindedness regarding morality; where this is most distinctly wanting we regard its absence as a sign of a morbid condition (Carlyle, Ibsen, Schopenhauer); if there is anything which can reconcile us to our age it is precisely the amount of immorality which it allows itself without falling in its own estimation.[262]
Modern science, despite its narrowing specialization, is a sign of ascent. Here is strictness in service, inexorability in small matters as well as great, rapidity in weighing, judging, and condemning; the hardest is demanded here, the best is done without reward of praise or distinction; it is rather as among soldiers,—almost nothing but blame and sharp reprimand is heard; for doing well prevails here as the rule, and the rule has, as everywhere, a silent tongue. It is the same with this “severity of science” as with the manners and politeness of the best society: it frightens the uninitiated. He, however, who is accustomed to it, does not like to live anywhere but in this clear, transparent, powerful, and highly electrified atmosphere, this manly atmosphere.[263]
In this achievement of science lies such an opportunity as philosophy has never had before. Science traces the course of things but points to no goal: what it does give consists of the fundamental facts upon which the new goal must be based. All the sciences have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this task being understood to mean that he must solve the problem of value, that he has to fix the hierarchy of values. He must become lawgiver, commander; he must determine the “whither” and “why” for mankind. All knowledge must be at his disposal, and must serve him as a tool for creation.[264]
Most certain of the signs of a reascending movement of life is the development of militarism. The military development of Europe is a delightful surprise. This fine discipline is teaching us to do our duty without expecting praise. Universal military service is the curious antidote which we possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas. Men are learning again the joy of living in danger. Some of them are even learning the old truth that war is good in itself, aside from any gain in land or other wealth; instead of saying “A good cause will hallow every war,” they learn to say “A good war hallows every cause.” When the instincts of a society ultimately make it give up war and conquest, it is decadent: it is ripe for democracy and the rule of shopkeepers. A state which should prevent war would not only be committing suicide (for war is just as necessary to the state as the slave is to society); it would be hostile to life, it would be an outrage on the future of man. The maintenance of the military state is the last means of adhering to the great traditions of the past; or where it has been lost, of reviving it. Only in this can the superior or strong type of man be preserved.[265]
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men, and then to get around them. The state is the organization of immorality for the attainment of this purpose. But as existing to-day the state is a very imperfect instrument, subject at any moment to democratic foundering. What concerns the thinker here is the slow and hesitant formation of a united Europe. This was the thought, and the sole real work and impulse, of the only broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century,—the tentative effort to anticipate the future of “the European.” Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the “Fatherlanders”—then they were once more “patriots.” One thinks here of men like Napoleon, Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. And after all, is there a single idea behind this bovine nationalism? What possible value can there be in encouraging this arrogant self-conceit when everything to-day points to greater and more common interests?—at a moment when the spiritual dependence and denationalization which are obvious to all are paving the way for the rapprochements and fertilizations which make up the real value and sense of present-day culture?[266]
What an instrument such a united Europe would be for the development and protection and expression of superior individuals! What a buoyant ascent of life after this long descent into democracy! See now, in review, the two movements which we have studied and on which we have strung our philosophy: on the one hand Christian mythology and morality, the cult of weakness, the fear of life, the deterioration of the species, ever increasing suppression of the privileged and the strong, the lapse into democracy, feminism, socialism, and at last into anarchy,—all terminating in pessimism, despair, total loss of the love of life; on the other hand the reaffirmation of the worth of life, the resolute distinction between slave-morality and master-morality, the recognition of the aristocratic valuation of health, vigor, energy, as moral in all their forms, and of the will to power as the source and significance of all action and all living; the conception of the higher man, of the exceptional individual, as the goal of human endeavor; the redirection of marriage, of education, of social structure, to the fostering and cherishing of these higher types;—culminating in the supernational organization of Europe as the instrumentality and artistic expression of the superior man.[267]