Is this philosophy too hard to bear? Very well. But those races that cannot bear it are doomed; and those which regard it as the greatest blessing are destined to be masters of the world.[268]
IV
Criticism
WHAT shall one say to this? What would a democrat say,—such a democrat as would be a friend to socialism and feminism, and even to anarchism,—and a lover of Jesus? One pictures such a man listening with irritated patience to the foregoing, and responding very readily to an invitation to take the floor.
There are lessons here, he begins, as if brushing away an initial encumbrance. There is something of Nietzsche in all of us, just as there is something of Jesus (almost as there is something of man and of woman in all of us, as Weininger argued); and part of that crowd called myself is flattered by this doctrine of ruthless power. Nietzsche stood outside our social and moral structure, he was a sort of hermit in the world of thought; and so he could see things in that structure which are too near to our noses for easy vision. And as you listen to him you see history anew as a long succession of masterings and enslavings and deceivings, and you become almost reconciled to the future being nothing but a further succession of the same. And then you begin to see that if the future is to be different, one of the things we must do is to pinch ourselves out of this Nietzschean dream.
And a good way to begin is with Nietzsche’s own principle, that every philosophy is a physiology.[269] He asks us to believe that there is no such thing as a morbid trait in him,[270] but we must not take him at his word. The most important point about this philosophy is that it was written by a sick man, a man sick to the very roots—if you will let me say it, abnormal in sexual constitution; a man not sufficiently attracted to the other sex, because he has so much of the other sex in him. “She is a woman,” he writes in Zarathustra, “and never loves anyone but a warrior”; that is, if Nietzsche but knew it, the diagnosis of his own disease. This hatred of women, this longing for power, this admiration for strength, for successful lying,[271] this inability to see a tertium quid between tyranny and slavery,[272]—all these are feminine traits. A stronger man would not have been so shrewishly shrill about woman and Christianity; a stronger man would have needed less repetition, less emphasis and underlining, less of italics and exclamation points; a stronger man would have been more gentle, and would have smiled where Nietzsche scolds. It is the philosophy, you see, of a man abnormally weak in the social instincts, and at the same time lacking in proper outlet for such social instincts as nature has left him.
Consequently, he never gets beyond the individual. He thinks society is made up of individuals, when it is really made up of groups. He supposes that the only virtues a man can have are those which help him as an isolated unit; the idea that a man may find self-expression in social expression, in coöperation, that there are virtues which are virtues because they enable one to work with others against a common evil,—this notion never occurs to him. He does not see that sympathy and mutual aid, for example, though they preserve some inferior individuals, yet secure that group-solidarity, and therefore group-survival, without which even the strong ones would perish.[273] He does not imagine that perhaps the barbarians who invaded Rome needed the gospel of a “gentle Jesus meek and mild” if anything at all was to remain of that same classical culture which he paints so lovingly.[274] He laughs at self-denial; and then invites you to devote yourself forever to some self-elected superman.
This philosophy of aristocracy, of the necessity of slavery, of the absurdity of democracy,—of course it is exciting to all weak people who would like to have power,—and who have not read it all before in Plato. In this particular case the humor of the situation lies in the very powerful attack which Nietzsche makes on the irreligious religious humbug which has proved one of the chief instruments of mastery in the hands of the class whose power he is trying to strengthen. “I hope to be forgiven,” says Nietzsche, “for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has belonged to the soporific appliances.”[275] “Discovering”—as if the aristocracy had not known that all along! “Here is a naïve bookworm,” these “strong men” will say among themselves, “who has discovered what every one of us knows. He presumes to tell us how to increase our power, and he can find no better way of helping us than to expose in print the best secrets of our trade.”
Just in this lies the value of Nietzsche, as Rousseau said of Machiavelli: he lets us in behind the scenes of the drama of exploitation. We know better now the men with whom democracy must deal. We see the greed for power that hides behind the contention that culture cannot exist without slavery. Grant that contention: so much the worse for culture! If culture means the increasing concentration of the satisfactions of life in the hands of a few “superior” pigs, their culture may be dispensed with; if it is to stay, it will have to mean the direction of knowledge and ability to the spread of the satisfactions of life. Which is finer,—the relationship of master and slave, or that of friend and friend? Surely a world of people liking and helping one another is a finer world to live in than one in which the instincts of aggression are supreme. And such a coöperative civilization need not fear the tests of survival; selection puts an ever higher premium on solidarity, an ever lower value on pugnacity. Intelligence, not ready anger, will win the great contests of the future. Friendship will pay.
The history of the world is a record of the patient and planful attempt to replace hatred by understanding, narrowness by large vision, opposition by coöperation, slavery by friendship. Friendship: a word to be avoided by those who would appear blasé. But let us repeat it; words have been known to nourish deeds which without them might never have grown into reality. Some find heaven in making as many men as possible their slaves; others find heaven in making as many men as possible their friends. Which type of man will we have? Which type of man, if abundant, would make this world a splendor and a delight?
The hope for which Jesus lived was that man might some day come to mean friend. It is the only hope worth living for.