NIETZSCHE

AND OTHER EXPONENTS OF

INDIVIDUALISM

BY

PAUL CARUS

CHICAGO LONDON

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY

1914

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
STATUE BY KLEIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS
[ANTI-SCIENTIFIC TENDENCIES] [DEUSSEN'S RECOLLECTIONS]
[EXTREME NOMINALISM]
[A PHILOSOPHY OF ORIGINALITY]
[THE OVERMAN]
[ZARATHUSTRA]
[A PROTEST AGAINST HIMSELF]
[NIETZSCHE'S PREDECESSOR]
[EGO-SOVEREIGNTY]
[ANOTHER NIETZSCHE]
[NIETZSCHE'S DISCIPLES]
[THE PRINCIPLE OF VALUATION]
[INDIVIDUALISM]
[CONCLUSION.]
[INDEX]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. STATUE BY KLEIN.]
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS A PUPIL AT SCHULPFORTA IN THE YEAR 1861.]
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE FROM PHOTOGRAPH IN THE POSSESSION OF PROFESSOR DEUSSEN.]
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE IN THE PRIME OF LIFE.]
[COINS OF ANCIENT ELIS.]
[NIETZSCHE'S HANDWRITING.]
[NIETZSCHE'S DRUNKEN SONG--ILLUSTRATION BY LINDLOF.]
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS A VOLUNTEER IN THE GERMAN ARTILLERY, 1868.]
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS PROFESSOR AT BASLE.]
[FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE—THE LATEST PORTRAIT, AFTER AN OIL PAINTING BY C. STOEVING.]
[PENCIL SKETCH OF MAX STIRNER.]
[BUST OF NIETZSCHE, BY KLINGER.]

ANTI-SCIENTIFIC TENDENCIES.

Philosophies are world-conceptions presenting three main features: (1) A systematic comprehension of the knowledge of their age; (2) An emotional attitude toward the cosmos; and (3) A principle that will serve as a basis for rules of conduct. The first feature determines the worth of the several philosophical systems in the history of mankind, being the gist of that which will last, and giving them strength and backbone. The second one, however, appeals powerfully to the sentiments of those who are imbued with the same spirit and thus constitutes its immediate acceptability; while the ethics of a philosophy becomes the test by which its use and practicability can be measured.

The author's ideal has been to harmonize these three features by making the first the regulator of the second and a safe basis of the third. What we need is truth; our fundamental emotion must be truthfulness, and our ethics must be a living of the truth. Truth is not something that we can fashion according to our pleasure; it is not subjective; its very nature is objectivity. But we must render it subjective by a love of truth; we must make it our own, and by doing so our conduct in life will unfailingly adjust itself.

Former philosophies made the subjective element predominant, and thus every philosopher worked out a philosophy of his own, endeavoring to be individual and original. The aim of our own philosophy has been to reduce the subjective to its proper sphere, and to establish, in agreement with the scientific spirit of the age, a philosophy of objective validity.

It is a well known experience that the march of progress does not advance in a straight line but proceeds in epicycles. Man seems to tire of the rigor of truth. From time to time he wants fiction. A strict adherence to exact methods becomes monotonous to clever minds lacking the power of concentration, and they gladly hail vagaries. Truth, they claim, is relative, knowledge mere opinion, and poetry had better replace science. Then they say: Error, be thou our guide; Error, thou art a liberator from the tyranny of truth. Glory be to Error!

Similar retrograde movements take place from time to time in art. Classical taste changes with romantic tendencies. Goethe, Schiller and Lessing are followed by Schlegel and Tieck, Mozart and Beethoven by Wagner.

The last half-century has been an age of unprecedented progress in science and we would expect that with all the wonderful successes and triumphs of scientific invention this age of science ought to find its consummation in the adoption of a philosophy of science. But no! The mass of mankind is weary of science, and anti-scientific tendencies grow up like mushrooms, finding spokesmen in philosophers like William James and Henri Bergson who have the ear of large masses, proclaiming the superiority of subjectivism over objectivism, and the advantages of animal instinct over human reason.

These subjective philosophies if considered as expressions of sentiment, as sentimental attitudes toward the world, as poetical effusions of a semi-philosophical nature, are perfectly legitimate and can be indulged in as well as the several religions which in allegories attune the minds of their followers toward the All of which they are parts. There is no need to condemn arts or emotions for they have a right to exist just as they are.

We protest against subjectivism in philosophy only when it denies the possibility of an objective philosophy. We do not deny that the masses of the world are not, cannot be and never will be scientific thinkers. Science is the prerogative of the few, and the large masses of mankind will always be of a pragmatist type. If the pragmatist considered himself as a psychologist pure and simple showing how the majority of mankind argues, how people are influenced by their own interest and how their thoughts are warped by what they wish the facts to be, pragmatism would be a commendable branch of the science of the soul. Pragmatism explains the errors of philosophy and we can learn much from a consideration of its principles. It becomes objectionable only in so far as it claims to be philosophy in the strict sense of the word.

The name philosophy is used in two senses, first as we defined it above, as a world-conception based upon critically sifted knowledge; and secondly it is used in a vague general sense as wisdom in the practical affairs of life. And if pragmatism claims to be a philosophy in this second sense it ought not to deny that philosophy as a science is possible.

Philosophy as a science is philosophy par excellence. It is the only philosophy of objective validity. All other philosophies are effusions of subjective points of view, of attitudes, of sentiment. But we must insist that these two contrasts may exist side by side just as art does not render mathematics supererogatory, and as a physicist who in his profession devotes himself to a study of nature according to methods of an objective exactness may in his leisure hours paint a Stimmungsbild to give an artistic expression to a subjective mood.

This world is not merely the object of science. There are innumerable tendencies which exist and have a right to exist, but they ought not to banish science, scientific enquiry and scientific ideals from the place they hold; for science is the mariners' compass which guides us over the ocean of life, and though the majority of the passengers do not and need not worry about it, science is after all the only means which makes for progress and lifts mankind to higher and higher levels.

If we criticize men like James and Bergson and other philosophers of subjectivism we do it as a defence of the indispensable character of the objectivity of science as well as of philosophy as a science.

James and Bergson were by no means the originators of their method of philosophizing. There have been many sages before them who deemed the spectacles through which they viewed the world to be the most important or even the only significant issue of life's problems. The Ionian physicists were outdone by the sophists, and in modern times Friedrich Nietzsche expressed the most sovereign contempt for science.

Among all the philosophies of modern times there is perhaps none which in its inmost principle is more thoroughly opposed to our own than Nietzsche's, and yet there are some points of mutual contact which are well worth pointing out. The problem which is at the basis of Nietzsche's thought is the same as in our philosophy, but our solution is radically different from his.

Friedrich Nietzsche is a philosopher who astonishes his readers by the boldness with which he rebels against every tradition, tearing down the holiest and dearest things, preaching destruction of all rule, and looking with disdain upon the heap of ruins in which his revolutionary thoughts would leave the world.

For more than a century Germany has been the storm-center of philosophical thought. The commotions that started in the Fatherland reached other countries, France, England, and the United States, after they had lost their force at home. Kant's transcendentalism and Hegel's phenomenalism began to flourish among the English-speaking races after having become almost extinct in the home of their founders. Prof. R. M. Wenley of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., expresses this truth with his native Scotch wit in the statement which I do not hesitate to endorse, that "German professors when they die go to Oxford," and we may add that from Oxford they travel west to settle for a while in Concord, Boston, Washington, or other American cities.

Hegelianism had scarcely died out in the United States when Schopenhauer and Nietzsche began to become fashionable. The influence of the former has been felt in a quiet way for some time while the Nietzsche movement is of more recent date and also of a more violent character.

Nietzsche represents a type of most modern date. His was a genius after the heart of Lombroso. He was eccentric and atypical.

Lombroso's psychology is an outgrowth of nominalism which does not recognize an objective norm for truth, health, reason, or normality of any kind, and regards the average as the sole method of finding a norm. If, however, the average type is the standard of measurement, the unusually excellent specimens, being rare in number, must be classed together with all other deviations from the average, and thus a genius is regarded as abnormal as much as a criminal—a theory which has found many admirers in this age that is sicklied over with agnosticism, the modern offshoot of nominalism. The truth is that true genius (not the pseudo-genius of erratic minds, not the would-be genius of those who make a failure of life) is uncommonly normal—I had almost said "abnormally normal."

A perfect crystal is rare; so the perfectly normal man is an exception; yet for all that he is a better representative of the ideal of his type than the average.

Nietzsche was most assuredly very ingenious; he was unusually talented but he was not a genius in the full sense of the word. He was abnormal, titanic in his pretensions and aims, and erratic. Breaking down under the burden of his own thought, he ended his tragical career in an insane asylum.

The mental derangement of Nietzsche may be an unhappy accident but it appears to have come as the natural result of his philosophy. Nietzsche, by nature modest and tractable, almost submissive, was, as a thinker, too proud to submit to anything, even to truth. Schopenhauer had taught him that the intellect, with its comprehension of truth, is a mere slave of the will, ancilla voluntatis. Our cognition of the truth has a purpose; it must accommodate itself to our own interest. But the self is sovereign; the self wants to assert itself; the self alone has a right to exist; and the self that does not dare to be itself is a servile, menial creature. Therefore Nietzsche preaches the ethics of self-assertion and pride. He is too proud to recognize the duty of inquiry, the duty of adapting his mind to the world, or of recognizing the cosmic order of the universe as superior to his self. He feels bigger than the cosmos; he is himself; and he wants to be himself. His own self is sovereign; and if the world is not satisfied to submit to his will, the world may go to ruin. If the world breaks to pieces, it will only cause him to laugh; on the other hand, if his very self is forced to the wall in this conflict, he will still, from sheer pride, not suffer himself to abandon his principle of the absolute sovereignty of selfhood. He will not be a man, human and humane, but an overman (Uebermensch), a superhuman despiser of humanity and humaneness. The multitudes are to him like cattle to be used, to be milked, fleeced and butchered, and Nietzsche calls them herds, animals of the flock, Heerdentiere.

Nietzsche's philosophy is unique in being throughout the expression of an emotion—the proud sentiment of a self-sufficient sovereignty of self. It rejects with disdain both the methods of the intellect, which submit the problems of life to an investigation, and the demands of morality, which recognize the existence of duty.

Other philosophers have claimed that rights imply duties and duties, rights. Nietzsche knows of rights only. Nietzsche claims that there is no objective science save by the permission of the sovereign self, nor is there any "ought," except for slaves and fools. He prides himself on being "the first Unmoralist," implying the absolute sovereignty of man—of the overman—and the foolishness as well as falsity of moral maxims.

[DEUSSEN'S RECOLLECTIONS]

Professor Paul Deussen, Sanskritist and philosopher of Kiel, was Friedrich Nietzsche's most intimate friend. They were chums together in school in Schulpforta, and remained friends to the end of Nietzsche's life. Nietzsche had come to Schulpforta in 1858, and Deussen entered the next year in the same class. Once Nietzsche, who as the senior of the class had to keep order among his fellow scholars during working periods and prevent them from making a disturbance, approached Deussen while he sat in his seat peacefully chewing the sandwich he had brought for his lunch and said, "Don't talk so loud to your crust!" using here the boys' slang term for a sandwich. These were the first words Nietzsche had spoken to Deussen, and Deussen says:[1] "I see Nietzsche still before me, how with the unsteady glance peculiar to extremely near-sighted people, his eye wandered over the rows of his classmates searching in vain for an excuse to interfere."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
AS A PUPIL AT SCHULPFORTA
IN THE YEAR 1861.

Nietzsche and Deussen began to take walks together and soon became chums, probably on account of their common love for Anacreon, whose poems were interesting to both perhaps on account of the easy Greek in which they are written.

In those days the boys of Schulpforta addressed each other by the formal Sie; but one day when Deussen happened to be in the dormitory, he discovered in the trunk under his bed a little package of snuff; Nietzsche was present and each took a pinch. With this pinch they swore eternal brotherhood. They did not drink brotherhood as is the common German custom, but, as Deussen humorously says, they "snuffed it"; and from that time they called each other by the more intimate du. This friendship continued through life with only one interruption, and on Laetare Sunday in 1861, they stepped to the altar together and side by side received the blessing at their confirmation. On that day both were overcome by a feeling of holiness and ecstasy. Thus their friendship was sealed in Christ, and though it may seem strange of Nietzsche who was later a most iconoclastic atheist, a supernatural vision filled their young hearts for many weeks afterwards.

There was a third boy to join this friendship—a certain Meyer, a young, handsome and amiable youth distinguished by wit and the ability to draw excellent caricatures. But Meyer was in constant conflict with his teachers and generally in rebellion against the rules of the school. He had to leave school before he finished his course. Nietzsche and Deussen accompanied him to the gate and returned in great sorrow when he had disappeared on the highway. What has become of Meyer is not known. Deussen saw him five years later in his home at Oberdreis, but at that time he was broken in health and courage, disgruntled with God, the world and himself. Later he held a subordinate position in the custom house, and soon after that all trace of him was lost. Probably he died young.

This Meyer was attached to Nietzsche for other reasons than Deussen. While Deussen appreciated more the intellectuality and congeniality of his friend, Meyer seems to have been more attracted by his erratic and wayward tendencies and this for some time endeared him to Nietzsche. Thus it came to pass that the two broke with Deussen for a time.

The way of establishing a state of hostility in Schulpforta was to declare oneself "mad" at another, and to some extent this proved to be a good institution, for since the boys came in touch with each other daily and constantly in the school, those who could not agree would have easily come to blows had it not been for this tabu which made it a rule that they were not on speaking terms. This state of things lasted for six weeks, and was only broken by an incidental discussion in a Latin lesson, when Nietzsche proposed one of his highly improbable conjectures for a verse of Virgil. The discussion grew heated, and when the professor after a long Latin disquisition finally asked whether any one had something to say on the subject, Deussen rose and extemporized a Latin hexameter which ran thus:

"Nietzschius erravit, neque coniectura probanda est"

On account of the declared state of "mad"-ness, the debate was carried on through the teacher, addressing him each time with the phrase: "Tell Nietzsche," "Tell Deussen," "Tell Meyer," etc., but in the heat of the controversy they forgot to speak in the third person, and finally addressed their adversaries directly. This broke the spell of being "mad" and they came to an understanding and a definite reconciliation.

Nietzsche never had another friend with whom he became so intimate as with Deussen. Deussen says (page 9): "At that time we understood each other perfectly. In our lonely walks we discussed all possible subjects of religion, philosophy, poetry, art and music. Often our thoughts ran wild and when words failed us we would look into each other's eyes, and one would say to the other: 'We understand each other.' These words became a standing phrase which forthwith we decided to avoid as trivial, and we had to laugh when occasionally it escaped our lips in spite of us. The great ordeal of the final examination came. We had to pass first through our written tests. In German composition, on the 'advantages and dangers of wealth' Nietzsche passed with No. 1; also in a Latin exercise de bello Punico primo; but in mathematics he failed with the lowest mark, No. 4. This upset him and in fact he who was almost the most gifted of us all was compelled to withdraw."

While the two were strolling up and down in front of the schoolhouse, Nietzsche unburdened his grief to his friend, and Deussen tried to comfort him. "What difference does it make," said he, "if you pass badly, if only you pass at all? You are and will always be more gifted than all the rest of us, and will soon outstrip even me whom you now envy. You must increase but I must decrease."

The course of events was as Deussen had predicted, for Nietzsche though not passing with as much distinction as he may have deserved nevertheless received his diploma.

When Deussen with his wife visited Nietzsche in August 1907 at Sils-Maria, Nietzsche showed him a requiem which he had composed for his own funeral, and he added: "I do not believe that I will last much longer. I have reached the age at which my father died, and I fear that I shall fall a victim to the same disease as he." Though Deussen protested vigorously against this sad prediction and tried to cheer him up, Nietzsche indeed succumbed to his sad fate within two years.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE FROM PHOTOGRAPH
IN THE POSSESSION OF PROFESSOR DEUSSEN.

Professor Deussen, though Nietzsche's most intimate friend, is by no means uncritical in judging his philosophy. It is true he cherishes the personal character and the ideal tendencies of his old chum, but he is not blind to his faults. Deussen says of Nietzsche: "He was never a systematic philosopher.... The great problems of epistemology, of psychology, of æsthetics and ethics are only tentatively touched upon in his writings.... There are many pearls of worth upon which he throws a brilliant side light, as it were in lightning flashes.... His overwhelming imagination is always busy. His thoughts were always presented in pleasant imagery and in language of dazzling brilliancy, but he lacked critical judgment and was not controlled by a consideration of reality. Therefore the creation of his pen was never in harmony with the actual world, and among the most valuable truths which he revealed with ingenious profundity there are bizarre and distorted notions stated as general rules although they are merely rare exceptions, as is also frequently the case in sensational novels. Thus Nietzsche produced a caricature of life which means no small danger for receptive and inexperienced minds. His readers can escape this danger only when they do what Nietzsche did not do, when they confront every thought of his step by step by the actual nature of things, and retain only what proves to be true under the touchstone of experience."

Between the negation of the will and its affirmation Nietzsche granted to Deussen while still living in Basel, that the ennoblement of the will should be man's aim. The affirmation of the will is the pagan ideal with the exception of Platonism. The negation of the will is the Christian ideal, and according to Nietzsche the ennoblement of the will is realized in his ideal of the overman. Deussen makes the comment that Nietzsche's notion of the overman is in truth the ideal of all mankind, whether this highest type of manhood be called Christ or overman; and we grant that such an ideal is traceable everywhere. It is called "Messiah" among the Jews; "hero" among the Greeks, "Christ" among the Christians, and chiün, the superior man, or to use Nietzsche's language, "the overman," among the Chinese; but the characteristics with which Nietzsche endows his overman are unfortunately mere brutal strength and an unscrupulous will to play the tyrant. Here Professor Deussen halts. It appears that he knew the peaceful character of his friend too well to take his ideal of the overman seriously.

We shall discuss Nietzsche's ideal of the overman more fully further down in a discussion of his most original thoughts, the typically Nietzschean ideas.

[1] See Dr. Paul Deussen's Erinnerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche. Leipsic, 1901.

[EXTREME NOMINALISM]

According to Nietzsche, the history of philosophy from Plato to his own time is a progress of the idea that objective truth (a conception of "the true world") is not only not attainable, but does not exist at all. He expresses this idea in his Twilight of the Idols (English edition, pp. 122-123) under the caption, "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable," which describes the successive stages as follows:

"1. The true world attainable by the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man,—he lives in it, he embodies it.

"(Oldest form of the idea, relatively rational, simple, and convincing. Transcription of the proposition, 'I, Plato, am the truth,')

"2. The true world unattainable at present, but promised to the wise, the pious, and the virtuous man (to the sinner who repents).

"(Progress of the idea: it becomes more refined, more insidious, more incomprehensible,—it becomes feminine, it becomes Christian.)

"3. The true world unattainable, undemonstrable, and unable to be promised; but even as conceived, a comfort, an obligation, and an imperative.

"(The old sun still, but shining only through mist and scepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, northerly, Koenigsbergian.)

"4. The true world—unattainable? At any rate unattained. And being unattained also unknown. Consequently also neither comforting, saving nor obligatory: what obligation could anything unknown lay upon us?

"(Gray morning. First dawning of reason. Cock-crowing of Positivism.)

"5. The 'true world'—an idea neither good for anything, nor even obligatory any longer,—an idea become useless and superfluous; consequently a refuted idea; let us do away with it!

"(Full day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato blushing for shame; infernal noise of all free intellects,)

"6. We have done away with the true world: what world is left? perhaps the seeming?... But no! in doing away with the true, we have also done away with the seeming world!

"(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; climax of mankind; Incipit Zarathustra!)"

The reader will ask, "What next?" Probably afternoon and evening, and then night. In the night presumably "the old sun," i. e., the idea of Plato's true world, which (according to Nietzsche) grew pale in the morning, will shine again.

Nietzsche's main desire was to live the real life and make his home not in an imaginary Utopia but in this actual world of ours. He reproached the philosophers as well as the religious leaders and ethical teachers for trying to make mankind believe that the teal world is purely phenomenal, for replacing it by the world of thought which they called "the true world" or the world of truth. To Nietzsche the typical philosopher is Plato. He and all his followers are accused of hypocrisy for making people believe that "the true world" of their own fiction is real and that man's ambition should be to attain to this "true world" (the world of philosophy, of science, of art, of ethical ideals) built above the real world. Nietzsche means to shatter all the idols of the past, and he has come to the conclusion that even the scientists were guilty of the same fault as the philosophers. They erected a world of thought, of subjective conception from the materials of the real world, and so he denounces even their attempts at constructing a "true world" as either a self-mystification or a lie. It is as imaginary as the world of the priest. In order to lead a life worthy of the "overman," we should assert ourselves and feel no longer hampered by rules of conduct or canons of logic or by any consideration for truth.

With all his hatred of religion, Nietzsche was nevertheless an intensely religious character, and knowing that he could not clearly see a connection between his so-called "real world" and his actual surroundings, he developed all the symptoms of religious fanaticism which characterizes religious leaders of all ages. He indulged in a mystic ecstacy, preaching it as the essential feature of his philosophy, and his Dionysiac enthusiasm is not the least of the intoxicants which are contained in his thought and bring so many poetical and talented but immature minds under his control.

It is obvious that "the real world" of Nietzsche is more unreal than "the true world" of philosophy and of religion which he denounces as fictitious, but he was too naive and philosophically crude to see this. Nietzsche's "real world" is a fabric of his own personal imagination, while the true world of science is at least a thought-construction of the world which pictures facts with objective exactness; it is controlled by experience and can be utilized in practical life; it is subject to criticism and its propositions are being constantly tested either to be refuted or verified. Nietzsche's "real world" is the hope (and perhaps not even a desirable hope) of a feverish brain whose action is influenced by a decadent body.

Nietzsche's so-called "real world" is one ideal among many others. It is as much subjective as the ideals of other mortals,—of men who seek happiness in wealth, or in pleasures, or in fame, or in scholarship, or in a religious life—all of them imagine that the world of their thoughts is real and the goal which they endeavor to reach is the only thing that possesses genuine worth. In Nietzsche's opinion all are dreamers catching at shadows, but the shadow of his own fancy appeared to him as real.

According to Nietzsche the universe is not a cosmos but a chaos. He says (La Gaya Scienza, German edition, p. 148):

"The astral order in which we live is an exception. This order and the relative stability which is thereby caused, made the exception' of exceptions possible,—the formation of organisms. The character-total of the world is into all eternity chaos, not in the sense of a missing necessity, but of missing order, articulation, form, beauty, wisdom, and as all our æsthetic humanities may be called."

In agreement with this conception of order, Nietzsche says of man, the rational animal:

"I fear that animals look upon man as a being of their own kind, which in a most dangerous way has lost the sound animal-sense,—as a lunatic animal, a laughing animal, a crying animal, a miserable animal." (La Gaya Scienza, German edition, p. 196.)

If reason is an aberration, the brute must be superior to man and instinct must range higher than logical thought. Man's reason, according to this consistent nominalist view, is purely subjective and has no prototype in the objective world. This is a feature common to all nominalistic philosophies. John Stuart Mill regards the theorems of logic and mathematics, not only not as truths, but as positive untruths. He says:

"The points, lines, circles, and squares, which any one has in his mind, are (I apprehend) simply copies of the points, lines, circles, and squares which he has known in his experience. Our idea of a point, I apprehend to be simply our idea of the minimum visibile, the smallest portion of surface which we can see. A line, as defined by geometers, is wholly inconceivable. We can reason about a line as if it had no breadth; because we have a power, which is the foundation of all the control we can exercise over the operations of our minds; the power, when a perception is present to our senses, or a conception to our intellects, of attending to a part only of that perception or conception, instead of the whole. But we cannot conceive a line without breadth; we can form no mental picture of such a line: all the lines which we have in our minds are lines possessing breadth."

Nietzsche shows his nominalistic tendencies by repeatedly pronouncing the same propositions in almost literally the same words,[1] without, however, acknowledging the school in which he picked up this error.

It is quite true that mathematical lines and circles are human conceptions, but they are not purely subjective conceptions, still less untruths; they are great and important discoveries. They are not arbitrarily devised but constructed according to the laws of the uniformities that dominate existence. They represent actual features of the factors which shape the objective universe, and thus only is it possible that the astronomer through the calculation of mathematical curves can predict the motion of the stars.[2]

Reason is the key to the universe, because it is the reflex of cosmic order, and the cosmic order, the intrinsic regularity and immanent harmony of the uniformities of nature, is not a subjective illusion but an objective reality.

When Goethe claims that all things transitory are symbols of that which is intransitory and eternal, Nietzsche answers that the idea of anything intransitory is a mere symbol, and God (the idea of anything eternal) a poet's lie.

Like a mocking-bird, the nominalist philosopher imitates the ring of Goethe's well-known lines at the conclusion of the second part of "Faust," in which the "real world" of transient things is considered as a mere symbol of the true world of eternal verities:

"Das Unvergangliche
Ist nur dein Glcichniss.
Gott der Verfängliche
Ist Dichter-Erschleichniss.
Weltspiel, das herrische,
Mischt Sein und Schein:—
Das Ewig-Närrische
Mischt uns—hinein."
"The non-deciduous
Is a symbol of thy sense,
God ever invidious,
A poetical license.
World-play domineeringly
Mixes semblance and fact,
And between them us sneeringly
The Ever-Foolish has packed."

In spite of Nietzsche's hunger for the realities of life, that is to say for objectivity, he was in fact the most subjective of all philosophers—so much so that he was incapable of formulating any thought as an objectively precise statement. He did not believe in truth: "There is probability, but no truth," says he in Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, p. 190; and he adds concerning the measure of the value of truth (ibid., Aphorism 4): "The trouble in ascending mountains is no measure of their height, and should it be different in science?"

It is true that such words as "long" and "short" are relative, because dependent on subjective needs and valuations. But must we for that reason give up all hope of describing facts in objective terms? Are not meters and foot-measures definite magnitudes, whether or not they be long for one purpose and short for another? Relativity itself admits of a description in objective terms; but if a statement of facts in objective terms were impossible, the ideals of exact science (as all ideals) would be a dream.

That Nietzsche prefers the abrupt style of aphorisms to dispassionate inquisitions is a symptom that betrays the nature of his philosophy. His ideas, thus expressed, are easily understood. They are but very loosely connected, and we find them frequently contradictory. They are not presented in a logical, orderly way, but sound like reiterated challenges to battle. They are appeals to all wild impulses and a clamor for the right of self-assertion.

While Nietzsche's philosophy is in itself inconsistent and illogical, it is yet born of the logic of facts; it is the consistent result and legitimate conclusion of principles uttered centuries ago and which were slowly matured in the historical development of thought.

The old nominalistic school is the father of Nietzsche's philosophy. A consistent nominalist will be driven from one conclusion to another until he reaches the stage of Nietzsche, which is philosophical anarchism and extreme individualism.

The nominalist denies the reality of reason; he regards the existence of universals as a fiction, and looks upon the world as a heap of particulars. He loses sight of the unity of the world and forgets that form is a true feature of things. It is form and the sameness of the laws of form which makes universality of reason possible.

Nominalism rose in opposition to the medieval realism of the schoolmen who looked upon universals as real and concrete things, representing them as individual beings that existed ante res, in rebus, and post res, i. e., in the particulars, before them and after them. The realists were wrong in so far as they conceived universals as substances or distinct essences, as true realities (hence the name "realism"); only they were supposed to be of a more spiritual nature than material things but, after all, they were concrete existences. They were said to have been created by God as an artisan would make patterns or molds for the things which he proposes to produce. According to Plato, ideas serve the Creator as models of concrete objects of which they are deemed to be the prototypes. The realists were mistaken in regarding the ideal as concrete and real, but the nominalists, on the other hand, also went too far in denying the objective significance of universals and declaring that universals were mere names (nomina and flatus vocis), i. e., words invented for the sake of conveniently thinking things and serving no other purpose.

At the bottom of the controversy lies the problem as to the nature of things. The question arises, What are things in themselves? Do things, or do they not, possess an independence of their own? Kant's reply is, that things in themselves can not be known; but our reply is, that the nature of a thing consists in its form; a thing is such as it is because it has a definite form. Therefore "things in themselves" do not exist; but there are "forms in themselves."

Form is not a non-entity but the most important feature of reality, and the pure laws of form are the determinative factors of the world. The sciences of the laws of pure form, logic, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, etc., are therefore the key to a comprehension of the world, and morality is the realization of ideals, i. e., of the conceptions of pure forms, which are higher, nobler, and better than those which have been actualized.

From our standpoint, evolution is a process in which the eternal laws of being manifest themselves in a series of regular transformations, reaching a point at which sentiency appears. And then evolution takes the shape of progress, that is to say, sentient beings develop mind; sentiments become sensations, i. e., representative images; and words denote the universals. Then reason originates as a reflex of the eternal laws of pure form. Human reason is deepened in a scientific world-conception, and becoming aware of the moral aspect of universality it broadens out into comprehensive sympathy with all forms of existence that like ourselves aspire after a fuller comprehension of existence.

Thus the personality of man is the reflex of that system of eternalities which sways the universe, and humanity is found to be a revelation of the core of the cosmos, an incarnation of Godhood. This revelation, however, is not closed. The appearance of the religions of good-will and mutual sympathy merely marks the beginning of a new era, and we may expect that the future of mankind will surpass the present, as much as the present surpasses savagery. Such is the higher humanity, the true "overman," representing a higher species of mankind, whom we expect.

Nietzsche's philosophy of "unmorality" looms on the horizon of human thought as a unique conception apparently ushered into this world without any preparation and without any precedent. It sets itself up against tradition. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche's immediate predecessor, regarded history as the desolate dream of mankind, and Nietzsche exhibits a remorseless contempt for everything that comes to us as a product of history. Nietzsche scorns not only law and order, church and state, but also reason, argument, and rule; he scorns consistency and logic which are regarded as toys for weaklings or as tools of the crafty.

Nietzsche is a nominalist with a vengeance. His philosophy is particularism carried to extremes. There is no unity of existence to him. The God-idea is dead—not only the old metaphysical notion of a God-individual, but also God in the sense of the ultimate ground of being, the supreme norm of the cosmos. Nietzsche's world is split up into particular selves. He does not ask how they originated; he only knows that they are here. Above all, he knows that his own self is here, and there is no bond of sympathy between it and other selves. The higher self is that which assumes dominion over the world. His ideal is brutal strength, his overman the tyrant who tramples under foot his fellowmen. Democracy is an abomination to him, and he despises the gospel of love as it is preached by both Christ and Buddha. This is the key to his anti-moralism and to the doctrine of the autonomy of selfhood.

Nietzsche's philosophy might be called philosophical nihilism, if he did not object to the word. He calls it positivism, but it is particularism, or rather an aristocratic individualism which in the domain of thought plays the same role that political nihilism plays in Russia. It would dethrone the hereditary Czar, the ruler by God's grace, but it would not establish a republic. It would set on the throne a ruthless demagogue, a self-made political boss—the overman. It is the philosophy of protest, and Nietzsche is conscious of being Slavic in thought and aspiration. Nor does he forget that his ancestors belonged to the nobility. He claims to have been descended from a Polish nobleman by the name of Niëtzki, a Protestant who came to Germany in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.

Nietzsche's love of Slavism manifested itself in his childhood, for when the news of the fall of Sebastopol became known, Nietzsche, at that time a mere boy, was so dejected that he could not eat and gave expression to his chagrin in mournful strains of verse.

He who has faith in truth accepts truth as authority; he who accepts truth as authority recognizes duty; he who recognizes duty beholds a goal of life. He has found a purpose for which life appears worth living, and reaches out beyond the bounds of his narrow individuality into the limitless cosmos. He transcends himself, he grows in truth, he increases in power, he widens in his sympathies.

Here we touch upon the God problem. In denning God as the ultimate authority of conduct, we are confronted by the dilemma, Is there, or is there not a norm of morality, a standard of right and wrong, to which the self must submit? And this question is another version of the problem as to the existence of truth. Is there truth which we must heed, or is truth a fiction and is the self not bound to respect anything? We answer this question as to the existence of truth in the affirmative, Nietzsche in the negative.

But he who rejects truth cuts himself loose from the fountain-head of the waters of life. He may deify selfhood, but his own self will die of its self-apotheosis. His divinity is not a true God-incarnation, it is a mere assumption and the self-exaltation of a pretender.

Nietzsche's philosophy is more consistent than it appears on its face. Being the negation of the right of consistency, its lack of consistency is its most characteristic feature. If the intellect is truly, as Schopenhauer suggests, the servant of the will, then there is no authority in reason, and arguments have no strength. All quarrels are simply questions of power. Then, there is might, but not right; right is simply the bon plaisir of might. Then there is no good nor evil; good is that which I will, bad is that which threatens to thwart my will. Good and evil are distinctions invented for the enslavement of the masses, but the free man, the genius, the aristocrat, who craftily tramples the masses under foot, knows no difference. He is beyond good and evil.

This, indeed, is the consequence which Nietzsche boldly draws. It is a consistent anarchism; it is unmoralism, a courageous denial of ethical rule; and a proud aristocratism, the ruthless shout of triumph of the victor who hails the doctrine of the survival of the strongest and craftiest as a "joyful science."

Nietzsche would not refute the arguments of those who differ from him; for refutation of other views does not befit a positive mind that posits its own truth. "What have I to do with refutations!" exclaims Nietzsche in the Preface to his Genealogy of Morals. The self is lord. There is no law for the lord, and so he denounces the ethics of Christianity as slave-morality, and preaches the lord-morality of the strong which is self-assertion.

Morality itself is denounced by Nietzsche as immoral. Morality is the result of evolution, and man's moral ideas are products of conditions climatic, social, economical, national, religious, and what not. Why should we submit to the tyranny of a rule which after all proves to be a relic of barbarism? Nietzsche rejects morality as incompatible with the sovereignty of selfhood, and, pronouncing our former judgment a superstition, he proposes "a transvaluation of all values." The self must be established as supreme ruler, and therefore all rules, maxims, principles, must go, for the very convictions of a man are mere chains that fetter the freedom of his soul.

[1] La Gaya Scienza, German edition, p. 154; and passim in Menschliches, etc.

[2] For further details of a refutation of this wrong conception of geometry, see the author's Foundation of Mathematics.

[A PHILOSOPHY OF ORIGINALITY]

One might expect that Nietzsche, who glories in the triumph of the strong over the weak in the struggle for life, red in tooth and claw, would look up to Darwin as his master. But Nietzsche recognizes no, master, and he emphasizes this by speaking in his poetry of Darwin as "this English joker," whose "mediocre reason" is accepted for philosophy.[1] To Nietzsche that which exists is the mere incidental product of blind forces. Instead of working for a development of the better from the best of the present, which is the method of nature, he shows his contempt for the human and all-too-human; he prophesies a deluge and hopes that from its floods the overman will emerge whose seal of superiority will be the strength of the conqueror that enables him to survive in the struggle for existence.

Nietzsche has looked deeply into the apparent chaos of life that according to Darwin is a ruthless struggle for survival. He avoids the mistake of those sentimentalists who believe that goody-goodyness can rule the world, who underrate the worth of courage and over-rate humility, and who would venture to establish peace on earth by grounding arms. He sees the differences that exist between all things, the antagonism that obtains everywhere, and preferring to play the part of the hammer, he showers expressions of contempt upon the anvil.

And Nietzsche's self-assertion is immediate and direct. He does not pause to consider what his self is, neither how it originated nor what will become of it. He takes it as it is and opposes it to the authority of other powers, the state, the church, and the traditions of the past. An investigation of the nature of the self might have dispelled the illusion of his self-glorification, but he never thinks of analysing its constitution. Bluntly and without any reflection or deliberation he claims the right of the sovereignty of self. He seems to forget that there are different selves, and that what we need most is a standard by which we can gauge their respective worth, and not an assertion of the rights of the self in general.

We do not intend to quarrel with Nietzsche's radicalism. Nor do we underrate the significance of the self. We, too, believe that every self has the liberty to choose its own position and may claim as many rights as it pleases provided it can maintain them. If it cannot maintain them it will be crushed; otherwise it may conquer its rivals and suppress counter-claims; but therefore the wise man looks before he leaps. Reckless self-assertion is the method of brute creation. Neither the lion nor the lamb meditate on their fate; they simply follow their instincts. They are carnivorous or herbivorous by nature through the actions of their ancestors. This is what Buddhists call the law of deeds or Karma. Man's karma leads higher. Man can meditate on his own fate, and he can discriminate. His self is a personality, i. e., a self-controlled commonwealth of motor ideas. Man does not blindly follow his impulses but establishes rules of action. He can thus abbreviate the struggle and avoid unnecessary friction; he can rise from brute violence to a self-contained and well-disciplined strength. Self-control (i. e., ethical guidance) is the characteristic feature of the true "overman"; but Nietzsche knows nothing of self-control; he would allow the self blindly to assert itself after the fashion of animal instincts.

Nietzsche is the philosopher of instinct. He spurns all logical order, even truth itself. He has a contempt for every one who learns from others, for he regards such a man as a slave to other people's thought. His ambition for originality is expressed in these four lines which he inserted as a motto to the second edition of La Gaya Scienza:

"Ich wohne in meinem eignen Haus,
Hab' niemandem nie nichts nachgemacht
Und—lachte noch jeden Meister aus,
Der nicht sich selber ausgelacht."

We translate faithfully, preserving even the ungrammatical use of the double negative, as follows:

"In my own house do I reside,
Did never no one imitate,
And every master I deride,
Save if himself he'd derogate."

We wonder that Nietzsche did not think of Goethe's little rhyme, which seems to suit his case exactly:

"A fellow says: 'I own no school or college;
No master lives whom I acknowledge;
And pray don't entertain the thought
That from the dead I e'er learned aught.'
This, if I rightly understand,
Means: 'I'm a fool by own command.'"

Nietzsche observes that the thoughts of most philosophers are secretly guided by instincts. He feels that all thought is at bottom a "will for power," and the will for truth has no right to exist except it serve the will for power. He reproaches philosophers for glorifying truth.

Fichte in his Duties of the Scholar says:

"My life and my fate are nothing; but the results of my life are of great importance. I am a priest of Truth; I am in the service of Truth; I feel under obligation to do, to risk, and to suffer anything for truth."

Nietzsche declares that this is shallow. Will for truth, he says, should be called "will to make being thinkable." Here, it seems to us, Nietzsche simply replaces the word "truth" by one of its functions. Truth is a systematic representation of reality, a comprehensive description of facts; the result being that "existence is made thinkable."

Nietzsche is in a certain sense right when he says that truth in itself is nothing; for every representation of reality must serve a purpose, otherwise it is superfluous and useless. And the purpose of truth is the furtherance of life. Nietzsche instinctively hits the right thing in saying that at the bottom of philosophy there is the will for power. In spite of our school-philosopher's vain declamations of "science for its own sake," genuine philosophy will never be anything else than a method for the acquisition of power. But this method is truth. Nietzsche errs when he declares that "the head is merely the intestine of the heart." The head endeavors to find out the truth, and the truth is not purely subjective. It is true that truth is of no use to a man unless he makes it his own; he must possess it; it must be part of himself, but he cannot create it. Truth cannot be made; it must be discovered. Since the scholar's specialized business is the elucidation of the method of discovering the truth—not its purpose, not its application in practical life—Fichte's ideal of the aim of scholarship remains justified.

Omit the ideal of truth in a philosophy, and it becomes an ignis fatuus, a will-o'-the-wisp, that will lead people astray. Truth makes existence thinkable, but thinkableness alone is not as yet a test of truth. The ultimate test of truth is its practical application. There is something wrong with a theory that does not work, and thus the self has a master, which is reality, the world in which it lives, with its laws and actualities. The subjective self must measure its worth by the objective standard of truth—to be obtained through exact inquiry and scientific investigation.

The will for power, in order to succeed, must be clarified by a methodical comprehension of facts and conditions. The contradictory impulses in one's own self must be systematized so that they will not collide and mutually annihilate themselves; and the comprehension of this orderly disposition is called reason.

Nietzsche is on the right track when he ridicules such ideals as "virtue for virtue's sake," and even "truth for truth's sake." Virtue and truth are for the sake of life. They have not their purpose in themselves, but their nature consists in serving the expansion and further growth of the human soul. This is a truth which we have always insisted upon and which becomes apparent when those people who speak of virtue for its own sake try to define virtue, or determine the ultimate standard of right and wrong, of goodness and badness. We say, that whatever enhances soulgrowth, thus producing higher life and begetting a superior humanity, is good; while whatever cripples or retards those aspirations is bad. Further, truth is not holy in itself. It becomes holy in the measure that it serves man's holiest aspirations. We sometimes meet among scientists, and especially among philologists, men who with the ideal of "truth for truth's sake," pursue some very trivial investigations, such, for example, as the use of the accusative after certain prepositions in Greek, or how often Homer is guilty of a hiatus. They resemble Faust's famulus Wagner, whom Faust characterizes as a fool

".... whose choice is
To stick in shallow trash for ever more,
Who digs with eager hand for buried ore,
And when he finds an angle-worm rejoices."

Thus there are many trivial truths of no importance, the investigation of which serves no useful purpose. For instance, whether the correct pronunciation of the Greek letter η; was ee or ay need not concern us much, and the philologist who devotes all his life and his best strength to its settlement is rather to be pitied than admired. Various truths are very different in value, for life and truth become holy according to their importance. All this granted, we need not, with Nietzsche, discard truth, reason, virtue, and all moral aspirations.

Nietzsche apparently is under the illusion that reason, systematic thought, moral discipline and self-control, are external powers, and in his love of liberty he objects to their authority. Did he ever consider that thought is not an external agent, but a clarification of man's instincts, and that discipline is, or at least in its purpose and final aim ought to be, self-regulation, so that our contradictory thoughts would not wage an internecine war? Thus, Nietzsche, the instinct-philosopher, appears as an ingenious boy whose very immaturity is regarded by himself as the highest blossom of his existence. Like an intoxicated youth, he revels in his irresponsibility and laughs at the man who has learned to take life seriously. Because the love of truth originates from instincts, Nietzsche treats it as a mere instinct, and nothing else. He forgets that in the evolution of man's soul all instincts develop into something higher than instinct, and the love of truth develops into systematic science.

Nietzsche never investigated what his own self consisted of. He never analyzed his individuality. Other-wise he would have learned that he received the most valuable part of his being from others, and that the bundle of instincts which he called his sovereign self was nothing but the heirloom of the ages that preceded him. In spite of his repudiation of any debt to others, he was but the continuation of others. But he boldly carried his individualism, if not to its logical conclusions, yet to its moral applications. When speaking of the Order of Assassins of the times of the Crusades, he said with enthusiasm: "The highest secret of their leaders was, 'Nothing is true, everything is allowed!'" And Nietzsche adds: "That indeed, was liberty of spirit; that dismissed even the belief in truth." The philosopher of instinct even regards the adherence to truth as slavery and the proclamation of truth as dogmatism.

[1] See Nietzsche's poems in the appendix to A Genealogy of Morals, Eng. ed., Macmillan, p. 248.

[THE OVERMAN]

He quintessence of Nietzsche's philosophy is the "overman." What is the overman?

The word (Uebermensch) comes from a good mint; it is of Goethe's coinage, and he used it in the sense of an awe-inspiring being, almost in the sense of Unmensch, to characterize Faust, the titanic man of high aims and undaunted courage,—the man who would not be moved in the presence of hell and pursued his aspirations in spite of the forbidding countenance of God and the ugly grin of Satan. But the same expression was used in its proper sense about two and a half millenniums ago in ancient China, where at the time of Lao-tze the term chiün jen [Chin. chars], "superior man," or chiün tse, "superior sage," was in common usage. But the overman or chiün jen of Lao-tze, of Confucius and other Chinese sages is not a man of power, not a Napoleon, not an unprincipled tyrant, not a self-seeker of domineering will, not a man whose ego and its welfare is his sole and exclusive aim, but a Christlike figure, who puts his self behind and thus makes his self—a nobler and better self—come to the front, who does not retaliate, but returns good for evil,[1] a man (as the Greek sage describes him) who would rather suffer wrong than commit wrong.[2]

This kind of higher man is the very opposite of Nietzsche's overman, and it is the spirit of this nobler conception of a higher humanity which furnishes the best ideas of all the religions of the world, of Lao-tze's Taoism, of Buddhism and of Christianity.

Alexander Tille, the English translator of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, translates the word Uebermensch by "beyond-man." But "beyond" means jenseits; and Nietzsche wrote über, i. e., superior to, over, or higher than, and the literal translation "overman" appears to be the best. It is certainly better than the barbaric combination of "superman" in which Latin and Saxon are mixed against one of the main rules for the construction of words. Say "superhuman" and "overman," but not "overhuman" or "superman." Emerson in a similar vein, when attempting to characterize that which is higher than the soul, invented the term "oversoul," and I can see no objection to the word "overman."

The overman is the higher man, the superhuman man of the future, a higher, nobler, more powerful, a better being than the present man! What a splendid idea! Since evolution has been accepted as a truth, we may fairly trust that we all believe in the overman. All our reformers believe in the possibility of realizing a higher mankind. We Americans especially have faith in the coming of the kingdom of the overman, and our endeavor is concentrated in hastening his arrival. The question is only, What is the overman and how can we make this ideal of a higher development actual?

Happy Nietzsche! You need not trouble yourself about consistency; you reject all ideals as superstitions, and then introduce an ideal of your own. "There you see," says an admirer of Nietzsche, "what a splendid principle it is not to own any allegiance to logic, or rule, or consistency. The best thought of Nietzsche's would never have been uttered if he had remained faithful to his own principles."

However ingenious the idea of an overman may be, Nietzsche carries his propositions to such extremes that in spite of many flashes of truth they become in the end ridiculous and even absurd. His ideal is good, but he utterly fails to comprehend its nature and also the mode in which alone the overman can be realized.

Nietzsche proclaims the coming of the "overman," but his overman is not superior by intellect, wisdom, or nobility of character, but by vigor, by strength, by an unbending desire for power and an unscrupulous determination. The blond barbarian of the north who tramples under foot the citizens of Greece and Rome, Napoleon I, and the Assyrian conqueror,—such are his heroes in whom this higher manhood formerly manifested itself.

He saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction must set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people, would become subservient. The "herd animal" (so Nietzsche called any one foolish enough to recognize morality and truth) is born to obey. He is destined to be trodden under foot by the overman who is strong, and also unscrupulous enough to use the herds and govern them.

Nietzsche was by no means under the illusion that the rule of the overman would be lasting, but he took comfort in the thought that though there would be periods in which the slaves would assert themselves and establish an era of the herd animals, the overman would nevertheless assert himself from time to time, and this was what he called his "doctrine of the eternal return"—the gospel of his philosophy. The highest summit of existence is reached in those phases of the denouement of human life when the overman has full control over the herds which are driven into the field, sheared and butchered for the sole benefit of him who knows the secret that this world has no moral significance beyond being a prey to his good pleasure. Nietzsche's hope is certainly not desirable for the mass of mankind, but even the fate of the overman himself would appear as little enviable a condition as that of the tyrant Dionysius under the sword of Damocles, or the Czar of Russia living in constant fear of the anarchistic bomb.

Nietzsche, feeling that his thoughts were untimely, lived in the hope of "the coming of the great day" on which his views would find recognition. He looked upon the present as a rebellion against the spirit of strength and vigor; Christianity especially, and its doctrine of humility and love for the down-trodden was hateful to him. He speaks of it as a rebellion of slaves and places in the same category the democraticism that now characterizes the tendency of human development which he denounces as a pseudo-civilization.

He insists that the overman is beyond good and evil; and yet it is obvious that though he claims to be the first philosopher who maintained the principle of unmorality, he was only the first philosopher boldly to proclaim it. His maxim (or lack of maxims) has been stealthily and secretly in use among all those classes whom he calls "overmen," great and small. The great overmen are conquerors and tyrants, who meteorlike appear and disappear, the small ones are commonly characterized as the criminal classes; but there is this difference between the two, that the former, at least so far as they have succeeded, recognize the absolute necessity of establishing law and order, and though they may temporarily have infringed upon the rules of morality themselves, they have finally come always to the conclusion that in order to maintain their position they must enforce upon others the usual rules of morality.

Both Alexander and Cæsar were magnanimous at the right moment. They showed mercy to the vanquished, they exercised justice frequently against their own personal likes or dislikes, and were by no means men of impulse as Nietzsche would have his overman be. The same is true of Napoleon whose success is mainly due to making himself subservient to the needs of his age. As soon as he assumed the highest power in France, Napoleon replaced the frivolous tone at his court, to which his first wife Josephine had been accustomed, by an observance of so-called bourgeois decency, and he enforced it against her inclinations and his own.

Further, Napoleon served the interests of Germany more than is commonly acknowledged by sweeping out of existence the mediæval system of innumerable sovereigns, ecclesiastical as well as secular, who in conformity with the conservative tenor of the German people had irremediably ensconced themselves in their hereditary rights to the disadvantage of the people. Moreover, the Code Napoleon, the new law book, perhaps the most enduring work of Napoleon, was compiled by the jurists of the time, not because Napoleon cared for justice, but because he saw that the only way of establishing a stable government was by acknowledging rules of equity and by enforcing their recognition. It is true that Napoleon made his service in the cause of right and justice a pedestal for himself, but in contrast to Nietzsche's ideas we must notice that this recognition of principle was the only way of success to a man whose natural tendency was an unbounded egotism, an unlimited desire for power.

In spite of his enthusiasm in announcing the advent of an overman, Nietzsche would be a poor adviser for a rising usurper. He would be able to cause a great upheaval, to bring about a Volcanic eruption, or to raise a thunderstorm wherever restlessness prevails, but his philosophy lacks the principle of using discretion, or advising self-discipline, of applying scientific methods—all of which is indispensable for success. He preaches boldness, not wisdom; and a hero after Nietzsche's heart would be like a navigator who courageously ventures into the storm but scorns a chart and leaves the mariners' compass behind; he would steer not as circumstances demand but according to his own sweet will, and would be wrecked before ever reaching the harbor of overmanhood.

How much greater is the ideal of the overman as taught by the ancient philosopher of China! He, the chiün jen, the superior man, does not need power either political or financial to be great; he does not need a pedestal of oppressed slaves to stand on; he is great in himself, because he has a great compassionate heart and a broad comprehensive mind. He is simple, and, as we read in the Tao Teh King, "He wears wool [is not dressed in silk and purple] and wears his jewel concealed in his bosom."

[1] Lao-tse's Tao Teh King, Chaps. 49 and 63.

[2] For a collection of Greek quotations on the ethics of returning good for evil, see The Open Court, Vol. XV, 1901, pp. 9-12.

[ZARATHUSTRA]

To those who have not the time to wade through the twelve volumes of Nietzsche's works and yet wish to become acquainted with him at his best, we recommend a perusal of his book Thus Spake Zarathustra. It is original and interesting, full of striking passages, sometimes flashes with deep truths, then again is sterile and unprofitable, or even tedious, and sometimes absurd; but at any rate it presents the embodiment of Nietzsche's grandest thoughts in their most attractive and characteristic form. We need scarcely warn the reader that Zarathustra is only another name for Friedrich Nietzsche and has nothing to do with the historical person of that name, the great Iranian prophet, the founder of Mazdaism.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a hermit philosopher who, weary of his wisdom, leaves his cave and comes to mingle with men, to teach them the overman. He meets a saint who loves God, and Zarathustra leaving him says: "Is it possible? This old saint in his forest has not yet heard that God is dead!"

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
IN THE PRIME OF LIFE.

Zarathustra preaches to a crowd in the market:

"I teach you the overman. Man is a something that shall be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass him?

"All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide and rather revert to the animal than surpass man?

"What with man is the ape? A joke or a sore shame. Man shall be the same for the overman, a joke or a sore shame.

"Behold, I teach you the overman!

"The overman is the significance of the earth. Your will shall say; the overman shall be the significance of the earth.

"I conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak unto you of superterrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are whether they know it or not.

"Verily, a muddy stream is man. One must be the ocean to be able to receive a muddy stream without becoming unclean.

"Behold, I teach you the overman: he is that ocean, in him your great contempt can sink.

"What is the greatest thing ye can experience? That is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which not only your happiness, but your reason and virtue as well, turn loathsome.

"I love him who is of a free spirit and of a free heart: thus his head is merely the intestine of his heart, but his heart driveth him to destruction.

"I love all those who are like heavy drops falling one by one from the dark cloud lowering over men: they announce the coming of the lightning and perish in the announcing.

"Behold, I am an announcer of the lightning and a heavy drop from the clouds; that lightning's name it the overman."

Zarathustra comes as an enemy of the good and the just. He says:

"Lo, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh to pieces their tables of values,—the law-breaker, the criminal:—but he is the creator.

"The destroyer of morality I am called by the good and just: my tale is immoral."

COINS OF ANCIENT ELIS.
Each is worth two drachmæ. One shows on the
obverse a Zeus head with a laurel wreath,
the other a winged Victory.

Nietzsche's favorite animals are the proud eagle and the cunning serpent, the former because it typifies aristocracy, the latter as the wisest among all creatures of the earth. It is a strange and exceptional combination, for these two animals are commonly represented as enemies. The eagle and serpent was the emblem of ancient Elis and is at present the coat-of-arms of Mexico, but in both cases the eagle is interpreted to be the conqueror of the serpent, not its friend, carrying it as his prey in his claws.

Zarathustra's philosophy is a combination of the eagle's pride and the serpent's wisdom, which Nietzsche describes thus:

"Lo! an eagle swept through the air in wide circles, a serpent hanging from it not like a prey, but like a friend: coiling round its neck.

"They are mine animals,' said Zarathustra and rejoiced heartily.

"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun have set out to reconnoitre.

"They wish to learn whether Zarathustra still liveth. Verily, do I still live.

"More dangerous than among animals I found it among men. Dangerous ways are taken by Zarathustra. Let mine animals lead me!"

Here is a sentence worth quoting:

"Of all that is written I love only that which the writer wrote with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt learn that blood is spirit."

In another chapter on the back-worlds-men Nietzsche writes:

"Once Zarathustra threw his spell beyond man, like all back-worlds-men. Then the world seemed to me the work of a suffering and tortured God.

"Alas! brethren, that God whom I created was man's work and man's madness, like all Gods!

"Man he was, and but a poor piece of man and the I. From mine own ashes and flame it came unto me, that ghost yea verily! It did not come unto me from beyond!

"What happened, brethren? I overcame myself, the sufferer, and carrying mine own ashes unto the mountains invented for myself a brighter flame. And lo! the ghost departed from me!

"Now to me, the convalescent, it would be suffering and pain to believe in such ghosts: suffering it would be for me and humiliation. Thus spake I unto the back-worlds-men."

Nietzsche's self is not ideal but material; it is not thought, not even the will, but the body. The following passage sounds like Vedantism as interpreted by a materialist:

"He who is awake and knoweth saith: Body I am throughout, and nothing besides; and soul is merely a word for a something in body.

"Body is one great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a herdsman.

"Also thy little reason, my brother, which thou callest 'spirit'—it is a tool of thy body, a little tool and toy of thy great reason.

"T, thou sayest and art proud of that word. But the greater thing is—which thou wilt not believe—thy body and its great reason. It doth not say T, but it is the acting 'I.'

"The self ever listeneth and seeketh: it compareth, subdueth, conquereth, destroyeth. It ruleth and is the ruler of the 'I' as well.

"Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, standeth a mighty lord, an unknown wise man—whose name is self. In thy body he dwelleth, thy body he is.

"There is more reason in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who can know why thy body needeth thy beat wisdom?

"Thy self laugheth at thine 'I' and its prancings: What are these boundings and flights of thought? it saith unto itself. A round-about way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the I and the suggester of its concepts.

"The creative self created for itself valuing and despising, it created for itself lust and woe. The creative body created for itself the spirit to be the hand of its will."

One of the best passages in Zarathustra's sermons is Nietzsche's command to love the overman, the man of the distant future:

"I tell you, your love of your neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.

"Ye flee from yourselves unto your neighbor and would fain make a virtue thereof; but I see through your unselfishness.'

"The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; man thus thrusteth himself upon his neighbor.

"Do I counsel you to love your neighbor? I rather counsel you to flee from your neighbor and to love the most remote.

"Love unto the most remote future man is higher than love unto your neighbor. And I consider love unto things and ghosts to be higher than love unto men.

"This ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou art. Why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones? Thou art afraid and fleest unto thy neighbor.

"Unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you and thus to gild you with his error.

"My brethren, I counsel you not to love your neighbor; I counsel you to love those who are the most remote."

In perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is Nietzsche's view of marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought:

"Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou must be built thyself square in body and soul.

"Thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate thyself upwards! Therefore the garden of marriage may help thee!

"Thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel of self-rolling,—thou shalt create a creator.

"Marriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one which is more than they who created it I call marriage reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a will.

"Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the much-too-many call marriage, those superfluous—alas, what call I that?

"Alas! that soul's poverty of two! Alas! that soul's dirt of two! Alas! that miserable ease of two!

"Marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in heaven.

"Well, I like it not that heaven of the superfluous!"

Nietzsche takes a Schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the common condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, "You are not a woman, you are a friend." He says of woman:

"Too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship; she knoweth love only."

Nietzsche is not aware that the self changes and that it grows by the acquisition of truth. He treats the self as remaining the same, and truth as that which our will has made conceivable. Truth to him is a mere creature of the self. Here is Zarathustra's condemnation of man's search for truth:

"'Will unto truth' ye call, ye wisest men, what inspireth you and maketh you ardent?

"'Will unto the conceivableness of all that is,'—thus I call your will!

"All that is ye are going to make conceivable. For with good mistrust ye doubt whether it is conceivable.

"But it hath to submit itself and bend before yourselves! Thus your will willeth. Smooth it shall become and subject unto spirit as its mirror and reflected image.

"That is your entire will, ye wisest men, as a will unto power; even when ye speak of good and evil and of valuations.

"Ye will create the world before which to kneel down. Thus it is your last hope and drunkenness."

Recognition of truth is regarded as submission:

"To be true,—few are able to be so! And he who is able doth not want to be so. But least of all the good are able.

"Oh, these good people! Good men never speak the truth. To be good in that way is a sickness for the mind.

"They yield, these good men, they submit themselves; their heart saith what is said unto it, their foundation obeyeth. But whoever obeyeth doth not hear himself!"

Nietzsche despises science. He must have had sorry experiences with scientists who offered him the dry bones of scholarship as scientific truth.

"When I lay sleeping, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath of my head,—ate and said eating: 'Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.'

"Said it and went off clumsily and proudly. So a child told me.

"This is the truth: I have departed from the house of scholars, and the door I have shut violently behind me.

"Too long sat my soul hungry at their table. Not, as they, am I trained for perceiving as for cracking nuts.

"Freedom I love, and a breeze over a fresh soil. And I would rather sleep on ox-skins then on their honors and respectabilities.

"I am too hot and am burnt with mine own thoughts, so as often to take my breath away. Then I must go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.

"Like millworks they work, and like corn-crushers. Let folk only throw their grain into them! They know only too well how to grind corn and make white dust out of it.

"They look well at each other's fingers and trust each other not over-much. Ingenious in little stratagems, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet; like spiders they wait.

"They also know how to play with false dice; and I found them playing so eagerly that they perspired from it.

"We are strangers unto each other, and their virtues are still more contrary unto my taste than their falsehoods and false dice."

Even if all scientists were puny sciolists, the ideal of science would remain, and if all the professed seekers for truth were faithless to and unworthy of their high calling, truth itself would not be abolished.

So far as we can see, Nietzsche never became acquainted with any one of the exact sciences. He was a philologist who felt greatly dissatisfied with the loose methods of his colleagues, but he has not done much in his own specialty to attain to a greater exactness of results. His essays on Homer, on the Greek tragedy, and similar subjects, have apparently not received much recognition among philologists and historians.

Having gathered a number of followers in his cave, one of them, called the conscientious man, said to the others:

"We seek different things, even up here, ye and I. For I seek more security. Therefore have I come unto Zarathustra. For he is the firmest tower and will—

"Fear—that is man's hereditary and fundamental feeling. By fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Out of fear also hath grown my virtue, which is called Science.

"Such long, old fears, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, to-day, methinketh, it is called Science."

This conception of science is refuted by Nietzsche in this fashion:

"Thus spake the conscientious one. But Zarathustra, who had just returned into his cave and had heard the last speech and guessed its sense, threw a handful of roses at the conscientious one, laughing at his 'truths.' 'What?' he called. 'What did I hear just now? Verily, methinketh, thou art a fool, or I am one myself. And thy "truth" I turn upside down with one blow, and that quickly.'

"'For fear is our exception. But courage and adventure, and the joy of what is uncertain, what hath never been dared—courage, methinketh, is the whole prehistoric development of man.

"'From the wildest, most courageous beasts he hath, by his envy and his preying, won all their virtues. Only thus hath he become a man.

"'This courage, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, this human courage with an eagle's wings and a serpent's wisdom—it, methinketh, is called to-day—'

"'Zarathustra!' cried all who sat together there, as from one mouth making a great laughter withal."

In spite of identifying the self with the body, which is mortal, Nietzsche longs for the immortal. He says:

"Oh! how could I fail to be eager for eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?

"Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have had children, unless it be this woman I love—for I love thee, O Eternity!"

NIETZSCHE'S HANDWRITING.

The best known of Nietzsche's poems forms the conclusion of Thus Spake Zarathustra, the most impressive work of Nietzsche, and is called by him "The Drunken Song." The thoughts are almost incoherent and it is difficult to say what is really meant by it. Nothing is more characteristic of Nietzsche's attitude and the vagueness of his fitful mode of thought. It has been illustrated by Hans Lindlof, in the same spirit in which Richard Strauss has written a musical composition on the theme of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra.

NIETZSCHE'S DRUNKEN SONG
—ILLUSTRATION BY LINDLOF.

"The Drunken Song" reads in our translation as follows:

"Man, listen, pray!
What the deep midnight has to say:
'I lay asleep,
'But woke from dreams deep and distraught
The world is deep,
'E'en deeper than the day e'er thought.
'Deep's the world's pain,—
'Joy deeper still than heartache's burning.
'Pain says, Life's vain!
'But for eternity Joy's yearning.
'For deep eternity Joy's yearning!'"

Prof. William Benjamin Smith has translated this same song, and we think it will be interesting to our readers to compare his translation with our rendering. It reads as follows:

"Oh Man! Give ear!
What saith the midnight deep and drear?
'From sleep, from sleep
'I woke as from a dream profound.
'The world is deep
'And deeper than the day can sound.
'Deep is its woe,—
'Joy, deeper still than heart's distress.
'Woe saith, Forego!
'But Joy wills everlastingness,—
'Wills deep, deep everlastingness.'"

[A PROTEST AGAINST HIMSELF]

Nietzsche is far from regarding his philosophy as timely. He was a proud and aristocratic character, spoiled from childhood by an unfaltering admiration on the part of both his mother and sister. It was unfortunate for him that his father had died before he could influence the early years of his son through wholesome discipline. Not enjoying a vigorous constitution Nietzsche was greatly impressed with the thought that a general decadence was overshadowing mankind. The truth was that his own bodily system was subject to many ailments which hampered his mental improvement. He was hungering for health, he envied the man of energy, he longed for strength and vigor, but all this was denied him, and so these very shortcomings of his own bodily strength—his own decadence—prompted in him a yearning for bodily health, for an unbounded exercise of energy, and for success. These were his dearest ideals, and his desire for power was his highest ambition. He saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people would become subservient.

Nietzsche's philosophy forms a strange contrast to his own habits of life. A model of virtue, he made himself the advocate of vice, and gloried in it. He encouraged the robber[1] to rob, but he himself was honesty incarnate; he incited the people to rebel against authority of all kinds, but he himself was a "model child" in the nursery, a "model scholar" in school, and a "model soldier" while serving in the German army. His teachers as well as the officers of his regiment fail to find words enough to praise Nietzsche's obedience.[2]

Nietzsche's professors declare that he distinguished himself "durch pünktlichen Gehorsam" (p. 3); his sister tells us that she and her brother were "ungeheuer artig, wahre Musterkinder" (p. 36). He makes a good soldier, and, in spite of his denunciations of posing, displays theatrical vanity in having himself photographed with drawn sword (the scabbard is missing). His martial mustache almost anticipates the tonsorial art of the imperial barber of the present Kaiser; and yet his spectacled eyes and good-natured features betray the peacefulness of his intentions. He plays the soldier only, and would have found difficulty in killing even a fly.

Nietzsche disclaims ever having learned anything in any school, but there never was a more grateful German pupil in Germany. He composed fervid poems on his school—the well known institution Schulpforta, which on account of its severe discipline he praises, not in irony but seriously, as the "narrow gate."[3]

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AS
A VOLUNTEER IN THE GERMAN ARTILLERY, 1868.

Nietzsche denounces the German character, German institutions, and the German language, his mother-tongue, and is extremely unfair in his denunciations. He takes pleasure in the fact that Deutsch (see Ulfila's Bible translation) originally means "pagans or heathen," and hopes that the dear German people will earn the honor of being called pagans. (La Gaya Scienza, p. 176.) A reaction against his patriotism set in immediately after the war, when he became acquainted with the brutality of some vulgar specimens of the victorious nation,—most of them non-combatants.[4]

Nietzsche not only wrote in German and made the most involved constructions, but when the war broke out he asked his adopted country Switzerland, in which he had acquired citizenship after accepting a position as professor of classical languages at the University of Basel, for leave of absence to join the German army. In the Franco-Prussian war he might have had a chance to live up to his theories of struggle, but unfortunately the Swiss authorities did not allow him to join the army, and granted leave of absence only on condition that he would serve as a nurse. Such is the irony of fate. While Nietzsche stood up for a ruthless assertion of strength and for a suppression of sympathy which he denounced as a relic of the ethics of a negation of life, his own tender soul was so over-sensitive that his sister feels justified in tracing his disease back to the terrible impressions he received during the war.

Nietzsche speaks of the king as "the dear father of the country."[5] If there was a flaw in Nietzsche's moral character, it was goody-goodyness; and his philosophy is a protest against the principles of his own nature. While boldly calling himself "the first unmoralist," justifying even license itself and defending the coarsest lust,[6] his own life might have earned him the name of sissy, and he shrank in disgust from moral filth wherever he met with it in practical life.

Nietzsche denounced pessimism, and yet his philosophy was, as he himself confesses, the last consequence of pessimism. Hegel declared (says Nietzsche in Morgenröthe, p. 8), "Contradiction moves the world, all things are self-contradictory"; "we (adds Nietzsche) carry pessimism even into logic." He proposes to vivisect morality; "but (adds he) you cannot vivisect a thing without killing it." Thus his "unmoralism" is simply an expression of his earnestness to investigate the moral problem, and he expresses the result in the terse sentence; Moral ist Nothlüge (Menschliches, p. 63.)

He preached struggle and hatred, and yet was so tender-hearted that in an hour of dejection he confessed to his sister with a sigh: "I was not at all made to hate or be an enemy."[7] The decadence which he imputes to mankind is a mere reflection of his own state of mind, and the strength which he praises is that quality in which he is most sorely lacking. Nietzsche himself had the least possible connection with active life. He was unmarried, had no children, nor any interests beyond his ambition, and having served as professor of the classical languages for some time at the small university of Basel, he was for the greater part of his life without a calling, without duties, without aims. He never ventured to put his own theories into practice. He did not even try to rise as a prophet of his own philosophy, and remained in isolation to the very end of his life.

Nietzsche must have felt the contradiction between his theories and his habits of life, and it appears that he suffered under it more than can be estimated by an impartial reader of his books. He was like the bird in the cage who sings of liberty, or an apoplectic patient who dreams of deeds of valor as a knight in tournament or as a wrestler in the prize ring. Never was craving for power more closely united with impotence!

It is characteristic of him that he said, "If there were a God, how should I endure not to be God?" and so his ambition impelled him at least to prophesy the coming of his ideal, i. e., robust health, full of bodily vigor and animal spirits, unchecked by any rule of morality, and an unstinted use of power.

Nietzsche had an exaggerated conception of his vocation and he saw in himself the mouthpiece of that grandest and deepest truth, viz., that man should dare to be himself without any regard of morality or consideration for his fellow beings. And here we have the tragic element of his life. Nietzsche, the atheist, deemed himself a God incarnate, and the despiser of the Crucified, suffered a martyr's fate in offering his own life to the cause of his hope. The earnestness with which he preached his wild and untenable doctrines appeals to us and renders his figure sympathetic, which otherwise would be grotesque. Think of a man who in his megalomania preaches a doctrine that justifies an irresponsible desire for power! Would he not be ridiculous in his impotence to actualize his dream? and on the other hand, if he were strong enough to practice what he preached, if like another Napoleon, he would make true his dreams of enslaving the world, would not mankind in self-defense soon rise in rebellion and treat him as a criminal, rendering him and his followers incapable of doing harm? But Nietzsche's personality, weak and impotent and powerless to appear as the overman and to subjugate the world to his will, suffered excruciating pains in his soul and tormented himself to death, which came to him in the form of decadence—a softening of the brain.

Poor Nietzsche! what a bundle of contradictions! None of these contradictions are inexplicable. All of them are quite natural. They are the inevitable reactions against a prior enthusiasm, and he swings, according to the law of the pendulum, to the opposite extreme of his former position.

How did Nietzsche develop into an unmoralist? Simply by way of reaction against the influence of Schopenhauer in combination with the traditional Christianity.

Nietzsche passed through three periods in his development. He was first a follower of Schopenhauer and an admirer of Wagner, but he shattered his idols and became a convert to Auguste Comte's positivism. Schopenhauer was the master at whose feet Nietzsche sat; from him he learned boldness of thought and atheism, that this world is a world of misery and struggle. He accepted for a time Schopenhauer's pessimism but rebelled in his inmost soul against the ethical doctrine of the negation of the will. He retained Schopenhauer's contempt for previous philosophers (presumably he never tried to understand them) yet he resented the thought of a negation of life and replaced it by a most emphatic assertion. He thus recognized the reactionary spirit of Schopenhauer, whose system is a Christian metaphysics. Nietzsche denounces the ethics of a negation of the will as a disease, and since nature in the old system is regarded as the source of moral evil the idea dawns on him that he himself, trying to establish a philosophy of nature, is an immoralist. He now questions morality itself from the standpoint of an affirmation of the will, and at last goes so far as to speak of ideals as a symptom of shallowness.[8]

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
AS PROFESSOR AT BASLE.

Nietzsche argued that our conception of truth and our ideal world is but a phantasmagoria, and the picture of the universe in our consciousness a distorted image of real life. Our pleasures and pains, too, are both transient and subjective. Accordingly it would be a gross mistake for us to exaggerate their importance. What does it matter if we endure a little more or less pain, or of what use are the pleasures in which we might indulge? The realities of life consist in power, and in our dominion over the forces that dominate life. Knowledge and truth are of no use unless they become subservient to this realistic desire for power. They are mere means to an end which is the superiority of the overman, the representative of Nietzsche's philosophy by whom the mass of mankind are to be enslaved. This view constitutes his third period, in which he wrote those works that are peculiarly characteristic of his own philosophy.

Nietzsche must not be taken too seriously. He was engaged with the deepest problems of life, and published his opinions as to their solution before he had actually attempted to investigate them. He criticised and attacked like the Irishman who hits a head wherever he sees it. Here are the first three rules of his philosophical warfare:

"First: I attack only those causes which are victorious, sometimes I wait till they are victorious. Secondly: I attack them only when I would find no allies, when I stand isolated, when I compromise myself alone. Thirdly: I have never taken a step in public which did not compromise me. That is my criterion of right action."

A man who adopts this strange criterion of right conduct must produce a strange philosophy. His soul is in an uproar against itself. Says Nietzsche in his Götzendämmerung, Aphorism 45:

"Almost every genius knows as one phase of his development the 'Catilinary existence,' so-called, which is a feeling of hatred, of vengeance, of revolution against everything that is, which no longer needs to become ... Catiline—the form of Cæsar's pre-existence."

Nietzsche changed his views during his life-time, and the unmoralist Nietzsche originated in contradiction to his habitual moralism. He was a man of extremes. As soon as a new thought dawned on him, it took possession of his soul to the exclusion of his prior views, and his later self contradicts his former self.

Nietzsche says:

"The serpent that cannot slough must die. In the same way, the spirits which are prevented from changing their opinions cease to be spirits."

So we must expect that if Nietzsche had been permitted to continue longer in health, he would have cast off the slough of his immoralism and the negative conceptions of his positivism. His Zarathustra was the last work of his pen, but it is only the most classical expression of the fermentation of his soul, not the final purified result of his philosophy; it is not the solution of the problem that stirred his heart.

While writing his Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Nietzsche characterizes his method of work thus:

"That I proceed with my outpourings considerably like a dilettante and in an immature manner, I know very well, but I am anxious first of all to get rid of the whole polemico-negative material. I wish undisturbedly to sing off, up and down and truly dastardly, the whole gamut of my hostile feelings, 'that the vaults shall echo back.'[9] Later on, i. e., within five years, I shall discard all polemics and bethink myself of a really 'good work,' But at present my breast is oppressed with disgust and tribulation. I must expectorate, decorously and indecorously, but radically and for good" [endgültig].

The writings of Nietzsche will make the impression of a youthful immaturity upon any half-way serious reader. There is a hankering after originality which of necessity leads to aberrations and a sovereign contempt for the merits of the past. The world seems endangered, and yet any one who would seriously try to live up to Nietzsche's ideal must naturally sober down after a while, and we may apply to him what Mephistopheles says of the baccalaureus:

"Yet even from him we're not in special peril
He will, ere long, to other thoughts incline.
The must may foam absurdly in the barrel.
Nathless, it turns at last to wine."
Tr. by Bayard Taylor.

Nietzsche did not live long enough to experience a period of matured thought. He died before the fermentation of his mind had come to its normal close, and so his life will remain forever a great torso, without intrinsic worth, but suggestive and appealing only to the immature, including the "herd animal" who would like to be an overman.

The very immaturity of Nietzsche's view becomes attractive to immature minds. He wrote while his thoughts were still in a state of fermentation, and he died before the wine of his soul was clarified.

Nietzsche is an almost tragic figure that will live in art as a brooding thinker, a representative of the dissatisfied, a man of an insatiable love of life, with wild and unsteady looks, proud in his indomitable self-assertion, but broken in body and spirit. Such he was in his last disease when his mind was wrapt in the eternal night of dementia, the oppressive consciousness of which made him exclaim in lucid moments the pitiable complaint. "Mutter, ich bin dumm" As such he is represented in Klein's statue,[10] which in its pathetic posture is a psychological masterpiece.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE—THE LATEST PORTRAIT,
AFTER AN OIL PAINTING BY C. STOEVING.

Nietzsche's works are poetic effusions more than philosophical expositions and yet we would hesitate to call him a poet. His poems are not poetical in the usual sense. They lack poetry and yet they appeal not only to his admirers, but also to his critics and enemies. Most of them are artificial yet they are so characteristic that they are interesting specimens of a peculiar kind of taste. They strike us as ingenious, because they reflect his eccentricities.

In a poem entitled "Ecce Homo"[11] he characterizes himself:

"Yea, I know from whence I came!
Never satiate, like the flame
Glow I and consume me too
Into light turns what I find,
Cinders do I leave behind,
Flame am I, 'tis surely true."

[1] E.g.:
"Bitte nie! Lass dies Gewimmer!
Nimm, ich bitte dich, nimm immer!"

[2] Compare Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.

[3] Leben, pp. 90-97.

[4] (See, e. g., Leben, II., 1, pp. 108-111.) "Nach dem Kriege missfiel mir der Luxus, die Franzosenverachtung," etc., p. 108. "Ich halte das jetzige Preussen für eine der Cultur höchst gefährliche Macht." Nietzsche ridicules the German language as barbarous in sound (La Gaya Scienza, pp. 138-140), "wälderhaft, heiser, wie aus räucherigen Stuben und unhöflichen Gegenden." Unique is the origin of the standard style of modern high German from the bureaucratic slang, "kanzleimässig schreiben, das war etwas Vornehmes" (La Gaya Scienza, p. 138), and at present the German changes into an "Offizierdeutsch" (ibid., p. 139). Nietzsche suspects, "the German depth," "die deutsche Tiefe," to be a mere mental dyspepsia (see "Jenseits von Gut und Böse," p. 211), saying, "Der Deutsche verdaut seine Ereignisse schlecht, or wird nie damit fertig; die deutsche Tiefe ist oft nur eine schwere, zögernde Verdauung." Nevertheless, he holds that the old-fashioned German depth is better than modern Prussian "Schneidigkeit und Berliner Witz und Sand." He prefers the company of the Swiss to that of his countrymen. (See also "Was den Deutschen abgeht," Vol. 8, p. 108.)

[5] "Unser lieber König," "der Landesvater," etc. See Leben, I., p. 24, and IL, 1, p. 248, "Unser lieber alter Kaiser Wilhelm," and "wir Preussen waren wirklich stolz." These expressions occur in Nietzsche's description of the Emperor's appearance at Bayreuth.

[6] E.g., "Auch der schädlichste Mensch ist vielleicht immer noch der allernützlichste in Hinsicht auf Erhaltung der Art," etc. La Gaya Scienza, p. 3 ff.