Part 6

Egotism thus becomes individualism, and threatens to become selfishness. The logic of these positions does not seem to have been clear to Max Stirner. That the individual must possess all his wishes and aspirations, even the most self-denying and suicidal, is obvious; he is the seat of those very obsessions and superstitions which Max Stirner deplored. The same thing is true of knowledge: a man can know only what he knows and what his faculties make him capable of knowing. This fact is the excuse for transcendentalism, and the element of truth in it. But the fact that volition and knowledge must have their [Pg 101] seat in some person prejudges nothing about the scope of their objects. The fallacy of egotism begins with the inference that, therefore, a person can know only his ideas and can live only for his own benefit. On the contrary, what makes knowledge knowledge is that our sensibility may report something which is not merely our feeling; and our moral being arises when our interests likewise begin to range over the world. To deny that a man is capable of generosity because his generosity must be his own, is insufferable quibbling. Even our vanities and follies are disinterested in their way; their egotism is not a calculated selfishness. When a man orders his tomb according to his taste, it is not in the hope of enjoying his residence in it.

Max Stirner, while deprecating all subordination of the individual to society, expected people, even after they were emancipated, to form voluntary unions for specific purposes, such as playing games. Did he think that such companionship and co-operation would go without gregarious feelings and ideal interests? Would not a player wish his side to win? Would he not impose a rather painful strain upon himself at times for the sake of that "spook," victory? All the sacrifices that society or religion imposes on a man, when they are legitimate, are based on the same principle.

The conclusion of Max Stirner, that because those idols are false, and the worship of them is cruel and superstitious, therefore we must worship nothing and merely enjoy in a piggish way what we may call our own, is a conclusion that misreads human nature. It overlooks the fact that man lives by the imagination, that the imagination--when not chaotic and futile--is exercised in the arts of life, that the objects [Pg 103] of these arts are impersonal, and that to achieve these objects brings us a natural happiness.

The Germans are by nature a good stolid people, and it is curious that their moralists, of every school, are so fantastic and bad. The trouble lies perhaps in this, that they are all precipitate. They have not taken the trouble to decipher human nature, which is an endowment, something many-sided, unconscious, with a margin of variation, and have started instead with the will, which is only an attitude, something casual, conscious, and narrowly absolute. Nor have they learned to respect sufficiently the external conditions under which human nature operates and to which it must conform--God, the material world, the nature and will of other men. Their morality consequently terminates in ideals, casual, conscious, and absolute expressions of the passions, or else expires in a mysticism which renounces all moral judgment. A reasonable morality terminates instead in the arts, by which human ideals and passions are compounded with experience and adapted to the materials they must work in. The immaturity of the German moralists appears in their conception that the good is life, which is what an irrational animal might say: whereas for a rational being the good is only the good part of life, that healthy, stable, wise, kind, and beautiful sort of life which he calls happiness.

THE BREACH WITH CHRISTIANITY

German philosophy has a religious spirit, but its alliance with Christianity has always been equivocal and external. Even in the speculations of Leibniz, concerned as he was about orthodoxy, there was a spirit of independence and absolutism which was rationalistic, not to say heathen. The principle of sufficient reason, for instance, demands that God and nature shall explain their existence and behaviour to us, as timid parents explain their behaviour to their censorious children. By rendering everything necessary, even the acts of God, it takes the place of God and makes him superfluous. Such frigid optimism as this principle involves, besides being fatalistic, is deeply discouraging to that hope of deliverance which is the soul of Christianity: for if this is the best world possible, how poor must be that realm of possible worlds where everything is tainted, and there is no heaven! The theory, too, that each soul contains the seeds of its whole experience and suffices for its own infinite development, destroys the meaning of creation, revelation, miracles, sin, grace, and [Pg 105] charity. Thus without intending it, even the obsequious but incredibly intelligent Leibniz undermined all the doctrines of Christianity in the act of thinking them afresh, and insinuated into them a sort of magic heathen individualism.

Kant, Fichte, and Hegel were less punctilious in their theology, but they still intended to be or to seem Christians. They felt that what made the sanctity of traditional religion and its moral force could be recovered in a purer form in their systems. This feeling of theirs was not unwarranted; at least, many religious minds, after the first shock of losing their realistic faith, have seen in transcendentalism a means, and perhaps the only safe means, of still maintaining a sort of Christianity which shall not claim any longer to be a miraculous or exceptional revelation, but only a fair enough poetic symbol for the principles found in all moral life. That he who loses his life shall save it, for instance, is a maxim much prized and much glossed by Hegelians. They lend it a meaning of their own, which might, indeed, be said to be the opposite of what the Gospel meant; for there the believer is urged to discard the very world with which Hegel asks him to identify himself. The idea is that if you surrender your private interests to those of your profession, science, or country, you become thereby a good and important person, and [Pg 106] unintentionally a happy one. You will then feel that the world shares your thoughts and renders them perpetual, while you, being absorbed in ideal pursuits, forget your private miseries and mortality.

In this sort of moral psychology there is evidently some truth; but the "law of experience" which it points to is but a loose and ambiguous law, which disguises more facts than it expresses. Honest minds will rebel against the suggestion that when you outgrow a desire you have fulfilled it; and they will detect the furtive irony in bidding you live hard in order not to feel the vanity of living. To drown sorrow in work, and to forget private failures in public interests, is certainly possible, but it is only drugging yourself with hurry and routine, which may not be more advantageous to others than it really is to yourself. Impersonal or "ideal" aims are not necessarily less delusive or "higher" than personal ones; in fact there is far more likelihood that they are conventional humbug. This pathological hygiene of idealism, which always stops at some uncriticised impulse, thinks it secures health when perhaps it has only increased the dose of illusion.

Nevertheless transcendentalism has this important element in common with Christianity and with the other Hebraic religions, that it regards human interests as the core of the universe and God as the [Pg 107] God of man, who disposes all things for man's benefit. In its eyes the sphere of providence and moral life is bounded by the history of a part of Europe and Asia for a few thousand years. So long as transcendentalism is taken to imply some such philosophy of history it can compound its differences with liberal Christianity, since they are at one in the cardinal point of their faith, which is the apotheosis of the human spirit.

Yet this human egotism, which comforts so many minds, offends others, in their way no less religious. Of course, those who believe in the infinity of the universe, be they mystics or naturalists, smile at such pettiness and fatuity. But even among transcendentalists, some are repelled; for the dominion which they attribute to their ego is a dominion over appearances only; they do not pretend that the grammar of the human intellect can lay down the law for the world at large. At the same time, in their own house they wish to keep their freedom. That prescribed evolution and that reversible optimism of the absolute transcendentalists are repulsive to them; they resent that such a precise and distasteful career should be imposed on their transcendental individuality, and should swallow it up. It is these rebels that have carried romanticism and German philosophy into its last phase. They have broken at [Pg 108] last with Christianity and at the same time with the theological and cosmic transcendentalism that was its treacherous ally, and hoped to be its heir.

The transcendentalism of Schopenhauer, sweeping as it was in its way, retained the modest and agnostic character it had had in Kant: he proclaimed that the world was his idea, but meant only (what is undeniable) that his idea of the world was his idea. The egotistical doctrine that the whole universe is but the image of it created by the mind disappeared altogether in his system. The so-called Will which he still placed behind everything was no longer his own will evolving experience out of nothing; it was a fanciful name for whatever force or substance might lie behind experience, animating all its objects, determining their inherent life, and constituting them facts collateral with himself. If his metaphysics remained idealistic, it was on account of his romantic habit of assimilating the life of nature to that of man, as hasty introspection reveals it; so that the universe is described in moral and poetical terms rather than in the terms of science.

The consequences of this change were important. The Will became infinite in what Hegel called the evil sense, that is, in the true one. It was no longer possible to speak of a plan of creation, nor of a dramatic progress in history, with its beginning in [Pg 109] Eden and its end in Berlin. Life was seen to radiate, as it really does, from an elementary form into all sorts of disparate and incomparable growths, capable of endless diversity. No limit, no forced co-operation, no stereotyped method was imputed to life. The pocket universe of Hegel opened out to the stars, so hateful to that philosopher. Man lost his importance and at the same time the insufferable burden of his false pretensions. In Schopenhauer frankness returned, and with frankness clearness. Yet he could not quite reconcile man to his actual place in nature. A deep prejudice still intervened.

Both Christianity and romanticism had accustomed people to disregard the intrinsic value of things. Things ought to be useful for salvation, or symbols of other greater but unknown things: it was not to be expected that they should be simply good in themselves. This life was to be justified, if justified at all, only as servile work or tedious business may be justified, not as health or artistic expression justify themselves. Unless some external and ulterior end could be achieved by living, it was thought that life would be vanity. Remove now the expectation of a millennium or of a paradise in the sky, and it may seem that all serious value has disappeared from our earthly existence. Yet this feeling is only a temporary after-image of a particular education.

How can he persuade himself of something so evidently false? By that mystical misinterpretation of human nature which is perhaps the core of romanticism. He imagines that what is desired is not: this or that--food, children, victory, knowledge, or some other specific goal of a human instinct--but an abstract and perpetual happiness behind all these alternating interests. Of course an abstract and perpetual happiness is impossible, not merely because events are sure to disturb any equilibrium we may think we have established in our lives, but for the [Pg 111] far more fundamental reason that we have no abstract and perpetual instinct to satisfy. The desire for self-preservation or power or union with God is no more perpetual or comprehensive than any other: it is commonly when we are in straits that we become aware of such objects, and to achieve them, or imagine we achieve them, will give us only a momentary satisfaction, like any other success. A highest good to be obtained apart from each and every specific interest is more than unattainable; it is unthinkable. The romanticist, chasing wilfully that ignis fatuus, naturally finds his life arduous and disappointing. But he might have learned from Plato or any sound moralist, if his genius could allow him to learn anything, that the highest good of man is the sum and harmony of those specific goods upon which his nature is directed. But because the romantic will was unteachable, all will was declared to be foolish.

Schopenhauer was led into his pessimism also by the spirit of opposition; his righteous wrath was aroused by the sardonic and inhuman optimism of Hegel, the arguments for which were so cogent, so Calvinistic, and so irrelevant that they would have lost none of their force if they had been proposed in hell. The best possible world and the worst possible world are, indeed, identical for that philosophy. Schopenhauer needed to change nothing in the [Pg 112] description of life, as the other idealists conceived it, in order to prove that life was a tragedy; for they were as romantic as himself and as far from feeling the intrinsic value of happiness, and the possibility of real progress. Real progress has little to do with perpetual evolution. It occurs only in certain places and times, when nature or art comes to the assistance of some definite interest already embodied, as the interest in security and mutual confidence, knowledge, or the fine arts is already embodied in mankind. Schopenhauer was not insensible to these achievements; he felt by instinct the infinity and luxuriance of the moral world. It was in part this secret sympathy with nature that alienated him from Christianity and from transcendental metaphysics. But because natural goods cannot be desired or possessed for ever, he thought their value was cancelled, even for those who desired and possessed them. The leaven of romanticism was still at work, forbidding him to recognise a natural order, with which a vital harmony might be established. The ground of life, the Will in all things, was something lurid and tempestuous, itself a psychological chaos. The alternative to theism in the mind of Schopenhauer was not naturalism but anarchy.

This romantic travesty of life and this conception of metaphysical anarchy were inherited by Nietzsche [Pg 113] and regarded by him as the last word of philosophy. But he made the breach with Christianity still wider. The grief of Schopenhauer in the presence of such a world, his desperate and exotic remedy--the denial of the will--and his love of contemplation were all evidences of a mind still half Christian: his pessimism itself was so much homage to the faith he had lost. Such backward glances were not for the impetuous Nietzsche, who felt he was a prophet of the future, and really was one. Romantic anarchy delighted him; and he crowned it with a rakish optimism, as with the red cap of Liberty. He was in hearty sympathy with absolute Will; he praised it even for being vain and maleficent, if it was only proud enough to praise itself.

NIETZSCHE AND SCHOPENHAUER

It is hardly fair to a writer like Nietzsche, so poetical, fragmentary, and immature, to judge him as a philosopher; yet he wished to be so judged, and planned a system which was to be an emendation of that of Schopenhauer. The will to live would become the will to dominate; pessimism founded on reflection would become optimism founded on courage; the suspense of the will in contemplation would yield to a more biological account of intelligence and taste; finally in the place of pity and asceticism (Schopenhauer's two principles of morals) Nietzsche would set up the duty of asserting the will at all costs and being cruelly but beautifully strong.

These points of difference from Schopenhauer cover the whole philosophy of Nietzsche. I will consider them in order, leaving the last for the next chapter.

The change from "the will to live" to "the will to be powerful" is only a change of metaphors: both are used merely to indicate the general movement of nature. The choice of a psychological symbol for this purpose is indifferent scientifically, since the [Pg 115] facts in any case remain the same and our knowledge of them is not enlarged; yet it is an interesting indication of the mind of the poet using it, because whatever a man knows and loves best, that he takes his metaphors from. Nietzsche had his reasons for liking to call the universal principle a lust for power. He believed he was the herald of two hundred years of war, he was in love with the vague image of a military aristocracy, and he was not without a certain biological acumen.

An acorn in the ground does not strive to persevere in the state it happens to be in, but expands, absorbs surrounding elements, and transforms them into its own substance, which itself changes its form. Here then is a will to grow, not simply a will to live or to preserve oneself; in fact, as Nietzsche eloquently said, here is a will to perish. It is true that when the oak is full grown it seems to pass to the defensive and no longer manifests the will either to perish or to grow. Even while the will to grow is operating, its scope is not indefinite. It would be grotesque to imagine that the acorn, like the ego of German philosophy, tended to annex the whole earth and the whole sky and to make a single oak of the universe. If we take a broad view, perhaps the ancient myth that nature tends to re-embody certain fixed types, though inaccurate, gives a better picture of the facts than [Pg 116] the modern myth that she is striving to change in one predetermined direction. Nevertheless, the fact that Nietzsche's attention was fascinated by the will to grow and to dominate shows that he was in sympathy with young things, that his heart was big with the future, and that his age believed in progress.

The change from pessimism to optimism, verbally so complete, did not imply any divergence between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in their description of the facts; it was all a matter of a little more spirit in the younger thinker and a little more conscience in the elder. Romantic poets and their heroes are well known to oscillate between passionate despair and passionate enterprise. Schopenhauer affected passionate despair, Nietzsche recommended passionate enterprise, each being wedded exclusively to one of those moods which Faust or Byron could feel alternately and reduce to act with all the dashing tumult of anarchy. The value which the world has in the eyes of its inhabitants is necessarily mixed, so that a sweeping optimism or pessimism can be only a theoretic pose, false to the natural sentiment even of those who assume it. Both are impressionistic judgments passed on the world at large, not perhaps without some impertinence.

Yet it is these poses or attitudes, or, if you like, these impertinences, that give importance to [Pg 117] transcendental philosophers; it is their representative and contagious side; their views of things would concern us little, if it was the things themselves that we wished to understand, but our whole study is a study in romanticism. The temper of the age ignored that man is a teachable animal living in a natural world. All that was a vulgar convention; in truth a disembodied Will was directed on any and every ideal at random, and when any of these fantastic objects seemed to be attained nothing was really accomplished, nothing was accumulated or learned. The wish for some other will-o'-the-wisp immediately succeeded, always equally passionate and equally foolish.

It is amazing that such a picture of human experience should have met with anything but general derision; but when people read books they compare them with other books, and when they turn to things they forget books altogether. Hence the most palpable falsehoods are held by general consent at certain moments, because they follow logically from what the books of the previous generation had maintained. This absurdity of Schopenhauer's is a plausible variation of idealism; to see how absurd it is you must remember the facts of life, the existence of any degree of civilisation or progress. In these the travail of human nature appears; for human nature is not [Pg 118] merely a name for a certain set of passions known to literature; in that sense Schopenhauer fully acknowledged it, and even thought it immutable; it is rather the constitution of an animal capable of training and development. What is more patent than that a man may learn something by experience and may be trained? But if he can be trained he is capable of adaptation and, therefore, of happiness, and the preposterous assertion that all desires are equally arbitrary and equally fruitless is blown to the winds.

The belief in a romantic chaos lends itself to pessimism, but it also lends itself to absolute self-assertion. Kant had boasted that he had removed knowledge in order to make room for faith; in other words, he had returned to chaos in order to find freedom. The great egotists, who detested the pressure of a world they had not posited or created, followed gladly in that path; but Schopenhauer was not an egotist. Like Goethe he was probably more selfish personally than those other philosophers whom their very egotism had made zealous and single-minded; but in imagination and feeling he was, like Goethe, genial and humane: the freedom and exuberance of nature impressed him more than his own. Had he been an egotist, as Fichte, Hegel, and Nietzsche were, he might have been an optimist like them. He was rather a happy man, hugely enjoying [Pg 119] a great many things, among them food and music; and he taught that music was a direct transcript of the tormented will to live. How simple it would have been for him, if he had been an egotist, to enjoy the spectacle of that tormented will as much as the music which was its faithful image! But no; such æsthetic cruelty, which was Nietzsche's delight, would have revolted Schopenhauer. He thought tragedy beautiful because it detached us from a troubled world and did not think a troubled world good, as those unspeakable optimists did, because it made such a fine tragedy. It is pleasant to find that among all these philosophers one at least was a gentleman.

If Will is the sole substance or force in the universe, it must be present in everything that exists, yet Schopenhauer affirmed that it was absent in æsthetic contemplation; and he looked to an ultimate denial of the Will, which if it was to be an act and not merely a void would evidently be impossible on his principles. The Will might well say to those who attempted to deny it: "They reckon ill who leave me out; when me they fly, I am the wings." In perceiving and correcting this contradiction, Nietzsche certainly improved the technique of the system.

Yet that contradiction was not substantial; it was verbal merely, and due to the fond use of the term [Pg 120] Will for what might more properly be called matter, energy, or movement. Will taken in the metaphorical sense can never be in abeyance, so long as anything is going on; but will taken in its proper sense is in abeyance often; and this is what Schopenhauer saw and meant to say. Actual and conscious will is a passing phenomenon; it is so little necessary to life that it always disappears when life is at its height. All pure pleasures, including those of seeing and thinking, are without it: they are ingenuous, and terminate in their present object. A philosopher should have learned from Aristotle, if not from his own experience, that at the acme of life we live in the eternal, and that then, as Schopenhauer said, we no longer pry but gaze, and are freed from willing.

This is not to say that Nietzsche was not very happy and witty in his description of the passions that dominate artists and philosophers, and in urging that the life of the spirit was an impassioned thing. To prove it, he might have quoted Schopenhauer himself, in those moving passages where he describes the ecstasy of thought and the spell of beauty. It is not the dead or the bloodless that have such feelings. Of course, if the operations of the brain, and the whole instinctive life of the soul, were interrupted neither these feelings nor any others would arise. This was at bottom Schopenhauer's conviction. His [Pg 121] great intuition, the corner-stone of his philosophy, was precisely the priority of automatism and instinct over the intellect. His only error came from having given to these underlying processes the name of Will, when properly the will is one expression of them only, as the intellect is.