Part 15

Nietzsche’s handling of this paradox is one of the significant movements of his thought. To understand it we must go back a little. It is not the question of the personality of Jesus, of the motives that were clearly present to his own consciousness that Nietzsche would discuss. In general, he is completely indifferent to the kind of evidence furnished by self-analysis respecting the motives of conduct and the ground of opinion. Even those whose powers of analysis might be supposed to give them a right to speak--the great philosophers and lovers of truth--are to Nietzsche deceivers or self-deceived. “What tempts me to look upon all philosophers half with mistrust, half with amusement is not that one discovers again and again what innocents they are, how often and how easily mistaken and misled, not, in a word, their prattle and childishness. It is rather that, in spite of the great and virtuous noise made by the whole company the moment the question of truth is even remotely touched on, they do not deal ingenuously with us. They all pose as believing that they have arrived at their own opinions by the self-development of a cool pure and divinely impassible dialectic (in contrast with the mystics of all shades, who, honest fools, will speak of Inspiration). At bottom, however, it is some idea loved at first sight, most frequently some heart’s desire made abstract and well refined that they defend with reasons found for the purpose. Advocates denying the name, cunning special pleaders for their prejudices, they christen these The Truth.”

If then the lover of truth cannot tell the truth about himself, if the cool thinker is unable to reveal the grounds of his thought, how much less can the man of heart tell what is at the bottom of his heart, the man of passion tell where his deepest passion lies? It remains for Nietzsche to make good these short-comings.

And Nietzsche makes them good in a way that lacks neither simplicity nor decision. He lays it down that there is one motive to which all others reduce, and to which everything that lives instinctively reacts. This motive is not the mere desire to preserve oneself, the desire that many have supposed sufficient to explain even the phenomenon of evolution. It goes beyond self-defense to strive after the maximum of aggression. Nietzsche calls it “der Wille zur Macht”--the Lust of Power. It is this that makes the world dance, that makes the brute prepare the way for man, that drives man to produce the superman. It is consequently this that compels the thinker to his thought, the meek to his resignation, the crucified to his cross.

“I am not of those of whom one asks ‘why?’” Nietzsche has once written. If you cannot accept his assurance that the deepest spring of conduct is the will to conquer, then accept the contrary doctrine: Nietzsche is prepared to trust his insight that you do this because the contrary doctrine is just the one you need to work out your own scheme of conquest,--as a wolf may on occasion sincerely prefer the pelt of a lamb to his own natural coat.

It is to the lust of power in men’s hearts that the gospel of the crucified one appeals! The paradox is perhaps most completely worked out in Nietzsche’s “Genealogie der Moral.” Here history is made to reveal a long conflict between two contradictory estimates of worth. For the one standard a contrast exists between high morals and low; for the other, between holiness and sin. The code of ethics based on the first of these contrasts embodies, as the etymology of its terms indicates, the aristocratic conception of worth. “High morals” are simply the manners of the upper, the ruling class; “low morals,” the habits of the underlings. This standard of valuation is accepted by the high and low alike of a race in its youth and strength. The second standard defining the opposition between good and evil is an invention of the miserable and oppressed; it is their reaction against their conquerors, the expression of their resentment. It can only become dominant in decadent races; its triumph in Christianity is evidence that the modern world has sunk to the ideals of the lowly--that is to say, of the low.

If we place these two codes side by side, we realize how completely the acceptance of either demands the “Umwerthung aller Werthe” acknowledged by the other. The highest worth in the aristocratic morality is the pride of strength; the great wickedness to the lowly moralist is just this same pride of strength. The great virtue of the slave-morality is humility; to the aristocratic taste this humility is abject. Of the history of the warfare between the two, Nietzsche gives a sufficiently dramatic account. Characteristic is his picture of the triumph of the slaves:

“All that has been accomplished on the earth against the higher orders is as nothing compared with what the Jews have done: the Jews, that priest-led people that finally contrived to have satisfaction of its enemies by a complete upsetting of all their ethical standards, in other words, by an act of intellectual revenge. It was the Jews who with inexorable logic dared to deny the aristocratic equation (good = lofty = powerful = beautiful = fortunate = god-favored) and who with bottomless hatred--the hatred born of impotence--set their teeth in a formula: to wit, ‘only the wretched are the good; only the poor, the weak, the lowly are the good; the suffering, the sick, the unlovely are indeed the only servants of God and the only ones blessed of God--while you, O ye high and mighty, you are in all eternity the men of sin, of violence, of lust, the insatiable, the Godless, and you shall be in all eternity the unblessed, the accursed, the damned!’... With the Jews begins the slave-morality, that morality which has a struggle of two thousand years behind it, one which we fail to note to-day, just because--it is victorious.”

The master is made to accept the slave-morality, the tyrant is made afraid! Our English poet Browning has given a picture of this moment in history which surpasses even Nietzsche’s in vividness. The man-forsaken, cowering yonder in his selfless humility--tempts the tyrant to wring from him one gesture of rebellion, one word that suggests pride of self. In vain! The slave’s arm of defense is just non-resistance, just a mimicry of non-entity.

When sudden ... how think ye the end? Did I say “without friend”? Say rather, from marge to blue marge The whole sky grew his targe With the sun’s self for visible boss, While an Arm ran across Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast Where the wretch was safe prest! Do you see? Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed! --So, I was afraid!

But the psychology of this fear of the Lord that is the beginning of decadence? How is the tyrant to be made to accept the “Sklavenmoral,” to respect, even to imitate humility and to call it holy? Well, the slave has on his side two things that make for success: superior numbers and superior cunning. For “only those who have need of cunning,” Nietzsche writes, “acquire it.” And the strong has one vulnerable point--his superstition. It is this point that the instinct of slave-hatred has found; with cunning and with numbers it has managed to inculcate a belief in the God of Pity, to overthrow the aristocratic appreciation of high and low, to substitute for it a morality of the miserable that sets up the distinction between holiness and sin. It is the denial of the will to conquer implied by such a standard of conduct that makes modernity decadent, that unfits it to produce the superman. No wonder Nietzsche should have claimed the gratitude of higher men for his glad tidings, the God of Pity is dead!

* * * * *

In passing beyond the morality of decadence, every suggestion of a plan of life that might be substituted for it, must come from the past: the young races not yet fallen into decrepitude give us our models of the heroic. We cannot however turn the clock back, we cannot repeat their acts today without becoming such anachronisms as a Cervantes could make laughter of. It may be however that our own institutions, foremost of which is the well-organized state, leave ample room for the heroism that prepares the way for the superman.

“Where the state ends--there begins the man who is not superfluous....

“Where the state ends--Look, my brothers! Do you not see the rainbow and the bridges that lead to the Superman?”

Where the state ends! only there does Nietzsche’s interest begin. But would he have the state end much nearer its beginning; yes, before its beginning; would he return to the condition that has no social, no political organization? Perhaps--it is hard to say; but it is not necessary that one advocate anarchy in order that one should prepare a field for that great struggle of man against man out of which are to emerge the victors, the fathers of the superman.

Huxley suggests another solution. For him too where the state ends a new struggle begins. The state assures security of life, and of this security is born a new desire--the aviditas vitae, let us say the desire for the maximum of life measured in terms of power and enjoyment. With this struggle born of the aviditas vitae, begins Nietzsche’s theory of ethical values. Here indeed there can be no question of unselfishness, of self-sacrifice for another. Within this domain the meaning of good and bad stands out with perfect clearness.

“What is good?” Nietzsche asks. “All that heightens in man the feeling of power, the desire for power, power itself.

“What is bad? All that comes from weakness.

“What is happiness? The feeling that our strength grows, that an obstacle is overcome.

“Not contentment, but more power; not universal peace, but war; not virtue, but forcefulness.

“The weak and ineffective must go under; first principle of our love of humanity. And one should even lend one’s hand to this end.

“What is more harmful than any vice? Pity for the condition of the ineffectives and weak--Christianity.”

Yet one must not imagine that this pitiless struggle of which is to be born the man of tomorrow is gloomy and hate-inspired. On the contrary it is joyous, and gives scope for a much nobler love than that which is pitiful. I know of no institution of modern life that so nearly realizes Nietzsche’s idea of this struggle together with the virtues it engenders, as does that of sport among gentlemen. Here one plays to win, and to spare one’s opponent or to be spared by him merely mars sport. Yet one does not hate one’s opponent, but loves him for his good sportsmanship. Only, this love, this friendship among strong men must not weaken the arm, must not soften the will; if it do, it destroys itself and is returned with contempt. We do not hate men because we fear them, Nietzsche makes it out, but just because we do not fear them. The hatred that leads one to shun one’s kind is born of disdain. Life that has for its joy the joy of battle, for its reward the sense of strength that grows with its exercise, for its delight the love of brother warriors, a brother that can give and take death generously! It is only the many too many, weakly looking on and trembling before the spectacle of a strength they fear and hate, that have no joy of life and cry, “Let there be peace.”

* * * * *

I would willingly describe this Homeric scene more in detail, consider the part that certain heroes, the warrior, the artist, the philosopher, play in it. But we must sweep on to larger issues, for there is a question that must have occurred to everyone as our description of the Nietzschian battle has advanced. It is the old question, Cui bono! We fight, suppose we win? Little Peterkin, who was surely brought up on Schopenhauer, is there to ask, What good has come of it? A little power more or less, what does it matter? Our brief hour is still a brief hour, our atomic selves cannot greatly swell, what after all is the use of fighting when we cannot befool ourselves as to the nature of the spoils?

For answer, we might point once more to the Superman. For him we kill pity in our hearts; for him, and not for spoils, is the battle fought. Surely the conqueror is conquered and his winnings cannot warm a grave. It is for the sake of them that come after that the costly struggle is maintained. Every fighter should know this; it should fire his heart and give him courage to be hard. “Higher than the love of thy nearest stands the love of those most remote from thee, thine offspring, the far future man. Higher than the love of thy kind is for me the love of a Shadow. This Shadow that runs before thee is more beautiful than thou; why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones?”

But this Superman? Can things stop with him? Is he really a goal? Or only a transition, a bridge to the super-superman? Has evolution really changed the situation that Schopenhauer depicts? In the endless flux can one find a purpose that abides?

This phrase--the endless flux--brings us to one of the strangest phases of Nietzsche’s doctrine. One who, with Schopenhauer, has deeply questioned the evidence of purpose, the harmony of purposes in this world of ours, one who has groped in the night of things for that which might inspire one’s will to live has perhaps been caught by the great idea of evolution, has perhaps cried with Nietzsche, “I will live and struggle for to-morrow.” Then, to such an one, the old questioning spirit returns as it is bound to return to men who think. The morrow of to-morrow looms up before him; the eternal flux of to-morrows stretches itself out and loses itself in a vague “Whither?”