Chapter II: Part 2

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!"

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."

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!"

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._

"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]

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]

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.

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.

[7] "Ich bin so gar nicht zum Hassen und zum Feind sein gemacht!"

[8] See, e. g., _Leben_, I., p. 135, where he speaks of a new "Freigeisterei," denouncing the "libres penseurs" as "unverbesserliche Flachköpfe und Hanswürste," adding, "Sie glauben allesammt noch an's 'Ideal.'"

[9] "Dass das Gewölbe wiederhallt,"--a quotation from Goethe's "Faust."

[10] Reproduced as the frontispiece of this book.

[11]

"Ja, ich weiss woher ich stamme! Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme, Glühe und verzehr ich mich, licht wird alles was ich fasse, Kohle alles was ich lasse: Flamme bin ich sicherlich!"

NIETZSCHE'S PREDECESSOR

Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ and the inventor of the new ideal called the "overman," is commonly regarded as the most extreme egotist, to whom morality is non-existent and who glories in the coming of the day in which a man of his liking--the overman--would live au grand jour. His philosophy is an individualism carried to its utmost extreme, sanctioning egotism, denouncing altruism and establishing the right of the strong to trample the weak under foot. It is little known, however, that he followed another thinker, Johann Caspar Schmidt, whose extreme individualism he adopted. But this forerunner who preached a philosophy of the sovereignty of self and an utter disregard of our neighbors' rights remained unheeded; he lived in obscurity, he died in poverty, and under the pseudonym "Max Stirner" he left behind a book entitled _Der Einzige und sein Eigentum_.

The historian Lange briefly mentioned him in his _History of Materialism_, and the novelist John Henry Mackay followed up the reference which led to the discovery of this lonely comet on the philosophical sky.[1]

The strangest thing about this remarkable book consists in the many coincidences with Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. It is commonly deemed impossible that the famous spokesman of the overman should not have been thoroughly familiar with this failure in the philosophical book market; but while Stirner was forgotten the same ideas transplanted into the volumes of the author of _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ found an echo first in Germany and soon afterwards all over the world.

Stirner's book has been Englished by Stephen T. Byington with an introduction by J. L. Walker at the instigation of Benjamin R. Tucker, the representative of American peaceful anarchism, under the title _The Ego and His Own_. They have been helped by Mr. George Schumm and his wife, Mrs. Emma Heller Schümm. These five persons, all interested in this lonely and unique thinker, must have had much trouble in translating the German original and though the final rendering of the title is not inappropriate, the translator and his advisers agree that it falls short of the mark. For the accepted form Mr. B. R. Tucker is responsible, and he admits in the preface that it is not an exact equivalent of the German. _Der Einzige_ means "the unique man," a person of a definite individuality, but in the book itself our author modifies and enriches the meaning of the term. The unique man becomes the ego and an owner (_ein Eigener_), a man who is possessed of property, especially of his own being. He is a master of his own and he prides himself on his ownhood, as well as his ownership. As such he is unique, and the very term indicates that the thinker who proposes this view-point is an extreme individualist. In Stirner's opinion Christianity pursued the ideal of liberty from the world; and in this sense Christians speak of spiritual liberty. To become free from anything that oppresses us we must get rid of it, and so the Christian to rid himself of the world becomes a prey to the idea of a contempt of the world. Stirner declares that the future has a better lot in store for man. Man shall not merely be free, which is a purely negative quality, but he shall be his own master; he shall become an owner of his own personality and whatever else he may have to control. His end and aim is he himself. There is no moral duty above him. Stirner explains in the very first sentence of his book:

"What is not supposed to be my concern! First and
foremost, the good cause, then God's cause, the cause of
mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice;
further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland;
finally, even the cause of mind, and a thousand other
causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. 'Shame on
the egoist who thinks only of himself!"

Stirner undertakes to refute this satirical explanation in his book on the unique man and his own, and a French critic according to Paul Lauterbach (p. 5) speaks of his book as _un livre qu'on quitte monarque_, "a book which one lays aside a king."

Stirner is opposed to all traditional views. He is against church and state. He stands for the self-development of every individual, and insists that the highest duty of every one is to stand up for his ownhood.

J. L. Walker in his Introduction contrasts Stirner with Nietzsche and gives the prize of superiority to the former, declaring him to be a genuine anarchist not less than Josiah Warren, the leader of the small band of New England anarchists. He says:

"In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for
political liberty. His interest in the practical
development of egoism to the dissolution of the state
and the union of free men is clear and pronounced, and
harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of
Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament
and language, there is a substantial agreement between
Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in
every increase of the number of free people and their
intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor.
But, on the other hand, will any one for a moment
seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march
together in general aim and tendency--that they have
anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine
and sepulcher of superstition?

"Nietzsche has been much spoken of as a disciple of
Stirner, and, owing to favorable cullings from Nietzsche's
writings, it has occurred that one of his books has been
supposed to contain more sense than it really does--so
long as one had read only the extracts.

"Nietzsche cites scores or hundreds of authors. Had he
read everything, and not read Stirner?

"But Nietzsche is as unlike Stirner as a tight-rope
performance is unlike an algebraic equation.

"Stirner loved liberty for himself, and loved to see any
and all men and women taking liberty, and he had no lust
of power. Democracy to him was sham liberty, egoism the
genuine liberty.