Read Ebook: Nietzsche: His Life and Works by Ludovici Anthony M Anthony Mario Levy Oscar Author Of Introduction Etc

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Ebook has 307 lines and 26437 words, and 7 pages

So far, so good. But then, if that were so, the character of a morality must be determined by the class of men among whom it came into being.

If Nietzsche has been called dangerous, pernicious and immoral, it is because people have deliberately overlooked this last question of his. No thinker who states and honestly sets out to answer this question, as Nietzsche did, deserves to be slandered, as he has been slandered, by prejudiced and interested people intent on misunderstanding only in order that they may fling mud more freely.

Nietzsche cast his critical eye very seriously around him, and the sight of the modern world led him to ask these admittedly pertinent questions: "Is that which we have for centuries held for good and evil, really good and evil? Does our table of ethical principles seem to be favouring the multiplication of a desirable type?"

In answering these two inquiries, Nietzsche unfortunately stormed the most formidable strongholds of modern society--Christianity and Democracy; and perhaps this accounts for the fact that his fight was so uneven and so hopeless. The strength of modern Europe, if indeed there be any strength in her, lies precisely on the side of Christianity and Democracy, the grandmother and the mother of what is called "progress," "modernity"; and in assailing these, Nietzsche must have known that he was engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with stony-hearted adversaries unaccustomed to giving quarter and unscrupulous in their methods.

But, before going into the reasons of this flat negative, let us first pause to consider the age and the circumstances in which our author wrote and thought.

In the midst of this general work of destruction it was almost impossible for Nietzsche to remain unmoved or indifferent, and very soon he found that he too was drawn into the general stream of European thought; but only to prove how completely he was independent of it, and in every way superior to it.

He contemplated the work of the destroyers for some time with amused interest; and then it suddenly occurred to him to inquire whether these zealous and well-meaning housebreakers were really doing any lasting good, or whether all their efforts were not perhaps a little misguided. True, they were pulling the embellishments from the walls and were casting the most cherished idols of the Christian Faith into the dust. But the walls themselves, the actual design of the edifice, remained untouched and as strong as ever. A few broken stones, a few complaints from the priestly archaeologists who wished to preserve them, and then all the noise subsided! Europe remained as it was before --that is to say, still in possession of a stronghold of Christianity, merely divested of its superfluous ornament.

Nietzsche soon perceived that, in spite of all the rubbish and refuse which such people as Kant, Schopenhauer, Strauss, Renan and others had made of Christian dogma, the essential core of Christianity, the vital organ of its body--its morality--had so far remained absolutely intact. Nay, he saw that it was actually being plastered up and restored by scholars and men of science who vowed that they could proffer reasonable, rationalistic, and logical grounds in support of it.

Just as Christian dogma and metaphysics had been rationalised and philosophically proved by the scholars of the Middle Ages, and even as late as Leibnitz; so, now, Christian morality was being presented in a purely philosophical garb by the intellects of Europe. Having relinquished the dogma as no longer tenable, all scholars and men of science were trying with redoubled vigour to bolster up Christian ethics with elaborate text-books and learned treatises. There were some who accepted it all as if it were innate in human nature, and attributed it to a "moral sense"; there were others--good-natured biologists--who were likewise desirous of leaving it whole, and who declared with conviction that it was the natural outcome of the feelings of pleasure and pain; and there were yet others who assumed that it must have been evolved quite automatically out of expediency and non-expediency.

Not one of these would-be rationalists, however, halted at the Christian terms "good" and "bad" themselves, in order to ask himself whether, like all the other notions of good and evil prevailing elsewhere under the shelter of other religions, these, the Christian notions, might not have been invented at some particular time by a certain kind of man, simply with the view of preserving and universalising his specific type. Breathless from their efforts at getting rid of the dogma, they did not dream that perhaps the most important part of the work still remained to be done.

Nietzsche went to the very foundation of the Christian edifice. He pointed to its morality and said: if we are going to measure the value of this religion, let us cease our petty quarrels concerning the truth or falsehood of such stories as the loss of the Gadarene swine, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and let us throw the whole of Christian morality into the scales and appraise its precise worth as a system of ethics. Nietzsche would have scorned to quarrel with the Church, as Huxley did; for much more important issues were at stake. The worth of a religion is measured by its morality; because by its morality it moulds and rears men and reveals the type of man who ultimately wishes to prevail by means of it.

With the metaphysics and the dogma of Christianity in ruins all around him, therefore, Nietzsche took a step very far in advance of the rationalistic iconoclasts of his age. He attacked Christian morals, and declared them to be, like all other morals, merely a weapon in the hands of a certain type of man, with which that type struggled for power.

But bold as this step was, it constituted but the first of a series, the next of which was to discover the type which had laid the foundations of the Christian ideal. If it could be proved that these Christian values had been created by a noble species with the object of perpetuating that species, then Christianity would come forth from the inquiry vindicated to the hilt, and fill the damage done to its dogma would not have deterred Nietzsche from standing by it and upholding it to his very last breath. Alas! Things turned out somewhat differently and Nietzsche was not by any means the least pained by the result. Pursuing the inquiry with his usual unflinching and uncompromising honesty, and avoiding no conclusion however unpleasant or fatal, Nietzsche, the scion of a profoundly religions house, the lover of order and tradition, with the blood of generations of earnest believers in his veins, finally found himself compelled to renounce and even to condemn, root and branch, the faith which had been the strength and hope of his forebears.

It is well to bear in mind, however, throughout our study of Nietzsche, that he had a higher type always in view; that he was also well aware that this type could only be attained by the strict observance of a new morality, and that if he opposed other forms of morality--more particularly the Christian form--it was because he earnestly believed that they were rearing an undesirable and even despicable kind of man.

"Verily men have made for themselves all their good and evil. Verily they did not take it: they did not find it: it did not come down as a voice from heaven."

"Behold, the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values; the breaker, the law-breaker: he, however, is the creator."

"Verily a muddy stream is man. One must be at least a sea to be able to absorb a muddy stream without becoming unclean."

"Behold, I teach you Superman: he is that sea; in him your great contempt can sink."

See also D.D. Aph. 81.

Z., p. 67.

Z., p. 65.

Z., p. 138.

G. E., p. 81.

G. E., p. 81.

G. E., p. 80.

G. M., 3rd Essay, Aph. 15.

Z., p. 67.

Z., p. 20.

Z., p. 8.

Nietzsche the Moralist

Conceiving all forms of morality to be but weapons in the struggle for power, Nietzsche concluded that every species of man must at some time or other have taken to moralising, and must have called that "good" which its instincts approved, and that "bad" which its enemies instincts approved. In Beyond Good and Evil, however, he tells us that after making a careful examination "of the finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on earth," he found certain traits recurring so regularly together, and so closely connected with one another, that, finally, two primary types of morality revealed themselves to him. That is to say, after passing the known moralities of the world in review, he was able to classify them broadly into two types.

He observed that throughout human history there had been a continual and implacable war between two kinds of men; it must have begun in the remotest ages, and it continues to this day. It is the war between the powerful and the impotent, the strong and the weak, the givers and the takers, the healthy and the sick, the happy and the wretched. The powerful formed their concept of "good," and it was one which justified their strongest instincts. The impotent likewise acquired their view of the matter, which was often precisely the reverse of the former view.

In the first, the master morality, it is the oak which contends: I must reach the sun and spread broad brandies in so doing; this I call "good," and the herd that I shelter may also call it good. In the second, the slave morality, it is the shrub which says: I also want to reach the sun, these broad branches of the oak, however, keep the sun from me, therefore the oak's instincts are "bad."

It is obvious that these two points of view exist and have existed everywhere on earth. Apart from national and racial distinctions, mankind does fall into the two broad classes of master and slave, or ruler and subject. We also know that each of these classes must have developed its moral code, and must have tried to protect its conduct and life therewith. But, what we did not know until Nietzsche pointed the fact out to us, was: which morality is the more desirable and the more full of promise for the future? Admitting that the master and the slave moralities are struggling for supremacy still, which of them ought we to promote with every means in our power?--which of them is going to make life more attractive, more justifiable, and more acceptable on earth?

These are now questions of the utmost importance; because it is precisely now that pessimism, nihilism, and other desperate faiths are beginning to set their note of interrogation to human existence, and to shake our belief even in the desirability of our own survival.

It is now time for us to discover whence arises this contempt and horror of life, and to lay the blame for it either at the door of the master or of the slave morality.

In order that we may understand how to set forth upon this inquiry, let us first form a mental image of the two codes as they must have been evolved by their originators.

Nietzsche reminds us before we start, however, that in most communities the two moralities have become so confused and mingled, in order to establish that compromise which is so dear to the hearts of the peaceful, that it would be almost a hopeless task to seek any society on earth in which they are now to be seen juxtaposed in sharp contrast. Be this as it may, in order to recognise the blood of each when we come across it, we have only to think of what must have occurred when the ruling caste and the ruled class took to moralising.

The creator of the master morality was he who, out of the very fulness of his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it better, greater, more beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the slave morality. Great artists, great legislators, and great warriors belong to the class that created master morality.

The creator of slave-morality was one who, out of the poverty of his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it smaller, meaner, and less beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the master values. Great misanthropists, pessimists, demagogues, tasteless artists, nihilists, spiteful authors and dramatists, and resentful saints belong to the class that created slave-morality.

The first order of values are active, creative, Dionysiac. The second are passive, defensive, venomous, subterranean; to them belong "Adaptation," "adjustment," and "utilitarian relationship to environment."

Now, seeing that mankind is undoubtedly moulded by the nature of the values which prevail over it, it is manifestly of paramount importance to the philosopher to know which order of values conduces to rear the most desirable species of man, and then to advocate that order, with all the art and science at his disposal.

Nietzsche saw two lines of life: an ascending and a descending line. At the end of the one he pictured an ideal type, robust in mind and body, rich enough in spirit and vigour to make giving and bestowing a necessary condition of its existence; at the end of the other line he already perceived degeneracy, poverty of blood and spirit, and a sufficiently low degree of vitality to make parasitism a biological need.

He believed that the first, or noble morality, when it prevailed, made for an ascending line of life and therefore favoured the multiplication of a desirable type of man; and he was now equally convinced that whenever ignoble or slave morality was supreme, life not only tended to follow the descending line, but that the very men whose existence it favoured were the least likely to stem the declining tide. Hence it seemed to him that the most essential of all tasks was to ascertain what kind of morality now prevailed, in order that we might immediately transvalue our values, while there was still time, if we believed this change to be necessary.

What then are our present values? Nietzsche replies most emphatically --they are Christian values.

In the last chapter we saw that although Christian dogma was very rapidly becoming mere wreckage, its most earnest opposers and destroyers nevertheless clung with fanatical faith to Christian morality. Thus, in addition to the vast multitude of those professing the old religion, there was also a host of atheists, agnostics, rationalists, and materialists, who, as far as Nietzsche was concerned, could quite logically be classed with those who were avowedly Christian. And, as for the remainder--a few indifferent and perhaps nameless people,--what could they matter? Even they, perhaps, if hard pressed, would have betrayed a sneaking, cowardly trust in Christian ethics, if only out of a sense of security; and with these the total sum of the civilised world was fully made up.

Perhaps to some this may appear a somewhat sweeping conclusion. To such as doubt its justice, the best advice that can be given is to urge them to consult the literature, ethical, philosophical, and otherwise, of those writers whom they would consider most opposed to Christianity before the publication of Nietzsche's works; and they will then realise that, with very few exceptions, mostly to be found among uninfluential and uncreative iconoclasts, the whole of the Western civilised world in Nietzsche's time was firmly Christian in morals, and most firmly so, perhaps, in those very quarters where the dogma of the religion of pity was most honestly disclaimed.

It had therefore become in the highest degree necessary to put these values under the philosophical microscope, and to discover to which order they belonged. Was Christianity the purveyor of a noble or of a slave morality? The reply to this question would reveal the whole tendency of the modern world, and would also answer Nietzsche's searching inquiry: "Are we on the right track?"

Pursuing Nietzsche's method as closely as we can, let us now turn to Christianity, as we find it to-day, and see whether it is possible to bring its values into line with one of the two broad classes spoken of in this chapter.

In the first place, Nietzsche discovers that Christianity is not a world-approving faith. The very pivot upon which it revolves seems to be the slandering and depreciating of this world, together with the praise and exaltation of a hypothetical world to come. To his mind it seems to draw odious comparisons between the things of this earth and the blessings of heaven. Finally, it gushes in a very unsportsmanlike manner over an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and disadvantage of a "here," of this earth, of this life, and posits another region--a nether region--for the accommodation of its enemies.

What, now, is the mental attitude of these "backworldsmen," as Nietzsche calls them, who can see only the world's filth? Who is likely to need the thought of a beyond, where he will live in bliss while those he hates will writhe in hell? Such ideas occur only to certain minds. Do they occur to the minds of those who, by the very health, strength, and happiness that is in them, transfigure all the world --even the ugliness in it--and declare it to be beautiful? Do they occur to the powerful who can chastise their enemies while their blood is still up? Admitting that the world may be surveyed from a hundred different standpoints, is this particular standpoint which we now have under our notice, that of a contented, optimistic, sanguine type, or that of a discontented, pessimistic, anaemic one?

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