| HENRY i ME NCKEN Se Re Pe en a SN a NS te SO OS se Eons 0 2a Tae Or +e pI EI aS Valassis chat i ’ ’ t a ; ‘ ty LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Lee The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 gan) PAV ig JAN Q 2} 198! os DEC 0 3 szoujanlt 8. 1994 eC ig ir | SEP 4 0 Ze WAN 2 6] 1982 JAN 4 4 YON" 3 194 eel : L161—O-1096 SS Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign httos://archive.org/details/gistofnietzscheOOniet The Gist of Nietzsche Arranged by HENRY L. MENCKEN Author of THE PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Boston JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY IgI0 we 24 Copyright IgI0 By L E Bassett | | 4 LE ostein Denera| Ra Nov 1937 INTRODUCTION 987137 INTRODUCTION. There is no need, at this late day, to offer excuses for a little book of stray thoughts from Nietzsche. His princi- pal ideas have been making great prog- ress since his death, and it is no exaggera- tion to say that many of them have found acceptance, at second hand, among folk who have yet to become aware of their author, save as a vague name. They appear, now and again, in the most un- likely quarters, and some trace of them is to be found in all contemporary specu- lation. Whether or not they are sound is a problem for the race to solve by experience. In the following pages a few of Nietzsche’s most interesting sayings are arranged under general headings. They show, of course, nothing of his wonder- fully acute processes of ratiocination, but only his conclusions. Nevertheless, they may serve to give some notion of the manner, as well as of the matter, of his philosophy. He was, first of all, a ruthless destroyer—the most savage and resolute, it is probable that Christian morals and Christian civilization have ever had to face. ‘Therefore, these ex- tracts are confined chiefly to his objec- tions and objurgations, and leave for the reader’s own inquiry his efforts to create. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born at Rocken in Prussian Saxony, Oc- tober 15, 1844 and was tbe son of a coun- try_pastor. He was educated in country schools, at the academy of Pforta and at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig. In 1869 the latter university made him a doctor of philosophy, and he became professor of classical philology at Basle. There he remained ten years, retiring upon a pension in 1879. In 1870 he served in the Franco-Prussian war as a hospital steward, being unable to go as a combatant because he had become a naturalized Swiss on accepting the Basle appointment. He attracted attention be- fore he was thirty by a number of acute studies in Greek literature and civiliza- tion, but it was not until 1877 that he really entered the arena as a philosopher. In that year the first volume of his first distinctive book, ‘“Menschliches allzu Menschliches” was published. During the twelve years that followed he wrote © nearly a dozen books, and in them his system of philosophy was gradually elab- orated. As a result of exposure in the war, his health was poor after 1870, and he spent much time in Italy and the Alps. In 1889 he_lost_his mind. His sister, Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche, cared for him in her home at Weimar until his death, August 25, . His autobiogra- shee phy and several books appeared posthumously. Nietzsche never married. THE GIST OF NIETZSCHE INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. E should not let ourselves be burnt for our opinions them- selves, of which we can never be quite sure, but we may perhaps do so for the right to hold and change them. A snake which is unable to change its skin will perish. So will all intellects that are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be intellects. mies to truth than lies. NIETZSCHE He who has attained something of intellectual freedom cannot regard him- self otherwise than as a wanderer on earth, and not as a traveller towards some goal, for none exists. But he will have his eyes open and watch what happens in the world. Such a man will have many hours of sadness when he wanders in the fields of knowledge as in a desert, but he will experience also _morning- hours of radiant happiness, when many pleasures surround him, gifts of the free spirits who dwell in the mountains and forests of soli- tude, and, like him, are philosophers and wanderers. MORALITY 3 MORALITY. HAT is Banc’ AU that increases the feeling of power-—the will to ; power—power itself—in man! weakest bad? All_that comes from aan is happiness? The_ feeling. that._power_increases—that_ resistence is being overcome! Let us have, not contentedness, but more power—not peace at any price, but warfare—not virtue, but The weak must ‘perish! That is the first principle of our charity. And we must help them to do so. What is more dangerous to the human race than atts crime?r sympat hristianity! Dae Antichrist, 2 Life is essentially the appropriation, the injury, the vanquishing of the un- adapted and weak. Its object is to ob- trude its own forms and insure its own 4 NIETZSCHE unobstructed functioning. Even an or- ganization whose individuals forebear in their dealings with one another (a healthy aristocracy, for instance) must, if it would live and not die, act hostilely toward all other organizations. It must endeavor to gain ground, to obtain ad- vantages, to acquire ascendancy. And this is not because it is immoral, but be- cause it lives and all life is will to power. —Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 259 In itself an act of injury, violation, exploitation or annihilation cannot be wrong, for life operates, essentially and fundamentally, by injuring, violating, exploiting and annihilating, and cannot even be conceived of as existing other- wise. One must admit, indeed, that from the highest biological standpoint, conditions under which the so-called rights of others are recognized must be ever regarded as exceptional conditions —that is to say, as partial restrictions of the instinctive power-seeking will to live of the individual, made to satisfy the more powerful will to live of the mass. MORALITY 5 Thus small units of power are sacrificed to create large units. To regard the rights of others as being inherent in them, and not as mere compromises for the benefit of the mass-unit, is to enun- ciate a principle hostile to life itself. —Zur Geneologie der Moral, II, 11 Morality not only commands. in- numerable terrible means for preventing critical hands being laid on her; her se- curity depends still more upon a sort of enchantment at which she is phenom- enally skilled. That it to say, she knows how to enrapture. She appeals to the emotions; her glance paralyzes the rea- son and the will...... Ever since there has been talking and persuading on earth, she has been the supreme mistress of seduction. —Morgenrote, preface, 3 A_ double wall is set up against the | continued testing, selection _and_criticism — of moral values. On one hand stands 6 NIETZSCHE revelation, and on the other veneration and tradition. The authority of the moral law is based upon two assumptions —first_that_God gave it, and secondly, that the wise men of the past obeyed it. —Der Antichrist, 57 Among the ancient master races the antithesis ‘“‘good and bad” signified prac- tically the same as “noble and contempt- ible.’ ‘The despised ones were the cowards, the timid, the insignificant, the self-abasing —the dog-species of men who allowed themselves to be misused— the flatterers and: above all, the liars. hr eriie The master type of man regards himself as a sufficient judge of worth. He does not seek approval; his own feel- ings determine his conduct. ‘‘What is injurious to me,” he reasons, “‘is injurious in itself.” This type of man honors whatever qualities he recognizes in him- self; his morality is self-glorification. He has a feeling of plentitude and pow- er and the happiness of high tension. He helps the unfortunate, perhaps, but it is not out of pity. The impulse, when it comes at all, rises out of his supera- MORALITY » bundance of power—his thirst to func- tion. He honors his own power, and he knows how to keep it in hand. He joy- fully exercises strictness and severity over himself and he reverences all that igpetnicorand SCVEre,. , b..c-).< The master- morality of this master caste is irritating to the taste of the present day because of its fundamental principle that a man has obligations only to his equals—that he may act as he pleases toward all of lower rank and all that are foreign. —Jenseits von Gut und Bose, 260 By the s/ave-morality of Christian- Liver A: the impotence which does not retaliate for injuries is falsified into ‘goodness ;” timorous abjectness becomes “humility ;” subjection to those one hates is called ‘‘obedience,” and the one who desires and commands this impotence, abjectness and subjection is called God. The inoffensiveness of the weak, their Conve IGe 2: . at: their standing at the door, their unavoidable time-serving and waiting—all these things get good names. The inability to get revenge is translated into an unwillingness to get revenge, and 8 NIETZSCHE becomes “forgiveness,” a virtue...... They are wretched, these mutterers and forgers, but they say that their wretched- ness is of God’s choosing, and even call it a distinction that he confers upon them. The dogs that are liked best, they say, are beaten most. Their wretchedness is a test, a preparation, a schooling, something which will be paid for, one day, in happiness. ‘They call this “‘bliss.” —Zur Geneologie der Moral, I, 14 During the Prae-historic or Prae- moral Period, the value of an action was determined by its after-effects, which made men think well or ill of it. But during the last ten thousand years—the Moral Period—the origin of an action, and not its consequences, has determined its value. Is it not once more necessary to reconsider values, on the threshold of the Ultra-Moral Period? Moral inten- tion has been a prejudice, premature and provisional, and ought to be surmounted. CASTES 9 CASTES. law of nature, against which no merely human agency can prevail. In every healthy society there are three broad castes, each of which has its own morality, its own work, its own notion of perfection and its own sense of mastery. The first caste comprises those who are . obviously superior to the mass intellect- ually; the second includes those whose superiority is chiefly muscular, and the third is made up of the indifferent. The third caste, very naturally, is the most numerous, but the first is the most pow- erful. To this highest caste belongs the privilege of representing beauty, happi- , SHE order of castes is the dominant ness and goodness on earth...... Its members accept the world as they find it and make the best of it...... They find their happiness in those things which, to lesser men, would spell ruin—in the labyrinth, in severity toward themselves and others, in effort. Their delight is self-government; with them asceticism 10 NIETZSCHE becomes naturalness, necessity, instinct. A difficult task is regarded by them as a privilege; to play with burdens which would crush others to death is their rec- reation. ‘They are the most venerable species of men. They are the most cheer- ful, the most amiable. They rule be- cause they are what they are. They are not at liberty to take second rank. The second caste includes the guard- ians and keepers of order and security— the warriors, the nobles, the king—above all, as the highest types of warriors, the judges and defenders of the law. They execute the mandates of the first caste, relieving the latter of all that is coarse and menial in the work of ruling. At the bottom are the workers— the men of handicraft, trade, agriculture and the greater part of art and science. It is the law of nature that they should be public utilities—that they should be wheels and functions. The only kind of happiness of which they are capable makes intelligent machines of them. For the mediocre, it is happiness to be me- diocre. In them _the-—mastery of one thing—1. e. specialization—is an instinct. It is unworthy of a profound in- tellect to see in mediocrity itself an ob- CASTES II jection. It is, indeed, a necessity of human existence, for only in the presence of a horde of average men is the excep- tional man a possibility. Whom do I hate most among the men of today? The socialist who under- mines the workingman’s healthy instincts, who takes from him his feeling of con- tentedness with his existence, who makes him envious, who teaches him re- DOUG ert ai There is no wrong in un- equal rights; it lies in the vain pretension to equal rights. | —Der Antichrist, 57 There have always been hordes of men, and a greater number of those who obeyed than those who commanded. The need of obedience has become a kind of formal conscience in men. ‘They accept all that authorities—rulers, parents, masters, laws, class prejudices or public opinion—declare unto them. But this instinctive obedience is transmitted at the expense of the art of commanding. The commanding class have become ashamed, and justify themselves by play- ing the role of executors of the orders of 12 NIETZSCHE higher authorities, such as ancestors, the constitution, the laws, or the Diety; or perhaps they claim to be first servants of the herd, or instruments of the public weal. The gregarious man nowadays would fain claim to be the only legit- imate person, and he puts forward his shortsighted utilitarian virtues, which render him gentle, tractable and useful, as the only virtues. They replace com- manders by assemblies of clever men from among themselves. Every improvement of the type Man has been the work of an aristocrat- ic society—and it will always be so—a society with a long hierarchy, of rank and differences among man, and based on slavery in one sense or another. With- out the sentiment of distance thus evolved there could not have been developed the desire to augment the distances in the in- terior of the soul—the psychic force characteristic of the noble caste. One does not hate so long as one despises; but only when one deems a per- son one’s equal or superior. CHRISTIANITY 13 CHRISTIANITY. condemn Christianity. I bring against [: Christian church the most ter- rible accusation ever voiced. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable cor- . ruptions; it has sought to bring about the ultimate corruption. It has left nothing uncontaminated by its depravity ; it has made every valuable thing worth- less, every truth a lie, every honest im- pulse a baseness of soul. Let anyone dare speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! To do away with distress has always been counter to its fundamental policy; it has lived by distress, it has created distress in order to make itself necessary and eternal. Consider, for example, the consciousness of sin; it remained for the church to enrich mankind with that state of dis- Bese itiiats 2: And “the equality of souls before the Lord;” that falsehood, that excuse for the rancor of the degraded, that explosive idea which has grown in- to revolution and the decadence of all 14 NIETZSCHE society—is Christian dynamite!....‘Hu- manitarian” blessings of Christianity! Pooh! It breeds out of humanities a self-crucifixion, an art of self-voilation, a will to the lie at any price, a repug- nance and contempt for all healthy and honest instincts! ‘These are for me the blessings of Christianity! Parasitism is the so/e praxis of the church—drinking out all blood, all love, all hope in life, with its anaemic ideals of holiness—the other world as an in- spiration to the negation of every reality —the cross as the rallying sign for the most underhand conspiracy that has ever existed—against health, beauty, well- being, courage, intelligence, benevolence of soul—against life itself! This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls (I have letters for making even the blind see); I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge (of the weak upon the strong) for which no expedient is AR ae TALS secret, subterrane- an, mean call it the one immortal blemish upon the human racel? a Der Antichrist, 62 CHRISTIANITY 15 A Jesus Christ was only possible in Jewish landscape—I mean to say, in a landscape over which hangs continually the gloomy and majestic thunder-cloud of the angry Jahveh. Only there could the rare and sud@én outburst of a single ray of sunshine be held to be a miracle of “Love,” as a ray of the most under- served mercy. Only there could Christ have dreamed of his rainbow and his heavenly ladder on which God descend- ed to man; everywhere else bright weather and sunshine were too much the rule, too commonplace. 16 NIETZSCHE MARRIAGE. ERE I a god, and a benevolent one, the marriages of men would annoy me more than anything else. Very far, indeed, may a man pro- gress in the seventy (nay, thirty) years of his life—it is marvelous even ‘to the gods! But when we see him hang up his inheritance and the fruit of his struggles and victory—the laurel- wreath of his humanity—upon some pil- lar where the first girl that comes along may pick it to pieces; when we see how much_beiter_he understands acquisition than preservation; nay, when we see how blind he is to the fact that by procreation he may enter into an even more trium- phant life—then, indeed, do we grow impatient, saying: “In the long run, nothing whatever will be made of hu- manity; the individual is squandered; the fortuitousness of marriage makes all rational and ordered progress impos- sible!” MARRIAGE 17 Marriage: by this name do I call the will of two to create that which 1s. greater than either, I call marriage rev- erence unto each other as unto those) capable of such a will. Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the many call marriage—alas, what call I thate Alas! that soul-poverty of two! Alas! that soul-filth of two! Alas! that miserable dalliance of two! And yet they call it marriage, and that marriage is made in heaven! Well, I like it not—that heaven of the useless! Nay, I like them not—those beasts caught in heavenly nets!.... Laugh not at such marriages! What child hath not reason to weep over its parents? Worthy and ripe for working out the destiny of the world appeared this man unto me—but when [I saw his wife the world seemed to be a madhouse.... Here cometh a man who fought for truth like a hero—and at last won a little dressed-up lie. He calleth it his mar- riage! Here cometh one who was reserved in intercourse and chose his familiars 18 NIETZSCHE fastidiously—and then, suddenly, he spoiled his company forever. He calleth it his marriage! A third looked for a servant with the soul of an angel. He became the —Also sprach Zarathustra, I It is ludicrous when a mob of paupers decrees the abolition of hered- itary rights, and it is not less ludicrous when the childless presume to mold the legislation of a country. ‘They have not enough cargo in their ships to steer a safe course into the ocean of the future. But it seems to me just as ludicrous for a man who has chosen the acquisition of the most knowledge and the solution of the largest problems for his lifework, to bur- den himself with the care of a family ....for he thereby stretches a veil before his telescope, and through it the rays of the distant stars can scarcely pass. ‘Thus I arrive at the conclusion that, in matters of the highest philosophical consequence, the views of all married men are du- bious. —Menschliches allzu Menschliches, 436 MARRIAGE 19 The natural inclination of all wo- men to a quiet, uniform, untroubled ex- istence....operates inevitably against the heroic impulses of the free spirit. | Without being aware of it, women act like a person who would remove the stones from the path of a minerologist, lest his feet come in contact with them, despite the fact that he has gone forth — for the very purpose of coming in con- ; tact with them. ss —Menschliches allzu Menschliches, 431 “The Flying Dutchman” preaches the sublime doctrine that woman makes even the most arrant vagabond settle down—or, in Wagnerian jargon, “‘saves”’ him. Here I take the liberty to ask a question. Granted that all this is true, is it also desirable? What becomes of the Wandering Jew, once he is adored and settled down by a womane He ceases to be the eternal seeker! He mar- ries—and is of no more interest to us! Translated into actuality, what | mean is this: that the great danger to artists, to geniuses—for they are Wandering Jews —lies in women. Adoring women are 20 NIETZSCHE their ruin. Hardly any man has suf-| ficient strength of character to resist be-| ing corrupted—being ‘‘saved’—when he | finds himself treated as a god. —Der Fall Wagner, 3! PARENTHOOD 21 PARENTHOOD. HOU art young, and thou wishest for a wife and achilde I ask thee: art thou a man who darest wish for a child? Art thou a victorious one, a self- subduer, a commander of thy senses, a master of thy virtues? Thus I inquire of thee. In thy wish, doth one hear the an- imal—or necessity? Or loneliness? Or discord with thyself? I would that victory and freedom were in thy longing for a child! If thou hast victory and freedom, it is meet to build them monuments..... But first thou must build thyself! —Also sprach Zarathustra, I 22 NIETZSCHE WOMEN. dle, and everything in women hath one answer; its name is child-bear- [ieee in women is a rid- ing. Man is for woman a means. The end is always the child. But what is woman for man? Two things are needed by the true man: danger and play. Therefore, he seeketh woman as the most dangerous of toys. Man should be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior. Everything else is folly..... Let woman be a toy, pure and deli- cate as a jewel, and illumined by the vir- tues of the world that is to come. Let a ray of starlight shine in your love! Let the hope be in your heart: “Would that I might give birth to the Let man fear woman when she lov- eth, for then she sacrificeth everything to that love, and nothing else hath value toxsher. a2 WOMEN 23 Man’s happiness lieth in “JI will!” Woman’s happiness lieth in “He will!” Thou goest to women? Forget not thy whip! —Also sprach Zarathustra, I The qualities in woman which in- spire respect—or fear—are her greater naturalness, her flexibility and craft, her tigress-claw, her naivete, her uneduca- bility, her instinctive cruelty, her im- mense passions and virtues. In spite of this fear, she excites pity by appearing more afflicted, more fragile, more nec- essitous of love, and more liable to disil- lusions than any other creature. Man has been arrested before woman with one foot already in tragedy! Is woman about to be disenchanted? It is a crime and a mistake to keep women ignorant of erotics during the years of education previous to their marriage. Their frail ideas too often break down after so suddenly experienc- ing the combination of a god and an an- imal in the man they love. 24 NIETZSCHE To be mistaken about the problem of woman, to overlook sex-antagonism, to dream of equal rights, duties, etc., are typical signs of shallow-mindedness. A profound man can only, like Orientals, consider woman as property, as a being whose predestined mission is domesticity. LIBERTY 26 LIBERTY. HE worth of a thing often lies, not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it—what it costs. Let me give an example. Democracy immediately ceases to mean freedom as soon as it is attained; afterward, there is no more mischievous or more bitter enemy of liberty..... It undermines the will to power, it gives the levelling ten- dency the authority of a moral impulse, it makes people small, cowardly and sat- isfied.... But democracy produces quite different effects so long as it is being fought for; it then, in fact, furthers freedom in a powerful manner. On looking into the matter more accurately, we see that it is the warfare itself which produces these effects—a warfare for liberal institutions which, as warfare, al- lows z/liberal instincts to have sway. And warfare prepares a man for free- dom. For what is freedom? The will to be responsible for oneself. The will to keep one’s distance. The will to be- 26 NIETZSCHE come indifferent to hardship, severity, privation, to life itself. The will to sacrifice men to one’s cause—and oneself, too. Freedom implies that the manly in- stincts, which delight in war and victory, have dominion over all other instincts— including the instinct to be “happy.” The man who is truly free treads under foot that contemptible species..of security dreamt of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is a warrior! How is freedom to be measured, in in- dividuals, as well as in nations? By the resistence which has to be overcome, by the effort which it costs to preserve autonomy. We must seek the highest type of freeman where the greatest re- sistence is constantly being overcome— five paces from tyranny, close to the threshold of thraldom....Those peoples who were worth something, who became worth something, never won their great- ness under liberal institutions. Great danger made something out of them which deserves our reverence—that sort of danger which first teaches us to know our resources, our virtues, our shield and sword, our genitus—which compels us to DeweStLOnge.. sone: Those great forcing- LIBERTY 27 houses of the strong—the strongest spe- cies of man that has hitherto existed—the aristocratic commonwealth of Rome and Venice, understood the word freedom as I understand it; that is to say, as some- thing which one has and has not, as something which one eternally desires and eternally wins by conquest. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 38 28 NIETZSCHE THE LABOR PROBLEM. HE fact that there is now a labor problem is to be blamed upon stu- pidity—or, at the bottom, upon that degeneration of the will to power which is the cause of all stupidity...... I do not at all understand what people want to do with the workingman, now that they have made a question of him. He finds himself situated far too advantage- ously to refrain from asking further questions himself, and always with de- creasing modesty. ‘The majority, at last, is now on his side. There is no longer any hope that a modest and humble spe- cies of human being, after the Chinese type, will constitute itself into a work- ing class. It would have been the ration- al course to build up such a class...... but what have people done? Everything to annihilate even the germ of the pre- requisite for such a course! By the most appalling thoughtlessness they have destroyed the instincts by virtue of which the workingman becomes possible as a LABOR 29 class. He has been made capable of military service, he has been given the right of combination and the right of the franchise. No wonder he already feels his class-existence as a state of disagreeable necessity (or, in terms of morality, as injustice)! But what do people want? Let it be asked once more. If they want to realize an end, they must be willing to use sensible means to that end. If they want to have slaves, it is foolish to educate them to be masters. —Gatzendammerung, IX, 40 30 NIETZSCHE PROGRESS. moral? The fact that all the world believes we are is in itself a reason to doubt it. We modern men—very delicate, very easily injured, giving and demanding consideration in a hundred ways—we flatter ourselves with the no- tion that this delicate humanity of ours, this realized unanimity in forbearance, helplessness and mutual trust, is a sign of progress, and that because of it we are above the men of the Renaissance. Every age, however, thinks of itself in this manner; it is ob/iged to think thus. But it is certain that we could not live under Renaissance conditions. We can- not even conceive ourselves living under them. Our nerves would not stand it, not to speak of our skins. But our in- capacity is no proof of progress. It only shows that we have reached a different, a later condition; that we are weaker, tenderer and more easily injured. Out of this change humanitarian morality has A RE we really becoming more PROGRESS 31 been evolved. If we could think of our- selves as lacking our present tenderness, (our lateness, our physiological senility) our humanitarian morality would forth- with lose its value. No morality has any value in itself. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 37 Many chains have been put upon man in order that he may learn to behave less like an animal; and in truth he has become more gentle, intellectual, bright and cautious than any other animal. Now, however, he suffers from the effects of these chains and the lack of pure air and free movement. These chains are—lI re- peat it again and again—the heavy and overpowering errors of moral, religious, metaphysical concepts. When the chains and their effects have been cast off, the first great goal is reached; the separation of man from beast. We are now just be- ginning to cast off the chains, and for this we need the greatest caution. 32 NIETZSCHE THE CRIMINAL. HE criminal type is the type of the strong man under unfavorable con- ditions—the strong man who has been made sick. He lacks the wildness, with its freer and more dangerous en- vironment—a state of existence in which all that is offensive and defensive in his instincts is regarded as right. His vir- tues are put under the ban by society, and so most powerful impulses in- stinctive to him become associated with depressing concepts—with fear, susp1- cion and disgrace. ‘This, unluckily, is almost the recipe for producing physio- logical degeneration. ‘The man who must do secretly and by stealth, and in the face of constant danger, the thing that he can best do, and that he most desires to do—this man inevitably be- comes anaemic. And because his yield- ing to his instincts is followed inevitably by danger, persecution and calamity, his sentiment toward those instincts changes. He begins to regard them, in a word, THE CRIMINAL 33 as harmful. In our domesticated, me- diocre, emasculated society, a man com- ing from the mountains or from seafar- ing adventures, with his natural instincts unimpaired, necessarily degenerates into a criminal,—or almost necessarily, for there are, of course, cases in which such a man proves himself stronger than soci- ety. The Corsican Napoleon offers the Sigsumecienrated example. ix.” Let us generalize the criminal. Let us look into the character of those persons who, for any reason whatever, lack the good opinion of the public—who know that they are not regarded as useful members of society—who have the Chandala’s feeling that they are counted inferior, outcast, unworthy and defiling. All such men take on a subterranean color in their thoughts and actions; everything in them becomes paler than in those whose lives are lived in daylight...... But almost all classes of men whom we now honor once lived in this semi-sepulchural at- mosphere—the scientific man, artist, the genius, the free spirit, the actor, the mer- chant, the great discoverer. As long, in- deed, as the priest passed for the highest type of man, every truly valuable class was depreciated..... But the time. comes 34 NIETZSCHE —I promise it!—when the priest will be regarded as the /owest type—as the most mendacious, the most disreputable vari- ety of human being. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 45 FAITH 36 FAITH. A LL great intellects are skeptical .strength and masterful intel- ligence reveal themselves by skep- ticism. Men of fixed conviction are not worth consulting when an effort is being made to determine the fundamental val- uations. Convictions are prisons. Men who hold to them do not see far enough —they do not see be/ow themselves. But to be entitled to a voice in the determina- tion of values one must be able to see five hundred convictions be/ow oneself—be- hind oneself. An intellect which reaches out for the great truths, and for the means to their attainment, is necessarily Berit 3) VLA. On the other hand, the need of a belief, of something that 1s unconditioned by Ved Or Navan (hs is a need of weakness. ‘The man of faith, the true believer of any kind, is necessarily a dependent man...... Every variety of belief is, in itself, an exaggeration of self- abegnation,..... —Der Antichrist, 54 36 NIETZSCHE It is so little true that a martyr proves the truth of his cause that I am constrained to deny that a martyr ever has anything to do with the truth...... Martyrdoms have been a great misfor- tune in history, for they have seduced. The inference of all idiots (women and the mob included) that a doctrine for which a man lays down his life (or which, like primitive Christianity, en- genders an epidemic of the desire to die for it) is necessarily an important one— this inference has always been an un- speakable drag upon the search for the eu G ATL The martyrs, in a word, have injured the truth...... Even at the pres- ent time some sort of persecution is all that is needed to give an honorable name to the most indifferent doctrine. But is it true that the credibility of a doctrine is altered in the slightest degree by the fact that someone is willing to die for it? No; an error which thus becomes honorable is merely an error which takes on an additional capacity for seduction. Do you fancy, Messrs. the theologians, that we will give you a chance to suffer martyrdom for your lies? The right way to refute an error is to lay it respectfully on ice; it is just so that one refutes FAITH 37 theologians. It showed the grand his- torical stupidity of all persecutors that they gave an honorable aspect to the cause of their opponents—that they added to it, as a free gift, the additional fascination of martyrdom. Woman is still prostrate on her knees before one error because she has been told that someone died for it on the cross. But 1s the cross an argument? Der Antichrist, 53 28 NIETZSCHE FREE WILL. E have no longer any sympathy with the notion of free will; we know only too well what it is— the most disreputable of all theological devices for making men “responsible” (that is, in thezr sense of the word) so that they become dependent upon theologians. ... Whenever you encounter an attempt to establish responsibility, you will al- ways find a yearning to punish and con- demn at the bottom of it... The dogma of free will was devised principally for the purpose of punishing, 7. e. with the in- tention of finding guilty. ‘The old psy- chology—will-psychology—would have been impossible but for the fact that its originators (the priests at the head of the old commonwealths) wanted to create for themselves a right to impose punishment—or a right for God to do so. Men were imagined to be free in order that they might be condemned and punished—in order that they might be found guilty. Consequently, every act FREE WILL 39 had to be thought of as voluntary, and the origin of every act had to be thought of as residing in consciousness. We who have entered upon a movement in the op- posite direction—we immoralists who endeavor, with our will to power, to rid the world of its notions of guilt and pun- ishment, and to cleanse psychology, his- tory, nature and society from these notions—we face, in these days, no more fundamental antagonism than that of the theologians, who, with their notion of a “moral order of the world,” go on taint- ing the innocence of life with punish- ment and guilt. Christianity is the hang- man’s. metaphysic! —Gotzendammerung, VI, 7 40 NIETZSCHE | PATRIOTISM. N TE good Europeans are not French enough to “love man- kind.” A man must be afflicted by an excess of Gallic eroticism to ap- proach mankind with ardor. Mankind! Was there ever a more hideous old wom- an among all the old women?....No, we do not love mankind!....On the other hand, we are not German enough to ad- vocate nationalism and race hatred, or to take delight in that national blood- poisoning which sets up quarantines be- tween the nations of Europe. We are too unprejudiced for that—too perverse, too fastidious, too well-informed, too much traveled. We prefer to live on mountains —apart, unseasonable..... We srarcetoo diverse and mixed in race to be patriots. We are, in a word, good Europeans—the rich heirs of milleniums of European thoueht seca. We rejoice in everything which, like ourselves, loves danger, war, adven- ture—which does not make compromises, PATRIOTISM 41 nor let itself be captured, conciliated or Racer LS; k 0: We ponder over the need of a new order of things—even of a new slavery, for the strengthening and eleva- tion of the human race always involves the existence of slaves. —Die frohliche Wissenschaft, 377 42 NIETZSCHE THE SUPERMAN. somthing that shall be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass hime All beings that have come into the world heretofore have created something beyond themselves. Are ye going to be — the ebb of the tide? Are ye going back to the animal or ahead to the superman? What to man is the ape?e A joke or a sore shame. Man shall be the same to the superman—a joke or a sore shame. Ye have made your way from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once ye were apes, but even now man is but an ape greater than any ape... Behold, I teach you the superman! —Also sprach Zarathustra, I a teach you the superman! Man is Man is a rope connecting animal and superman—a rope over a preci- THE SUPERMAN 43 The greatness of man lies in this: ~ that he is a bridge and not a goal. The thing that can be loved in man is this: matene is a transition. and an exit... I love those who do not seek beyond the stars for reasons to perish and be sacrificed, but who sacrifice themselves to earth that earth may one day bring forth the superman. —Also sprach Zarathustra, I 44 NIETZSCHE BEAUTY. OTHING is more conditioned, or N rate: restricted, than our notion of the beautiful. A person who tried to think of it as detached from de- light of man in himself would immedi- ately lose his way. ‘The “beautiful-in- itself” is an expression only and not even a concept. In considering beauty, man always posits himself as the standard of perfection; in some cases he even wor- ships himself as that standard. A species cannot possibly do otherwise than thus say yea to itself. Its lowest instinct, that of simple self-preservation and self- expression, casts its shadow upon even such sublimities. Man affects to believe that the world itself is overcharged with beauty: he forgets that he himself is the cause of it. He alone has endowed it with beauty—and only, alas! with very human, all-too-human beauty!....Man mirrors himself in things. He counts everything beautiful which reflects his likeness. When he calls a thing beauti- BEAUTY 46 ful he merely displays his conceit in his species. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 19 Nothing is beautiful, except man; all aesthetics are founded upon this naivete, it is their first truth. Let us straightway add their second ; ‘nothing is ugly, except the degenerating man)... Whatever is ugly weakens and troubles man. It reminds him of deterioration, danger, impotence; he actually suffers loss of power in contemplating it. When- ever man is depressed he has a sense of the proximity of something “ugly.” His sense of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—all sink with the ugly and rise with the beautiful. ‘The ugly is instinctively recognized as a sign and symptom of degeneration; that which reminds us in the remotest manner of degeneracy prompts us to pronounce the verdict of “ugly.” Every indication of exhaustion, heaviness, age or lassi- tude; every variety of constraint, such as a cramp or paralysis; and above all, the odour,color and likeness of decom- position or putrefaction, be it attenuated even to a mere symbol—all these things 46 NIETZSCHE call for the same reaction, the evaluation “ugly.” A hatred is thereby excited— and what is it that man hates? ‘There can be no doubt; it is the decline of his type. That hatred is inspired by the most profound instinct of the species; there is horror, foresight, profundity and _ far- reaching vision in it—it is the profoundest of all hatreds. On account of it, art is profound. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 20 ART 47 ART. HE fight against a purpose in art is always a fight against the moraliz- ing tendency in art—against its sub- ordination to morality. ‘Art for art’s sake” means “The devil take morality!” But....when the purpose of the ethical preacher and the improver of mankind has been excluded from art, it does not at all follow that art itself is without a purpose, without a goal, without mean- ing....‘‘No purpose at all, rather than a moral purpose!”—this is mere passion speaking. A psychologist, on the con- trary, asks the question: What does all art do? Does it not praise? Does it not glorify? Does it not select? Does it not bring into prominence? In all these cases it strengthens or weakens certain valuations...... isithisconlys:2 ers an ac- cident? —Gaotzendammerung, IX, 24 48 NIETZSCHE DEATH. ATURAL death is death under the N tvs contemptible conditions. It is involuntary death, death at the wrong time, a coward’s death...... We should desire a different kind of death— voluntary, conscious, not accidental or bysurprise:, va) When a man does away with himself he does the noblest thing in the world. By doing it, he almost proves his right to live. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 36 Under certain conditions it is im- proper to live any longer. Continued vegetation in cowardly dependence upon physicians and prescriptions, after the © meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost, should entail the profound con- tempt of humanity. —Gotzendammerung, IX, 36 DEATH AQ Natural death is destitute of ration- ality. It is really irrational death, for the pitiable substance of the shell deter- mines how long the kernel shall endure. The pining, sottish prison-warder de- cides the hour at which his noble prisoner Tet IGS The enlightened regula- tion and control of death belongs to the morality of the future. Pernice allzu Menschliches, III 105 I sing unto you my death, my free death, which cometh because I will it! And when shall I will it? He who hath a goal and an heir wishest death to come at the right time for goal and heir. And out of reverence for goal and heir he will hang up no more withered wreaths in the sanctuary of life...... And whosoever wisheth fame, must in due season say farewell to honor, and achieve the difficult task of departing at the right time. One must cease to be eaten at the time one tasteth best. He who would be loved for long must know that. —Also sprach Zarathustra, I. 50 NIETZSCHE MINOR SAYINGS. HAT does not kill me, strength- ens me. ; Help thyself; then everyone else helps thee. How is it? Is man only a mistake of God?e Or God only a mistake of mane Contentment is a prophylactic. Has any woman who knew she was well dressed ever caught cold? There is a hatred of lying due to a sensitive notion of honor; there is also a hatred of lying due to the fact that it is forbidden by a divine command. Thus, a man may be too cowardly to tell lies. How little is required for happiness! The sound of a bagpipe! The most important fruit of human effort in the past is that we need no MINOR SAYINGS 51 longer live in dread of wild beasts, barbarians, gods and our own dreams. Civilization aims at making all good things—honors, treasure, fair women— accessible even to cowards. Dante—the hyena poetizing in tombs! Zola—the delight to stink! George Sand—a milch-cow with a grand manner! Sainte-Beuve—a female, after all, with a woman’s revengefulness and a wo- an’s sensousness! The Brothers Goncourt — the two Ajaxes struggling with Homer; music by Offenbach! The greatest modern event—that God is dead—that the Christian God has become unworthy of belief—has now begun to cast its shadows over Europe. The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age. Nothing is rarer among moralists and saints than rectitude. 52 NIETZSCHE At the bottom of all distinguished races the beast of prey is not to be mis- taken—the magnificent blood beast roam- ing wantonly in search of prey and vic- tory. You say that a good cause will sanc- « tify even war! I tell you that a good _war will sanctify any cause! You should love peace as a means to new war, and the short peace more than the long. This new table, brethren, I put up for you: “Be hard!” He who cannot lie doesn’t know what truth is. The idealist is incorrigible; if one casts him out of his heaven, he makes an ideal of his hell. There is a superfluity of goodness which is like wickedness. FRANCE 53 FRANCE. bility, of taste, and nobleness has been the work and creation of France. Even today France is the refuge of the most intellectual and refined cult- ure, and is still the great school of taste. Schopenhauer is more to this France of taste than he ever was to the Germans. Heine has long since passed into the flesh and blood of the best Parisian lyrics; and Hegel, in the person of Taine, exercises an almost tyrannical sway. As to Wag- ner, the more French music adapts itself to the exigencies of the modern soul, the more will it become Wagnerized. \ LL that Europe has known of sensi- 54 NIETZSCHE WEAKNESS ELIEF of some kind is always B most urgently needed when Will is lacking. For Will, as the love of command, is the distinguishing char- acteristic of strength and independence. The less a man understands the art of commanding, the more he longs for a commander, be it a person, a belief, or a conviction. We are therefore perhaps not far wrong if we consider the two world-religions, Buddhism and Christ- lanity, as having their origin, and es- pecially their sudden expansion, in an im- mense weakness and decrease of volition. Both religions found a desire existing for a “Thou shalt,” a desire caused by a disease of Will-power. They offered happiness to numberless weak souls, for they taught them fanaticism; and fan- aticism is the only exercise of the Will to which the feeble and the uncertain can attain, through a kind of hypnotising of their whole sensual and intellectual sys- tem, which results in the over-nourish- WEAKNESS 55 ment and over-development of one single point of view. ‘This one point of view dominates them—and this the Christian calls his Faith. 56 NIETZSCHE INTELLECTUAL JEALOUSY. HERE is this difference between sociable and solitary intellectual na- tures; the former are contented with anything, as soon as their intellects have a communicable, favorable version of it; but the lonely souls have their silent rapt- ure, their speechless agony. They loath the ingenious, brilliant display of their in- nermost problems as sincerely as seeing their beloved too gaudily dressed; they watch her with mournful eyes, as though with a dawning suspicion that she is de- sirous of pleasing others. Such is the jealousy which all lonely thinkers and passionate dreamers display with regard to “esprit.” THE GENTLEMAN 57 THE GENTLEMAN. HE demeanor of high-born persons shows plainly that in their minds the consciousness of power is ever- present. Above all things, they strive to avoid a show of weakness, whether it takes the form of inefficiency or of a too- easy yielding to passion or emotion. ‘They never sink exhausted into a chair. On the train, when the vulgar try to make them- selves comfortable, these higher folk avoid reclining. They do not seem to get tired after hours of standing at court. They do not furnish their houses in a com- fortable, but in a spacious and dignified manner, as if they were the abodes of a taller race of beings. To a provoking speech, they reply, with politeness and self-possession—and not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, en- raged or out of breath, after the manner of plebeians. The aristocrat knows how to preserve the appearance of ever-pres- ent physical strength, and he knows, too, how to convey the impression that his soul 58 NIETZSCHE and intellect are a match to all dangers and surprises, by keeping up an unchang- ing serenity and civility, even under the most trying circumstances. Morgenraote, § 201. THE JEWS 59 THE JEWS. HE Jews will either become the masters of Europe or lose Europe, as they once lost Egypt. And it seems to be improbable that they will lose again. In Europe, for eighteen centur- ies, they have passed through a school more terrible than that known to any other nation, and the experiences of this time of stress and storm have benefitted the individual more than the community. In consequence, the resourcefulness and alertness of the modern Jew are extraor- Selah Vey: In times of extremity, the people of Israel less often sought refuge in drink and suicide than any other race of Europe. ‘Today, every Jew finds in the history of his forebears a voluminous record of coolness and perseverance in terrible predicaments—of artful cunning and clever fencing with chance and mis- fortune. The Jews have hid their brave- ry under the cloak of submissiveness; their heroism in facing contempt surpas- ses that of the saints. People tried to 60 NIETZSCHE make them contemptible for twenty cen- turies by refusing them all honors and dignities and by pushing them down into the mean trades. The process did not make them cleaner, alas! but neither did it make them contemptible. Morgenrote § 205. PRESS COMMENT on THE PHILOSOPHY OF NIETZSCHE. “He (Mr. Mencken) has writ- ten one of the most interesting and instructive books that has come from the American press in many a long day” —The Educational Review. (Edited by Nicholas Murray Butler.) “As time goes on Nietzsche, Wagner and Ibsen bid fair to be- come, if they have not already reached that eminence, the most widely discussed Europeans of the latter nineteenth century...It does not flaunt obscurities in the face of the unenlightened reader nor does it offend the knowledge of the Nietzschean expert. After read. ing Mr. Mencken, we need no longer look at Nietzsche askance.” —Boston Evening Transcript “Tt is an illuminating and eventful work. His clear and con- cise exposition of the ‘overlord and underman’ system of social regulation, elaborated in Nietz- sche’s works, should command a large measure of popular interest and attention.” —Philadelphia North American. “Though we dissent profound- ly from the appreciation of Nietz- sche expressed in this volume, (The Philosophy of Freidrich Nietzsche), we have to thank the author for his keen analysis and clear statement of the ideas and principals that characterize the philosophy of the Superman.” —The Catholic World. FREIDRICH NIETZSCHE The standard work in English on the subject of Nietzsche’s phil- Mr. Mencken, after presenting a careful biography to the reader, proceeds to analyze and arrange logical sequence Nietzsche’s philosophic system, The result is ‘a full, clear and impartial presen- tation of the teachings of this most radical thinker whose influence is sO apparent in all progressive thought of the present time. The subject is presented not only in a thoughtful but entertain- ing style while the keen insight which the author has into the in- fluences which this philosophy is exercising in all fields of activity today adds greatly to its value. Crown octavo. Cloth, with etched portrait. 325 pages. Price $2. net. Postage 15 cents. John W. Luce and Company THE PHILOSOPHY of by Henry L. Mencken Boston is i Ms 1 At A Teta a PRUARY ‘ ' wii eo: SS ree oS a } te z=