Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None - 21

same mistaken tactics on the part of most publishers, all proceed in the
same happy-go-lucky style when “taking him up.” They have had it said to
them that he wrote without any system, and they very naturally conclude
that it does not matter in the least whether they begin with his first,
third, or last book, provided they can obtain a few vague ideas as to
what his leading and most sensational principles were.
Now, it is clear that the book with the most mysterious, startling, or
suggestive title, will always stand the best chance of being purchased
by those who have no other criteria to guide them in their choice
than the aspect of a title-page; and this explains why “Thus Spake
Zarathustra” is almost always the first and often the only one of
Nietzsche’s books that falls into the hands of the uninitiated.
The title suggests all kinds of mysteries; a glance at the
chapter-headings quickly confirms the suspicions already aroused,
and the sub-title: “A Book for All and None”, generally succeeds in
dissipating the last doubts the prospective purchaser may entertain
concerning his fitness for the book or its fitness for him. And what
happens?
“Thus Spake Zarathustra” is taken home; the reader, who perchance may
know no more concerning Nietzsche than a magazine article has told him,
tries to read it and, understanding less than half he reads, probably
never gets further than the second or third part,—and then only to feel
convinced that Nietzsche himself was “rather hazy” as to what he was
talking about. Such chapters as “The Child with the Mirror”, “In the
Happy Isles”, “The Grave-Song,” “Immaculate Perception,” “The Stillest
Hour”, “The Seven Seals”, and many others, are almost utterly devoid of
meaning to all those who do not know something of Nietzsche’s life, his
aims and his friendships.
As a matter of fact, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, though it is
unquestionably Nietzsche’s opus magnum, is by no means the first of
Nietzsche’s works that the beginner ought to undertake to read. The
author himself refers to it as the deepest work ever offered to the
German public, and elsewhere speaks of his other writings as being
necessary for the understanding of it. But when it is remembered that
in Zarathustra we not only have the history of his most intimate
experiences, friendships, feuds, disappointments, triumphs and the like,
but that the very form in which they are narrated is one which tends
rather to obscure than to throw light upon them, the difficulties which
meet the reader who starts quite unprepared will be seen to be really
formidable.
Zarathustra, then,—this shadowy, allegorical personality, speaking in
allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating
his own dreams—is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we
have no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche;
and it were therefore well, previous to our study of the more abstruse
parts of this book, if we were to turn to some authoritative book on
Nietzsche’s life and works and to read all that is there said on the
subject. Those who can read German will find an excellent guide, in this
respect, in Frau Foerster-Nietzsche’s exhaustive and highly interesting
biography of her brother: “Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s” (published
by Naumann); while the works of Deussen, Raoul Richter, and Baroness
Isabelle von Unger-Sternberg, will be found to throw useful and
necessary light upon many questions which it would be difficult for a
sister to touch upon.
In regard to the actual philosophical views expounded in this work,
there is an excellent way of clearing up any difficulties they may
present, and that is by an appeal to Nietzsche’s other works. Again and
again, of course, he will be found to express himself so clearly that
all reference to his other writings may be dispensed with; but where
this is not the case, the advice he himself gives is after all the best
to be followed here, viz.:—to regard such works as: “Joyful Science”,
“Beyond Good and Evil”, “The Genealogy of Morals”, “The Twilight of
the Idols”, “The Antichrist”, “The Will to Power”, etc., etc., as the
necessary preparation for “Thus Spake Zarathustra”.
These directions, though they are by no means simple to carry out, seem
at least to possess the quality of definiteness and straightforwardness.
“Follow them and all will be clear,” I seem to imply. But I regret to
say that this is not really the case. For my experience tells me that
even after the above directions have been followed with the greatest
possible zeal, the student will still halt in perplexity before certain
passages in the book before us, and wonder what they mean. Now, it is
with the view of giving a little additional help to all those who find
themselves in this position that I proceed to put forth my own personal
interpretation of the more abstruse passages in this work.
In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should
like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or
indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part—a very feeble
one perhaps—to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting
difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche’s life and works has
enabled me, partially I hope, to overcome.
...
Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch
of Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that
the reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all
passages in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche’s views in those
three important branches of knowledge.
(A.) Nietzsche and Morality.
In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the
relativist. He says there are no absolute values “good” and “evil”;
these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to
maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the
lion’s good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly’s
good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in
danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is
practically this: “I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be
of no use to thee.” This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for
it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively
adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence
or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is
found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality
of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All
species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion’s good is
the antelope’s evil and vice versa.
Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means
to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power.
Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian
moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely
an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of
Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.
Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons
of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war
between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted
on the one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the
ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moral principles.
The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or
MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls
SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking
down upon a browsing lamb, contends that “eating lamb is good.” In the
second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the
sward, bleats dissentingly: “Eating lamb is evil.”
(B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared.
The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian. The second is
passive, defensive,—to it belongs the “struggle for existence.”
Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they
may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which
proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness,
and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is
“the struggle for power.” The antithesis “good and bad” to this
first class means the same as “noble” and “despicable.” “Bad” in the
master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring
from weakness, to the man with “an eye to the main chance,” who would
forsake everything in order to live.
With the second, the slave-morality, the case is different. There,
inasmuch as the community is an oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, and
weary one, all THAT will be held to be good which alleviates the
state of suffering. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience,
industry, and humility—these are unquestionably the qualities we shall
here find flooded with the light of approval and admiration; because
they are the most USEFUL qualities—; they make life endurable, they are
of assistance in the “struggle for existence” which is the motive force
behind the people practising this morality. To this class, all that is
AWFUL is bad, in fact it is THE evil par excellence. Strength, health,
superabundance of animal spirits and power, are regarded with hate,
suspicion, and fear by the subordinate class.
Now Nietzsche believed that the first or the noble-morality conduced to
an ascent in the line of life; because it was creative and active. On
the other hand, he believed that the second or slave-morality, where
it became paramount, led to degeneration, because it was passive and
defensive, wanting merely to keep those who practised it alive. Hence
his earnest advocacy of noble-morality.
(C.) Nietzsche and Evolution.
Nietzsche as an evolutionist I shall have occasion to define and discuss
in the course of these notes (see Notes on Chapter LVI., par. 10, and on
Chapter LVII.). For the present let it suffice for us to know that he
accepted the “Development Hypothesis” as an explanation of the origin of
species: but he did not halt where most naturalists have halted. He
by no means regarded man as the highest possible being which evolution
could arrive at; for though his physical development may have reached
its limit, this is not the case with his mental or spiritual attributes.
If the process be a fact; if things have BECOME what they are, then, he
contends, we may describe no limit to man’s aspirations. If he struggled
up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates,
his ideal should be to surpass man himself and reach Superman (see
especially the Prologue).
(D.) Nietzsche and Sociology.
Nietzsche as a sociologist aims at an aristocratic arrangement of
society. He would have us rear an ideal race. Honest and truthful in
intellectual matters, he could not even think that men are equal. “With
these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For
thus speaketh justice unto ME: ‘Men are not equal.’” He sees precisely
in this inequality a purpose to be served, a condition to be exploited.
“Every elevation of the type ‘man,’” he writes in “Beyond Good and
Evil”, “has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society—and so
will it always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of
rank and differences of worth among human beings.”
Those who are sufficiently interested to desire to read his own detailed
account of the society he would fain establish, will find an excellent
passage in Aphorism 57 of “The Antichrist”.
...
PART I. THE PROLOGUE.
In Part I. including the Prologue, no very great difficulties will
appear. Zarathustra’s habit of designating a whole class of men or a
whole school of thought by a single fitting nickname may perhaps lead to
a little confusion at first; but, as a rule, when the general drift
of his arguments is grasped, it requires but a slight effort of the
imagination to discover whom he is referring to. In the ninth paragraph
of the Prologue, for instance, it is quite obvious that “Herdsmen” in
the verse “Herdsmen, I say, etc., etc.,” stands for all those to-day
who are the advocates of gregariousness—of the ant-hill. And when our
author says: “A robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen,” it
is clear that these words may be taken almost literally from one whose
ideal was the rearing of a higher aristocracy. Again, “the good and
just,” throughout the book, is the expression used in referring to the
self-righteous of modern times,—those who are quite sure that they
know all that is to be known concerning good and evil, and are satisfied
that the values their little world of tradition has handed down to them,
are destined to rule mankind as long as it lasts.
In the last paragraph of the Prologue, verse 7, Zarathustra gives us a
foretaste of his teaching concerning the big and the little sagacities,
expounded subsequently. He says he would he were as wise as his serpent;
this desire will be found explained in the discourse entitled “The
Despisers of the Body”, which I shall have occasion to refer to later.
...
THE DISCOURSES.
Chapter I. The Three Metamorphoses.
This opening discourse is a parable in which Zarathustra discloses the
mental development of all creators of new values. It is the story of
a life which reaches its consummation in attaining to a second
ingenuousness or in returning to childhood. Nietzsche, the supposed
anarchist, here plainly disclaims all relationship whatever to anarchy,
for he shows us that only by bearing the burdens of the existing law and
submitting to it patiently, as the camel submits to being laden, does
the free spirit acquire that ascendancy over tradition which enables him
to meet and master the dragon “Thou shalt,”—the dragon with the values
of a thousand years glittering on its scales. There are two lessons in
this discourse: first, that in order to create one must be as a little
child; secondly, that it is only through existing law and order that
one attains to that height from which new law and new order may be
promulgated.
Chapter II. The Academic Chairs of Virtue.
Almost the whole of this is quite comprehensible. It is a discourse
against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and
who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and tends to
deepen sleep.
Chapter IV. The Despisers of the Body.
Here Zarathustra gives names to the intellect and the instincts; he
calls the one “the little sagacity” and the latter “the big sagacity.”
Schopenhauer’s teaching concerning the intellect is fully endorsed here.
“An instrument of thy body is also thy little sagacity, my brother,
which thou callest ‘spirit,’” says Zarathustra. From beginning to end it
is a warning to those who would think too lightly of the instincts
and unduly exalt the intellect and its derivatives: Reason and
Understanding.
Chapter IX. The Preachers of Death.
This is an analysis of the psychology of all those who have the “evil
eye” and are pessimists by virtue of their constitutions.
Chapter XV. The Thousand and One Goals.
In this discourse Zarathustra opens his exposition of the doctrine of
relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means
to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the
Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the
penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of
modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man has no goal, no
aim, no ideals (see Note A).
Chapter XVIII. Old and Young Women.
Nietzsche’s views on women have either to be loved at first sight
or they become perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who
otherwise would be inclined to accept his philosophy. Women especially,
of course, have been taught to dislike them, because it has been
rumoured that his views are unfriendly to themselves. Now, to my mind,
all this is pure misunderstanding and error.
German philosophers, thanks to Schopenhauer, have earned rather a bad
name for their views on women. It is almost impossible for one of them
to write a line on the subject, however kindly he may do so, without
being suspected of wishing to open a crusade against the fair sex.
Despite the fact, therefore, that all Nietzsche’s views in this respect
were dictated to him by the profoundest love; despite Zarathustra’s
reservation in this discourse, that “with women nothing (that can be
said) is impossible,” and in the face of other overwhelming evidence
to the contrary, Nietzsche is universally reported to have mis son
pied dans le plat, where the female sex is concerned. And what is the
fundamental doctrine which has given rise to so much bitterness and
aversion?—Merely this: that the sexes are at bottom ANTAGONISTIC—that
is to say, as different as blue is from yellow, and that the best
possible means of rearing anything approaching a desirable race is to
preserve and to foster this profound hostility. What Nietzsche strives
to combat and to overthrow is the modern democratic tendency which is
slowly labouring to level all things—even the sexes. His quarrel is not
with women—what indeed could be more undignified?—it is with those who
would destroy the natural relationship between the sexes, by modifying
either the one or the other with a view to making them more alike. The
human world is just as dependent upon women’s powers as upon men’s. It
is women’s strongest and most valuable instincts which help to determine
who are to be the fathers of the next generation. By destroying these
particular instincts, that is to say by attempting to masculinise woman,
and to feminise men, we jeopardise the future of our people. The general
democratic movement of modern times, in its frantic struggle to mitigate
all differences, is now invading even the world of sex. It is against
this movement that Nietzsche raises his voice; he would have woman
become ever more woman and man become ever more man. Only thus, and
he is undoubtedly right, can their combined instincts lead to the
excellence of humanity. Regarded in this light, all his views on woman
appear not only necessary but just (see Note on Chapter LVI., par. 21.)
It is interesting to observe that the last line of the discourse, which
has so frequently been used by women as a weapon against Nietzsche’s
views concerning them, was suggested to Nietzsche by a woman (see “Das
Leben F. Nietzsche’s”).
Chapter XXI. Voluntary Death.
In regard to this discourse, I should only like to point out that
Nietzsche had a particular aversion to the word “suicide”—self-murder.
He disliked the evil it suggested, and in rechristening the act
Voluntary Death, i.e., the death that comes from no other hand than
one’s own, he was desirous of elevating it to the position it held in
classical antiquity (see Aphorism 36 in “The Twilight of the Idols”).
Chapter XXII. The Bestowing Virtue.
An important aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is brought to light in
this discourse. His teaching, as is well known, places the Aristotelian
man of spirit, above all others in the natural divisions of man. The
man with overflowing strength, both of mind and body, who must discharge
this strength or perish, is the Nietzschean ideal. To such a man, giving
from his overflow becomes a necessity; bestowing develops into a means
of existence, and this is the only giving, the only charity, that
Nietzsche recognises. In paragraph 3 of the discourse, we read
Zarathustra’s healthy exhortation to his disciples to become independent
thinkers and to find themselves before they learn any more from him (see
Notes on Chapters LVI., par. 5, and LXXIII., pars. 10, 11).
...
PART II.
Chapter XXIII. The Child with the Mirror.
Nietzsche tells us here, in a poetical form, how deeply grieved he was
by the manifold misinterpretations and misunderstandings which were
becoming rife concerning his publications. He does not recognise
himself in the mirror of public opinion, and recoils terrified from the
distorted reflection of his features. In verse 20 he gives us a
hint which it were well not to pass over too lightly; for, in the
introduction to “The Genealogy of Morals” (written in 1887) he finds it
necessary to refer to the matter again and with greater precision. The
point is this, that a creator of new values meets with his surest and
strongest obstacles in the very spirit of the language which is at his
disposal. Words, like all other manifestations of an evolving race, are
stamped with the values that have long been paramount in that race.
Now, the original thinker who finds himself compelled to use the current
speech of his country in order to impart new and hitherto untried views
to his fellows, imposes a task upon the natural means of communication
which it is totally unfitted to perform,—hence the obscurities and
prolixities which are so frequently met with in the writings of original
thinkers. In the “Dawn of Day”, Nietzsche actually cautions young
writers against THE DANGER OF ALLOWING THEIR THOUGHTS TO BE MOULDED BY
THE WORDS AT THEIR DISPOSAL.
Chapter XXIV. In the Happy Isles.
While writing this, Nietzsche is supposed to have been thinking of the
island of Ischia which was ultimately destroyed by an earthquake. His
teaching here is quite clear. He was among the first thinkers of Europe
to overcome the pessimism which godlessness generally brings in its
wake. He points to creating as the surest salvation from the suffering
which is a concomitant of all higher life. “What would there be to
create,” he asks, “if there were—Gods?” His ideal, the Superman, lends
him the cheerfulness necessary to the overcoming of that despair usually
attendant upon godlessness and upon the apparent aimlessness of a world
without a god.
Chapter XXIX. The Tarantulas.
The tarantulas are the Socialists and Democrats. This discourse offers
us an analysis of their mental attitude. Nietzsche refuses to be
confounded with those resentful and revengeful ones who condemn society
FROM BELOW, and whose criticism is only suppressed envy. “There are
those who preach my doctrine of life,” he says of the Nietzschean
Socialists, “and are at the same time preachers of equality and
tarantulas” (see Notes on Chapter XL. and Chapter LI.).
Chapter XXX. The Famous Wise Ones.
This refers to all those philosophers hitherto, who have run in the
harness of established values and have not risked their reputation with
the people in pursuit of truth. The philosopher, however, as Nietzsche
understood him, is a man who creates new values, and thus leads mankind
in a new direction.
Chapter XXXIII. The Grave-Song.
Here Zarathustra sings about the ideals and friendships of his youth.
Verses 27 to 31 undoubtedly refer to Richard Wagner (see Note on Chapter
LXV.).
Chapter XXXIV. Self-Surpassing.
In this discourse we get the best exposition in the whole book of
Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Will to Power. I go into this question
thoroughly in the Note on Chapter LVII.
Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from choice. Those who hastily class him
with the anarchists (or the Progressivists of the last century) fail
to understand the high esteem in which he always held both law and
discipline. In verse 41 of this most decisive discourse he truly
explains his position when he says: “...he who hath to be a creator in
good and evil—verily he hath first to be a destroyer, and break values
in pieces.” This teaching in regard to self-control is evidence enough
of his reverence for law.
Chapter XXXV. The Sublime Ones.
These belong to a type which Nietzsche did not altogether dislike, but
which he would fain have rendered more subtle and plastic. It is the
type that takes life and itself too seriously, that never surmounts the
camel-stage mentioned in the first discourse, and that is obdurately
sublime and earnest. To be able to smile while speaking of lofty things
and NOT TO BE OPPRESSED by them, is the secret of real greatness. He
whose hand trembles when it lays hold of a beautiful thing, has the
quality of reverence, without the artist’s unembarrassed friendship
with the beautiful. Hence the mistakes which have arisen in regard to
confounding Nietzsche with his extreme opposites the anarchists and
agitators. For what they dare to touch and break with the impudence
and irreverence of the unappreciative, he seems likewise to touch and
break,—but with other fingers—with the fingers of the loving and
unembarrassed artist who is on good terms with the beautiful and who
feels able to create it and to enhance it with his touch. The question
of taste plays an important part in Nietzsche’s philosophy, and verses
9, 10 of this discourse exactly state Nietzsche’s ultimate views on the
subject. In the “Spirit of Gravity”, he actually cries:—“Neither a good
nor a bad taste, but MY taste, of which I have no longer either shame or
secrecy.”
Chapter XXXVI. The Land of Culture.
This is a poetical epitome of some of the scathing criticism of
scholars which appears in the first of the “Thoughts out of Season”—the
polemical pamphlet (written in 1873) against David Strauss and his
school. He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and
shows them that their sterility is the result of their not believing
in anything. “He who had to create, had always his presaging dreams and
astral premonitions—and believed in believing!” (See Note on Chapter
LXXVII.) In the last two verses he reveals the nature of his altruism.
How far it differs from that of Christianity we have already read in the
discourse “Neighbour-Love”, but here he tells us definitely the nature
of his love to mankind; he explains why he was compelled to assail the
Christian values of pity and excessive love of the neighbour, not only
because they are slave-values and therefore tend to promote degeneration
(see Note B.), but because he could only love his children’s land, the
undiscovered land in a remote sea; because he would fain retrieve the
errors of his fathers in his children.
Chapter XXXVII. Immaculate Perception.
An important feature of Nietzsche’s interpretation of Life is disclosed
in this discourse. As Buckle suggests in his “Influence of Women on the
Progress of Knowledge”, the scientific spirit of the investigator is
both helped and supplemented by the latter’s emotions and personality,
and the divorce of all emotionalism and individual temperament from
science is a fatal step towards sterility. Zarathustra abjures all those
who would fain turn an IMPERSONAL eye upon nature and contemplate her
phenomena with that pure objectivity to which the scientific idealists
of to-day would so much like to attain. He accuses such idealists of
hypocrisy and guile; he says they lack innocence in their desires and
therefore slander all desiring.
Chapter XXXVIII. Scholars.
This is a record of Nietzsche’s final breach with his former
colleagues—the scholars of Germany. Already after the publication of
the “Birth of Tragedy”, numbers of German philologists and professional
philosophers had denounced him as one who had strayed too far from
their flock, and his lectures at the University of Bale were deserted
in consequence; but it was not until 1879, when he finally severed all
connection with University work, that he may be said to have attained to
the freedom and independence which stamp this discourse.
Chapter XXXIX. Poets.
People have sometimes said that Nietzsche had no sense of humour. I
have no intention of defending him here against such foolish critics; I
should only like to point out to the reader that we have him here at
his best, poking fun at himself, and at his fellow-poets (see Note on
Chapter LXIII., pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20).
Chapter XL. Great Events.
Here we seem to have a puzzle. Zarathustra himself, while relating