Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None - 23

must not be taken too literally. I do not think Nietzsche’s profoundest
views on marriage were ever intended to be given over to the public at
all, at least not for the present. They appear in the biography by his
sister, and although their wisdom is unquestionable, the nature of the
reforms he suggests render it impossible for them to become popular just
now.
Pars. 26, 27.
See Note on “The Prologue”.
Par. 28.
Nietzsche was not an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or
empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and
against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what
these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the
task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what
modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see—namely, that man is in
danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken.
I need hardly point out, therefore, how deeply he was conscious of
the responsibility he threw upon our shoulders when he invited us to
reconsider our position. The lines in this paragraph are evidence enough
of his earnestness.
Chapter LVII. The Convalescent.
We meet with several puzzles here. Zarathustra calls himself the
advocate of the circle (the Eternal Recurrence of all things), and he
calls this doctrine his abysmal thought. In the last verse of the
first paragraph, however, after hailing his deepest thought, he cries:
“Disgust, disgust, disgust!” We know Nietzsche’s ideal man was that
“world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious creature, who has not only
learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes
to have it again, AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity insatiably calling
out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play” (see
Note on Chapter XLII.). But if one ask oneself what the conditions to
such an attitude are, one will realise immediately how utterly different
Nietzsche was from his ideal. The man who insatiably cries da capo to
himself and to the whole of his mise-en-scene, must be in a position to
desire every incident in his life to be repeated, not once, but
again and again eternally. Now, Nietzsche’s life had been too full of
disappointments, illness, unsuccessful struggles, and snubs, to allow of
his thinking of the Eternal Recurrence without loathing—hence probably
the words of the last verse.
In verses 15 and 16, we have Nietzsche declaring himself an evolutionist
in the broadest sense—that is to say, that he believes in the
Development Hypothesis as the description of the process by which
species have originated. Now, to understand his position correctly
we must show his relationship to the two greatest of modern
evolutionists—Darwin and Spencer. As a philosopher, however, Nietzsche
does not stand or fall by his objections to the Darwinian or Spencerian
cosmogony. He never laid claim to a very profound knowledge of biology,
and his criticism is far more valuable as the attitude of a fresh mind
than as that of a specialist towards the question. Moreover, in his
objections many difficulties are raised which are not settled by an
appeal to either of the men above mentioned. We have given Nietzsche’s
definition of life in the Note on Chapter LVI., par. 10. Still, there
remains a hope that Darwin and Nietzsche may some day become reconciled
by a new description of the processes by which varieties occur. The
appearance of varieties among animals and of “sporting plants” in
the vegetable kingdom, is still shrouded in mystery, and the question
whether this is not precisely the ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche
will meet, is an interesting one. The former says in his “Origin of
Species”, concerning the causes of variability: “...there are two
factors, namely, the nature of the organism, and the nature of the
conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics
are mine.), for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as
far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand,
dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be
nearly uniform.” Nietzsche, recognising this same truth, would ascribe
practically all the importance to the “highest functionaries in the
organism, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative
principle,” and except in certain cases (where passive organisms alone
are concerned) would not give such a prominent place to the influence
of environment. Adaptation, according to him, is merely a secondary
activity, a mere re-activity, and he is therefore quite opposed to
Spencer’s definition: “Life is the continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations.” Again in the motive force behind
animal and plant life, Nietzsche disagrees with Darwin. He
transforms the “Struggle for Existence”—the passive and involuntary
condition—into the “Struggle for Power,” which is active and creative,
and much more in harmony with Darwin’s own view, given above, concerning
the importance of the organism itself. The change is one of such
far-reaching importance that we cannot dispose of it in a breath, as a
mere play upon words. “Much is reckoned higher than life itself by the
living one.” Nietzsche says that to speak of the activity of life as a
“struggle for existence,” is to state the case inadequately. He warns us
not to confound Malthus with nature. There is something more than
this struggle between the organic beings on this earth; want, which is
supposed to bring this struggle about, is not so common as is supposed;
some other force must be operative. The Will to Power is this force,
“the instinct of self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most
frequent results thereof.” A certain lack of acumen in psychological
questions and the condition of affairs in England at the time Darwin
wrote, may both, according to Nietzsche, have induced the renowned
naturalist to describe the forces of nature as he did in his “Origin of
Species”.
In verses 28, 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet
with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely “le manoir
a l’envers,” indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche,
that “Thus Spake Zarathustra” is no more than a compendium of modern
views and maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox
pronouncements a little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive
their truth. Regarding good and evil as purely relative values, it
stands to reason that what may be bad or evil in a given man, relative
to a certain environment, may actually be good if not highly virtuous
in him relative to a certain other environment. If this hypothetical man
represent the ascending line of life—that is to say, if he promise all
that which is highest in a Graeco-Roman sense, then it is likely that
he will be condemned as wicked if introduced into the society of men
representing the opposite and descending line of life.
By depriving a man of his wickedness—more particularly nowadays—
therefore, one may unwittingly be doing violence to the greatest in him.
It may be an outrage against his wholeness, just as the lopping-off of a
leg would be. Fortunately, the natural so-called “wickedness” of higher
men has in a certain measure been able to resist this lopping process
which successive slave-moralities have practised; but signs are not
wanting which show that the noblest wickedness is fast vanishing from
society—the wickedness of courage and determination—and that Nietzsche
had good reasons for crying: “Ah, that (man’s) baddest is so very small!
Ah, that his best is so very small. What is good? To be brave is good!
It is the good war which halloweth every cause!” (see also par. 5,
“Higher Man”).
Chapter LX. The Seven Seals.
This is a final paean which Zarathustra sings to Eternity and the
marriage-ring of rings, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence.
...
PART IV.
In my opinion this part is Nietzsche’s open avowal that all his
philosophy, together with all his hopes, enthusiastic outbursts,
blasphemies, prolixities, and obscurities, were merely so many gifts
laid at the feet of higher men. He had no desire to save the world. What
he wished to determine was: Who is to be master of the world? This is
a very different thing. He came to save higher men;—to give them that
freedom by which, alone, they can develop and reach their zenith (see
Note on Chapter LIV., end). It has been argued, and with considerable
force, that no such philosophy is required by higher men, that, as a
matter of fact, higher men, by virtue of their constitutions always, do
stand Beyond Good and Evil, and never allow anything to stand in the
way of their complete growth. Nietzsche, however, was evidently not so
confident about this. He would probably have argued that we only see the
successful cases. Being a great man himself, he was well aware of the
dangers threatening greatness in our age. In “Beyond Good and Evil” he
writes: “There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined,
or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and
deteriorated...” He knew “from his painfullest recollections on what
wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have
hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become
contemptible.” Now in Part IV. we shall find that his strongest
temptation to descend to the feeling of “pity” for his contemporaries,
is the “cry for help” which he hears from the lips of the higher men
exposed to the dreadful danger of their modern environment.
Chapter LXI. The Honey Sacrifice.
In the fourteenth verse of this discourse Nietzsche defines the solemn
duty he imposed upon himself: “Become what thou art.” Surely the
criticism which has been directed against this maxim must all fall to
the ground when it is remembered, once and for all, that Nietzsche’s
teaching was never intended to be other than an esoteric one. “I am a
law only for mine own,” he says emphatically, “I am not a law for
all.” It is of the greatest importance to humanity that its highest
individuals should be allowed to attain to their full development; for,
only by means of its heroes can the human race be led forward step by
step to higher and yet higher levels. “Become what thou art” applied
to all, of course, becomes a vicious maxim; it is to be hoped, however,
that we may learn in time that the same action performed by a given
number of men, loses its identity precisely that same number of
times.—“Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi.”
At the last eight verses many readers may be tempted to laugh. In
England we almost always laugh when a man takes himself seriously at
anything save sport. And there is of course no reason why the reader
should not be hilarious.—A certain greatness is requisite, both in
order to be sublime and to have reverence for the sublime. Nietzsche
earnestly believed that the Zarathustra-kingdom—his dynasty of a
thousand years—would one day come; if he had not believed it so
earnestly, if every artist in fact had not believed so earnestly in
his Hazar, whether of ten, fifteen, a hundred, or a thousand years, we
should have lost all our higher men; they would have become pessimists,
suicides, or merchants. If the minor poet and philosopher has made us
shy of the prophetic seriousness which characterized an Isaiah or a
Jeremiah, it is surely our loss and the minor poet’s gain.
Chapter LXII. The Cry of Distress.
We now meet with Zarathustra in extraordinary circumstances. He is
confronted with Schopenhauer and tempted by the old Soothsayer to commit
the sin of pity. “I have come that I may seduce thee to thy last sin!”
says the Soothsayer to Zarathustra. It will be remembered that in
Schopenhauer’s ethics, pity is elevated to the highest place among the
virtues, and very consistently too, seeing that the Weltanschauung is
a pessimistic one. Schopenhauer appeals to Nietzsche’s deepest and
strongest sentiment—his sympathy for higher men. “Why dost thou conceal
thyself?” he cries. “It is THE HIGHER MAN that calleth for thee!”
Zarathustra is almost overcome by the Soothsayer’s pleading, as he
had been once already in the past, but he resists him step by step. At
length he can withstand him no longer, and, on the plea that the higher
man is on his ground and therefore under his protection, Zarathustra
departs in search of him, leaving Schopenhauer—a higher man in
Nietzsche’s opinion—in the cave as a guest.
Chapter LXIII. Talk with the Kings.
On his way Zarathustra meets two more higher men of his time; two
kings cross his path. They are above the average modern type; for their
instincts tell them what real ruling is, and they despise the mockery
which they have been taught to call “Reigning.” “We ARE NOT the first
men,” they say, “and have nevertheless to STAND FOR them: of this
imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted.” It is the kings
who tell Zarathustra: “There is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny
than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. There
everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous.” The kings are
also asked by Zarathustra to accept the shelter of his cave, whereupon
he proceeds on his way.
Chapter LXIV. The Leech.
Among the higher men whom Zarathustra wishes to save, is also the
scientific specialist—the man who honestly and scrupulously pursues his
investigations, as Darwin did, in one department of knowledge. “I love
him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the
Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.”
“The spiritually conscientious one,” he is called in this discourse.
Zarathustra steps on him unawares, and the slave of science, bleeding
from the violence he has done to himself by his self-imposed task,
speaks proudly of his little sphere of knowledge—his little hand’s
breadth of ground on Zarathustra’s territory, philosophy. “Where mine
honesty ceaseth,” says the true scientific specialist, “there am I blind
and want also to be blind. Where I want to know, however, there want
I also to be honest—namely, severe, rigorous, restricted, cruel, and
inexorable.” Zarathustra greatly respecting this man, invites him too to
the cave, and then vanishes in answer to another cry for help.
Chapter LXV. The Magician.
The Magician is of course an artist, and Nietzsche’s intimate knowledge
of perhaps the greatest artist of his age rendered the selection of
Wagner, as the type in this discourse, almost inevitable. Most readers
will be acquainted with the facts relating to Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s
friendship and ultimate separation. As a boy and a youth Nietzsche had
shown such a remarkable gift for music that it had been a question at
one time whether he should not perhaps give up everything else in order
to develop this gift, but he became a scholar notwithstanding, although
he never entirely gave up composing, and playing the piano. While
still in his teens, he became acquainted with Wagner’s music and
grew passionately fond of it. Long before he met Wagner he must have
idealised him in his mind to an extent which only a profoundly artistic
nature could have been capable of. Nietzsche always had high ideals for
humanity. If one were asked whether, throughout his many changes, there
was yet one aim, one direction, and one hope to which he held fast,
one would be forced to reply in the affirmative and declare that aim,
direction, and hope to have been “the elevation of the type man.”
Now, when Nietzsche met Wagner he was actually casting about for an
incarnation of his dreams for the German people, and we have only to
remember his youth (he was twenty-one when he was introduced to Wagner),
his love of Wagner’s music, and the undoubted power of the great
musician’s personality, in order to realise how very uncritical his
attitude must have been in the first flood of his enthusiasm. Again,
when the friendship ripened, we cannot well imagine Nietzsche, the
younger man, being anything less than intoxicated by his senior’s
attention and love, and we are therefore not surprised to find him
pressing Wagner forward as the great Reformer and Saviour of mankind.
“Wagner in Bayreuth” (English Edition, 1909) gives us the best proof
of Nietzsche’s infatuation, and although signs are not wanting in this
essay which show how clearly and even cruelly he was sub-consciously
“taking stock” of his friend—even then, the work is a record of what
great love and admiration can do in the way of endowing the object
of one’s affection with all the qualities and ideals that a fertile
imagination can conceive.
When the blow came it was therefore all the more severe. Nietzsche
at length realised that the friend of his fancy and the real Richard
Wagner—the composer of Parsifal—were not one; the fact dawned
upon him slowly; disappointment upon disappointment, revelation after
revelation, ultimately brought it home to him, and though his best
instincts were naturally opposed to it at first, the revulsion of
feeling at last became too strong to be ignored, and Nietzsche was
plunged into the blackest despair. Years after his break with Wagner,
he wrote “The Case of Wagner”, and “Nietzsche contra Wagner”, and these
works are with us to prove the sincerity and depth of his views on the
man who was the greatest event of his life.
The poem in this discourse is, of course, reminiscent of Wagner’s own
poetical manner, and it must be remembered that the whole was written
subsequent to Nietzsche’s final break with his friend. The dialogue
between Zarathustra and the Magician reveals pretty fully what it
was that Nietzsche grew to loathe so intensely in Wagner,—viz., his
pronounced histrionic tendencies, his dissembling powers, his inordinate
vanity, his equivocalness, his falseness. “It honoureth thee,” says
Zarathustra, “that thou soughtest for greatness, but it betrayeth thee
also. Thou art not great.” The Magician is nevertheless sent as a guest
to Zarathustra’s cave; for, in his heart, Zarathustra believed until the
end that the Magician was a higher man broken by modern values.
Chapter LXVI. Out of Service.
Zarathustra now meets the last pope, and, in a poetical form, we get
Nietzsche’s description of the course Judaism and Christianity pursued
before they reached their final break-up in Atheism, Agnosticism, and
the like. The God of a strong, warlike race—the God of Israel—is a
jealous, revengeful God. He is a power that can be pictured and endured
only by a hardy and courageous race, a race rich enough to sacrifice and
to lose in sacrifice. The image of this God degenerates with the people
that appropriate it, and gradually He becomes a God of love—“soft and
mellow,” a lower middle-class deity, who is “pitiful.” He can no longer
be a God who requires sacrifice, for we ourselves are no longer rich
enough for that. The tables are therefore turned upon Him; HE must
sacrifice to us. His pity becomes so great that he actually does
sacrifice something to us—His only begotten Son. Such a process
carried to its logical conclusions must ultimately end in His own
destruction, and thus we find the pope declaring that God was one day
suffocated by His all-too-great pity. What follows is clear enough.
Zarathustra recognises another higher man in the ex-pope and sends him
too as a guest to the cave.
Chapter LXVII. The Ugliest Man.
This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche’s suggestions
concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon
the sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature
sitting on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only
correct feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great
misery—that is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche
detested the obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without
a blush either on its cheek or in its heart—the pity which is only
another form of self-glorification. “Thank God that I am not like
thee!”—only this self-glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted
man the impudence to SHOW his pity for the cripple and the
ill-constituted. In the presence of the ugliest man Nietzsche
blushes,—he blushes for his race; his own particular kind of
altruism—the altruism that might have prevented the existence of this
man—strikes him with all its force. He will have the world otherwise.
He will have a world where one need not blush for one’s fellows—hence
his appeal to us to love only our children’s land, the land undiscovered
in the remotest sea.
Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this
is one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism—the Atheism of the man who
reveres beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages
him, must be concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as
Zarathustra respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His
pity must be foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore,
for the really GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. “Their pity IS it from
which I flee away,” he says—that is to say: “It is from their want of
reverence and lack of shame in presence of my great misery!” The ugliest
man despises himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: “I love
the great despisers because they are the great adorers, and arrows of
longing for the other shore.” He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees
height in his self-contempt, and invites him to join the other higher
men in the cave.
Chapter LXVIII. The Voluntary Beggar.
In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not
Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism,
and almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of
praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for
decadents, its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in
Christianity, from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of “The
Antichrist”, he compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and
the result of his investigation is very much in favour of the older
religion. Still, he recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence
in Christ’s teaching, and the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very
reminiscent of his views in regard to the Christian Savior.
The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and
many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own
lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft
of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has
attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been
taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan’s view, that Christ
was “le grand maitre en ironie”; in Aphorism 31 of “The Antichrist”,
he says that he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble
Nazarene of all those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of
the struggle the first Christians went through, may very well have been
added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at
that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points,
seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive
deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of
the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche
always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man
with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and
in presenting us with this new portrait of the Saviour, purged of all
impurities, Nietzsche rendered military honours to a foe, which far
exceed in worth all that His most ardent disciples have ever claimed for
Him. In verse 26 we are vividly reminded of Herbert Spencer’s words “‘Le
mariage de convenance’ is legalised prostitution.”
Chapter LXIX. The Shadow.
Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that
literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great
leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes,
and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and
most broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring
movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely
lose their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a
way, a goal, or a home. “On every surface have I already sat!...I become
thin, I am almost equal to a shadow!” At last, in despair, such men
do indeed cry out: “Nothing is true; all is permitted,” and then they
become mere wreckage. “Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing
mattereth to me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,—how
should I still love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home?”
Zarathustra realises the danger threatening such a man. “Thy danger is
not small, thou free spirit and wanderer,” he says. “Thou hast had a bad
day. See that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!” The danger
Zarathustra refers to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a
blessing to such a man. At least the bars keep him in a place of rest;
a place of confinement, at its worst, is real. “Beware lest in the end
a narrow faith capture thee,” says Zarathustra, “for now everything that
is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee.”
Chapter LXX. Noontide.
At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him
man came of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old
guardians, the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and
fears of our childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we
lived through our morning with but one master—chance—; let us see to
it that we MAKE our afternoon our own (see Note XLIX., Part III.).
Chapter LXXI. The Greeting.
Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and
aim of the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy (as stated at the beginning
of my Notes on Part IV.) is completely upheld. He fought for “all who
do not want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE—unless THEY learn
(from him) the GREAT hope!” Zarathustra’s address to his guests shows
clearly enough how he wished to help them: “I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS
INDULGENTLY,” he says: “how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?” He
rebukes and spurns them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere
he says a man should be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be
of use to him. Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men. He would
make them harder; for, in order to be a law unto himself, man must
possess the requisite hardness. “I wait for higher ones, stronger ones,
more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in
body and soul.” He says in par. 6 of “Higher Man”:—
“Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put
wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you
sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and
easier footpaths?”
“Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type
shall succumb—for ye shall always have it worse and harder.”
Chapter LXXII. The Supper.
In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing
a gentle allusion to Schopenhauer’s habits as a bon-vivant. For a
pessimist, be it remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary
life. He ate well, loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he
smoked the best cigars. What follows is clear enough.
Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to
the people, to the crowd in the market-place, but that he had ultimately
to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market-place.
Par. 3.
Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their
impulses and desires to the instinct of self-preservation. The struggle
for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people.
To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved,
provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that “Life per se is
precious” is the ruling maxim here.