Part 7

The assertion of selfhood and the hankering after originality make Nietzsche the exponent of the absolute uniqueness of everything particular, and he goes to the extreme of denying all kinds of universality--even that of formal laws (the so-called uniformities of nature), reason, and especially its application in the field of practical life, morality. His ideal is "Be thyself! Be unique! Be original!" Properly speaking, we should not use the term ideal when speaking of Nietzsche's maxims of life, for the conception of an ideal is based upon a recognition of some kind of universality, and Nietzsche actually sneers at any one having ideals. The adherents of Nietzsche speak of their master as "_der Einzige_," i. e., "the unique one," and yet (in spite of the truth that every thing particular is in its way unique) the uniformities of nature are so real and unfailing that Nietzsche is simply the representative of a type which according to the laws of history and mental evolution naturally and inevitably appears whenever the philosophy of nominalism reaches its climax. He would therefore not be unique even if he were the only one that aspires after a unique selfhood; but the fact is that there are a number of Nietzsches, he happening to be the best known of his type. Other advocates of selfhood, of course, will be different from Nietzsche in many unimportant details, but they will be alike in all points that are essential and characteristic. One of these Nietzsches is George Moore, a Britain who is scarcely familiar with the writings of his German double, but a few quotations from his book, _Confessions of a Young Man_, will show that he can utter thoughts which might have been written by Friedrich Nietzsche himself. George Moore says:

"I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal" (p. 18).

"I was a model young man indeed" (p. 20).

"I boasted of dissipations" (p. 19).

"I say again, let general principles be waived; it will suffice for the interest of these pages if it be understood that brain-instincts have always been, and still are, the initial and the determining powers of my being" (p. 47).

George Moore, like Nietzsche, is one of Schopenhauer's disciples who has become sick of pessimism. He says:

"That odious pessimism! How sick I am of it" (p. 310).

When George Moore speaks of God he thinks of him in the old-fashioned way as a big self, an individual and particular being. Hence he denies him. God is as dead as any pagan deity. George Moore says:

"To talk to us, the legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the existence of God, strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof of the existence of Jupiter Ammon" (p. 137).

George Moore is coarse in comparison with Nietzsche. Nietzsche is no cynic; he is pure-hearted and noble by nature. Moore is voluptuous and vulgar. Both are avowed immoralists, and if the principle of an unrestrained egotism be right, George Moore is as good as Nietzsche, and any criminal given to the most abominable vices would not be worse than either.

Nietzsche feels the decadence of the age and longs for health; but he attributes the cause of his own decadence to the Christian ideals of virtue, love, and sympathy with others. George Moore cherishes the same views; he says:

"We are now in a period of decadence, growing steadily more and more acute" (p. 239).

"Respectability ... continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating influence on literature" (p. 240).

"Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. The great pagan world I love knew it not" (p. 200).

"The philanthropist is the Nero of modern times" (p. 185).

Both Nietzsche and Moore long for limitless freedom; but Moore seems more consistent, for he lacks the ideal of the overman and extends freedom to the sex relation, saying:

"Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage...freedom limitless" (p. 168-169).

Moore loves art, but his view of art is cynical, and here too he is unlike Nietzsche; he says:

"Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. Art is a sublime excrement" (p. 178).

Both believe in the coming of a great social deluge. George Moore says:

"The French revolution will compare with the revolution that is to come, that must come, that is inevitable, as a puddle on the road-side compares with the sea. Men will hang like pears on every lamp-post, in every great quarter of London, there will be an electric guillotine that will decapitate the rich like hogs in Chicago" (p. 343).

Ideals are regarded as superstitions, and belief in ideas is deemed hypocritical. George Moore says:

"In my heart of hearts I think myself a cut above you, because I do not believe in leaving the world better than I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader, think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the world better than you found it" (p. 354).

The deeds of a man, his thoughts and aspirations, which constitute his spiritual self, count for nothing; the body alone is supposed to be real, and thus after death a pig is deemed more useful than a Socrates. Continues Moore:

"The pig that is being slaughtered as I write this line will leave the world better than it found it, but you will leave only a putrid carcass fit for nothing but the grave" (p. 353).

Wrong is idealized:

"Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice.

"Man would not be man but for injustice" (p. 203).

"Again I say that all we deem sublime in the world's history are acts of injustice; and it is certain that if mankind does not relinquish at once and for ever, its vain, mad, and frantic dream of justice, the world will lapse into barbarism" (p. 205).

George Moore gives a moment's thought to the ideal of "a new art, based upon science, in opposition to the art of the old world that was based on imagination, an art that should explain all things and embrace modern life in its entirety, in its endless ramifications, be it, as it were, a new creed in a new civilization ... that would continue to a more glorious and legitimate conclusion the work that the prophets have begun"; but he turns his back upon it. It would be after all a product of development; it would be the tyranny of a past age, and he says, "as well drink the dregs of yesterday's champagne" (p. 128).

NIETZSCHE'S DISCIPLES

It is said that barking dogs do not bite, and this being true, we must look upon Nietzsche's philosophy as a harmless display of words and a burning desire for power without making any attempt to practice what he preached. His philosophy, so far as he is concerned, is a purely Platonic love of an unattainable star whose brilliance dazzled the imagination of a childlike peaceful weakling. Suppose, however, for argument's sake, that Nietzsche had been a man of robust health, and that he had been born at the time of great disturbances, offering unlimited chances to an unscrupulous ambition, would he under these circumstances have led the life he preached, and in case he had done so, would he have boldly and unreservedly admitted his principles while carrying out his plans? Did ever Cæsar or Napoleon or any usurper, such as Richard III, who unscrupulously aspired for power, own that he would shrink from nothing to attain his aim? Such a straightforward policy for any schemer would be the surest way of missing his aim. Such men, on the contrary, have played hypocrites, and have pretended to cherish ideals generally approved by the large masses of the people whom Nietzsche calls the herd. So it is obvious that the philosophy of Nietzsche if it were ever practically applied, would have become a secret doctrine known only to the initiated few, while the broad masses would be misguided by some demonstrative show of moral principles that might be pleasing to the multitudes and yet at the same time conceal the real tendency of the overman to gain possession of his superior position.

Nietzsche's influence upon professional philosophers is comparatively weak. Whenever mentioned by them, it is in criticism, and he is generally set aside as onesided, and perhaps justly, because he was truly no philosopher in the strict sense of the word. He was no reasoner, no logician, and we can not, properly speaking, look upon his philosophy as a system or even a systematized view of the world. Nietzsche made himself the exponent of a tendency, and as such he has his followers among large masses of those very people whom he despised as belonging to the herds. As Nietzsche idealized this very quality in which he was lacking, so his followers recruit themselves from the ranks of those people who more than all others would be opposed to the rule of the overman. His most ardent followers are among the nihilists of Russia, the socialists and anarchists of all civilized countries. The secret reason of attraction, perhaps unknown to themselves, seems to be Nietzsche's defense of the blind impulse and the privilege which he claims for the overman to be himself in spite of law and order and morality, and also his contempt for rules, religious, philosophical, ethical or even logical, that would restrict the great sovereign passion for power.

Nietzsche's philosophy has taken a firm hold of a number of souls who rebel against the social, the political, the religious, and even the scientific, conditions of our civilization. Nietzsche is the philosopher of protest, and, strange to say, while he himself is aristocratic in his instincts, he appeals most powerfully to the masses of the people.

Nietzsche's disciples are not among the aristocrats, not among the scholars, not among the men of genius. His followers are among the people who believe in hatred and hail him as a prophet of the great deluge. His greatest admirers are anarchists, sometimes also socialists, and above all those geniuses who have failed to find recognition. Nietzsche's thought will prove veritable dynamite if it should happen to reach the masses of mankind, the disinherited, the uneducated, the proletariat, the Catilinary existences. Nietzsche's philosophy is an intoxicant to those whom he despised most; they see in him their liberator, and rejoice in his invectives.

Invectives naturally appeal to those who are as unthinking as the brutes of the field, but feel the sufferings of existence as much as do the beasts of burden. They are impervious to argument, but being full of bitterness and envy they can be led most easily by any kind of denunciations of their betters. Nietzsche hated the masses, the crowd of the common people, the herd. He despised the lowly and had a contempt for the ideals of democracy. Nevertheless, his style of thought is such as to resemble the rant of the leaders of mobs, and it is quite probable that in the course of time he will become the philosopher of demagogues.

A great number of Nietzsche's disciples share their master's eccentricities and especially his impetuosity. Having a contempt for philosophy as the work of the intellect, they move mainly in the field of political and social self-assertion; they are anarchists who believe that the overman is coming in labor troubles, strikes, and through a subversion of the authority of government in any form.

The best known German expounders of Nietzsche's philosophy have been Rudolph Steiner and Alexander Tille.[1] Professor Henri Lichtenberger of the University of Nancy was his interpreter in France,[2] and the former editor of The Eagle and the Serpent, known under the pseudonym of Erwin McCall, in England. This periodical, which flourished for a short time only, characterized its own tendency as follows:

"_The Eagle and the Serpent_ is a bi-monthly journal of egoistic philosophy and sociology which teaches that in social science altruism spells damnation and egoism spells salvation. In the war against their exploiters the exploited cannot hope to succeed till they act as a unit, an 'ego.'"

A reader of _The Eagle and the Serpent_ humorously criticised the egoistic philosophy as follows:

"Dear Eagle and Serpent.--I am one of those unreasonable persons who see no irreconcilable conflict between egoism and altruism. The altruism of Tolstoy is the shortest road to the egoism of Whitman. The unbounded love and compassion of Jesus made him conscious of being the son of God, and that he and the Father were one. Could egoism go further than this? I believe that true egoism and true altruism grow in precisely equal degree in the soul, and that the alleged qualities which bear either name and attempt to masquerade alone without their respective make-weights are shams and counterfeits. The real desideratum is balance, and that cannot be permanently preserved on one leg. However, you skate surprisingly well for the time being on one foot, and I have enjoyed the first performance so well that I enclose 60 cents for a season-ticket--ERNEST H. CROSBY. Rhinebeck, N. Y., U. S. A."

A German periodical _Der Eigene_, i. e., "he who is his own," announced itself as "a journal for all and nobody," and sounded "the slogan of the egoists," by calling on them to "preserve their ownhood."

Another anarchistic periodical that stood under the influence of Nietzsche appeared in Budapest,[3] Hungary, in German and Hungarian under the name Ohne Staat, ("Without Government") as "the organ of ideal anarchists," under the editorship of Karl Krausz.

Perhaps the most worthy exponent of Nietzsche in England to-day is his translator Thomas Common. He does not consider himself an orthodox Nietzsche apostle but thinks that Nietzsche has given the world a very important revelation and that his new philosophy of history and his explanation of the role of Christianity are among the most wonderful discoveries since Darwin. At the same time Mr. Common pronounces Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence "very foolish" and believes his use of the terms "good" and "evil" so perverted that he was frequently confused about them and so misled superficial readers. Mr. Common published at regular intervals during the years 1903 to 1909 ten numbers of a small periodical entitled variously _Notes for Good Europeans and The Good European Point of View_, and expects to resume its publication soon. Its motto is from Nietzsche, "In a word--and it shall be an honorable word--we are Good Europeans ... the heirs of thousands of years of the European spirit." Its purpose is expressed in its first number as follows: "Our general purpose is to spread the best and most important knowledge relating to human well-being among those who are worthy to receive it, with a view to reducing the knowledge to practice, after some degree of unanimity has been attained.... As Nietzsche's works, notwithstanding some limitations, exaggerations and minor errors, embody the foremost philosophical thought of the age, it will be one of our special objects to introduce these works to English readers."

These numbers contain many bibliographical and other notes of interest to friends or critics of the Nietzsche propaganda. Mr. Common has published selections from Nietzsche's works under the title, _Nietzsche as Critic, Philosopher, Poet and Prophet_.[4]

In America Nietzsche's philosophy is represented by a book of Ragnar Redbeard, entitled _Might is Right, the Survival of the Fittest._[5] The author characterizes his work as follows:

"This book is a reasoned negation of the Ten Commandments--the Golden Rule--the Sermon on the Mount--Republican Principles--Christian Principles--and Principles' in general.

"It proclaims upon scientific evolutionary grounds, the unlimited absolutism of Might, and asserts that cut-and-dried moral codes are crude and immoral inventions, promotive of vice and vassalage."

The author is a most ardent admirer of Nietzsche, as may be learned from his verses made after the pattern of Nietzsche's poetry. He sings:

"There is no 'law' in heaven or earth that man must needs obey! Take what you can, and all you can; and take it while you--may.

"Let not the Jew-born Christ ideal unnerve you in the fight. You have no 'rights,' except the rights you win by--might.

"There is no justice, right, nor wrong; no truth, no good, no evil. There is no 'man's immortal soul,' no fiery, fearsome Devil.

"There is no 'heaven of glory:' No!--no 'hell where sinners roast' There is no 'God the Father,' No!--no Son, no 'Holy Ghost.'

"This world is no Nirvâna where joy forever flows. It is a grewsome butcher shop where dead 'lambs' hang in--rows.

"Man is the most ferocious of all the beasts of prey. He rangeth round the mountains, to love, and feast, and--slay.

"He sails the stormy oceans, he gallops o'er the plains, and sucks the very marrow-bones of captives held in--chains.

"Death endeth all for every man,--for every 'son of thunder'; then be a lion (not a 'lamb') and--don't be trampled under."

A valuable recent addition to the discussion of egoism is _The Philosophy of Egoism_ by James L. Walker, (Denver, 1905).

We know of no American periodical which stands for Nietzsche's views, except, perhaps, _The Lion's Paw_ (Chicago) which claims to follow no one. In the last years of the nineteenth century Clarence L. Swartz published at Wellesley, Mass., an egoistic periodical called the _I_. This magazine is no longer in existence, but Mr. Swartz is very active in the International Intelligence Institute whose aims are universal language, universal nationality and universal peace. He still maintains the same philosophical view which he held as editor of the _I_, but his philosophical egoism has led him in far different paths from those of Nietzsche--into the paths of peace and not of struggle. He expresses his present conception as follows:

"In the last analysis there is no right but might. Such is the common ordinary rule of every-day life, from which there is no escape, even were escape desirable. Any attempt to overthrow or circumvent or even dispute the exercise of this prerogative of the mighty is but to assert or oppose a greater might. Expediency always dictates how might should be exercised. Politically, I hold that the non-coercion of the non-invasive individual is the part of wisdom. The individual is supreme, and should be preserved as against society, for in no other way can evolution perform its perfect work."

_The Free Comrade_ edited by J. Wm. Lloyd and Leonard Abbott, an avowedly socialistic and individualistic paper, originally under the sole editorship of Lloyd, stood for Nietzsche and his egoism, but can no longer be said to do so.

[1] A. Tille, _Von Darwin bis Nietzsche_. R. Steiner, _Wahrheit und Wissenschaft_; _Die Philosophie der Freiheit; and F. Nietzsche, ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit_.

We have already mentioned the biography of Nietzsche published by the philosopher's sister, Frau E. Förster-Nietzsche. A characterization, disavowed by Nietzsche's admirers, was written by Frau Lou Andreas Salome, under the title _F. Nietzsche in seinen Werken_. Other works kindred in spirit are Schellwien's _Der Geist der neueren Philosophie_, 1895, and Der Darwinismus, 1896; also Adolf Gerecke, _Die Aussichtslosigkeit des Moralismus_; Schmitt, _An der Grenzscheide zweier Weltalter_; Károly Krausz, _Nietzsche und seine Weltanschauung._

[2] Henri Lichtenberger, _La Philosophie de Nietzsche_. Paris, Alcan, 1898

[3] We may mention incidentally that a contributor to _Ohne Staat_ reproduced one of the Homilies of St Chrysostom, in which he harangues after the fashion of the early Christian preachers against wealth and power. The state's attorney, not versed in Christian patristic literature, seized the issue and placed the man who quoted the old Byzantine saint behind the prison bars. In the issue of Nov., 1898, Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt mentions the case and says: "Thus we have an exact and historical proof that the liberty of speech and thought was incomparably greater in miserable, servile Byzantium than it is now in the much more miserable and more servile despotism of modern Europe." Does not Dr. Schmitt overlook the fact that in the days of Byzantine Christianity the saints were protected by the mob, which was much feared by the imperial government and was kept at bay only by a nominal recognition of its claims and beliefs?

[4] Other recent English Nietzschean literature is as follows: Grace Neal Dolson, _The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche_, 1901; Oscar Levy, _The Revival of Aristocracy_, 1906; A. R. Orage, _Fried. Nietzsche, the Dionysion Spirit of the Age_, 1906; A. R. Orage, _Nietzsche in Outline and Alphorism_; Henry L. Mencken, _The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche_; M. A. Mügge, _Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Work_; Anthony M. Ludovici, _Who Is to Be Master of the World_?

[5] Published by Adolph Mueller, Chicago.

THE PRINCIPLE OF VALUATION

It may be interesting in this connection to mention the case of an American equivalent to Nietzsche's philosophy, which so far as I know has never yet seen publicity.

Some time ago the writer of this little book became acquainted with a journalist who has worked out for his own satisfaction a new system of philosophy which he calls "Christian economics," the tendency of which would be to preach a kind of secret doctrine for the initiated few who would be clever enough to avail themselves of the good opportunity. He claims that the only thing worth while in life is the acquisition of power through the instrumentality of money. He who acquires millions can direct the destiny of mankind, and this tendency was first realized in the history of mankind in this Christian nation of ours, whose ostensible faith is Christianity. Our religion, he argues, is especially adapted to serve as a foil to protect and conceal the real issue, and so he calls his world-conception, "Christian economics." Emperors and kings are mere puppets who are exhibited to general inspection, and so are presidents and all the magistrates in office. Political government has to obey the behests of the financiers, and the most vital life of mankind resides in its economical conditions.

The inventor of this new system of "Christian economics" would allow no other valuation except that of making money, on the sole ground that science, art and the pleasures of life are nothing to man unless he is in control of power which can be had only through the magic charm of the almighty dollar.

I shall not comment upon his view, but shall leave it to the reader, and am here satisfied to point out its similarity to Nietzsche's philosophy. There is one point only which I shall submit here for criticism and that is the principle of valuation which is a weak point with both the originator of "Christian economics" and with Friedrich Nietzsche.