Part 17

_Liberty._--The worth of a thing often lies, not in what one attains by it, but in the difficulty one experiences in getting it. The struggle for political liberty, for example, has done more than any other one thing to develop strength, courage and resourcefulness in the human race, and yet liberty itself, as we know it today, is nothing more or less than organized morality, and as such, is necessarily degrading and degenerating. "It undermines the will to power, it levels the racial mountains and valleys, it makes man small, cowardly and voluptuous. Under political liberty the herd-animal always triumphs." But the very fight to attain this burdensome equality develops the self-reliance and unconformity which stand opposed to it, and these qualities often persist. Warfare, in brief, makes men fit for real, as opposed to political freedom. "And what is freedom? The will to be responsible for one's self. The will to keep that distance which separates man from man. The will to become indifferent to hardship, severity, privation and even to life. The will to sacrifice men to one's cause and to sacrifice one's self, too.... The man who is truly free tramples under foot the contemptible species of well-being dreamt of by shop-keepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is a warrior.... How is freedom to be measured? By the resistance it has to overcome--by the effort required to maintain it. We must seek the highest type of freemen where the highest resistance must be constantly overcome: five paces from tyranny, close to the threshold of thraldom.... Those peoples who were worth something, who became worth something, never acquired their greatness under political liberty. Great danger made something of them--danger of that sort which first teaches us to know our resources, our virtues, our shields and swords, our genius--which compels us to be strong."[10]

_Science_--The object of all science is to keep us from drawing wrong inferences--from jumping to conclusions. Thus it stands utterly opposed to all faith and is essentially iconoclastic and skeptical. "The wonderful in science is the reverse of the wonderful in juggling. The juggler tries to make us see a very simple relation between things which, in point of fact, have no relation at all. The scientist, on the contrary, compels us to abandon our belief in simple casualities and to see the enormous complexity of phenomena. The simplest things, indeed, are extremely complex--a fact which will never cease to make us wonder." The effect of science is to show the absurdity of attempting to reach perfect happiness and the impossibility of experiencing utter woe. "The gulf between the highest pitch of happiness and the lowest depth of misery has been created by imaginary things."[11] That is to say, the heights of religious exaltation and the depths of religious fear and trembling are alike creatures of our own myth-making. There is no such thing as perfect and infinite bliss in heaven and there is no such thing as eternal damnation in hell. Hereafter our highest happiness must be less than that of the martyrs who saw the heavenly gates opening for them, and our worst woe must be less than that of those medieval sinners who died shrieking and trembling and with the scent of brimstone in their noses. "This space is being reduced further and further by science, just as through science we have learned to make the earth occupy less and less space in the universe, until it now seems infinitely small and our whole solar system appears as a mere point."[12]

_The Jews._--For the Jewish slave-morality which prevails in the western world today, under the label of Christianity, Nietzsche had, as we know, the most violent aversion and contempt, but he saw very clearly that this same morality admirably served and fitted the Jews themselves; that it had preserved them through long ages and against powerful enemies, and that its very persistence proved alike its own ingenuity and the vitality of its inventors as a race. "The Jews," said Nietzsche, "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 centuries; 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 benefited the individual even more than the community. In consequence, the resourcefulness and alertness of the modern Jew are extraordinary.... In times of extremity, the people of Israel less often sought refuge in drink or 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 misfortune. The Jews have hid their bravery under the cloak of submissiveness; their heroism in facing contempt surpasses that of the saints. People tried to make them contemptible for twenty centuries 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. They have never ceased to believe themselves qualified for the highest of activities. They have never failed to show the virtues of all suffering peoples. Their manner of honoring their parents and their children and the reasonableness of their marriage customs make them conspicuous among Europeans. Besides, they have learned how to derive a sense of power from the very trades forced upon them. We cannot help observing, in excuse for their usury, that without this pleasant means of inflicting torture upon their oppressors, they might have lost their self-respect ages ago, for self-respect depends upon being able to make reprisals. Moreover, their vengeance has never carried them too far, for they have that liberality which comes from frequent changes of place, climate, customs and neighbors. They have more experience of men than any other race and even in their passions there appears a caution born of this experience. They are so sure of themselves that, even in their bitterest straits, they never earn their bread by manual labor as common workmen, porters or peasants.... Their manners, it may be admitted, teach us that they have never been inspired by chivalrous, noble feelings, nor their bodies girt with beautiful arms: a certain vulgarity always alternates with their submissiveness. But now they are intermarrying with the gentlest blood of Europe, and in another hundred years they will have enough good manners to save them from making themselves ridiculous, as masters, in the sight of those they have subdued." It was Nietzsche's belief that the Jews would take the lead before long, in the intellectual progress of the world. He thought that their training, as a race, fitted them for this leadership. "Where," he asked, "shall the accumulated wealth of great impressions which forms the history of every Jewish family--that great wealth of passions, virtues, resolutions, resignations, struggles and victories of all sorts--where shall it find an outlet, if not in great intellectual functioning?" The Jews, he thought, would be safe guides for mankind, once they were set free from their slave-morality and all need of it. "Then again," he said, "the old God of the Jews may rejoice in Himself, in His creation and in His chosen people--and all of us will rejoice with Him."[13]

_The Gentleman._--A million sages and diagnosticians, in all ages of the world, have sought to define the gentleman, and their definitions have been as varied as their own minds. Nietzsche's definition is based upon the obvious fact that the gentleman is ever a man of more than average influence and power, and the further fact that this superiority is admitted by all. The vulgarian may boast of his bluff honesty, but at heart he looks up to the gentleman, who goes through life serene and imperturbable. There is in the flatter, in truth, an unmistakable air of fitness and efficiency, and it is this which makes it possible for him to be gentle and to regard those below him with tolerance. "The demeanor of high-born persons," says Nietzsche, "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 themselves 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 comfortable, but in a spacious and dignified manner, as if they were the abodes of a greater and taller race of beings. To a provoking speech, they reply with politeness and self-possession--and not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, enraged or out of breath, after the manner of plebeians. The aristocrat knows how to preserve the appearance of ever-present physical strength, and he knows, too, how to convey the impression that his soul and intellect are a match to all dangers and surprises, by keeping up an unchanging serenity and civility, even under the most trying circumstances."[14]

_Dreams._--Dreams are symptoms of the eternal law of compensation. In our waking hours we develop a countless horde of yearnings, cravings and desires, and by the very nature of things, the majority of them must go ungratified. The feeling that something is wanting, thus left within us, is met and satisfied by our imaginary functionings during sleep. That is to say, dreams represent the reaction of our yearnings upon the phenomena actually encountered during sleep--the motions of our blood and intestines, the pressure of the bedclothes, the sounds of church-bells, domestic animals, etc., and the state of the atmosphere. These phenomena are fairly constant, but our dreams vary widely on successive nights. Therefore, the variable factor is represented by the yearnings we harbor as we go to bed. Thus, the man who loves music and must go without it all day, hears celestial harmonies in his sleep. Thus the slave dreams of soaring like an eagle. Thus the prisoner dreams that he is free and the sailor that he is safely at home. Inasmuch as the number of our conscious and unconscious desires, each day, is infinite, there is an infinite variety in dreams. But always the relation set forth may be predicated.

[1] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I.

[2] "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_," III, § 185.

[3] "_Science and Immortality_," New York, 1904.

[4] "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_," II, § 88.

[5] "_Morgenröte_," § 42.

[6] "_Zur Genealogie der Moral_," III, 11 to 17.

[7] "_Morgenröte_," § 91.

[8] "_Götzendämmerung_," IX, § 19.

[9] "_Götzendämmerung_," IX, § 24.

[10] "_Götzendämmerung_," IX, § 38.

[11] "_Morgenröte_," § 6.

[12] "_Morgenröte_," § 7.

[13] "_Morgenröte_," § 205.

[14] "_Morgenröte_," § 201.

XIV

NIETZSCHE VS. WAGNER

Nietzsche believed in heroes and, in his youth, was a hero worshipper. First Arthur Schopenhauer's bespectacled visage stared from his shrine and after that the place of sacredness and honor was held by Richard Wagner. When the Wagner of the philosopher's dreams turned into a Wagner of very prosaic flesh and blood, there came a time of doubt and stress and suffering for poor Nietzsche. But he had courage as well as loyalty, and in the end he dashed his idol to pieces and crunched the bits underfoot. Faith, doubt, anguish, disillusion--it is not a rare sequence in this pitiless and weary old world.

Those sapient critics who hold that Nietzsche discredited his own philosophy by constantly writing against himself, find their chief ammunition in his attitude toward the composer of "_Tristan und Isolde_" In the decade from 1869 to 1878 the philosopher was the king of German Wagnerians. In the decade from 1879 to 1889, he was the most bitter, the most violent, the most resourceful and the most effective of Wagner's enemies. On their face these things seem to indicate a complete change of front and a careful examination bears out the thought. But the same careful examination reveals another fact: that the change of front was made, not by Nietzsche, but by Wagner.

As we have seen, the philosopher was an ardent musician from boyhood and so it was not unnatural that he should be among the first to recognize Wagner's genius. The sheer musicianship of the man overwhelmed him and he tells us that from the moment the piano transcription of "_Tristan und Isolde_" was printed he was a Wagnerian. The music was bold and daring: it struck out into regions that the _süsslich_ sentimentality of Donizetti and Bellini and the pallid classicism of Beethoven and Bach had never even approached. In Wagner Nietzsche saw a man of colossal originality and sublime courage, who thought for himself and had skill at making his ideas comprehensible to others. The opera of the past had been a mere _potpourri_ of songs, strung together upon a filament of banal recitative. The opera of Wagner was a symmetrical and homogeneous whole, in which the music was unthinkable without the poetry and the poetry impossible without the music.

Nietzsche, at the time, was saturated with Schopenhauer's brand of individualism, and intensely eager to apply it to realities. In Wagner he saw a living, breathing individualist--a man who scorned the laws and customs of his craft and dared to work out his own salvation in his own way. And when fate made it possible for him to meet Wagner, he found the composer preaching as well as practising individualism. In a word, Wagner was well nigh as enthusiastic a Schopenhauerean as Nietzsche himself. His individualism almost touched the boundary of anarchy. He had invented a new art of music and he was engaged in the exciting task of smashing the old one to make room for it.

Nietzsche met Wagner in Leipsic and was invited to visit the composer at his home near Tribschen, a suburb of Lucerne. He accepted, and on May 15, 1869, got his first glimpse of that queer household in which the erratic Richard, the ingenious Cosima and little Siegfried lived and had their being. When he moved to Basel, he was not far from Tribschen and so he fell into the habit of going there often and staying long. He came, indeed, to occupy the position of an adopted son, and spent the Christmas of 1869 and that of 1870 under the Wagner rooftree. This last fact alone is sufficient to show the intimate footing upon which he stood. Christmas, among the Germans, is essentially a family festival and mere friends are seldom asked to share its joys.

Nietzsche and Wagner had long and riotous disputations at Tribschen, but in all things fundamental they agreed. Together they accepted Schopenhauer's data and together they began to diverge from his conclusions. Nietzsche saw in Wagner that old dionysian spirit which had saved Greek art. The music of the day was colorless and coldblooded. A too rigid formalism stood in the way of all expression of actual life. Wagner proposed to batter this formalism to pieces and Nietzsche was his prophet and _claque_.

It was this enthusiasm, indeed, which determined the plan of "_Die Geburt der Tragödie_". Nietzsche had conceived it as a mere treatise upon the philosophy of the Greek drama. His ardor as an apostle, his yearning to convert the stolid Germans, his wild desire to do something practical and effective for Wagner, made him turn it into a gospel of the new art. To him Wagner was Dionysus, and the whole of his argument against Apollo was nothing more than an argument against classicism and for the Wagnerian romanticism. It was a bomb-shell and its explosion made Germany stare, but another--perhaps many more--were needed to shake the foundations of philistinism. Nietzsche loaded the next one carefully and hurled it at him who stood at the very head of that self-satisfied conservatism which lay upon all Germany. This man was David Strauss. Strauss was the prophet of the good-enough. He taught that German art was sound, that German culture was perfect. Nietzsche saw in him the foe of Dionysus and made an example of him. In every word of that scintillating philippic there was a plea for the independence and individualism and outlawry that the philosopher saw in Wagner.[1]

Unluckily the disciple here ran ahead of the master and before long Nietzsche began to realize that he and Wagner were drifting apart. So long as they met upon the safe ground of Schopenhauer's data, the two agreed, but after Nietzsche began to work out his inevitable conclusions, Wagner abandoned him. To put it plainly, Wagner was the artist before he was the philosopher, and when philosophy began to grow ugly he turned from it without regret or qualm of conscience. Theoretically, he saw things as Nietzsche saw them, but as an artist he could not afford to be too literal. It was true enough, perhaps, that self-sacrifice was a medieval superstition, but all the same it made effective heroes on the stage.

Nietzsche was utterly unable, throughout his life, to acknowledge anything but hypocrisy or ignorance in those who descended to such compromises. When he wrote "_Richard Wagner in Bayreuth_" he was already the prey of doubts, but it is probable that he still saw the "ifs" and "buts" in Wagner's individualism but dimly. He could not realize, in brief, that a composer who fought beneath the banner of truth, against custom and convention, could ever turn aside from the battle. Wagner agreed with Nietzsche, perhaps, that European civilization and its child, the European art of the day, were founded upon lies, but he was artist enough to see that, without these lies, it would be impossible to make art understandable to the public. So in his librettos he employed all of the old fallacies--that love has the supernatural power of making a bad man good, that one man may save the soul of another, that humility is a virtue.[2]

It is obvious from this, that the apostate was not Nietzsche, but Wagner. Nietzsche started out in life as a seeker after truth, and he sought the truth his whole life long, without regarding for an instant the risks and dangers and consequences of the quest. Wagner, so long as it remained a mere matter of philosophical disputation, was equally radical and courageous, but he saw very clearly that it was necessary to compromise with tradition in his operas. He was an atheist and a mocker of the gods, but the mystery and beauty of the Roman Catholic ritual appealed to his artistic sense, and so, instead of penning an opera in which the hero spouted aphorisms by Huxley, he wrote "_Parsifal_" And in the same way, in his other music dramas, he made artistic use of all the ancient fallacies and devices in the lumber room of chivalry. He was, indeed, a philosopher in his hours of leisure only. When he was at work over his music paper, he saw that St. Ignatius was a far more effective and appealing figure than Herbert Spencer and that the conventional notion that marriage was a union of two immortal souls was far more picturesque than the Schopenhauer-Nietzschean idea that it was a mere symptom of the primary will to live.

In 1876 Nietzsche began to realize that he had left Wagner far behind and that thereafter he could expect no support from the composer. They had not met since 1874, but Nietzsche went to Bayreuth for the first opera season. A single conversation convinced him that his doubts were well-founded--that Wagner was a mere dionysian of the chair and had no intention of pushing the ideas they had discussed to their bitter and revolutionary conclusion. Most other men would have seen in this nothing more than an evidence of a common-sense decision to sacrifice the whole truth for half the truth, but Nietzsche was a rabid hater of compromise. To make terms with the philistines seemed to him to be even worse than joining their ranks. He saw in Wagner only a traitor who knew the truth and yet denied it.

Nietzsche was so much disgusted that he left Bayreuth and set out upon a walking tour, but before the end of the season he returned and heard some of the operas. But he was no longer a Wagnerian and the music of the "Ring" did not delight him. It was impossible, indeed, for him to separate the music from the philosophy set forth in the librettos. He believed, with Wagner, that the two were indissolubly welded, and so, after awhile, he came to condemn the whole fabric--harmonies and melodies as well as heroes and dramatic situations.

When Wagner passed out of his life Nietzsche sought to cure his loneliness by hard work and "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_" was the result. He sent a copy of the first volume to Wagner and on the way it crossed a copy of "_Parsifal_." In this circumstance is well exhibited the width of the breach between the two men. To Wagner "_Menschliches allzu Menschliches_" seemed impossibly and insanely radical; to Nietzsche "_Parsifal_", with all its exaltation of ritualism, was unspeakable. Neither deigned to write to the other, but we have it from reliable testimony that Wagner was disgusted and Nietzsche's sister tells us how much the music-drama of the grail enraged him.

A German, when indignation seizes him, rises straightway to make a loud and vociferous protest. And so, although Nietzsche retained, to the end of his life, a pleasant memory of the happy days he spent at Tribschen and almost his last words voiced his loyal love for Wagner the man, he conceived it to be his sacred duty to combat what he regarded as the treason of Wagner the philosopher. This notion was doubtlessly strengthened by his belief that he himself had done much to launch Wagner's bark. He had praised, and now it was his duty to blame. He had been enthusiastic at the first task, and he determined to be pitiless at the second.

But he hesitated for ten years, because, as has been said, he could not kill his affection for Wagner, the man. It takes courage to wound one's nearest and dearest, and Nietzsche, for all his lack of sentiment, was still no more than human. In the end, however, he brought himself to the heroic surgery that confronted him, and the result was "_Der Fall Wagner_". In this book all friendship and pleasant memories were put aside. Wagner was his friend of old? Very well: that was a reason for him to be all the more exact and all the more unpitying.

"What does a philosopher firstly and lastly require of himself?" he asks. "To overcome his age in himself; to become timeless! With what, then, has he to fight his hardest fight? With those characteristics and ideas which most plainly stamp him as the child of his age." Herein we perceive Nietzsche's fundamental error. Deceived by Wagner's enthusiasm for Schopenhauer and his early, amateurish dabbling in philosophy, he regarded; the composer as a philosopher. But Wagner, of course, was first of all an artist, and it is the function of an artist, not to reform humanity, but to depict it as he sees it, or as his age sees it--fallacies, delusions and all. George Bernard Shaw, in his famous criticism of Shakespeare, shows us how the Bard of Avon made just such a compromise with the prevailing opinion of his time. Shakespeare, he says, was too intelligent a man to regard Rosalind as a plausible woman, but the theatre-goers of his day so regarded her and he drew her to their taste.[3] An artist who failed to make such a concession to convention would be an artist without an audience. Wagner was no Christian, but he knew that the quest of the holy grail was an idea which made a powerful appeal to nine-tenths of civilized humanity, and so he turned it into a drama. This was not conscious lack of sincerity, but merely a manifestation of the sub-conscious artistic feeling for effectiveness.[4]