Chapter 2

[1]See also D.D. Aph. 81.

[2]Z., p. 67.

[3]Z., p. 65.

[4]Z., p. 138.

[5]G. E., p. 81.

[6]G. E., p. 81.

[7]G. E., p. 80.

[8]G. M., 3rd Essay, Aph. l5.

[9]Z., p. 67.

[10]Z., p. 20.

[11]Z., p. 8.

Conceiving all forms of morality to be but weapons in the struggle for power, Nietzsche concluded that every species of man must at some time or other have taken to moralising, and must have called that "good" which its instincts approved, and that "bad" which its enemies instincts approved. In Beyond Good and Evil, however, he tells us that after making a careful examination "of the finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on earth," he found certain traits recurring so regularly together, and so closely connected with one another, that, finally, two primary types of morality revealed themselves to him. That is to say, after passing the known moralities of the world in review, he was able to classify them broadly into two types.

He observed that throughout human history there had been a continual and implacable war between two kinds of men; it must have begun in the remotest ages, and it continues to this day. It is the war between the powerful and the impotent, the strong and the weak, the givers and the takers, the healthy and the sick, the happy and the wretched. The powerful formed their concept of "good," and it was one which justified their strongest instincts. The impotent likewise acquired their view of the matter, which was often precisely the reverse of the former view.

In this way Nietzsche arrived at the following broad generalisation: that all the moralities of the world could be placed under one of two heads,Master Morality or Slave Morality.

In the first, the master morality, it is the oak which contends: I must reach the sun and spread broad brandies in so doing; this I call "good," and the herd that I shelter may also call it good. In the second, the slave morality, it is the shrub which says: I also want to reach the sun, these broad branches of the oak, however, keep the sun from me, therefore the oak's instincts are "bad."

It is obvious that these two points of view exist and have existed everywhere on earth. Apart from national and racial distinctions, mankind does fall into the two broad classes of master and slave, or ruler and subject. We also know that each of these classes must have developed its moral code, and must have tried to protect its conduct and life therewith. But, what we did not know until Nietzsche pointed the fact out to us, was: which morality is the more desirable and the more full of promise for the future? Admitting that the master and the slave moralities are struggling for supremacy still, which of them ought we to promote with every means in our power?—which of them is going to make life more attractive, more justifiable, and more acceptable on earth?

These are now questions of the utmost importance; because it is precisely now that pessimism, nihilism, and other desperate faiths are beginning to set their note of interrogation to human existence, and to shake our belief even in the desirability of our own survival.

It is now time for us to discover whence arises this contempt and horror of life, and to lay the blame for it either at the door of the master or of the slave morality.

In order that we may understand how to set forth upon this inquiry, let us first form a mental image of the two codes as they must have been evolved by their originators.

Nietzsche reminds us before we start, however,[1]that in most communities the two moralities have become so confused and mingled, in order to establish that compromise which is so dear to the hearts of the peaceful, that it would be almost a hopeless task to seek any society on earth in which they are now to be seen juxtaposed in sharp contrast. Be this as it may, in order to recognise the blood of each when we come across it, we have only to think of what must have occurred when the ruling caste and the ruled class took to moralising.

Taking the ruling caste first, it is clear that in their morality, all isgoodwhich proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for the motive force behind the people who evolved it was simply the will to discharge a plenitude, a superabundance, of spiritual and physical wealth. A consciousness of high tension, of a treasure that would fain give and bestow,—this is the mental attitude of the nobles. 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.

The creator of the master morality was he who, out of the very fulness of his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it better, greater, more beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the slave morality. Great artists, great legislators, and great warriors belong to the class that created master morality.

Turning now to the second class, we must bear in mind that it is the product of a community in which the struggle for existence is the prime life-motor. There, inasmuch as oppression, suffering, weariness, and servitude are the general rule, all will be regarded as good that tends to alleviate pain. Pity, the obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, and humility,—these are undoubtedly the virtues we shall here find elevated to the highest places; because they areusefulvirtues; they make life endurable; they are helpful in the struggle for existence. To this class, all that proceeds from strength, superabundance of spiritual or bodily power, or great health, is looked upon with loathing and mistrust, while that which is awful is the worst and greatest evil. He is good who is amenable, kind, unselfish, meek, and submissive; that is why, in all communities where slave morality is in the ascendant, a "good fellow" always suggests a man in possession of a fair modicum of foolishness and sentimentality.

The creator of slave-morality was one who, out of the poverty of his soul, transfigured all he saw and heard, and declared it smaller, meaner, and less beautiful than it appeared to the creator of the master values. Great misanthropists, pessimists, demagogues, tasteless artists, nihilists, spiteful authors and dramatists, and resentful saints belong to the class that created slave-morality.

The first order of values are active, creative, Dionysiac. The second are passive, defensive, venomous, subterranean; to them belong "Adaptation," "adjustment," and "utilitarian relationship to environment."

Now, seeing that mankind is undoubtedly moulded by the nature of the values which prevail over it, it is manifestly of paramount importance to the philosopher to know which order of values conduces to rear the most desirable species of man, and then to advocate that order, with all the art and science at his disposal.

Nietzsche saw two lines of life: an ascending and a descending line. At the end of the one he pictured an ideal type, robust in mind and body, rich enough in spirit and vigour to make giving and bestowing a necessary condition of its existence; at the end of the other line he already perceived degeneracy, poverty of blood and spirit, and a sufficiently low degree of vitality to make parasitism a biological need.

He believed that the first, or noble morality, when it prevailed, made for an ascending line of life and therefore favoured the multiplication of a desirable type of man; and he was now equally convinced that whenever ignoble or slave morality was supreme, life not only tended to follow the descending line, but that the very men whose existence it favoured were the least likely to stem the declining tide. Hence it seemed to him that the most essential of all tasks was to ascertain what kind of morality now prevailed, in order that we might immediately transvalue our values, while there was still time, if we believed this change to be necessary.

What then are our present values? Nietzsche replies most emphatically —they are Christian values.

In the last chapter we saw that although Christian dogma was very rapidly becoming mere wreckage, its most earnest opposers and destroyers nevertheless clung with fanatical faith to Christian morality. Thus, in addition to the vast multitude of those professing the old religion, there was also a host of atheists, agnostics, rationalists, and materialists, who, as far as Nietzsche was concerned, could quite logically be classed with those who were avowedly Christian. And, as for the remainder—a few indifferent and perhaps nameless people,—what could they matter? Even they, perhaps, if hard pressed, would have betrayed a sneaking, cowardly trust in Christian ethics, if only out of a sense of security; and with these the total sum of the civilised world was fully made up.

Perhaps to some this may appear a somewhat sweeping conclusion. To such as doubt its justice, the best advice that can be given is to urge them to consult the literature, ethical, philosophical, and otherwise, of those writers whom they would consider most opposed to Christianity before the publication of Nietzsche's works; and they will then realise that, with very few exceptions, mostly to be found among uninfluential and uncreative iconoclasts, the whole of the Western civilised world in Nietzsche's time was firmly Christian in morals, and most firmly so, perhaps, in those very quarters where the dogma of the religion of pity was most honestly disclaimed.

It had therefore become in the highest degree necessary to put these values under the philosophical microscope, and to discover to which order they belonged. Was Christianity the purveyor of a noble or of a slave morality? The reply to this question would reveal the whole tendency of the modern world, and would also answer Nietzsche's searching inquiry: "Are we on the right track?"

Pursuing Nietzsche's method as closely as we can, let us now turn to Christianity, as we find it to-day, and see whether it is possible to bring its values into line with one of the two broad classes spoken of in this chapter.

In the first place, Nietzsche discovers that Christianity is not a world-approving faith. The very pivot upon which it revolves seems to be the slandering and depreciating of this world, together with the praise and exaltation of a hypothetical world to come. To his mind it seems to draw odious comparisons between the things of this earth and the blessings of heaven. Finally, it gushes in a very unsportsmanlike manner over an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and disadvantage of a "here," of this earth, of this life, and posits another region—a nether region—for the accommodation of its enemies.[2]

What, now, is the mental attitude of these "backworldsmen," as Nietzsche calls them, who can see only the world's filth? Who is likely to need the thought of a beyond, where he will live in bliss while those he hates will writhe in hell? Such ideas occur only to certain minds. Do they occur to the minds of those who, by the very health, strength, and happiness that is in them, transfigure all the world —even the ugliness in it—and declare it to be beautiful? Do they occur to the powerful who can chastise their enemies while their blood is still up? Admitting that the world may be surveyed from a hundred different standpoints, is this particular standpoint which we now have under our notice, that of a contented, optimistic, sanguine type, or that of a discontented, pessimistic, anæmic one?

"To the pure all things are pure!—I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things are swinish."[3]

Nietzsche's sensitive car caught curious notes in the daily dronings of those around him—notes that made him suspicious of the whole melody of modern life, and still more suspicions of the chorus executing it.

He heard to his astonishment: ... "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, the impotent, the lowly alone are good; only the sufferers, the needy, the sick, the ugly are pious only they are godly; them alone blessedness awaits—but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for aye and evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless; ye will also be, to all eternity, the unblessed, the cursed, and the damned."[4]

He continued listening intently, and, with his ear attuned anew, these sentiments broke strangely upon his senses:—

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."[5]

There was no time for brooding over stray thoughts; there was still much to be seen and hoard. When you want to catch some one napping, you keep your eye eagerly upon him, and turn neither to the right nor to the left. Nietzsche, it must be remembered, was at this stage treading softly towards Europe whom he believed to be "napping."

In his lonely hermit cell he was able to catch all the sounds that rose from the city beneath him, and he heard perhaps more than the inhabitants themselves.

He could see them all fighting and quarrelling, and he was cheered, because he knew that where the great fight for power ceases, the standard of life falls. But some he saw were wounded, others were actually unfit for the battlefield, a large number looked tired and listless, and there were yet others—a goodly multitude—who were resentful at the sight of their superiors and who, like sulky children, dropped their arms in a pet and declared that they would not play any more. And what were all these feeble and less viable mortals doing? They were crying aloud, and making their deepest wishes known. They were elevating their desiderata to the highest places amongst earthly virtues—and driving back the others withwords! Nietzsche thought of Reynard the Fox, who, at the very moment that he was about to be hanged, and with the rope already round his neck, succeeded by his dialectical skill in persuading the crowd to release him. For Nietzsche could hear the weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the fight, crying quite distinctly through their lips parched for rest: "Peace is good! Love is good! Love for one's neighbour is good! Ay, and even love for one's enemy is good!"[6]

And some cried: "It is God that avengeth me!" to those who oppressed them, and others said: "The Lord avenge me!"[7]

Whereupon Nietzsche thought of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the God of revenge and thunderbolts; he recalled the sentiment: "Ye shall chase your enemies and they shall fall fall before you by the sword," and he wondered how this had come to mean "love your enemies," in the New Testament. Had another type of men perhaps made themselves God's mouthpiece?

Yes, that must be so; for, in their holy book, he came across this passage, ascribed to one of their greatest saints:

"Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

"For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

"... Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many nobleare called:

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty:

"And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are."[8]

Here, Nietzsche tells us, he began to hold his nose; but he still listened; for there was yet more to be heard. From the smiles that were breaking over the lips of those who read the above words, he gathered that they must have overcome their unhappiness. Yes, indeed, they had. But what did they call it? This was important—even the Christian view of unhappiness seemed significant to Nietzsche in this inquiry.

Their unhappiness, their wretchedness, they called a trial, a gift, a distinction! Not really? Yes indeed! As Nietzsche points out: "They are wretched, no doubt, all these mumblers and underground forgers, though warmly seated together. But they tell us their wretchedness is a selection and distinction from God, that the dogs which are loved most are whipped, that their misery may perhaps also be a preparation, a trial, a schooling; perhaps even more—something which at some time to come will be refuted and paid back with immense interest in gold. No! in happiness. This they call 'blessedness.'"[9]

At this point Nietzsche declares that he could stand it no longer. "Enough, enough! Bad air! Bad air!" he cried. "Methinks this workshop of virtue positively reeks."

He had now realised in whose company he had been all this time.

These people who halted at nothing in order to elevate their weaknesses to the highest place among the virtues, and to monopolise goodness on earth—who called that good which was tame and soft and harmless, because they themselves could only survive in litters of cotton wool; who coloured the earth with the darknessthatwas in their own bodies; —who did not scruple to dub all manly and vital virtues odiously sinful and wicked, and who preferred to set the life of the whole world at stake, rather than acknowledge that it was precisely their own second-rate, third-rate, or even fourth-rate, vitality which was the greatest sin of all; who in one and the same breath preached their utilitarian "universal love" to the powerful, and then sent them to eternal damnation in another world: Nietzsche asks, are these people the supporters of a noble or of a slave morality?

The answer is obvious, and we need not labour the point. But it was so obvious to the lonely hermit, that the thought of it filled him with horror and dread, and he was moved to leave his cell and to descend into the plain, while there was yet time, with the object of urging us to transvalue our values.

In Christian values, Nietzsche read nihilism, decadence, degeneration, and death. They were calculated to favour the multiplication of the least desirable on earth: and, as such, despite his antecedents, and with his one desire, "the elevation of the type man," always before him, he condemned Christian morality from top to bottom. This magnificent attempt on the part of the low, the base, and the worthless, to establish themselves as the most powerful on earth, must be checked at all costs, and with terrible earnestness he exhorts us to alter our values.

"O my brethren, with whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and the just?

"Break up, break up, I pray you, the good and the just!"

This condemnation of Christian values, as slave values—which Nietzsche regarded as his greatest service to mankind—he says he would write on all walls. He tells us he came just in the nick of time; to-morrow might be too late.

"It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope.

"His soil is still rich enough for that purpose. But that soil will one day be too poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow thereon."[10]

[1]G. E., p. 227

[2]John xii. 25; 1 John ii. 15, 16; James iv. 4.

[3]Z., p. 249.

[4]G. M., 1st Essay, Aph. 7.

[5]Matthew v.

[6]Matthew xxiii. 39; Mark xiii. 31; Luke x. 27; Matthew v. 44.

[7]2 Luke xviii. 7, 8; Romans xii. l9; Revelation vi. 10.

[8]I Corinthians i. 20, 21, 26, 27, 28.

[9]G. M., 1st Essay, Aph. 14. See also Epistle to the Hebrews xii. 6, and Revelation iii. 19.

[10]Z., p. 12

"Transvalue your values or perish!" This was the message of the hermit Nietzsche to the people inhabiting the valley into which he had descended. "Transvalue your values!"—that is to say, make them what they once were, noble, life-approving, virile! For two thousand years the roll of the world-wheel had been reversed—Stendhal had said that many years before Nietzsche lived—but it was left to Nietzsche, Stendhal's admirer and pupil, to teach and prove this fact. Stendhal, too, had cried out against the tameness, the lukewarmness, the effeminacy of society; but Nietzsche took up this cry with a voice more brazen than Stendhal's at a time when mankind was in much greater need of it. Stendhal had pointed enthusiastically to the sun and to the passion of the south, and had donned a moral respirator whenever he turned to face the grey and depressing atmosphere of northern ideas and northern tepidness. Nietzsche follows his master's hint with alacrity, but in doing so converts Stendhal's clarion notes into thunder, and the glint of Stendhal's rapier into strokes of lightning.[1]

When Nietzsche began to write Europe was suffering from the worst kind of spiritual illness—weakness of will. Everywhere comfort and freedom from danger were becoming the highest ideals; everywhere, too, virtue was being confounded with those qualities which led to the highest possible amount of security and tame, back-parlour pleasures; and man was gradually developing into a harmless domesticated type of animal, capable of performing a host of charming little drawing-room tricks which rejoiced the hearts of his womenfolk.

Sleep seemed to be the greatest accomplishment. It had become all important to have a good night's rest, and everything was done to achieve this end. A man no longer asked his heart what it dictated, when he stood irresolute before a daring deed, he simply consulted Morpheus, who warned him that he could not promise him a soft pillow if he did anything that was ever so slightly naughty. In the end, Morpheus would prevail, and thus all Europe was beginning to snore peacefully the whole night through, with marvellous regularity, while manliness rotted and danger dwindled.[2]

Nietzsche protested against this state of affairs:—"What is good? ye ask. To be brave is good. Let the little schoolgirls say: To be good is sweet and touching at the same time. Ye say, a good cause will hallow even war? I say unto you: a good war halloweth every cause. War and courage have done greater things than love!"[3]

"I pass through this people and keep mine eyes open: they have becomesmaller, and ever become smaller:the reason thereof is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.

"For they are moderate also in virtue—because they want comfort. With comfort, however, moderate virtue only is compatible.

"Of man there is little here: therefore do their women make themselves manly. For only he who is man enough, willsave the womanin woman.

"In their hearts, they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them.

"That, however, iscowardice, though it be called virtue."[4]

Some there were, of course, who were conscious of the dreadful condition of things, and who deplored it, without, however, being able to put their finger on the root of the evil. Such people were most of them pessimists, and, at the time that Nietzsche lived, Schopenhauer was their leader.

Sensitive, noble-minded, artistic people, deprived by rationalistic and atheistic teachers of the belief in God, felt the ignobleness of European hopes and aspirations, and knowing of no better creed and possessing the intelligence to see the hopelessness of things under the rule of the values which then prevailed, they succumbed to a mood of utter despair, subscribed to Schopenhauer's horror and loathing of the world, and regarded the very optimism of childhood with suspicion and scorn.

For a while Nietzsche, too, was an ardent and devoted follower of Schopenhauer. Godlessness was bad enough to endure: but Godlessness in a world of un-pagan and effeminate manhood, was too much for the loving student of classical antiquity, and he turned to Schopenhauer as to one who, he thought, would understand how to steel his heart against life's misery.

But this opiate did not maintain its sway over Nietzsche long. Our poet was of a type too courageous and too vigorous to be able to surrender himself so completely to sorrow and to Buddhistic consolations. Gradually he began to regard the humble and resigned attitude of the pessimist before life's hardships and modernity's greyness as unworthy of a spirited and active man. Slowly it dawned upon him that the root of the evil lay, not in the constitution of the earth, but in man himself, and in man's actual values. If man could be roused to pursue higher ideals; if he could be moved to kill the poisonous snake of ignoble values that had crawled into his throat and choked him while he was in slumber;[5]in fact, if man could surpass himself and regard the reversal of the world's engines, for the last two thousand years, as Stendhal had done—that is to say, as the grossest error and most ridiculousfaux pasthat had ever been made—then, Nietzsche thought, pessimism and Schopenhauer might go to the deuce, and conscious, sensitive, intellectual, and artistic Europe would once more be able to smile instead of shuddering at the thought of mankind's former qualities.

Thus it was the condemnation of modern values, together with the thought of man's being able to surpass himself, which gave Nietzsche the grounds and the necessary strength for abandoning pessimism and embracing that wise optimism which characterises the whole of his works afterThe Joyful Wisdom.

True, God was dead; but that ought only to make man feel more self-reliant, more creative, prouder. Undoubtedly God was dead: but man could now hold himself responsible for himself. He could now seek a goal in manhood, on earth, and one that was at least within the compass of his powers. Long enough had he squinted heavenwards, with the result, that he had neglected his task on earth.[6]

"Dead are all Gods!" Nietzsche cries, "now we will that Superman live!"[7]

We are now before Nietzsche the evolutionist, and we must define him, relatively to those other evolutionists with whom we, as English people, are already familiar.

To begin with, then, let us dispose of the fundamental question: Nietzsche's concept of life. We have had life variously defined for us by our own writers, and perhaps one among Nietzsche's greatest contemporaries in England—Herbert Spencer—defined it in the most characteristically English fashion. Spencer said: "Life is activity," or "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." Now there is absolutely nothing in either of these definitions, no suggestion or hint, which would lead the most suspicious to conjecture what life really is. (Activity) reveals nothing of life's passions, its hate, its envy, its covetousness, its hard, inexorable principles; the process of the continual adjustments of internal relations to external relations might mean the serpent's digestion of its prey, or the training of an opera singer's voice, and it might also be a scientific formula for a "moral order of things." Both definitions are delightfully unheroic and vague; though they do not compromise the writer they compromise with everything else, and to start out with them is to shelve the question in a way which allows of our subsequently weaving all the romance and sweetness possible into life, and of making it as pretty as a little nursery story.

Nietzsche, always eager for a practical and tangible idea, naturally could not accept these two definitions as expressing anything profound about life at all. Looking into the race of nature, and reading her history from the amoeba with its predatory pseudo-podia, to the lion with its murderous prehensile claws, he defined life practically, uprightly, and bravely, as "appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation, and, at least, putting it mildest, exploitation."[8]

Thus, as we see, from the start Nietzsche closes his eyes at nothing, he does not want life to be a pretty tale if it is not one. He wants to know it as it is: for he is convinced that this is the only way of arriving at sound principles as to the manner in which human existence should be led.

"Appropriation," then, he takes as a fact: he does not argue it away, any more than he tries to argue away "injury," "conquest of the strange and weak," "suppression," and "incorporation." These things are only too apparent, and he states them bravely in his definition. We know life is all this; but how much more comfortable it is, when we are sitting in our soft easy-chairs before our cheerful fires, to think that life is merely activity!

To believe that there is a moral order in the universe is to believe that these unpleasant things in Nietzsche's definition will one day be overcome. This was the position Christianity assumed from the start. Put, though it was excusable in a religion fighting for power, and compelled to use nice and attractive words for its followers, to suppose that all the misery on earth will one day be transformed by God's wisdom into perfect bliss; such an attitude is quite unpardonable in the case of a philosopher or even of a poet. When Browning chanted smugly: "God's in His heaven: All's right with the world," he confessed himself a mediocre spirit with one stroke of the pen. And when Spencer wrote that the blind process of evolution "must inevitably favour all changes of nature which increase life and augment happiness," he did the same. We may now perhaps understand Nietzsche's impatience of his predecessors and contemporaries, who refused to see precisely what he saw in the face of nature.

But even in his extended definition of life, the modern biologist brings himself no nearer to Nietzsche's honest standpoint, and for the following reasons:—

The modern biologist says, this "activity" he speaks of has a precise meaning. It connotes "the struggle for existence," or in other words "self-defence." (Again he is looking at life through moral or Christian glasses; because if every thing on earth is done in self-defence, even the devil himself is argued out of existence, and God remains creator of the "good" alone.) Nietzsche replies by denying this flatly. He says that the definition is again inadequate. He warns us not to confound Malthus with nature.[9]He admits that the struggle occurs, but only as an exception. "The general aspect of life is not a state of want or hunger; it is rather a state of opulence, luxuriance, and even absurd prodigality—where there is a struggle, it is a struggle for power." —Will to power and not will to live is the motive force of life.

"Wherever I found living matter," he says, "I found will to power, and even in the servant I found the yearning to be master.

"Only where there is life, there is will: though a not will to live, but thus I teach thee—WILL TO POWER."[10]

Is there no aggression without the struggle for existence? Is there no voluptuousness in a position of power for us own sake? Of course there is! And one wonders how these English biologists could ever have been schoolboys without noticing these facts. As Nietzsche points out, however, they are every one of them labouring under the Christian ideal still—in spite of all their upsetting of the first chapter of Genesis, and in spite of all their blasting of the miracles. Put, if life is the supreme aim of all, how is it that many things are valued higher than life by living beings? If the will to live sometimes finds itself overpowered by another will—more particularly in great warriors, great prophets, great artists, and great heroes—what is this mightier force which thus overpowers it? We have heard what Nietzsche calls it—it is the Will to Power.

"Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is Will to Power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results thereof."[11]

In spite of everything we have already said, Nietzsche's disagreement with our own biologists may still seem to many but a play upon words. A moment's meditation, however—more particularly over the passage just quoted—will show that it is really much deeper than this. It is one thing to regard an animal as a mere automaton, prowling around to satisfy its hunger, and happy to remain inactive when the sensation of hunger is appeased, and quite another to regard an animal as a battery of accumulated forces whichmustbe discharged at all costs (and for good or evil), with only temporary lapses of purely self-preservative desires and self-preservative actions. All the different consequences of these two views will occur to the thinker in an instant.

Upon this basis, then, the Will to Power, Nietzsche builds up a cosmogony which also assumes that species have been evolved; but again, in the processes of that evolution he is at variance with Darwin and all the natural-selectionists.

Nietzsche cannot be persuaded that "mechanical adjustment to ambient conditions," or "adaptation to environment"—both purely passive, meek, and uncreative functions—should be given the importance, as determining factors, which the English and German schools give them. With Samuel Butler, he protests against this "pitchforking of mind and spirit out of the universe," and points imperatively to an inner creative will in living organisms, which ultimately makes environment and natural conditions subservient and subject. In theGenealogy of Morals[12]he makes it quite clear that he would ascribe the greatest importance to a power in the organism itself, to "the highest functionaries in the animal, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative principle," and that even in the matter of the mysterious occurrence of varieties (sports) he would seek for inner causes. Darwin himself threw out only a hint in this direction; that is why it is safe to suppose that, if Nietzsche and Darwin are ever reconciled, it will probably be precisely on this ground. In theOrigin of Species, speaking of the causes of variability, Darwin said: "... There are two factors, namely the nature of the organism, and the nature of the conditions.The former seem to be much the more important,[13]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 uniform."

Thus differing widely from the orthodox school of evolutionists, Nietzsche nevertheless believed their hypothesis to be sound; but once more he has an objection to raise. Why did they halt where they halted?

If the process is a fact, if things have become what they are, and have not always been so; then why should we rest on our oars? If it was possible for man to struggle up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates, and reach the zenith of his physical development; why, Nietzsche asks, should he not surpass himself and attain to Superman by evolving in the same decree volitionally and mentally?

"The most careful ask to-day: 'How is man preserved?' But Zarathustra asketh as the only and first one: 'How is man surpassed?'[14]

"All beings (in your genealogical ladder) have created something beyond themselves, and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide?

"Behold I teach you Superman!"[15]

And now, again, at the risk of being monotonous, I must point to yet another difference between Nietzsche and the prevailing school of evolutionists. Whereas the latter, in their unscrupulous optimism, believed that out of the chaotic play of blind forces something highly desirable and "good" would ultimately be evolved; whereas they tacitly, though not avowedly, believed that their "fittest" in the struggle for existence would eventually prove to be the best—in fact that we should "muddle through" to perfection somehow, and that something really noble and important would be sure to result from John Brown's contest with Harry Smith for the highest place in an insurance office, for instance; Nietzsche disbelieved from the bottom of his heart in this chance play of blind and meaningless tendencies. He said: Given a degenerate, mean, and base environment and the fittest to survive therein will be the man who is best adapted to degeneracy, meanness, and baseness—therefore the worst kind of man. Given a community of parasites, and it may be that the flattest, the slimiest, and the softest, will be the fittest to survive. Such faith in blind forces Nietzsche regarded merely as the survival of the old Christian belief in the moral order of things, fogged out in scientific apparel to suit modern tastes. He saw plainly, that if man were to be elevated at all, no blind struggle in his present conditions would ever effect that end; for the present conditions themselves make those the fittest to survive in them who are persons of absolutely undesirable gifts and propensities.

He declared (and here we are in the very heart of Nietzscheism) that nothing but a total change in these conditions, a complete transvaluation of all values, would ever alter man and make him more worthy of his past. For it is values, values, and again values, that mould men, and rear men, and create men; and ignoble values make ignoble men, and noble values make noble men! Thus it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, truth without end—for men.

Nietzsche realised "all that could still be made out of man, through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements"; he knew "how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in mysterious and dangerous crossways, and has launched forth upon the right or the wrong road, impelled merely by a whim, or by a hint from the giant Chance."[16]And now, he was determined that, whether man wished to listen or not, at least he should be told of the ultimate disaster that awaited him, if he continued in his present direction. For, there was yet time!

It is to higher men that Nietzsche really makes his appeal, the leaders and misleaders of the mob. He had no concern with the multitude and they did not need him. The world had seen philosophies enough which had advocated the cause of the "greatest number"—English libraries were stacked with such works. What was required was, to convert those rare men who give the direction—the heads of the various throngs—the vanguard.

"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones! From the future, winds are coming with a gentle beating of wings, and there cometh good tidings for fine ears.

"Ye lonely ones of to-day, ye who stand apart, ye shall one day be a people: from you, who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise and from it Superman."[17]

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