Chapter 4

[37]It is important here to note, first, that Roger Bacon was an Aristotelian through his intimate study of the Arabian treatises on the Greek philosopher, and, secondly, that although Greek speculation was governed more by insight than experience, Aristotle forms a striking exception to this rule.

[38]G. E., p. 210: "What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle—real power of intellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy."

[39]In reply to those who said, "Nothing exists in the intellect but what has before existed in the senses," Leibnitz replied: "Yes, nothing but the intellect."

[40]Kritische Geschichte der Æsthetik(1872). Speaking of the English Æstheticians, he says (p. 285), "The fact that there is no decrease, but rather an increase of Materialism in their thought, no purification in their meditation from the coarseness of experience, but rather a gradual immersion in the same, may also be regarded as characteristic of the development of the English spirit in general."

[41]Coventry Patmore,Principles in Art, p. 209.

[42]G. E., p. 213.

[43]Even J. S. Mill saw the flaw in his own teaching in this respect, and acknowledged it openly. See hisLiberty, chapter "The Elements of Well-Being," paragraph 13.

D. The Evolutionary Hypothesis.

Finally, in the latter half of the last century, these two tendencies at last reached their zenith, and culminated in a discovery which, by some, is considered as the proudest product of the English mind. This discovery, which was at once a gospel and a solution of all world riddles, and which infected the whole atmosphere of Europe from Edinburgh to Athens, was the Evolutionary Hypothesis as expounded by Darwin and Spencer.

A more utterly vulgar, mechanistic, and depressing conception of life and man cannot be conceived than this evolutionary hypothesis as it was presented to us by its two most famous exponents; and its immediate popularity and rapid success, alone, should have made it seem suspicious, even in the eyes of its most ardent adherents.

And yet it was acclaimed and embraced by almost everybody, save those, only, whose interests it assailed.

How much more noble was the origin of the world as described even in Genesis, Disraeli was one of the first to see and to declare;[44]and yet, so strong was the faith in a doctrine which, by means of its popular proof through so-called facts, could become the common possession of every tinker, tailor and soldier, that people preferred to think they had descended from monkeys, rather than doubt such an overwhelming array of data, and regard themselves still as fallen angels.

In its description of the prime motor of life as a struggle for existence; in its insistence upon adaptation to environment and mechanical adjustment to external influences;[45]in its deification of a blind and utterly inadequate force which was called Natural Selection; and above all in its unprincipled optimism, this new doctrine bore the indelible stamp of shallowness and vulgarity.

According to it, man was not only a superior monkey, but he was also a creature who sacrificed everything in order to live; he was not only a slave of habit, but he was a yielding jelly, fashioned by his surroundings; he was not only a coward, but a cabbage; and, with it all, he was invoked to do nothing to assist the world process and his own improvement; for, he was told by his unscrupulous teachers, that "evil tended perpetually to disappear,"[46]and that "progress was therefore not an accident, but a necessity."[47]

Thus not only was man debased, but we could now fold our arms apathetically, and look on while he dashed headlong to his ruin.[48]

"No," said the evolutionists, "we do not believe in a moral order of things, although our doctrine does indeed seem to be a reflection of such an order; neither do we believe in God: but we certainly pin our faith to our little idol Evolution, and feel quite convinced that it is going to make us muddle through to perfection somehow—look at our proofs!"

And what are these proofs? On all sides they are falling to bits, and we are quickly coming to the conclusion that an assembly of facts can prove nothing—save the inability of a scientist to play the rôle of a creative poet.

Nietzsche was one of the first to see, that if Becoming were a reliable hypothesis, it must be supported by different principles from those of the Darwinian school, and he spared no pains in sketching out these different principles.[49]

"These English psychologists—what do they really mean?" Nietzsche demands. "We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front thepartie honteuseof our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing and decisive principle in that precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it—that is to say, in slothfulness of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid,—what is the real motive power which always impels these psychologists in precisely this direction?"[50]

Not one of these advocates of mechanism, however, realized how profoundly he was degrading man, and how seriously he had therefore sullied all human achievement. In their scientificréchaufféof the Christian concept of man's depravity, they all had the most hearty faith, and, as there was little in their over-populated and industrial country to contradict their conclusions, they did not refrain from passing these conclusions into law.

We can detect nothing in this greatest scientific achievement of the last century which seriously resists or opposes our heritage in the realm of the religious spirit. In their fundamentals, the two are one; And when we take them both to task, and try to discover their influence upon the world, we wonder not so much why Art is so bad, but why Art has survived at all.

For, though for the moment we may exclude the influence of earlier English thought upon general artistic achievement, at least the degraded condition of Art at the present day cannot be divorced in this manner from more recent English speculation, for even Mr. Bosanquet counts Darwin and Lyell among those who have ushered in the new renaissance of art in England![51]

"At present," says Nietzsche, "nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,—for pathos of distance,... and even our politics are morbid from this want of courage!"[52]

To-day, when all reverence has vanished, even before kings and gods, when to respect oneself overmuch is regarded with undisguised resentment, what can we hope from a quarter in which self-reverence and reverence in general are the first needs of all?

We can only hope to find what we actually see, and that, as we all very well know and cannot deny, is a condition of anarchy, incompetence, purposelessness and chaos.

"Culture ... has a very important function to fulfil for mankind," said Matthew Arnold. "And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole civilization is, to a much greater degree than the civilization of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But, above all, in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because, here, that mechanical character, which civilization tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree.... The idea of perfection as aninwardcondition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilization in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us."[53]

We may trust that it is not in vain that men like Matthew Arnold and Nietzsche raised their voices against the spirit of the age. And we may hope that it is not in vain that lesser men have taken up their cry.

In any case Nietzsche did not write in utter despair. His words do not fall like faded autumn leaves announcing the general death that is imminent. On the contrary, he saw himself approaching a new century,thiscentury, and he drew more than half his ardour from the hope that we might now renounce this heritage of the past, the deleterious effects of which he spent his lifetime in exposing.

"Awake and listen, ye lonely ones!" he says. "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, and from you who have chosen yourselves, a chosen people shall arise.

"Verily a place of healing shall the earth become! And already a new odour lieth around it, an odour which bringeth salvation—and a new hope."[54]

[44]See Froude'sThe Earl of Beaconsfield(9th Edition), pp. 176, 177: "The discoveries of science are not, we are told, consistent with the teachings of the Church.... It is of great importance when this tattle about science is mentioned, that we should attach to the phrase precise ideas. The function of science is the interpretation of nature, and the interpretation of the highest nature is the highest science. What is the highest nature? Man is the highest nature. But I must say that when I compare the interpretation of the highest nature by the most advanced, the most fashionable school of modern science with some other teaching with which we are familiar I am not prepared to admit that the lecture room is more scientific than the Church. What is the question now placed before society, with a glib assurance the most astounding? The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence the contrary view, which I believe foreign to the conscience of humanity."

[45]See p. 37.**

[46]Spencer,Social Statics(Ed. 1892), p. 27.

[47]Ibid., p. 31.

[48]Two Christian principles are concealed here: 1. The depravity of man. 2. Faith in a moral order of things.

[49]I have discussed this question, with as much detail as the space would allow, inNietzsche, his Life and Works, Chap. IV. (Constable's Philosophies Ancient and Modern). See also my letter, "Nietzsche and Science," in theSpectatorof 8th January, 1910.

[50]G. M., p. 17.

[51]A History of Æsthetic, p. 445.

[52]A., Aph. 43.

[53]Culture and Anarchy(Smith, Elder, 1909), p. 10.

[54]Z., I, XXII.

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."—Genesisi. 28.

Man has ceased from believing in miracles, because he is convinced that the divine power of the miracle-worker has departed from him. At last he has proclaimed the age of wonders to be at an end, because he no longer knows himself capable of working wonders.

He acknowledges that miracles are still needed. He hears the distressing cry for thesuper-natural everywhere. All about him to-day he feels that wonders will have to be worked if the value of Life, of his fellows, and of himself is to be raised, by however little; and yet he halts like one paralyzed before the task he can no longer accomplish, and finding that his hand has lost its cunning and that his eye has lost its authority, he stammers helplessly that the age of miracles has gone by.

Everything convinces him of the fact. Everybody, from his priest to his porter, from his wife to his astrologer, from his child to his neighbour, tells him plainly that he is no longer divine, no longer a god, no longer even a king!

Not only has the age of miracles gone by; but with it, also, has vanished that age in which man could conceive of god in his own image. There are no gods now; because man himself has long since doubted that man is godlike.

Soon there will be no kings,[2]finally there will be no greatness at all, and this will mean the evanescence of man himself.

To speak of all this as the advance of knowledge, as the march of progress, as the triumph of science, and as the glories of enlightenment, is merely to deck a corpse, to grease-paint a sore, and to pour rose-water over a cesspool.

If the triumph of science mean "The Descent of Man"; if the glories of enlightenment mean, again, the descent of man; and if progress imply, once more, the descent of man; then the question to be asked is: in whose hands have science, enlightenment and the care of progress fallen?

This world is here for us to make of it what we will. It is a field of yielding clay, in which, like sandboys, we can build our castles and revel in our creations.

But what are these people doing? In building their castles they grow ever more like beavers, and ants, and beetles. In laying out their gardens they grow ever more like slugs, and worms, and centipedes. And their joy seems to be to feel themselves small and despised.

Once, for instance, their sky was the mighty god Indra; the clouds were his flock, and he drove his flock across his vast fields—blue and fragrant with delicate flowers. Their fruitful rain was the milk which their god Indra obtained from his herd of cows, and their seasons of drought were times when the god Indra was robbed by brigands of his flock.

Now, their sky is infinite space. Their clouds are masses of vapour in a state of condensation more or less considerable, and their rain is the outcome of that condensation becoming too considerable.

Not so many years ago their Heaven and their Earth were the father and mother of all living things, who had become separated in order that their offspring might have room to live and breathe and move. And thus their mists were the passionate sighs of the loving wife, breathing her love heavenwards; and the dew, the tearful response of her affectionate and sorrowful spouse.

Now, their Heaven is a thing that no one knows anything at all about. Their Earth is an oblate spheroid revolving aimlessly through a hypothetical medium called ether; their mists are vaporous emanations; while their dew is a discharge of moisture from the air upon substances that have irradiated a sufficient quantity of heat.

Their Sun was once a god with long, shining streams of golden hair, of which every year their goddess Night would rob him, thus leaving Winter mistress of the earth.

Now, their sun is the central orb of their Solar system. It consists of a nucleus, it is surrounded by a photosphere and a chromosphere, and has a disease of the face called "spots."

The facts remain the same; the mist still rises, the dew still falls, and the canopy of Heaven still spans the two horizons. Whatever the interpretation of these phenomena may be, this at least is certain, that they are still with us. But there is one thing that changes; one thing that cannot remain indifferent to interpretation—even though the facts do not alter,—and that is the soul of man.

A million times more sensitive to changes in interpretation than the column of mercury is to changes in the atmosphere, the soul of man rises or falls according to the nobility or the baseness of the meaning which he himself puts into things; and, just as, in this matter, he may be his own regenerator, so, also, may he be his own assassin.

[1]Delivered at University College on Dec. 8th, 1910.

[2]W. P., Vol. II, p. 187: "The time of kings has gone by, because people are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends." See alsoZ., III, LVI.

1. The World "without form" and "void."

For, in the beginning, the world was "without form" and "void," things surrounded man; but they had no meaning. His senses received probably the same number of impressions as they do now—and perhaps more—but these impressions had no co-ordination and no order. He could neither calculate them, reckon with them, nor communicate[3]them to his fellows.

Before he could thus calculate, reckon with, and communicate the things of this world, a vast process of simplification, co-ordination, organization and ordering had to be undertaken, and this process, however arbitrarily it may have been begun, was one of the first needs of thinking man.

Everything had to be given some meaning, some interpretation, and some place; and in every case, of course, this interpretation was in the terms of man, this meaning was a human meaning, and this place was a position relative to humanity.

Perhaps no object is adequately defined until the relation to it of every creature and thing in the universe has been duly discovered and recorded.[4]But no such transcendental meaning of a thing preoccupied primeval man. All he wished was to understand the world, in order that he might have power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his impressions concerning it. And, to this end, the only relation of a thing that he was concerned with was its relation to himself. It must be given a name, a place, an order, a meaning—however arbitrary, however fanciful, however euphemistic. Facts were useless, chaotic, bewildering, meaningless, before they had been adjusted,[5]organized, classified, and interpreted in accordance with the desires, hopes, aims and needs of a particular kind of man.

Thus interpretation was the first activity of all to thinking humanity, and it was human needs that interpreted the world.[6]

The love of interpreting and of adjusting—this primeval love and desire, this power of the sandboy over his castles; how much of the joy in Life, the love of Life, and, at the same time, the sorrow in Life, does not depend upon it! For we can know only a world which we ourselves have created.[7]

There was the universe—strange and inscrutable; terrible in its strangeness, insufferable in its inscrutability, incalculable in its multifariousness. With his consciousness just awaking, a cloud or a shower might be anything to man—a godlike friend or a savage foe. The dome of blue behind was also prodigious in its volume and depth, and the stars upon it at night horrible in their mystery.

What, too, was this giant's breath that seemed to come from nowhere, and which, while it cooled his face, also bent the toughest trees like straws? The sun and moon were amazing—the one marvellously eloquent, communicative, generous, hot and passionate: the other silent, reserved, aloof, cold, incomprehensible.[8]

But there were other things to do, besides interpreting the stars, the sun, the moon, the sea, and the sky above. There was the perplexing multiplicity of changes and of tides in Life, to be mastered and simplified. There was the fateful flow of all things into death and into second birth, the appalling fact of Becoming and never-resting, of change and instability, of bloom and of decay, of rise and of decline. What was to be done?

It was impossible to live in chaos. And yet, in its relation to man Nature was chaotic. There was no order anywhere. And, where there is no order, there are surprises,[9]ambushes, lurking indignities. The unexpected could jump out at any minute. And a masterful mind abhors surprises and loathes disorder. His Will to Power is humiliated by them. To man,—whether he be of yesterday, of to-day or of to-morrow— unfamiliarity, constant change, and uncertainty, are sources of great anxiety, great sorrow, great humiliation and sometimes great danger. Hence everything must be familiarized, named and fixed. Values must be definitely ascertained and determined. And thus valuing becomes a biological need. Nietzsche even goes so far as to ascribe the doctrine of causality to the inherent desire in man to trace the unfamiliar to the familiar. "The so-called instinct of causality," he says, "is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known."[10]

In the torrent and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purpose of human orientation. In the avalanche of evolutionary changes, pillars must be made to stand, to which man can hold tight for a space and collect his senses. The slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux, must be transformed into a soil on which man can gain some foothold.[11]

Primeval man stood baffled and oppressed by the complexity of his task. Facts were insuperable as facts; they could, however, be overcome spiritually—that is to say, by concepts. And that they must be overcome, man never doubted for an instant—he was too proud for that. For his aim was not existence, but a certain kind of existence—an existence in which he could hold his head up, look down upon the world, and stare defiance even at the firmament.

And thus all humanity began to cry out for a meaning, for an interpretation, for a scheme, which would make all these distant and uncontrollable facts their property, their spiritual possessions. This was not a cry for science, or for a scientific explanation, as we understand it; nor was it a cry for truth in the Christian sense.[12]For the bare truth, the bare fact, the bald reality of the thing was obvious to everybody. All who had eyes to see could see it. All who had ears to hear could hear it. And all who had nerves to feel could feel it. If ever there was a time when there was a truth for all, this was the time; and it was ugly, bare and unsatisfying. What was wanted was a scheme of life, a picture of life, in which all these naked facts and truths could be given some place and some human significance—in fact, some order and arrangement, whereby they would become the chattels of the human spirit, and no longer subjects of independent existence and awful strangeness.[13]Only thus could the dignity and pride of humanity begin to breathe with freedom. Only thus could life be made possible, where existence alone was not the single aim and desire.

"The purpose of 'knowledge,' "says Nietzsche, "in this case, as in the case of 'good,' or 'beautiful,' must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility of preservation—andnotsome abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception—stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge.... In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which theWill to Powergrows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount into its service."[14]

And thus "the object was, not to know, but to schematize, to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs required."[15]

"The whole apparatus of knowledge," says Nietzsche, "is an abstracting and simplifying apparatus—not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things."[16]

No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than this thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar, familiar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the spirit.[17]

Life without food and drink was bad enough; but Life without nourishment for this spiritual appetite, this famished wonder,[18]this starving amazement, was utterly intolerable!

The human system could appropriate, and could transform into man, in bone and flesh, the vegetation and the animals of the earth; but what was required was a process, aWeltanschauung, a general concept of the earth which would enable man to appropriate also Life's other facts, and transform them into man the spirit. Hence the so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and conquest,[19]and the "will to truth" to a process of establishing things, to a process of making things true and lasting.... Thus truth is not something which is present and which has to be found and discovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process, or better still, to the "will to overpower."[20]

For what is truth? It is any interpretation of the world which has succeeded in becoming the belief of a particular type of man.[21]Therefore there can be many truths; therefore there must be an order of rank among truths.

"Let this mean Will to Truth unto you," says Zarathustra, "that everything be made thinkable, visible, tangible unto man!

"And what ye have called the world, shall have first to be created by you:[22]your reason, your image, your will, your love shall the world be! And, verily, for your own bliss, ye knights of Knowledge!"[23]

"The purpose was to deceive oneself in a useful way; the means thereto was the invention of forms and signs, with the help of which, the confusing multifariousness of Life could be reduced to a useful and wieldly scheme."[24]

This was the craving. Not only must a meaning, a human meaning, be given to all things, in order to subordinate them to man's power; but Life itself must also be schematized and arranged. And, while all humanity cried aloud for this to be done, it was humanity's artists and higher men who set to and did it.[25]

[3]W. P., Vol. II, p. 72: "... Communication is necessary, and for it to be possible, something must be stable, simple and capable of being stated precisely."

[4]W. P., Vol. II, p. 65.

[5]Okakura-Kakuzo,The Book of Tea, p. 58: "Adjustment is Art."

[6]W. P., Vol. II, p. 13. See also Th. Gomperz,Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, p. 25. Speaking of interpretation, he says: "And this tendency was notably strengthened by the suspicious circumstances of external life, which awoke the desire for clearness, distinctness and a logical sequence of ideas."

[7]W. P., Vol. II, p. 21. See also Max Müller,Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 198-207,T. I., Part 10, Aph. 19.

[8]Hegel, in hisVorlesungen über Æsthetik(Vol. I, p. 406), says: "If we should wish to speak of the first appearance of symbolic Art as a subjective state, we should remember that artistic meditation in general, like religious meditation—or rather the two in one—and even scientific research, took their origin in wonderment."

[9]Hegel makes some interesting remarks on this point. See hisVorlesungen über Æsthetik, Vol. I, p. 319. He shows that the extreme regularity of gardens of the seventeenth century was indicative of their owners' masterful natures.

[10]W. P., Vol. II, p. 58. See also p. 11: "to 'understand' means simply this: to be able to express something new in the terms of something old or familiar."

[11]W. P., Vol. II, p. 88.

[12]W. P., Vol. II, p. 26: "The prerequisite of all living things and of their lives is: that there should be a large amount of faith, that it should be possible to pass definite judgments on things, and that there should be no doubt at all concerning values. Thus it is necessary that something should be assumed to be true,notthat it is true."

[13]Felix Clay,The Origin of the Sense of Beauty, p. 95: "The mind or the eye, brought face to face with a number of disconnected and apparently different facts, ideas, shapes, sounds or objects, is bothered and uneasy; the moment that some central conception is offered or discovered by which they all fall into order, so that their due relation to one another can be perceived and the whole grasped, there is a sense of relief and pleasure which is very intense."

[14]W. P., Vol. II, p. 12.

[15]W. P., Vol. II, p. 29.

[16]W. P., Vol. II, p. 24.

[17]W. P., Vol. II, p. 76. Hegel was also approaching this truth when he said, in his introduction to theVorlesungen über Æsthetik(pp. 58, 59 of the translation of that Introduction by B. Bosanquet): "Man is realized for himself by poetical activity, inasmuch as he has the impulse, in the medium which is directly given to him, and externally presented before him, to produce himself. This purpose he achieves by the modification of external things upon which he impresses the seal of his inner being. Man does this in order, as a free subject, to strip the outer world of its stubborn foreignness, and to enjoy, in the shape and fashion of things, a mere external reality of himself."

[18]Hegel again seems to be on the road to Nietzsche's standpoint, when he says: "Wonderment arises when man, as a spirit separated from his immediate connection with Nature, and from the immediate relation to his merely practical desires, steps back from Nature and from his own singular existence, and then begins to seek and to see generalities, permanent qualities, and absolute attributes in things" (Vorlesungen über Æsthetik, Vol. I, p. 406).

[19]W. P., Vol. I, p. 339. See also Hegel (Vorlesungen über Æsthetik, p. 128): "The instinct of curiosity and the desire for knowledge, from the lowest stage up to the highest degree of philosophical insight, is the outcome only of man's yearning to make the world his own in spirit and concepts."

[20]W. P., Vol. II, p. 60.

[21]"Truth is that kind of error without which a certain species of living being cannot exist" (W. P., Vol. II, p. 20). See alsoG. E., pp. 8, 9: "A belief might be false and yet life-preserving." See alsoW. P., Vol. II, pp. 36, 37: "We should not interpret thisconstraintin ourselves to imagine concepts, species, forms, purposes, and laws as if we were in a position to construct a real world; but as a constraint to adjust a world by means of which our existence is ensured: we thereby create a world which is determinable, simplified, comprehensible, etc., for us."

[22]W. P., Vol. II, p. 76.

[23]Z., II, XXIV. See alsoW. P., Vol. II, p. 33: "Truth is the will to be master over the manifold sensations that reach consciousness; it is the will to classify phenomena according to definite categories."

[24]W. P., Vol. II, p. M. See also Schelling,System des transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 468, where the author says, "Science, in the highest interpretation of this term, has one and the same mission as Art."

[25]W. P., Vol. II, pp. 28, 90, 103.

2. The First Artists.

For it was then that man's strongest instinct became creative in man's highest product—the artist—and the discovery was made that the world, although "without form" and "void," as a fact, could be simplified and made calculable and full of form and attractions, as a valuation, as an interpretation, as a spiritual possession. With the world at a distance from him, unfamiliar and unhuman, man's existence was a torment. With it beneath him, inside him, bearing the impress of his spirit, and proceeding from him, he became a lord, casting care to the winds, and terror to the beasts around.

Man, the bravest animal on earth, thus conceived the only possible condition of his existence; namely, to become master of the world. And, when we think of the miracles he then began to perform, we cease from wondering why he once believed in miracles, why he thought of God as in his own image, and why he made his strongest instinct God, and thereupon made Him say: "Replenish the earth and subdue it!"

It was therefore the powerful who made the names of things into law.[26]It was their Will to Power that simplified, organized, ordered and schematized the world, and it was their will to prevail which made them proclaim their simplification, their organization, their order and scheme, as the norm, as the thing to be believed, as the world of values which must be regarded as creation itself.

These early artists conceived of no other way of subduing the earth than by converting it into concepts; and, as time soon showed that there actually was no other way, interpretation came to be regarded as the greatest task of all.[27]Naming, adjusting, classifying, qualifying, valuing, putting a meaning into things, and, above all, simplifying—all these functions acquired a sacred character, and he who performed them to the glory of his fellows became sacrosanct.

So great were the relief and solace that these functions bestowed upon mankind, and so different did ugly reality appear, once it had been interpreted by the artist mind, that creating and naming actually began to acquire much the same sense. For to put a meaning into things was clearly to create them afresh[28]—in fact, to create them literally. And so it came to pass that, in one of the oldest religions on earth, the religion of Egypt, God was imagined as a Being who created things by naming them;[29]while, in the Judaic notion of the creation of the world, which was probably derived from the Egyptians themselves, Jehovah is also said to have brought things into existence merely by pronouncing their names.[30]

The world thus became literally man's Work of Art,[31]man's Sculpture.[32]Miracle after miracle at last reduced Nature to man's chattel, and it was man's lust of mastership, his will to power, which thus became creative in his highest specimen—the artist—and which, fighting for "the higher worthiness and meaning of mankind,"[33]transfigured reality by means of human valuations, and overcame Becoming by falsifying it as Being.[34]

"We are in need of lies," says Nietzsche, "in order to rise superior to reality, to truth—that is to say, in order to live.... That lies should be necessary to life, is part and parcel of the terrible and questionable character of existence....

"Metaphysics, morality, religion, science—all these things are merely different forms of falsehood, by means of them we are led to believe in life. 'Life must inspire confidence;' the task which this imposes upon us is enormous. In order to solve this problem man must already be a liar in his heart. But he must, above all, be an artist. And he is that. Metaphysics, religion, morality, science—all these things are but an offshoot of his will to Art, to falsehood, to a flight from 'truth,' to a denial of 'truth.' This ability, this artistic capacity,par excellence, of man—thanks to which he overcomes reality with lies—is a quality which he has in common with all other forms of existence....

"To be blind to many things, to see many things falsely, to fancy many things. Oh, how clever man has been in those circumstances in which he believed that he was anything but clever! Love, enthusiasm, 'God'—are but subtle forms of ultimate self-deception; they are but seductions to life and to the belief in life! In those moments when man was deceived, when he befooled himself and when he believed in life: Oh, how his spirit swelled within him! Oh, what ecstasies he had! What power he felt! And what artistic triumphs in the feeling of power!... Man had once more become master of 'matter'—master of truth!... And whenever man rejoices, it is always in the same way: he rejoices as an artist, his Power is his joy, he enjoys falsehood as his power."[35]

"Subdue it!" said the Jehovah of the Old Testament, speaking to man, and pointing to the earth: "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

This was man's original concept of his task on earth, and with it before him he began to breathe at last, and to feel no longer a worm, entangled in a mysterious piece of clockwork mechanism.

"What is it that created esteeming and despising and value and will?" Zarathustra asks.

"The creating self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as a hand to its will."[36]

To appraise a thing was to create it for ever in the minds of a people. But to create a thing in the minds of a people was to create that people too; for it is to have values in common that constitutes a people.[37]

"Creators were they who created peoples, and hung one belief and one love over them," says Zarathustra; "thus they served life."[38]

"Values did man stamp upon things only that he might preserve himself—he alone created the meaning of things—a human meaning! Therefore calleth he himself man—that is, the valuing one.

"Valuing is creating: listen, ye creators! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of valued things.

"Through valuing alone can value arise; and without valuing, the nut of existence would be hollow. Listen, ye creators!

"Change of values—that is, change of creators.[39]

"Verily a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a yoke on the thousand necks of this animal?"[40]

"All the beauty and sublimity with which we have invested real and imagined things," says Nietzsche, "I will show to be the property and product of man, and this should be his most beautiful apology. Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power. Oh, the regal liberality with which he has lavished gifts upon things!... Hitherto this has been his greatest disinterestedness, that he admired and worshipped, and knew how to conceal from himself that he it was who had created what he admired."[41]

"Man as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power"—this man, following his divine inspiration to subdue the earth and to make it his, became the greatest stimulus to Life itself, the greatest bond between earth and the human soul; and, in shedding the glamour of his personality, like the sun, upon the things he interpreted and valued, he also gilded, by reflection, his fellow creatures.

There is not a thing we call sacred, beautiful, good or precious, that has not been valued for us by this man, and when we, like children, call out for the Truth about the riddles of this world, it is not for the truth of reality which is the object of Christianity and of science for which we crave; but for the simplifications[42]and values of this man-god, who, by the art-form, into which he casts reality, makes us believe that reality is as he says it is.

If this man is lacking, then we succumb to the blackest despair. If he is with us, we voluntarily yield to boundless joy and good cheer. His function is the divine principle on earth; his creationArt"is the highest task and the properly metaphysical activity of this life."[43]

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