“He serveth the servant,The brave he loves amain,He kills the cripple and the sick,And straight begins again;For gods delight in gods,And thrust the weak aside,—To him who scorns their charitiesTheir arms fly open wide.”
“He serveth the servant,The brave he loves amain,He kills the cripple and the sick,And straight begins again;For gods delight in gods,And thrust the weak aside,—To him who scorns their charitiesTheir arms fly open wide.”
“He serveth the servant,
The brave he loves amain,
He kills the cripple and the sick,
And straight begins again;
For gods delight in gods,
And thrust the weak aside,—
To him who scorns their charities
Their arms fly open wide.”
From such a world-view what moral could proceed more logically than that of Zarathustra: “And him whom ye do not teach to fly, teach—how to fall quicker”?
But after all, the intellectual origin of Nietzsche's ideas matters but little. Wheresoever they were derived from, he made them strikingly his own by raising them to the splendid elevation of his thought. And if nevertheless he has failed to take high rank and standing among the sages of the schools, this shortage in his professional prestige is more than counterbalanced by the wide reach of his influence among the laity. What might the re-classification, or perchance even the re-interpretation, of known facts about life havesignified beside Nietzsche's lofty apprehension of the sacredness of life itself? For whatever may be the social menace of his reasoning, his commanding proclamation to an expectant age of the doctrine that Progress means infinite growth towards ideals of perfection has resulted in a singular reanimation of the individual sense of dignity, served as a potent remedy of social dry-rot, and furthered our gradual emergence from the impenetrable darkness of ancestral traditions.
In seeking an adequate explanation of his power over modern minds we readily surmise that his philosophy draws much of its vitality from the system of science that underlies it. And yet while it is true enough that Nietzsche's fundamental thesis is an offshoot of the Darwinian theory, the violent individualism which is the driving principle of his entire philosophy is rather opposed to the general orientation of Darwinism, since that is social. Not to the author of the “Descent of Man” directly is the modern ethical glorification of egoism indebted for its measure of scientific sanction, but to one of his heterodox disciples, namely to the bio-philosopher W. H. Rolph, who in a volume named “Biologic Problems,” with thesubtitle, “An Essay in Rational Ethics,”(18)deals definitely with the problem of evolution in its dynamical bearings. The question is raised, Why do the extant types of life ascend toward higher goals, and, on reaching them, progress toward still higher goals, to the end of time? Under the reason as explained by Darwin, should not evolution stop at a definite stage, namely, when the object of the competitive struggle for existence has been fully attained? Self-preservation naturally ceases to act as an incentive to further progress, so soon as the weaker contestants are beaten off the field and the survival of the fittest is abundantly secured. From there on we have to look farther for an adequate causation of the ascent of species. Unless we assume the existence of an absolutistic teleological tendency to perfection, we are logically bound to connect upward development with favorable external conditions. By substituting for the Darwinian “struggle for existence” a new formula: “struggle for surplus,” Rolph advances a new fruitful hypothesis. In all creatures the acquisitive cravings exceed the limit of actual necessity. Under Darwin's interpretation of nature,the struggle between individuals of the same species would give way to pacific equilibrium as soon as the bare subsistence were no longer in question. Yet we know that the struggle is unending. The creature appetites are not appeased by a normal sufficiency; on the contrary, “l'appetit vient en mangeant”; the possessive instinct, if not quite insatiable, is at least coextensive with its opportunities for gratification. Whether or not it be true—as Carlyle claims—that, after all, the fundamental question between any two human beings is, “Can I kill thee, or canst thou kill me?”—at any rate in civilized human society the contest is not waged merely for the naked existence, but mainly for life's increments in the form of comforts, pleasures, luxuries, and the accumulation of power and influence; and the excess of acquisition over immediate need goes as a residuum into the structure of civilization. In plain words, then, social progress is pushed on by individual greed and ambition. At this point Rolph rests the case, without entering into the moral implicates of the subject, which would seem to obtrude themselves upon the attention.
Now to a believer in progressive evolution with a strong ethical bent such a theory brings homeman's ulterior responsibility for the betterment of life, and therefore acts as a call to his supreme duty of preparing the ground for the arrival of a higher order of beings. The argument seems simple and clinching. Living nature through a long file of species and genera has at last worked up to thehomo sapienswho as yet does not even approach the perfection of his own type. Is it a legitimate ambition of the race to mark time on the stand which it has reached and to entrench itself impregnably in its present mediocrity? Nietzsche did not shrink from any of the inferential conclusions logically to be drawn from the biologic argument. If growth is in the purpose of nature, then once we have accepted our chief office in life, it becomes our task to pave the way for a higher genus of man. And the only force that makes with directness for that object is the Will to Power. To foreshadow the resultant human type, Nietzsche resurrected from Goethe's vocabulary the convenient wordÜbermensch—“Overman.”
Any one regarding existence in the light of a stern and perpetual combat is of necessity driven at last to the alternative between making the bestof life and making an end of it; he must either seek lasting deliverance from the evil of living or endeavor to wrest from the world by any means at his command the greatest sum of its gratifications. It is serviceable to describe the two frames of mind respectively as the optimistic and the pessimistic. But it would perhaps be hasty to conclude that the first of these attitudes necessarily betokens the greater strength of character.
Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy sprang from pessimism, yet issued in an optimism of unheard-of exaltation; carrying, however, to the end its plainly visible birthmarks. He started out as an enthusiastic disciple of Arthur Schopenhauer; unquestionably the adherence was fixed by his own deep-seated contempt for the complacency of the plebs. But he was bound soon to part company with the grandmaster of pessimism, because he discovered the root of the philosophy of renunciation in that same detestable debility of the will which he deemed responsible for the bovine lassitude of the masses; both pessimism and philistinism came from a lack of vitality, and were symptoms of racial degeneracy. But before Nietzsche finally rejected Schopenhauer and gave his shocking counterblast to the undermining action of pessimism,he succumbed temporarily to the spell of another gigantic personality. We are not concerned with Richard Wagner's musical influence upon Nietzsche, who was himself a musician of no mean ability; what is to the point here is the prime principle of Wagner's art theory. The key to the Wagnerian theory is found, also, in Schopenhauer's philosophy. Wagner starts from the pessimistic thesis that at the bottom of the well of life lies nothing but suffering,—hence living is utterly undesirable. In one of his letters to Franz Liszt he names as the duplex root of his creative genius the longing for love and the yearning for death. On another occasion, he confesses his own emotional nihilism in the following summary ofTristan und Isolde: “Sehnsucht, Sehnsucht, unstillbares, ewig neu sich gebärendes Verlangen—Schmachten und Dursten; einzige Erlösung: Tod, Sterben, Untergehen,—Nichtmehrerwachen.”(19)But from the boundless ocean of sorrow there is a refuge. It was Wagner's fundamental dogma that through the illusions of art the individual is enabled to rise above the hopelessness of the realities into a new cosmos replete with supreme satisfactions.Man's mundane salvation therefore depends upon the ministrations of art and his own artistic sensitiveness. The glorification of genius is a natural corollary of such a belief.
Nietzsche in one of his earliest works examines Wagner's theory and amplifies it by a rather casuistic interpretation of the evolution of art. After raising the question, How did the Greeks contrive to dignify and ennoble their national existence? he points, by way of an illustrative answer, not perchance to the Periclean era, but to a far more primitive epoch of Hellenic culture, when a total oblivion of the actual world and a transport into the realm of imagination was universally possible. He explains the trance as the effect of intoxication,—primarily in the current literal sense of the word. Such was the significance of the cult of Dionysos. “Through singing and dancing,” claims Nietzsche, “man manifests himself as member of a higher community. Walking and talking he has unlearned, and is in a fair way to dance up into the air.” That this supposititious Dionysiac phase of Hellenic culture was in turn succeeded by more rational stages, in which the impulsive flow of life was curbed and dammed in by operations of the intellect, is not permitted by Nietzsche to invalidatethe argument. By his arbitrary reading of ancient history he was, at first, disposed to look to the forthcomingUniversal-Kunstwerk(20)as the complete expression of a new religious spirit and as the adequate lever of a general uplift of mankind to a state of bliss. But the typical disparity between Wagner and Nietzsche was bound to alienate them. Wagner, despite all appearance to the contrary, is inherently democratic in his convictions,—his earlier political vicissitudes amply confirm this view,—and fastens his hope for the elevation of humanity through art upon the sort of genius in whom latent popular forces might combine to a new summit. Nietzsche on the other hand represents the extreme aristocratic type, both in respect of thought and of sentiment. “I do not wish to be confounded with and mistaken for these preachers of equality,” says he. “For withinmejustice saith: men are not equal.” His ideal is a hero of coercive personality, dwelling aloft in solitude, despotically bending the gregarious instincts of the common crowd to his own higher purposes by the dominating force of his Will to Might.
The concept of the Overman rests, as has beenshown, upon a fairly solid substructure of plausibility, since at the bottom of the author's reasoning lies the notion that mankind is destined to outgrow its current status; the thought of a humanity risen to new and wondrous heights of power over nature is not necessarily unscientific for being supremely imaginative. The Overman, however, cannot be produced ready made, by any instantaneous process; he must be slowly and persistently willed into being, through love of the new ideal which he is to embody: “All great Love,” speaketh Zarathustra, “seeketh to create what it loveth.MyselfI sacrifice into my love, andmy neighboras myself, thus runneth the speech of all creators.” Only the fixed conjoint purpose of many generations of aspiring men will be able to create the Overman. “Could you create a God?—Then be silent concerning all gods! But ye could very well create Beyond-man. Not yourselves perhaps, my brethren! But ye could create yourselves into fathers and fore-fathers of Beyond-man; and let this be your best creating. But all creators are hard.”
Nietzsche's startlingly heterodox code of ethics coheres organically with the Overman hypothesis, and so understood is certain to lose some of itsaspect of absurdity. The racial will, as we have seen, must be taught to aim at the Overman. But the volitional faculty of the generation, according to Nietzsche, is so debilitated as to be utterly inadequate to its office. Hence, advisedly to stimulate and strengthen the enfeebled will power of his fellow men is the most imperative and immediate task of the radical reformer. Once the power of willing, as such, shall have been,—regardless of the worthiness of its object,—brought back to active life, it will be feasible to give the Will to Might a direction towards objects of the highest moral grandeur.
Unfortunately for the race as a whole, the throng is ineligible for partnership in the auspicious scheme of co-operative procreation: which fact necessitates a segregative method of breeding. The Overman can only be evolved by an ancestry of master-men, who must be secured to the race by a rigid application of eugenic standards, particularly in the matter of mating. Of marriage, Nietzsche has this definition: “Marriage, so call I the will of two to create one who is more than they who created him.” For the bracing of the weakened will-force of the human breed it is absolutely essential that master-men, the potential progenitorsof the superman, be left unhampered to the impulse of “living themselves out” (sich auszuleben),—an opportunity of which under the regnant code of morals they are inconsiderately deprived. Since, then, existing dictates and conventions are a serious hindrance to the requisite autonomy of the master-man, their abolishment might be well. Yet on the other hand, it is convenient that theVielzuviele, the “much-too-many,” i. e. the despised generality of people, should continue to be governed and controlled by strict rules and regulations, so that the will of the master-folk might the more expeditiously be wrought. Would it not, then, be an efficacious compromise to keep the canon of morality in force for the general run, but suspend it for the special benefit of master-men, prospective or full-fledged? From the history of the race Nietzsche draws a warrant for the distinction. His contention is that masters and slaves have never lived up to a single code of conduct. Have not civilizations risen and fallen according as they were shaped by this or that class of nations? History also teaches what disastrous consequences follow the loss of caste. In the case of the Jewish people, the domineering type or morals gave way to the servileas a result of the Babylonian captivity. So long as the Jews were strong, they extolled all manifestations of strength and energy. The collapse of their own strength turned them into apologists of the so-called “virtues” of humility, long-suffering, forgiveness,—until, according to the Judæo-Christian code of ethics, being good came to mean being weak. So races may justly be classified into masters and slaves, and history proves that to the strong goes the empire. The ambitions of a nation are a sure criterion of its worth.
“I walk through these folk and keep mine eyes open. They have becomesmallerand are becoming ever smaller.And the reason of that is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.For they are modest even in their virtue; for they are desirous of ease. But with ease only modest virtue is compatible.True, in their fashion they learn how to stride and to stride forward. That I call theirhobbling. Thereby they become an offense unto every one who is in a hurry.And many a one strideth on and in doing so looketh backward, with a stiffened neck. I rejoice to run against the stomachs of such.Foot and eyes shall not lie, nor reproach each other for lying. But there is much lying among small folk.Some of themwill, but most of themare willedmerely. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.There are unconscious actors among them, and involuntaryactors. The genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.Here is little of man; therefore women try to make themselves manly. For only he who is enough of a man will save the woman in woman.And this hypocrisy I found to be worst among them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.‘I serve, thou servest, we serve.’ Thus the hypocrisy of the rulers prayeth. And, alas, if the highest lord be merely the highest servant!Alas! the curiosity of mine eye strayed even unto their hypocrisies, and well I divined all their fly-happiness and their humming round window panes in the sunshine.So much kindness, so much weakness see I. So much justice and sympathy, so much weakness.Round, honest, and kind are they towards each other, as grains of sand are round, honest, and kind unto grains of sand.Modestly to embrace a small happiness—they call ‘submission’! And therewith they modestly look sideways after a new small happiness.At bottom they desire plainly one thing most of all: to be hurt by nobody. Thus they oblige all and do well unto them.But this iscowardice; although it be called ‘virtue.’And if once they speak harshly, these small folk,—I hear therein merely their hoarseness. For every draught of air maketh them hoarse.Prudent are they; their virtues have prudent fingers. But they are lacking in clenched fists; their fingers know not how to hide themselves behind fists.For them virtue is what maketh modest and tame. Thereby they have made the wolf a dog and man himself man's best domestic animal.‘We put our chair in the midst’—thus saith theirsimpering unto me—‘exactly as far from dying gladiators as from happy swine.’This is mediocrity; although it be called moderation.”(21)
“I walk through these folk and keep mine eyes open. They have becomesmallerand are becoming ever smaller.And the reason of that is their doctrine of happiness and virtue.
For they are modest even in their virtue; for they are desirous of ease. But with ease only modest virtue is compatible.
True, in their fashion they learn how to stride and to stride forward. That I call theirhobbling. Thereby they become an offense unto every one who is in a hurry.
And many a one strideth on and in doing so looketh backward, with a stiffened neck. I rejoice to run against the stomachs of such.
Foot and eyes shall not lie, nor reproach each other for lying. But there is much lying among small folk.
Some of themwill, but most of themare willedmerely. Some of them are genuine, but most of them are bad actors.
There are unconscious actors among them, and involuntaryactors. The genuine are always rare, especially genuine actors.
Here is little of man; therefore women try to make themselves manly. For only he who is enough of a man will save the woman in woman.
And this hypocrisy I found to be worst among them, that even those who command feign the virtues of those who serve.
‘I serve, thou servest, we serve.’ Thus the hypocrisy of the rulers prayeth. And, alas, if the highest lord be merely the highest servant!
Alas! the curiosity of mine eye strayed even unto their hypocrisies, and well I divined all their fly-happiness and their humming round window panes in the sunshine.
So much kindness, so much weakness see I. So much justice and sympathy, so much weakness.
Round, honest, and kind are they towards each other, as grains of sand are round, honest, and kind unto grains of sand.
Modestly to embrace a small happiness—they call ‘submission’! And therewith they modestly look sideways after a new small happiness.
At bottom they desire plainly one thing most of all: to be hurt by nobody. Thus they oblige all and do well unto them.
But this iscowardice; although it be called ‘virtue.’
And if once they speak harshly, these small folk,—I hear therein merely their hoarseness. For every draught of air maketh them hoarse.
Prudent are they; their virtues have prudent fingers. But they are lacking in clenched fists; their fingers know not how to hide themselves behind fists.
For them virtue is what maketh modest and tame. Thereby they have made the wolf a dog and man himself man's best domestic animal.
‘We put our chair in the midst’—thus saith theirsimpering unto me—‘exactly as far from dying gladiators as from happy swine.’
This is mediocrity; although it be called moderation.”(21)
The only law acknowledged by him who would be a master is the bidding of his own will. He makes short work of every other law. Whatever clogs the flight of his indomitable ambition must be ruthlessly swept aside. Obviously, the enactment of this law that would render the individual supreme and absolute would strike the death-knell for all established forms and institutions of the social body. But such is quite within Nietzsche's intention. They are noxious agencies, ingeniously devised for the enslavement of the will, and the most pernicious among them is the Christian religion, because of the alleged divine sanction conferred by it upon subserviency. Christianity would thwart the supreme will of nature by curbing that lust for domination which the laws of nature as revealed by science sanction, nay prescribe. Nietzsche's ideas on this subject are loudly and over-loudly voiced inDer Antichrist(“The Anti-Christ”), written in September 1888 as the first part of a planned treatise in four instalments, entitledDer Wille zur Macht. Versuch einerUmwertung aller Werte. (“The Will to Power. An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values”.)
The master-man's will, then, is his only law. That is the essence ofHerrenmoral. And so the question arises, Whence shall the conscience of the ruler-man derive its distinctions between the Right and the Wrong? The arch-iconoclast brusquely stifles this naïve query beforehand by assuring us that such distinctions in their accepted sense do not exist for personages of that grander stamp. Heedless of the time-hallowed concepts that all men share in common, he enjoins mastermen to take their position uncompromisingly outside the confining area of conventions, in the moral independence that dwells “beyond good and evil.” Good and Evil are mere denotations, devoid of any real significance. Right and Wrong are not ideals immutable through the ages, nor even the same at any time in all states of society. They are vague and general notions, varying more or less with the practical exigencies under which they were conceived. What was right for my great-grandfather is notipso factoright for myself. Hence, the older and better established a law, the more inapposite is it apt to be to the living demands.Why should the ruler-man bow down to outworn statutes or stultify his self-dependent moral sense before the artificial and stupidly uniform moral relics of the dead past? Good is whatever conduces to the increase of my power,—evil is whatever tends to diminish it! Only the weakling and the hypocrite will disagree.
Unmistakably this is a straightout application of the “pragmatic” criterion of truth. Nietzsche's unconfessed and cautious imitators, who call themselves pragmatists, are not bold enough to follow their own logic from the cognitive sphere to the moral. They stop short of the natural conclusion to which their own premises lead. Morality is necessarily predicated upon specific notions of truth. So if Truth is an alterable and shifting concept, must not morality likewise be variable? The pragmatist might just as well come out at once into the broad light and frankly say: “Laws do not interest me in the abstract, or for the sake of their general beneficence; they interest me only in so far as they affect me. Therefore I will make, interpret, and abolish them to suit myself.”
To Nietzsche the “quest of truth” is a palpable evasion. Truth is merely a means for the enhancementof my subjective satisfaction. It makes not a whit of difference whether an opinion or a judgment satisfies this or that scholastic definition. I call true and good that which furthers my welfare and intensifies my joy in living; and,—to vindicate my self-gratification as a form, indeed the highest, of “social service,”—the desirable thing is that which matters for the improvement of the human stock and thereby speeds the advent of the Superman. “Oh,” exclaims Zarathustra, “that ye would understand my word: Be sure to do whatever ye like,—but first of all be such ascan will! Be sure to love your neighbor as yourself,—but first of all be such aslove themselves,—as love themselves with great love, with contempt. Thus speaketh Zarathustra, the ungodly.”
By way of throwing some light upon this phase of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, it may be added that ever since 1876 he was an assiduous student of Herbert Spencer, with whose theory of social evolution he was first made acquainted by his friend, Paul Rée, who in two works of his own, “Psychologic Observations,” (1875), and “On the Origin of Moral Sentiments,” (1877), had elaborated upon the Spencerian theory about the genealogy of morals.
The best known among all of Nietzsche's works,Also Sprach Zarathustra(“Thus Spake Zarathustra”), is the Magna Charta of the new moral emancipation. It was composed during a sojourn in southern climes between 1883 and 1885, during the convalescence from a nervous collapse, when after a long and critical depression his spirit was recovering its accustomed resilience. Nietzsche wrote hismagnum opusin solitude, in the mountains and by the sea. His mind always was at its best in settings of vast proportions, and in this particular work there breathes an exaltation that has scarcely its equal in the world's literature. Style and diction in their supreme elation suit the lofty fervor of the sentiment. From the feelings, as a fact, this great rhapsody flows, and to the feelings it makes its appeal; its extreme fascination must be lost upon those who only know how to “listen to reason.” The wondrous plastic beauty of the language, along with the high emotional pitch of its message, render “Zarathustra” a priceless poetic monument; indeed its practical effect in chastening and rejuvenating German literary diction can hardly be overestimated. Its value as a philosophic document is much slighter. It is not even organized on severely logical lines. Onthe contrary, the four component parts are but brilliant variations upon a single generic theme, each in a different clef, but harmoniously united by the incremental ecstasy of the movement. The composition is free from monotony, for down to each separate aphorism every part of it has its special lyric nuance. The whole purports to convey in the form of discourse the prophetic message of Zarathustra, the hermit sage, an idealized self-portrayal of the author.
In the first book the tone is calm and temperate. Zarathustra exhorts and instructs his disciples, rails at his adversaries, and discloses his superiority over them. In the soliloquies and dialogues of the second book he reveals himself more fully and freely as the Superman. The third book contains the meditations and rhapsodies of Zarathustra now dwelling wholly apart from men, his mind solely occupied with thought about the Eternal Return of the Present. In the fourth book he is found in the company of a few chosen spirits whom he seeks to imbue with his perfected doctrine. In this final section of the work the deep lyric current is already on the ebb; it is largely supplanted by irony, satire, sarcasm, even buffoonery, all of which are resorted to for the pitilessexcoriation of our type of humanity, deemed decrepit by the Sage. The author's intention to present in a concluding fifth division the dying Zarathustra pronouncing his benedictions upon life in the act of quitting it was not to bear fruit.
“Zarathustra”—Nietzsche's terrific assault upon the fortifications of our social structure—is too easily mistaken by facile cavilers for the ravings of an unsound and desperate mind. To a narrow and superficial reading, it exhibits itself as a wholesale repudiation of all moral responsibility and a maniacal attempt to subvert human civilization for the exclusive benefit of the “glorious blonde brute, rampant with greed for victory and spoil.” Yet those who care to look more deeply will detect beneath this chimerical contempt of conventional regulations no want of a highminded philanthropic purpose, provided they have the vision necessary to comprehend a love of man oriented by such extremely distant perspectives. At all events they will discover that in this rebellious propaganda an advancing line of life is firmly traced out. The indolent and thoughtless may indeed be horrified by the appalling dangers of the gospel according to Zarathustra. But in reality there is no great cause for alarm. Society mayamply rely upon its agencies, even in these stupendous times of universal war, for protection from any disastrous organic dislocations incited by the teachings of Zarathustra, at least so far as the immediate future is concerned—in which alone society appears to be interested. Moreover, our apprehensions are appeased by the sober reflection that by its plain unfeasibleness the whole supersocial scheme of Nietzsche is reduced to colossal absurdity. Its limitless audacity defeats any formulation of its “war aims.” For what compels an ambitious imagination to arrest itself at the goal of the superman? Why should it not run on beyond that first terminal? In one of Mr. G. K. Chesterton's labored extravaganzas a grotesque sort of super-overmanin spesucceeds in going beyond unreason when he contrives this lucid self-definition: “I have gone where God has never dared to go. I am above the silly supermen as they are above mere men. Where I walk in the Heavens, no man has walked before me, and I am alone in a garden.” It is enough to make one gasp and then perhaps luckily recall Goethe's consoling thought that under the care of Providence the trees will not grow into the heavens. (“Es ist dafür gesorgt, dass die Bäume nicht in den Himmelwachsen.”) As matter of fact, the ideas promulgated inAlso Sprach Zarathustraneed inspire no fear of their winning the human race from its venerable idols, despite the fact that the pull of natural laws and of elemental appetites seems to be on their side. The only effect to be expected of such a philosophy is that it will act as an antidote for moral inertia which inevitably goes with the flock-instinct and the lazy reliance on the accustomed order of things.
Nietzsche's ethics are not easy to valuate, since none of their standards are derived from the orthodox canon. His being a truly personalized form of morality, his principles are strictly cognate to his temperament. To his professed ideals there attaches a definite theory of society. And since his philosophy is consistent in its sincerity, its message is withheld from the man-in-the-street, deemed unworthy of notice, and delivered only to theélitethat shall beget the superman. To Nietzsche the good of the greatest number is no valid consideration. The great stupid mass exists only for the sake of an oligarchy by whom it is duly exploited under nature's decree that the strong shall prey upon the weak. Let, then, this favored set further the design of nature by systematicallyencouraging the elevation of their own type.
We have sought to dispel the fiction about the shaping influence of Nietzsche upon the thought and conduct of his nation, and have accounted for the miscarriage of his ethics by their fantastic impracticability. Yet it has been shown also that he fostered in an unmistakable fashion the class-consciousness of the aristocrat, born or self-appointed. To that extent his influence was certainly malign. Yet doubtless he did perform a service to our age. The specific nature of this service, stated in the fewest words, is that to his great divinatory gift are we indebted for an unprecedented strengthening of our hold upon reality. In order to make this point clear we have to revert once more to Nietzsche's transient intellectual relation to pessimism.
We have seen that the illusionism of Schopenhauer and more particularly of Wagner exerted a strong attraction on his high-strung artistic temperament.
Nevertheless a certain realistic counter-drift to the ultra-romantic tendency of Wagner's theory caused him in the long run to reject the faith inthe power of Art to save man from evil. Almost abruptly, his personal affection for the “Master,” to whom in his eventual mental eclipse he still referred tenderly at lucid moments, changed to bitter hostility. Henceforth he classes the glorification of Art as one of the three most despicable attitudes of life: Philistinism, Pietism, and Estheticism, all of which have their origin incowardice, represent three branches of the ignominious road of escape from the terrors of living. In three extended diatribes Nietzsche denounces Wagner as the archetype of modern decadence; the most violent attack of all is delivered against the point of juncture in which Wagner's art gospel and the Christian religion culminate: the promise of redemption through pity. To Nietzsche's way of thinking pity is merely the coward's acknowledgment of his weakness. For only insomuch as a man is devoid of fortitude in bearing his own sufferings is he unable to contemplate with equanimity the sufferings of his fellow creatures. Since religion enjoins compassion with all forms of human misery, we should make war upon religion. And for the reason that Wagner's crowning achievement, hisParsifal, is a veritable sublimation of Mercy, there can be no truce between itscreator and the giver of the counsel: “Be hard!” Perhaps this notorious advice is after all not as ominous as it sounds. It merely expresses rather abruptly Nietzsche's confidence in the value of self-control as a means of discipline. If you have learned calmly to see others suffer, you are yourself able to endure distress with manful composure. “Therefore I wash the hand which helped the sufferer; therefore I even wipe my soul.” But, unfortunately, such is the frailty of human nature that it is only one step from indifference about the sufferings of others to an inclination to exploit them or even to inflict pain upon one's neighbors for the sake of personal gain of one sort or another.
Why so hard? said once the charcoal unto the diamond, are we not near relations?Why so soft? O my brethren, thus I ask you. Are ye not my brethren?Why so soft, so unresisting, and yielding? Why is there so much disavowal and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your looks?And if ye are not willing to be fates, and inexorable, how could ye conquer with me someday?And if your hardness would not glance, and cut, and chip into pieces—how could ye create with me some day?For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness unto you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,—Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder than brass, nobler than brass. The noblest only is perfectly hard.This new table, O my brethren, I put over you: Become hard!(22)
Why so hard? said once the charcoal unto the diamond, are we not near relations?
Why so soft? O my brethren, thus I ask you. Are ye not my brethren?
Why so soft, so unresisting, and yielding? Why is there so much disavowal and abnegation in your hearts? Why is there so little fate in your looks?
And if ye are not willing to be fates, and inexorable, how could ye conquer with me someday?
And if your hardness would not glance, and cut, and chip into pieces—how could ye create with me some day?
For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness unto you to press your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,—
Blessedness to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder than brass, nobler than brass. The noblest only is perfectly hard.
This new table, O my brethren, I put over you: Become hard!(22)
The repudiation of Wagner leaves a tremendous void in Nietzsche's soul by depriving his enthusiasm of its foremost concrete object. He loses his faith in idealism. When illusions can bring a man like Wagner to such an odious outlook upon life, they must be obnoxious in themselves; and so, after being subjected to pitiless analysis, they are disowned and turned into ridicule. And now, the pendulum of his zeal having swung from one emotional extreme to the other, the great rhapsodist finds himself temporarily destitute of an adequate theme. However, his fervor does not long remain in abeyance, and soon it is absorbed in a new object. Great as is the move it is logical enough. Since illusions are only a hindrance to the fuller grasp of life which behooves all free spirits, Nietzsche energetically turns from self-deception to its opposite, self-realization. In this new spiritual endeavor he relies far more on intuition than on scientific and metaphysical speculation. From his own stand he is certainly justifiedin doing this. Experimentation and ratiocination at the best are apt to disassociate individual realities from their complex setting and then proceed to palm them off as illustrations of life, when in truth they are lifeless, artificially preserved specimens.
“Encheiresin naturae nennt's die Chemie,Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie.”(23)
“Encheiresin naturae nennt's die Chemie,Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie.”(23)
“Encheiresin naturae nennt's die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie.”(23)
Nietzsche's realism, by contrast, goes to the very quick of nature, grasps all the gifts of life, and from the continuous flood of phenomena extracts a rich, full-flavored essence. It is from a sense of gratitude for this boon that he becomes an idolatrous worshiper of experience, “der grosse Jasager,”—the great sayer of Yes,—and the most stimulating optimist of all ages. To Nietzsche reality is alive as perhaps never to man before. He plunges down to the very heart of things, absorbs their vital qualities and meanings, and having himself learned to draw supreme satisfaction from the most ordinary facts and events, he makes the common marvelous to others, which, as was said by James Russell Lowell, is a true test ofgenius. No wonder that deification of reality becomes the dominantmotifin his philosophy. But again that onesided aristocratic strain perverts his ethics. To drain the intoxicating cup at the feast of life, such is the divine privilege not of the common run of mortals but only of the elect. They must not let this or that petty and artificial convention, nor yet this or that moral command or prohibition, restrain them from the exercise of that higher sense of living, but must fully abandon themselves to its joys. “Since man came into existence he hath had too little joy. That alone, my brethren, is our original sin.”(24)The “much-too-many” are doomed to inanity by their lack of appetite at the banquet of life:
Such folk sit down unto dinner and bring nothing with them, not even a good hunger. And now they backbite: “All is vanity!”But to eat well and drink well, O my brethren, is, verily, no vain art! Break, break the tables of those who are never joyful!(25)
Such folk sit down unto dinner and bring nothing with them, not even a good hunger. And now they backbite: “All is vanity!”
But to eat well and drink well, O my brethren, is, verily, no vain art! Break, break the tables of those who are never joyful!(25)
The Will to Live holds man's one chance of this-worldly bliss, and supersedes any care for the remote felicities of any problematic future state. Yet the Nietzschean cult of life is not to be understoodby any means as a banal devotion to the pleasurable side of life alone. The true disciple finds in every event, be it happy or adverse, exalting or crushing, the factors of supreme spiritual satisfaction: joy and pain are equally implied in experience, the Will to Live encompasses jointly the capacity to enjoy and to suffer. It may even be paradoxically said that since man owes some of his greatest and most beautiful achievements to sorrow, it must be a joy and a blessing to suffer. The unmistakable sign of heroism isamor fati, a fierce delight in one's destiny, hold what it may.
Consequently, the precursor of the superman will be possessed, along with his great sensibility to pleasure, of a capacious aptitude for suffering. “Ye would perchance abolish suffering,” exclaims Nietzsche, “and we,—it seems that we would rather have it even greater and worse than it has ever been. The discipline of suffering,—tragical suffering,—know ye not that only this discipline has heretofore brought about every elevation of man?” “Spirit is that life which cutteth into life. By one's own pain one's own knowledge increaseth;—knew ye that before? And the happiness of the spirit is this: to be anointed and consecratedby tears as a sacrificial animal;—knew ye that before?” And if, then, the tragical pain inherent in life be no argument against Joyfulness, the zest of living can be obscured by nothing save the fear of total extinction. To the disciple of Nietzsche, by whom every moment of his existence is realized as a priceless gift, the thought of his irrevocable separation from all things is unbearable. “‘Was this life?’ I shall say to Death. ‘Well, then, once more!’” And—to paraphrase Nietzsche's own simile—the insatiable witness of the great tragi-comedy, spectator and participant at once, being loath to leave the theatre, and eager for a repetition of the performance, shouts his endlessencore, praying fervently that in the constant repetition of the performance not a single detail of the action be omitted. The yearning for the endlessness not of life at large, not of life on any terms, but ofthis my lifewith its ineffable wealth of rapturous moments, works up the extreme optimism of Nietzsche to its stupendousa priorinotion of infinity, expressed in the namedie ewige Wiederkehr(“Eternal Recurrence”). It is a staggeringly imaginative concept, formed apart from any evidential grounds, and yet fortified with a fair amount of logical armament. Theuniverse is imagined as endless in time, although its material contents are not equally conceived as limitless. Since, consequently, there must be a limit to the possible variety in the arrangement and sequence of the sum total of data, even as in the case of a kaleidoscope, the possibility of variegations is not infinite. The particular co-ordination of things in the universe, say at this particular moment, is bound to recur again and again in the passing of the eons. But under the nexus of cause and effect the resurgence of the past from the ocean of time is not accidental nor is the configuration of things haphazard, as is true in the case of the kaleidoscope; rather, history, in the most inclusive acceptation of the term, is predestined to repeat itself; this happens through the perpetual progressive resurrection of its particles. It is then to be assumed that any aspect which the world has ever presented must have existed innumerable millions of times before, and must recur with eternal periodicity. That the deterministic strain in this tremendousVorstellungof a cyclic rhythm throbbing in the universe entangles its author's fanatical belief in evolution in a rather serious self-contradiction, does not detract from its spiritual lure,nor from its wide suggestiveness, however incapable it may be of scientific demonstration.
From unfathomed depths of feeling wells up the pæan of the prophet of the life intense.
O Mensch! Gib Acht!Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?Ich schlief, ich schlief—,Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:—Die Welt ist tief,Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.Tief ist ihr Weh—,Lust—tiefer noch als Herzeleid:Weh spricht: Vergeh!Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit—Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!(26)
O Mensch! Gib Acht!Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?Ich schlief, ich schlief—,Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:—Die Welt ist tief,Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.Tief ist ihr Weh—,Lust—tiefer noch als Herzeleid:Weh spricht: Vergeh!Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit—Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!(26)
O Mensch! Gib Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
Ich schlief, ich schlief—,
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:—
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh—,
Lust—tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit—
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!(26)
A timid heart may indeed recoil from the iron necessity of relivingad infinitumits woeful terrestrial fate. But the prospect can hold no terror for the heroic soul by whose fiat all items of experience have assumed important meanings andvalues. He who has cast in his lot with Destiny in spontaneous submission to all its designs, cannot but revere and cherish his own fate as an integral part of the grand unalterable fatality of things.
If this crude presentment of Friedrich Nietzsche's doctrine has not entirely failed of its purpose, theleitmotifsof that doctrine will have been readily referred by the reader to their origin; they can be subsumed under that temperamental category which is more or less accurately defined as theromantic. Glorification of violent passion,—quest of innermost mysteries,—boundless expansion of self-consciousness,—visions of a future of transcendent magnificence, and notwithstanding an ardent worship of reality a quixotically impracticable detachment from the concrete basis of civic life,—these outstanding characteristics of the Nietzschean philosophy give unmistakable proof of a central, driving, romantic inspiration: Nietzsche shifts the essence and principle of being to a new center of gravity, by substituting the Future for the Present and relying on the untrammeled expansion of spontaneous forces which uponcloser examination are found to be without definite aim or practical goal.
For this reason, critically to animadvert upon Nietzsche as a social reformer would be utterly out of place; he is simply too much of a poet to be taken seriously as a statesman or politician. The weakness of his philosophy before the forum of Logic has been referred to before. Nothing can be easier than to prove the incompatibility of some of his theorems. How, for instance, can the absolute determinism of the belief in Cyclic Recurrence be reconciled with the power vested in superman to deflect by his autonomous will the straight course of history? Or, to touch upon a more practical social aspect of his teaching,—if in the order of nature all men are unequal, how can we ever bring about the right selection of leaders, how indeed can we expect to secure the due ascendancy of character and intellect over the gregarious grossness of the demos?
Again, it is easy enough to controvert Nietzsche almost at any pass by demonstrating his unphilosophic onesidedness. Were Nietzsche not stubbornly onesided, he would surely have conceded—as any sane-minded person must concede in these times of suffering and sacrifice—that charity, self-abnegation,and self-immolation might be viewed, not as conclusive proofs of degeneracy, but on the contrary as signs of growth towards perfection. Besides, philosophers of themétierare sure to object to the haziness of Nietzsche's idea of Vitality which in truth is oriented, as is his philosophy in general, less by thought than by sentiment.
Notwithstanding his obvious connection with significant contemporaneous currents, the author of “Zarathustra” is altogether too muchsui generisto be amenable to any crude and rigid classification. He may plausibly be labelled an anarchist, yet no definition of anarchism will wholly take him in. Anarchism stands for the demolition of the extant social apparatus of restraint. Its battle is for the free determination of personal happiness. Nietzsche's prime concern, contrarily, is with internal self-liberation from the obsessive desire for personal happiness in any accepted connotation of the term; such happiness to him does not constitute the chief object of life.
The cardinal point of Nietzsche's doctrine is missed by those who, arguing retrospectively, expound the gist of his philosophy as an incitation to barbarism. Nothing can be more remote from his intentions than the transformation of societyinto a horde of ferocious brutes. His impeachment of mercy, notwithstanding an appearance of reckless impiety, is in the last analysis no more and no less than an expedient in the truly romantic pursuit of a new ideal of Love. Compassion, in his opinion, hampers the progress towards forms of living that shall be pregnant with a new and superior type of perfection. And in justice to Nietzsche it should be borne in mind that among the various manifestations of that human failing there is none he scorns so deeply as cowardly and petty commiseration of self. It also deserves to be emphasized that he nowhere endorses selfishness when exercised for small or sordid objects. “I love the brave. But it is not enough to be a swordsman, one must also know against whom to use the sword. And often there is more bravery in one's keeping quiet and going past, in order to spare one's self for a worthier enemy: Ye shall have only enemies who are to be hated, but not enemies who are to be despised.”(27)Despotism must justify itself by great and worthy ends. And no man must be permitted to be hard towards others who lacks the strength of being even harder towards himself.
At all events it must serve a better purpose to appraise the practical importance of Nietzsche's speculations than blankly to denounce their immoralism. Nietzsche, it has to be repeated, was not on the whole a creator of new ideas. His extraordinary influence in the recent past is not due to any supreme originality or fertility of mind; it is predominantly due to his eagle-winged imagination. In him the emotional urge of utterance was, accordingly, incomparably more potent than the purely intellectual force of opinion: in fact the texture of his philosophy is woven of sensations rather than of ideas, hence its decidedly ethical trend.
The latent value of Nietzsche's ethics in their application to specific social problems it would be extremely difficult to determine. Their successful application to general world problems, if it were possible, would mean the ruin of the only form of civilization that signifies to us. His philosophy, if swallowed in the whole, poisons; in large potations, intoxicates; but in reasonable doses, strengthens and stimulates. Such danger as it harbors has no relation to grossness. His call to the Joy of Living and Doing is no encouragement of vulgar hedonism, but a challenge to perseveringeffort. He urges the supreme importance of vigor of body and mind and force of will. “O my brethren, I consecrate you to be, and show unto you the way unto a new nobility. Ye shall become procreators and breeders and sowers of the future.—Not whence ye come be your honor in future, but whither ye go! Your will, and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves, be that your new honor!”(28)
It would be a withering mistake to advocate the translation of Nietzsche's poetic dreams into the prose of reality. Unquestionably his Utopia if it were to be carried into practice would doom to utter extinction the world it is devised to regenerate. But it is generally acknowledged that “prophets have a right to be unreasonable,” and so, if we would square ourselves with Friedrich Nietzsche in a spirit of fairness, we ought not to forget that the daring champion of reckless unrestraint is likewise the inspired apostle of action, power, enthusiasm, and aspiration, in fine, a prophet of Vitality and a messenger of Hope.
LEO TOLSTOY
Inthe intellectual record of our times it is one of the oddest events that the most impressive preacher who has taken the ear of civilized mankind in this generation raised up his voice in a region which in respect of its political, religious, and economic status was until recently, by fairly common consent, ruled off the map of Europe. The greatest humanitarian of his century sprang up in a land chiefly characterized in the general judgment of the outside world by the reactionism of its government and the stolid ignorance of its populace. A country still teeming with analphabeticians and proverbial for its dense medievalism gave to the world a writer who by the great quality of his art and the lofty spiritualism of his teaching was able not only to obtain a wide hearing throughout all civilized countries, but to become a distinct factor in the moral evolution of the age. The stupefying events that haverecently revolutionized the Russian state have given the world an inkling of the secrets of the Slavic type of temperament, so mystifying in its commixture of simplicity and strength on the one hand with grossness and stupidity, and on the other hand with the highest spirituality and idealism. For such people as in these infuriated times still keep up some objective and judicious interest in products of the literary art, the volcanic upheaval in the social life of Russia has probably thrown some of Tolstoy's less palpable figures into a greater plastic relief. Tolstoy's own character, too, has become more tangible in its curious composition. The close analogy between his personal theories and the dominant impulses of his race has now been made patent. We are better able to understand the people of whom he wrote because we have come to know better the people for whom he wrote.
The emphasis of Tolstoy's popular appeal was unquestionably enhanced by certain eccentricities of his doctrine, and still more by his picturesque efforts to conform his mode of life, by way of necessary example, to his professed theory of social elevation. The personality of Tolstoy, like the character of the Russian people, is many-sided,and since its aspects are not marked off by convenient lines of division, but are, rather, commingled in the great and varied mass of his literary achievements, it is not easy to make a definitive forecast of his historic position. Tentatively, however, the current critical estimate may be summed up in this: as a creative writer, in particular of novels and short stories, he stood matchless among the realists, and the verdict pronounced at one time by William Dean Howells when he referred to Tolstoy as “the only living writer of perfect fiction” is not likely to be overruled by posterity. Nor will competent judges gainsay his supreme importance as a critic and moral revivalist of society, even though they may be seriously disposed to question whether his principles of conduct constitute in their aggregate a canon of much practical worth for the needs of the western world. As a philosopher or an original thinker, however, he will hardly maintain the place accorded him by the less discerning among his multitudinous followers, for in his persistent attempt to find a new way of understanding life he must be said to have signally failed. Wisdom in him was hampered by Utopian fancies; his dogmas derive from idiosyncrasies and lead into absurdities. Then,too, most of his tenets are easily traced to their sources: in his vagaries as well as in his noblest and soundest aspirations he was merely continuing work which others had prepared.
An objective survey of Tolstoy's work in realistic fiction, in which he ranked supreme, should start with the admission that he was by no means the first arrival among the Russians in that field. Nicholas Gogol, Fedor Dostoievsky, and Ivan Turgenieff had the priority by a small margin. Of these three powerful novelists, Dostoievsky (1821–1881) has probably had an even stronger influence upon modern letters than has Tolstoy himself. He was one of the earliest writers of romance to show the younger generation how to found fiction upon deeper psychologic knowledge. His greatest proficiency lay, as is apt to be the case with writers of a realistic bent, in dealing with the darkest side of life. The wretched and outcast portion of humanity yielded to his skill its most congenial material. His novels—“Poor Folk,” (1846), “Memoirs from a Dead House,” (1862), “Raskolnikoff,” (1866), “The Idiot,” (1868), “The Karamasoffs,” (1879)—take the reader into company such as had heretoforenot gained open entrance to polite literature: criminals, defectives, paupers, and prostitutes. Yet he did not dwell upon the wretchedness of that submerged section of humanity from any perverse delight in what is hideous or for the satisfaction of readers afflicted with morbid curiosity, but from a compelling sense of pity and brotherly love. His works are an appeal to charity. In them, the imperdible grace of the soul shines through the ugliest outward disguise to win a glance from the habitual indifference of fortune'senfants gâtés. Dostoievsky preceded Tolstoy in frankly enlisting his talents in the service of his outcast brethren. With the same ideal of the writer's mission held in steady view, Tolstoy turned his attention from the start, and then more and more as his work advanced, to the pitiable condition of the lower orders of society. It must not be forgotten in this connection that his career was synchronous with the growth of a social revolution which, having reached its full force in these days, is making Russia over for better or for worse, and whose wellsprings Tolstoy helps us to fathom.
For the general grouping of his writings it is convenient to follow Tolstoy's own division of hislife. His dreamy poetical childhood was succeeded by three clearly distinct stages: first, a score of years filled up with self-indulgent worldliness; next, a nearly equal length of time devoted to artistic ambition, earnest meditation, and helpful social work; last, by a more gradual transition, the ascetic period, covering a long stretch of years given up to religious illumination and to the strenuous advocacy of the Simple Life.
The remarkable spiritual evolution of this great man was apparently governed far more by inborn tendencies than by the workings of experience. Of Tolstoy in his childhood, youth, middle age, and senescence we gain trustworthy impressions from numerous autobiographical documents, but here we shall have to forego anything more than a passing reference to the essential facts of his career. He was descended from an aristocratic family of German stock but domiciled in Russia since the fourteenth century. The year of his birth was 1828, the same as Ibsen's. In youth he was bashful, eccentric, and amazingly ill-favored. The last-named of these handicaps he outgrew but late in life, still later did he get over his bashfulness, and his eccentricity never left him. His penchant for the infraction of custom nearlyput a premature stop to his career when in his urchin days he once threw himself from a window in an improvised experiment in aerial navigation. At the age of fourteen he was much taken up with subtile speculations about the most ancient and vexing of human problems: the future life, and the immortality of the soul. Entering the university at fifteen, he devoted himself in the beginning to the study of oriental languages, but later on his interest shifted to the law. At sixteen he was already imbued with the doctrines of Jean Jacques Rousseau that were to play such an important rôle in guiding his conduct. In 1846 he passed out of the university without a degree, carrying away nothing but a lasting regret over his wasted time. He went directly to his ancestral estates, with the idealistic intention to make the most of the opportunity afforded him by the patriarchal relationship that existed in Russia between the landholder and theadscripti glebaeand to improve the condition of his seven hundred dependents. His efforts, however, were foredoomed to failure, partly through his lack of experience, partly also through a certain want of sincerity or tenacity of purpose. The experiment in social education having abruptly come to its end,the disillusionized reformer threw himself headlong into the diversions and dissipations of the capital city. In his “Confession” he refers to that chapter of his existence as made up wholly of sensuality and worldliness. He was inordinately proud of his noble birth,—at college his inchoate apostleship of the universal brotherhood of man did not shield him from a general dislike on account of his arrogance,—and he cultivated the most exclusive social circles of Moscow. He freely indulged the love of sports that was to cling through life and keep him strong and supple even in very old age. (Up to a short time before his death he still rode horseback and perhaps none of the renunciations exacted by his principles came so hard as that of giving up his favorite pastime of hunting.) But he also fell into the evil ways of gilded youth, soon achieving notoriety as a toper, gambler, andcourreur des femmes. After a while his brother, who was a person of steadier habits and who had great influence over him, persuaded him to quit his profligate mode of living and to join him at his military post. Under the bracing effect of the change, the young man's moral energies quickly revived. In the wilds of the Caucasus he at once grew freer and cleaner; his deep affectionfor the half-civilized land endeared him both to the Cossack natives and the Russian soldiers. He entered the army at twenty-three, and from November, 1853, up to the fall of Sebastopol in the summer of 1855, served in the Crimean campaign. He entered the famous fortress in November, 1854, and was among the last of its defenders. The indelible impressions made upon his mind by the heroism of his comrades, the awful scenes and the appalling suffering he had to witness, were responsible then and later for descriptions as harrowing and as stirring as any that the war literature of our own day has produced.
In the Crimea he made his début as a writer. Among the tales of his martial period the most popular and perhaps the most excellent is the one called “The Cossacks.” Turgenieff pronounced it the best short story ever written in Russian, and it is surely no undue exaggeration to say of Tolstoy's novelettes in general that in point of technical mastery they are unsurpassed.
Sick at heart over the unending bloodshed in the Caucasus the young officer made his way back to Petrograd, and here, lionized in the salons doubly, fur his feats at arms and in letters, he seems to have returned, within more temperatelimits, to his former style of living. At any rate, in his own judgment the ensuing three years were utterly wasted. The mental inanity and moral corruption all about him swelled his sense of superiority and self-righteousness. The glaring humbug and hypocrisy that permeated his social environment was, however, more than he could long endure.
Having resigned his officer's commission he went abroad in 1857, to Switzerland, Germany, and France. The studies and observations made in these travels sealed his resolution to settle down for good on his domain and to consecrate his life to the welfare of his peasants. But a survey of the situation found upon his return made him realize that nothing could be done for the “muzhik” without systematic education: therefore, in order to prepare himself for efficacious work as a teacher, he spent some further time abroad for special study, in 1859. After that, the educational labor was taken up in full earnest. The lord of the land became the schoolmaster of his subjects, reenforcing the effect ofviva voceteaching by means of a periodical published expressly for their moral uplift. This work he continued for about three years, his hopes of success now rising, nowfalling, when in a fit of despondency he again abandoned his philanthropic efforts. About this time, 1862, he married Sophia Andreyevna Behrs, the daughter of a Moscow physician. With characteristic honesty he forced his private diary on his fiancée, who was only eighteen, so that she might know the full truth about his pre-conjugal course of living.
About the Countess Tolstoy much has been said in praise and blame. Let her record speak for itself. Of her union with the great novelist thirteen children were born, of whom nine reached an adult age. The mother nursed and tended them all, with her own hands made their clothes, and until they grew to the age of ten supplied to them the place of a schoolmistress. It must not be inferred from this that her horizon did not extend beyond nursery and kitchen, for during the earlier years she acted also as her husband's invaluable amanuensis. Before the days of the typewriter his voluminous manuscripts were all copied by her hand, and recopied and revised—in the case of “War and Peace” this happened no less than seven times, and the novel runs to sixteen hundred close-printed pages!—and under her supervision his numerous works were not only printed but alsopublished and circulated. Moreover, she managed his properties, landed, personal, and literary, to the incalculable advantage of the family fortune. This end, to be sure, she accomplished by conservative and reliable methods of business; for while of his literary genius she was the greatest admirer, she never was in full accord with his communistic notions. And the highest proof of all her extraordinaryTüchtigkeitand devotion is that by her common sense and tact she was enabled to function for a lifetime as a sort of buffer between her husband's world-removed dreamland existence and the rigid and frigid reality of facts.
Thus Tolstoy's energies were left to go undivided into literary production; its amount, as a result, was enormous. If all his writings were to be collected, including the unpublished manuscripts now reposing in the Rumyantzoff Museum, which are said to be about equal in quantity to the published works, and if to this collection were added his innumerable letters, most of which are of very great interest, the complete set of Tolstoy's works would run to considerably more than one hundred volumes. To discuss all of Tolstoy's writings, or even to mention all, is here quite outof the question. All those, however, that seem vital for the purpose of a just estimate and characterization will be touched upon.
The literary fame of Tolstoy was abundantly secured already in the earlier part of his life by his numerous short stories and sketches. The three remarkable pen pictures of the siege of Sebastopol, and tales such as “The Cossacks,” “Two Hussars,” “Polikushka,” “The Snow-Storm,” “The Encounter,” “The Invasion,” “The Captive in the Caucasus,” “Lucerne,” “Albert,” and many others, revealed together with an exceptional depth of insight an extraordinary plastic ability and skill of motivation; in fact they deserve to be set as permanent examples before the eyes of every aspiring author. In their characters and their setting they present true and racy pictures of a portentous epoch, intimate studies of the human soul that are full of charm and fascination, notwithstanding their tragic sadness of outlook. Manifestly this author was a prose poet of such marvelous power that he could abstain consistently from the use of sweeping color, overwrought sentiment, and high rhetorical invective.
At this season Tolstoy, while he refrained fromfollowing any of the approved literary models, was paying much attention to the artistic refinement of his style. There was to be a time when he would abjure all considerations of artistry on the ground that by them the ethical issue in a narration is beclouded. But it would be truer to say conversely that in his own later works, since “Anna Karenina,” the clarity of the artistic design was dimmed by theobtrusivedidactic purpose. Fortunately the artistic interest was not yet wholly subordinated to the religious urge while the three great novels were in course of composition: “War and Peace,” (1864–69), “Anna Karenina,” (first part, 1873; published complete in 1877), and “Resurrection,” (1899). To the first of these is usually accorded the highest place among all of Tolstoy's works; it is by this work that he takes his position as the chief epic poet of modern times. “War and Peace” is indeed an epic rather than a novel in the ordinary meaning. Playing against the background of tremendous historical transactions, the narrative sustains the epic character not only in the hugeness of its dimensions, but equally in the qualities of its technique. There is very little comment by the author upon the events, and merely a touch of subjective irony here andthere. The story is straightforwardly told as it was lived out by its characters. Tolstoy has not the self-complacency to thrust in the odds and ends of his personal philosophy, as is done so annoyingly even by a writer of George Meredith's consequence, nor does he ever treat his readers with the almost simian impertinence so successfully affected by a Bernard Shaw. If “War and Peace” has any faults, they are the faults of its virtues, and spring mainly from an unmeasured prodigality of the creative gift. As a result of Tolstoy's excessive range of vision, the orderly progress of events in that great novel is broken up somewhat by the profusion of shapes that monopolize the attention one at a time much as individual spots in a landscape do under the sweeping glare of the search-light. Yet although in the externalization of this crowding multitude of figures no necessary detail is lacking, the grand movement as a whole is not swamped by the details. The entire story is governed by the conception of events as an emanation of the cosmic will, not merely as the consequence of impulses proceeding from a few puissant geniuses of the Napoleonic order.
It is quite in accord with such a view of history that the machinery of this voluminous epopeeis not set in motion by a single conspicuous protagonist. As a matter of fact, it is somewhat baffling to try to name the principals in the story, since in artistic importance all the figures are on an equal footing before their maker; possibly the fact that Tolstoy's ethical theory embodied the most persistent protest ever raised against the inequality of social estates proved not insignificant for his manner of characterization. Ethical justice, however, is carried to an artistic fault, for the feelings and reactions of human nature in so many diverse individuals lead to an intricacy and subtlety of motivation which obscures the organic causes through overzeal in making them patent. Anyway, Tolstoy authenticates himself in this novel as a past master of realism, particularly in his utterly convincing depictment of Russian soldier life. And as a painter of the battlefield he ranks, allowing for the difference of the medium, with Vasili Verestschagin at his best. It may be said in passing that these two Russian pacifists, by their gruesome exposition of the horrors of war, aroused more sentiment against warfare than did all the spectacular and expensive peace conferences inaugurated by the crowned but hollow head of their nation, and the splendid declamations of thepossessors of, or aspirants for, the late Mr. Nobel's forty-thousand dollar prize.
Like all true realists, Tolstoy took great pains to inform himself even about the minutiæ of his subjects, but he never failed, as did in large measure Zola inLa Débâcle, to infuse emotional meaning into the static monotony of facts and figures. In his strong attachment for his own human creatures he is more nearly akin to the idealizing or sentimentalizing type of realists, like Daudet, Kipling, Hauptmann, than to the downright matter-of-fact naturalists such as Zola or Gorki. But to classify him at all would be wrong and futile, since he was never leagued with literary creeds and cliques and always stood aloof from the heated theoretical controversies of his time even after he had hurled his great inclusive challenge to art.
“War and Peace” was written in Tolstoy's happiest epoch, at a time, comparatively speaking, of spiritual calm. He had now reached some satisfying convictions in his religious speculations, and felt that his personal life was moving up in the right direction. His moral change is made plain in the contrast between two figures of the story, Prince Andrey and Peter Bezukhoff: the ambitiousworldling and the honest seeker after the right way.
In his second great novel, “Anna Karenina,” the undercurrent of the author's own moral experience has a distinctly greater carrying power. It is through the earnest idealist, Levine, that Tolstoy has recorded his own aspirations. Characteristically, he does not make Levine the central figure.
“Anna Karenina” is undoubtedly far from “pleasant” reading, since it is the tragical recital of an adulterous love. But the situation, with its appalling consequence of sorrow, is seized in its fullest psychological depth and by this means saved from being in any way offensive. The relation between the principals is viewed as by no means an ordinary liaison. Anna and Vronsky are serious-minded, honorable persons, who have struggled conscientiously against their mutual enchantment, but are swept out of their own moral orbits by the resistless force of Fate. This fatalistic element in the tragedy is variously emphasized; so at the beginning of the story, where Anna, in her emotional confusion still half-ignorant of her infatuation, suddenly realizes her love for Vronsky; or in the scene at the horse races where he meets with an accident. Throughout thenarrative the psychological argumentation is beyond criticism. Witness the description of Anna's husband, a sort of cousin-in-kind of Ibsen's Thorvald Helmer, reflecting on his future course after his wife's confession of her unfaithfulness. Or that other episode, perhaps the greatest of them all, when Anna, at the point of death, joins together the hands of her husband and her lover. Or, finally, the picture of Anna as she deserts her home leaving her son behind in voluntary expiation of her wrong-doing, an act, by the way, that betrays a nicety of conscience far too subtle for the Rhadamantine inquisitors who demand to know why, if Anna would atone to Karenin, does she go with Vronsky? How perfectly true to life, subsequently, is the rapiddégringoladeof this passion under the gnawing curse of the homeless, workless, purposeless existence which little by little disunites the lovers! Only the end may be somewhat open to doubt, with its metastasis of the heroine's character,—unless indeed we consider the sweeping change accounted for by the theory of duplex personality. She herself believes that there are two quite different women alive in her, the one steadfastly loyal to her obligations,the other blindly driven into sin by the demon of her uncontrollable temperament.
In the power of analysis, “Anna Karenina” is beyond doubt Tolstoy's masterpiece, and yet in its many discursive passages it already foreshadows the disintegration of his art, or more precisely, its ultimate capitulation to moral propagandism. For it was while at work upon this great novel that the old perplexities returned to bewilder his soul. In the tumultuous agitation of his conscience, the crucial and fundamental questions, Why Do We Live? and How Should We Live? could nevermore be silenced. Now a definitive attitude toward life is forming; to it all the later works bear a vital relation. And so, in regard to their moral outlook, Tolstoy's books may fitly be divided into those written before and those written since his “conversion.” “Anna Karenina” happens to be on the dividing line.