The Bestowing Virtue
George Burman Foster
Thethou is older than the I; the thou hath been proclaimed holy, but the I not yet; thus spake Zarathustra.
In times most ancient—at culture’s dawn of day—the individual was swallowed up and lost in the life of the tribe. He did not count as an individual, but was valued only as a member of the group to which he happened to belong. Subsequently, man’s endowment to personality entered upon its unfolding—the first syllables of the long human story were stammered. Man began to become a self. To be a self was to specialize into a difference from all other men. From that moment on, the entire course of evolution may be considered as a progressive differentiation and specialization of the human personality. At the outset there were only a few splendidly and highly endowed natures that felt a distinct life of their own welling up in themselves from mysterious springs of being. They took up the gauge of battle against others, against the mass which attempted to subject and assimilate them to its peculiarity. Mass meant monotony. But the differentiating energy and impetus encroached further and further, passing from the great to the small, pushing into the mass whose members no longer wanted to be mass, herd, but men. The might of spiritual personality opposed itself to the superiority of corporeal peculiarity. Psychical feeling more and more became personal. Character increasingly received a distinctive stamp. Along with this, the impulse to self-dependence began to stir even in those men who were outclassed in physical strength by their stronger human brothers. Later, when the head and heart, and no longer the fist, formed the strength of man, woman pressed into the circle of life’s evolution. She was no longer a mere exemplar of the genius. She, too, would be personality. This course of events signified an infinite refinement and enrichment of cultural life on the one side; on the other, it gave rise to the question as to how, in this differentiation of men into even more decidedly pronounced personalities, a cohesiveness could be originated among them that would save life from disintegration and consequent decay. At bottom, the individual is not sufficient unto himself. Self-dependent, he would be miserably impoverished and stunted—of this there can be no doubt, according to the most elementary laws of life. Hence, along with the formation of human personality, there is a refinement of those forces of life which seem summoned to secure a bond of fellowship among men: law, custom, a benevolent disposition toward others, the feeling of sympathy for others. Even Nietzsche, who foresees a future in which all these older groupforces and moral impulses shall be obliterated, and every man pander to his own self alone and his own peculiarity in willing and feeling, in thinking and speaking—even Nietzsche cannot help preaching a new love that shall bind men together. Even Zarathustra confesses: “I love men! My will, my ardent will to creation, impels me constantly to men—as the hammer to the stone!” To be sure, this Zarathustra-love is to grow out beyond and above what we call love to-day, what we call Christian love. There is to be a Beyond Christianity. The new love will be as high above the old love as Above-Man will be above man. Beyond-man means Beyond-love. How earnestly and ominously does this preaching of a new love pierce like a sword into the heart of our time! A new test of the worth or unworth of our moral view of life! Were we even convinced that the best and purest features of the old Christian love would re-appear in any new love, still the question would not be elucidated—the question whether this old love would thereby become new again, would become living again, save through a storm of thunder and lightning that should purify the heavy, stuffy atmosphere which has gathered about the word love itself.
You will know them by their fruits—of nothing is this so true as of love. Where there is power, an effect must ensue, and in the effect, not only the right of the power, but the kind as well, manifests itself. Now, love wills to promote the life of another with its own life. Love wills to do good to its object, to redress some wrong, supply some lack, help some need, remedy some defect, and the like. Therefore, the fruits of love are gifts—hence,die schenkende Tugend, the bestowing or the giving virtue, of Nietzsche’s phrase. Accordingly, only a possessor can give. Who possesses most—the rich—give most! Who needs gifts is poor, and since poverty is great, becoming ever greater, gifts are needed to meet the needs. Thus, human love has become the practice of beneficence—the work of the rich by which they help the poor. The greatness of benefactions, this becomes a criterion for the greatness of love. We have but to think of the “foundations” and “benevolent funds” and “charitable institutions” and “unions” for the care and keeping of the poor, as well as of the incalculable sums which are given in private for the relief of want, in order to be impressed with the “fruits” which have grown on the tree of human love. How magnificent, how imposing these “fruits” are! How much love there is in the world today, in this world in which so much good is done! Who could doubt it? Who could deny it? Who? Who but Friedrich Nietzsche!
The loathsome vanity and the refined hypocrisy with which this beneficence is prosecuted, such obvious strictures as these, Nietzsche passes over without a word. This genus “benefactor” that does what it does just to benefit itself, is so lowdown to the Zarathustra-poet thathe will not honor it with a notice. He simply classed it with the gilded and counterfeit rabble,Pöbel, with the culprits of wealth, who pick their profits from sweepings. Then there is the criterion of the numerical worth of the gift, not the ratio of the gift to the possessions of the giver, this criterion for the evaluation of love was so external, so deceptive, to Nietzsche, that he left it, too, out of account. What impelled Nietzsche to his depreciation of this whole species of beneficence was something different, something deeper. All these gifts, great and numerical as they may be, are alms, and who has only alms to give to man is a poor man, and Zarathustra feels—well, listen to what he says to the saint!
Zarathustra answered: “I love men.”
“Why,” said the saint, “did I go to the forest and desert? Was it not because I loved men greatly over-much? Now I love God: men I love not. Man is a thing far too imperfect for me. Love of men would kill me.”
Zarathustra answered: “What did I say of love! I am bringing gifts to men.”
“Do not give them anything,” said the saint. “Rather take something from them and bear their burdens along with them—that will serve them best; if it only serve thyself well! And if thou art going to give them aught, give them no more than an alms, and let them beg even for that.”
“No,” said Zarathustra, “I do not give alms. I am not poor enough for that.”
I am not poor enough for that.Priceless words! You read these words and you think of truly kindhearted men who sigh: If I were only rich so I could do good! They envy the rich their possessions, not for the sake of the pleasures and comforts which possessions permit their possessors to provide, but in the wholly honest feeling of the blessings which they could scatter with their wealth. Then comes Nietzsche, and says to these kindhearted men, You are only poor noodles, if you have nothing better to bring the world and men than this blessing of wealth. Then he points them to gifts the least of which outweighs a million donations.
Now, Nietzsche had no contempt of wealth with which to insult his fellowmen’s intelligence. Nor was he a socialistic indicter of beneficence. Nor was he even a rigorous critic of the doubtful disposition, so often manifest in such benevolent activities. But perhaps his plain words on the poverty of almsgiving seem so weighty precisely because he must be acquitted without further ado of speaking from contempt, from the standpoint of Christianity, or from the milieu of poor folk. And yet it was this most soaring spirit of the nineteenth century, this aristocratfrom top to toe, compared with whom even a Goethe seems like a plebeian, it was precisely he who—as from an aerie up among the eagles—looked down with such abysmal contempt upon the highest and noblest triumph of riches—namely, the ability to bestow benefits—that he detected, even in this triumph, only testimony to the poverty of riches. Along with this, at all events, Nietzsche passed damnatory judgment upon aKulturwhich estimates the distances among men, the measure of their greatness according to the distinctions of possession, and therefore derives the right of the influence which it accords the individual from the sums which he donates by way of alms. Then, too, what has the man to do with his possession! It is not hispersonalitywhich has assigned him a place in life where a confluence of industrial goods crystallize around him! What does it signify as to the worth of a man that he has cast his baited hook into the stream of life just where a big hungry fish swims by and bites! And if, now, this most contingent of all contingencies, that a man should get rich, is considered by his generation as the peculiar deed of a hero, the deed which he was in a position to compass in life,—if the mere fact that a man releases, in the shape of benefits and alms, a part of this wealth which he could not spend upon himself if he would is a phenomenon around which the conversation of the day revolves, of which newspapers in special articles and telegraphic dispatches have so much to say, then this is a sign of the decay of our moral culture, and we cannot be thankful enough to the man who has jolted us out of such aberration of ideas and made us see with eyes no longer blinded by the glitter of gold!
Aye, wealth a man does need who wants to give. Wealth he needs for the sake of his giving love. But he must create this wealth himself. He must wrest wealth from all values. He must coerce all things to himself and into himself. All these things must stream back from the well of living water within him as the gifts of his love. Insatiably does the soul seek after treasures and gems because her virtue is insatiable in her will to give. This is the soul’s thirst to be an offering and a gift, and hence she thirsts to house all wealth in herself.
Vulgar souls give what they have, noble souls what they are—this is the well known saying that mirrors the meaning of Nietzsche. Love’s highest labor is to create something great out of its ownself, that it may be able to give unceasingly out of its own fulness and yet never be exhausted! No mountain is too steep and no valley too deep for love, because love herself must know heights and depths that she may give to others what she has seen and known there. Do we fear lest we succumb to a weakness? Then we must force the weakness underneath our feet because we need our strength to give strength to others.Would we say to virtue: Thou art too hard for us; take thy laurel and let us sin? Now, the hardest is spur to our love, to steel our wills, our courage, so that courage may gush into the souls of others also. What we have made out of our own selves, this, this alone, is our wealth, this is the gift by whose bestowal men can become rich. A thought of our own which we have acquired; a light of our own, which we have kindled in our innermost being; a lofty enthusiasm for what is great; an energetic aversion to all that is common and base,—this is our true wealth, the gift that enriches us while it is given to others. Poor indeed are the people who can give only alms; rich indeed are those who give themselves to men, who proffer their most intimate gifts to men, who say to men’s hidden hearts and hopes: Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I give unto thee!
Why are we so deeply involved in hard necessity that our life can not dispense with alms and therefore with the people who make a virtue out of this giving of alms! Simply because we have so few such truly rich men who thirst to become offerings and gifts for man! These men can we have, can we become ourselves, only when duty and righteousness, and not benevolence and inclination, shall decide in an ordering and helpful way, as to the requirement of life. Behind every benefit which is necessary there is concealed an unrighteousness of life which makes the benefit necessary. All alms with which the world cannot dispense today is an accusation against our culture, a confession of how poor we are in the midst of all our wealth. It will be the first great step towards a new culture when we first learn to measure the unworth of these benefits by the eternal worths which alone are worthy of man, which man forms in himself as new fructifying deeds, as the lightning of thought which detonates from his soul, as living beauty to which he gives shape in his own being.
Then if all duties which are based on right and law, shall cease to be considered as something special, something great, if their fulfilment shall be no longer marveled at as a feat of virtue, because these duties shall have become self-evident and natural, then shall man be illumined by new and greater duties which shall make him a debtor to life, then shall he call his wealth and the fulness of his being his debt which he can pay only in constant creation for man, in ceaseless giving to man! “Therefore, nobler souls will it: they will to have nothinggratis, least of all life! Whoever is of thePöbelwills to livegratis, but we others to whom life gave itself—we ever meditate as to what we can best give in return and, verily, that is a noble saying which says: what life promises us, that will we keep for life!” In simpler language: Not to merit a reward, heavenly or earthly, will we give, will we assemblein ourselves the highest gifts, to lay them down as offerings upon the altars of men, but we will give to return thanks for all that we have undeservedly received. Bickering and calculating as to whether we have had our just dues, haggling over hopes which have not done what they promised, we will have none of this, but thanks, thanks, that as men we have gained some material from the saddest life, created joys out of its pains, wealth and worth out of its weakness and loss. This, this, in Nietzsche’s immortal words, iseine Umwertung der Werte, a transvaluation of values in the moral life, from which a new moral culture can issue. In our labors we are ever shadowed by the still, lurking thought of returns and rewards, we calculate, and calculate ever in our own favor, that somewhere life has left us in the lurch. Could we but once reverse this matter: It is not life that is obligated and indebted to us—we are obligated and indebted to life! In the former way of counting we always come out with a deficit, with a poverty: in the later, with a balance, with a wealth: we still have something for which we gave nothing, did nothing, with which we have done no good!
How would it do to put such thankfulness to the test? When the heart is shaken with sorrow’s power—it is life’s gift to feel such shaking, in such shaking love can feel the storm raging. Even such gift you would not havegratis. You would make some return—the bravery with which you settle for it. You come to know despondency, a new deed, and your thanks therefor is that you have been permitted to overcome a paralysis of your energy. If, with freer vision and with broader heart, your eye has become alert and keen for human folly and lamentation, and these attack you as cowardice and disgust of life, then you take this as a gift that you will not havegratis, you will give something as counter-gift and thanks: a more energetic will, that will go to the bottom of folly and grief, with the fineness of feeling which has been bestowed upon you—you will dig deeper, search out more earnestly the genuine values of life, so that your cowardice and yourennuiat life may become a new strength and a new joy for life. If you feel your hands tied, if the world seems a prison at whose bars you lunge, but whose rods you cannot break, if then a horrible feebleness befalls you, and your best will confesses that you are too weak,—then take this, too, as a gift for which you learn to give thanks, for even the restriction of your power creates a new freedom, the pressure of the impossible ceases with your learning, thus, the possible, the necessary, of your life. Poor? You may be rich, immeasurably rich, not for yourself indeed, but for others, that you may communicate to them, give to them and yet never give out! Be debtor of life, that in your poverty you may make many rich. Be debtor of love, that you may never be able to pay your great eternal debt. Confessing and obligating yourself to such debt, your life gains that eternal worth which increases the more you spend of it, whichreceives, the more you give of it. Poor, yet having all things; poor, yet making many rich—also sprach Paulus-Nietzsche.
After this Zarathustra went back into the mountains and the solitude of hiscave and withdrew from men, waiting like a sower who hath thrown out his seed. But his soul was filled with impatience and longing for those he loved; for he had still many gifts for them. For this is the hardest: to shut one’s open hand because of love.
It is the business of the very few to be independent: it is the privilege of the strong, and whoever attempts it, even with the best regret but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand-fold the dangers which life itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by someminotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they can neither feel it nor sympathize with it, and he cannot any longer go back! He cannot ever go back again to the sympathies of men.—Nietzsche.
It is the business of the very few to be independent: it is the privilege of the strong, and whoever attempts it, even with the best regret but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand-fold the dangers which life itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by someminotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they can neither feel it nor sympathize with it, and he cannot any longer go back! He cannot ever go back again to the sympathies of men.—Nietzsche.