Zarathustra Vs. Rheims
George Soule
Hauptmannand Rolland have quarreled about the war, Hæckel has repudiated his English honorary degrees, and now Thomas Hardy has placed on Nietzsche the responsibility for the destruction of the cathedral of Rheims. The tragedy of nationalism, it seems, is not content with ruining lives and art; it must also vitiate philosophy and culture.
“Nietzsche and his followers, Treitschke, Von Bernhardi, and others,” writes Hardy. In the next sentence he speaks of “off-hand assumptions.” One is tempted to write, “Christ and his followers, Czar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm, and others!”
Nietzsche has been claimed as a prophet by hereditary aristocrats, by anarchists, by socialists, by artists, and by militarists. There is even a book to prove that he who called himself “the Antichrist” was a supporter of the Catholic Church. One suspects, however, that the Jesuit who wrote it had a subtle sense of truth.
The most fundamental truth about Nietzsche is that the torrent of his inspiration is open to everyone who can drink of it. His value, his quality, consist not in the fact that he said this or that, but that life in him was strong and beautiful. This is true of all prophets; how much more so, then, of the one who threw to the winds all stiffness of orthodoxy and insisted on a transvaluation of all values! “O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom,” said Zarathustra.
But even in his teachings we can find no justification of the present shame of Europe. It was Darwin who laid the foundation for the philosophy of the survival of the fittest and the struggle for existence. With the shallow inferences from these conceptions Nietzsche had no patience. If the fittest survives, the fittest is not necessarily the best. The brute force which makes for survival had no attraction for Nietzsche. He called upon man’s will to make itself the deciding factor in the struggle. When he argued for strength, he argued for the strength of the beautiful and noble, not strength for its own sake. Of what avail is a great individual to the world if he makes himself weak and sacrifices himself to an inferior enemy? The French gunners who defended the Cathedral of Rheims might justly claim the approval of Nietzsche. If the Allies had turned the other cheek and allowed their countries to be overrun by German militarism, they would then have proved themselves Christian and truly anti-Nietzschean.
Moreover, Nietzsche uncompromisingly opposed the supremacy of mere numbers, the supremacy of non-spiritual values. He argued after the war of 1870 that the victory of Prussian arms endangered rather than helped Prussian culture. Culture is a thing of the spirit; it was undermined by the tide of smug satisfaction in the triumph of militarism.
“You say that a good cause will even justify war; I tell you that it is the good war that justifies all causes,” wrote Nietzsche. It is the logic of the newspaper paragrapher which makes this statement a justification of militarism.The good war—what is that? It is the quality of heroism, the unreckoning love of beauty, the pride of the soul in its own strength and purity. It is the opponent of mere contentment and sluggishness. It is the militant virtue which has inspired great souls since the beginning of the world; it is the hope of future man. If a cause is not justified by the good war what can be said for it? It is a pathetic absurdity to think that Nietzsche would have found the good war in the present struggle for territory and commercial supremacy. No, gentlemen of letters, fight the Kaiser if you must, but do not aim your clods at the prophets in your hasty partisanship!
For it is in this very Nietzsche and his good war that mankind will now find its spirit of hope. We who see that wars of gunpowder are evil, we who intend to abolish them, cannot do so by denying our own strength and appealing helplessly to some external power in the sky. We must say with Zarathustra,
“How could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, the riddle-reader, and the redeemer of chance!
“To redeem what is past, and to transform every ‘It was’ into ‘Thus would I have it!’ that only do I call redemption!
“Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends!”
InEcce Homothe word “German” has become something like his worst term of abuse. He believes only in French culture; all other culture is a misunderstanding. In his deepest instincts Nietzsche asserts to be so foreign to everything German, that the mere presence of a German “retards his digestion.” German intellect is to him indigestion. If he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion to Wagner, this was because in Wagner he honored the foreigner, because in him he saw the incarnate protest against all German virtues, the “counter-poison” (he believed in Wagner’s Jewish descent). He allows the Germans no honor as philosophers: Leibnitz and Kant were “the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of Europe.” No less passionately does he deny to the Germans all honor as musicians: “A Germancannotknow what music is. The men who pass as German musicians are foreigners, Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen, or Jews.” He abhors the “licentiousness” of the Germans in historical matters: “History is actually written on Imperial German and Antisemitic lines, and Mr. Treitschke is not ashamed of himself.” The Germans have on their conscience every crime against culture committed in the last four centuries (they deprived the Renaissance of its meaning; they wrecked it by the Reformation). When, upon the bridge of two centuries of decadence, aforce majeureof genius and will revealed itself, strong enough to weld Europe into political and economic unity, the Germans finally with their “Wars of Liberation,” robbed Europe of the meaning of Napoleon’s existence, a prodigy of meaning. Thus they have upon their conscience all that followed, nationalism, thenévrose nationalefrom which Europe is suffering, and the perpetuation of the system of little states, of petty politics.—George Brandes in “Friedrich Nietzsche.”
InEcce Homothe word “German” has become something like his worst term of abuse. He believes only in French culture; all other culture is a misunderstanding. In his deepest instincts Nietzsche asserts to be so foreign to everything German, that the mere presence of a German “retards his digestion.” German intellect is to him indigestion. If he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion to Wagner, this was because in Wagner he honored the foreigner, because in him he saw the incarnate protest against all German virtues, the “counter-poison” (he believed in Wagner’s Jewish descent). He allows the Germans no honor as philosophers: Leibnitz and Kant were “the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of Europe.” No less passionately does he deny to the Germans all honor as musicians: “A Germancannotknow what music is. The men who pass as German musicians are foreigners, Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen, or Jews.” He abhors the “licentiousness” of the Germans in historical matters: “History is actually written on Imperial German and Antisemitic lines, and Mr. Treitschke is not ashamed of himself.” The Germans have on their conscience every crime against culture committed in the last four centuries (they deprived the Renaissance of its meaning; they wrecked it by the Reformation). When, upon the bridge of two centuries of decadence, aforce majeureof genius and will revealed itself, strong enough to weld Europe into political and economic unity, the Germans finally with their “Wars of Liberation,” robbed Europe of the meaning of Napoleon’s existence, a prodigy of meaning. Thus they have upon their conscience all that followed, nationalism, thenévrose nationalefrom which Europe is suffering, and the perpetuation of the system of little states, of petty politics.—George Brandes in “Friedrich Nietzsche.”