# Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XII

CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS AND FORECASTS
In no way, perhaps, did Nietzsche come to differ more from Schopenhauer than in his sense of the possibility of change—whether in the individual or in society generally. What may be called the historical view of reality was almost lacking in Schopenhauer—owing in part no doubt to his conviction of the subjectivity of time. No thoroughgoing Kantian, I may say, can believe in the final reality of an historical process. It is possible that Nietzsche's vivid sense of his own changes had something to do with the formal relinquishment of his early subjectivism as to time, which we shall come upon later on.
I
In any case the area of possible change for men and society is now large to him. Disillusioned about the near advent of a new tragic culture, he is not without compensatory thoughts. Is it not possible, he asks, to remove some evils rather than merely try to turn them into subjects of art, or to find consolation for them in religion? The ancients strove to forget the sufferings of existence, or else to make them agreeable through art—they worked palliatively; we today wish to work prophylactically and attack the causes of suffering. "Artists glorify continually—they do nothing else," he somewhat impatiently observes. He thinks that art is a resource for moments and becomes dangerous when it sets up for more—a halt should be called to its fanatical pretensions. With a touch of irony, he notes that removing evil may make it hard for the tragic poets, whose stock of material would so far diminish, and harder still for the priests, whose main business hitherto has been to narcotize; but both classes, he thinks, belong to the non-progressive ​forces of society. Progress is doubted by artists, and by metaphysical philosophers like Schopenhauer, but the very fact that we are now passing out of the tropical zone of culture with its violent contrasts and glowing colors, in which artists live, into the cooler, clearer, temperate zone of science, seems to him an instance of progress. He questions indeed the necessity of progress and thinks that the days of the unconscious sort may be over; all the same, he urges that we might now consciously strive for a new culture, might create better conditions for the rise of human beings, for their nourishment, training, and instruction, might undertake an economic administration of the earth as a whole, measuring and distributing the forces of men wisely to this end—and this would surely be progress and would itself destroy the old mistrust of progress. Nietzsche really began, as we have seen, with a general hope of this character; the difference is now that he has been somewhat chastened and no longer looks for appreciable help from art, and that he emphasizes certain practically necessary measures—something which preoccupation with art is liable to make one neglect. At the same time he continues to be thinker rather than himself reformer—believing, like Socrates, that "a private life, not a public one," is alone suitable to him, and not having any too high idea of existing states and of the kind of political activity they make necessary anyway.
As regards the economic structure of society, there is no change from the view that slavery is necessary. A higher culture can arise only where there are the two castes of those who labor and those possessed of leisure, or, as he sometimes puts it, of compulsory labor and free labor. The way in which happiness (Glück) is distributed is not vital when the production of a higher culture is at stake; in any case it is those with leisure, to whom come the greater tasks, who have less ease in existence, who suffer more. If only there might be exchange between the castes, so that worn-out stocks and individuals in the upper could descend into the lower, and freer men among the lower could rise to the higher, a state would be reached, ​beyond which only indefinite wishes are possible. Something of this sort was, I think, suggested by Huxley—and it shows that it was not a caste system, in the sense of one with impassable barriers, that Nietzsche had in mind. More or less of this exchange—at least in the downward direction—takes place in caste societies as matter of fact. According to Professor Sumner, a Plantagenet was a butcher in a suburb of London a few years ago, and representatives of the great mediæval families may now be found as small farmers, farm laborers, or tramps in England (Hardy using a fact of this kind in Tess of the D'Urbervilles). If things like this could happen in both directions and with reasonable promptness and in accordance with a recognized social law, Nietzsche's somewhat shadowy idea would be realized—of course, changes in the laws of inheritance would be necessary.
As to property (Besitz), Nietzsche thinks that only those with mind should have it; otherwise it is an element of danger in a community. He who does not know how to use the free time which its possession gives strives for more—it is his way of diverting himself, of fighting boredom; and so from moderate possessions, which would suffice an intellectual man, comes wealth proper—a shining consequence of the lack of independence and intellectual poverty in one who amasses it, and at the same time something that excites the envy of the poor and uneducated, and prepares the way for a social revolution. Only up to a certain point does property serve its purpose of making one more independent and free; beyond that, property becomes the master and the owner a slave. Nietzsche sometimes draws almost a contemptuous picture of mere riches, his attitude being only softened by the reflection that rich men are half-ashamed of themselves [a type with which we do not appear to be acquainted in America]. He makes sport of the dinners of the rich, gives instances of how the love of money makes one unscrupulous, notes the unhappy effect of American ​gold-hunger on Europe in destroying the true estimate of leisure, in banishing ceremony from social intercourse, in making letter-writing the style-less, mindless thing it has come to be, in reducing pleasure to what overworked slaves have to have to recreate and amuse them—we all want to be "busy," and are ashamed of what makes for the ease and grace and dignity of life.
This does not mean that Nietzsche fails to appreciate what industry and commerce are doing for our time—he even says that it is the commercial class who keep us from falling back into barbarism (having in mind telegraphs, geographical explorations, industrial inventions, etc.). It is not commerce, but the motives behind it, the methods it too often pursues, that lead to reflections like those cited. Men are after money, and do almost anything for a rich return. He finds exchange honorable and just, when each party is guided by the thought of what an article is worth (taking into account a variety of factors that determine worth); but when either is influenced by the thought of the needs of the other, he is only a refined robber and extortioner. He notes that the merchant and the pirate were for a long time one and the same person, bartering being resorted to when force was not expedient; and current business morality now is really only a refinement of pirate morality—the maxim being to buy as cheaply and sell as dearly as possible. It is accordingly the mark of the higher type of man not to be at home in trade. For a teacher, an official, an artist to sell his ability for the highest price, or to practise usury with it, is to drop to the shop-keeper's level. A principal cause of bad conditions in Germany is, that there are far too many living off trade and wishing to live well there—hence reducing prices to the utmost limit to producers, raising them to the utmost limit to consumers, and drawing profit from the greatest possible injury to both.
​Nietzsche's attitude to the laborer, whether we agree with it or not, cannot be called unsympathetic. We today, in contrast with the ancient world, like to exalt labor, but he does not think that we treat the laborer much better, and he raises the question whether our talk has not some cynicism in it, or at least tartuferie. He prefers plain speaking, and uses such terms as slavery, and in particular factory-slavery, much as the socialists do. He has a sense of the unhappy effect of the modern machine upon the workers. It depersonalizes labor, strips it of its bit of humanity, turns men into machines. Although it liberates a vast amount of energy, it gives no impulse to higher development, to doing better work, to becoming more artistic; it shows how masses may co-operate by each one doing one thing, and so becomes a pattern for party organization and the conduct of war—its most general effect is to teach the uses of centralization. Once he suggests certain remedies against what is injurious in machine-labor—first, frequent interchange of labor among those working at a machine or at different machines; second, getting a comprehension of the total structure of the machine, including knowledge of its defects and the possibilities of improving it; he finds suggestive the example of a democratic state, which changes its officials often. As to the deserts of labor, he gives up the attempt to estimate them—indeed, desert in general is for him an illusory conception, as we have already seen; all the same he finds considerations of utility in order, and believes that justice as a highly refined utility may well come into play. By this he means a long-range view of consequences, one which takes account not of a momentary situation merely, but of the future as well, hence of the well-being of the laborer, his contentment in body and mind, so that he and his children may work well for coming generations. From this point of view the exploitation of the laborer is a stupidity, a robbery at the expense of the future, an imperiling of society. Nietzsche thinks that we have now almost ​come to a state of war in society; at least the costs of maintaining peace are becoming enormous, the folly of the exploiting classes being so great and so persistent. He deems a social revolution not unlikely.
The educated classes in general are not without responsibility for the situation. If we complain of lack of discipline among the masses, the reproach falls back heavily on them; the masses are just as good and just as bad as the educated are; they set the tone, and elevate and corrupt the mass as they elevate or corrupt themselves. A part of the trouble, too, lies in the lack of personal relation between employers and employed. We pay any one we know and respect, who does us a service, whether he be physician, artist, or hand-worker, as high as we can, perhaps beyond our means; but an unknown person we pay as little as practicable—the human element or relation disappears. Manners, breeding are also a factor. It is strange, Nietzsche says, that subjection to powerful, fear-inspiring, even frightful persons, to tyrants and military commanders, is not so painfully felt, as subjection to unknown and uninteresting persons such as the great men of industry are: the laborer sees in his employer usually only a cunning dog of a man, who drains him and speculates on his needs, and whose name, shape, and reputation are utterly indifferent to him. Manufacturers and great leaders of business have apparently lacked quite too much thus far all those forms and signs of a higher race, which first make persons interesting; had there been the distinction of the born noble in their look and bearing, perhaps socialism would never have developed among the masses. For these at bottom are ready for any kind of slavery, provided that the man who stands over them continually legitimates himself as one born to command—by distinction of manner! The commonest man feels that such distinction is not to be improvised and that in it he honors the fruit of a long past—but the absence of it and the notorious manufacturer-vulgarity with red fat hands bring him to the thought that only accident and luck have elevated one man above another—and so he says to himself, "Let us try accident and luck! We will throw the dice!"—and socialism ​begins. And yet Nietzsche does not think it necessary that the workers shall always live as they live now. Dipping into the future, one of the things he conceives possible is that economic relations might be so ordered that there would be no longer the desperate anxiety about living and dying which prevails at present. This does not mean, however, really rising out of slavery. If the workers are bent on that, they must be ready to leave existing civilization, become emigrants, colonists, incur risks of want and danger. He is evidently not without admiration for those who should take so heroic a step, and is ironical about those who are willing to remain screws, if they can only be better paid, i.e., who put a price upon their personality-ironical too about those who think, socialist fashion, that if they can only be screws in the great machine called the state, all will change, and their slavery become a virtue. "Poor, happy, and independent! this is all possible at the same time; poor, happy, and slave!—this also is possible"—though there can be little doubt which of the possibilities Nietzsche ranks higher.
II
Turning now to the political field, we find Nietzsche inclined to look at democracy as a fait accompli, and disposed to turn it to the best possible account. The "enlightenment" (Aufklärung) of the eighteenth century was in itself a good, and if the changes naturally ensuing had been slow, if customs and institutions had been gradually modified, all would have been well. But with the French Revolution the movement took a violent turn, and trying to be sudden and complete the Revolution became a pathetic and bloody piece of quackery. Democracy, however, is not his ideal. He desires a rule of the intelligent rather than of the many, and once ventures to suggest a way for getting them. It would be really a process of self-selection, or rather mutual-selection. First, the honest and trustworthy of a country, who are at the same time in ​some respect masters and experts, would segregate themselves, by a process of scenting one another out and reciprocal recognition; and then from among these, such as are of the first rank in each special line would select themselves, again by reciprocal. recognition and guarantees. These last would constitute the legislative body, and thus the highest grade of specialized ability would be brought to bear on the making of laws, each branch of specialists deciding on the questions in their province, the rest being honorable and decent enough to leave things in their hands. In this way laws would be strictly the outcome of the intelligence of the most intelligent. Now parties decide things, and every time that a vote is taken there must be hundreds of bad consciences—so many are ill-instructed, or incapable of judging, and simply follow others or are dragged along. Nothing lowers the dignity of a new law so much as the blush of dishonesty to which every party vote compels. Nietzsche is aware that it is easy to propose and hard to carry out such a scheme, but he has the hope that sometime faith in the utility of science and of men who know will arise in the most unwilling and replace the present faith in numbers. Besides, he argues that the system of having everybody vote depends logically on everybody's wanting to vote, the will of a majority not being sufficient to constitute a universal rule, and he doubts whether all do want to vote now, since so many do not use the privilege they have. But with all his argumentation he accepts the situation as he finds it, and he realizes the ironical side of it for the old ruling classes. "The poor reigning princes! All their rights are turning themselves now unexpectedly into claims, and all these claims soon sound like pretensions!" King and emperor are becoming almost ciphers in ordinary times—symbols, ornaments, beautiful superfluities; though on this account they cling the more tenaciously to their dignity as war-lords—and need wars on occasion, i.e., exceptional circumstances in which the democratic pressure is interrupted.
​Nietzsche even finds advantages in the new régime, in which government does not so much rule the people as become their organ. "Democratic institutions are quarantine stations against the old pest of tyrannical ambitions—as such, very useful and very tedious." The democratizing of Europe now going on seems to him a link in the chain of those immense prophylactic measures, characteristic of the new time, by which we are marking ourselves off against the Middle Ages. At last we are to get a sure foundation, on which the future can build. We shall make it impossible for fruitful fields of culture to be destroyed in a night by wild and senseless mountain floods, shall put up dams and walls against barbarians, against pestilences, against whatever would subject the bodies or the minds of men. It is crude, rough work at the start, but it will prepare the way for something higher and more spiritual to come—as the gardener has first to protect his field, and then proceeds to plant. Yes, Nietzsche will not judge the workers for democracy too harshly, if for the time being they consider democracy an end, instead of a means. What democracy wants to do is to create and guarantee independence for as many as possible—independence of thought, of manner of life, and of occupation. To this end, however, it must make restrictions—must deny the right to vote on the one hand to the propertyless, on the other to the really rich. These are the two unpermissible classes in the community, for whose removal democracy must continually labor, the one because they are without independence, the other because they threaten it; they and the party system are the three great foes of independence. He is aware that democracy of this character belongs to the future; for present-day democracy differs from older forms of government simply in that it drives with new horses—the streets are the old ones, and the vehicles the old ones too. With similar concern for independence, Nietzsche hopes that the new rulers will not try to rule everywhere, or make standards convenient to the majority binding on all. Some scattering individuals should be allowed to hold aloof from politics, if they will. They should also be forgiven if they do not take the happiness of the many as so supremely important, and become ironical now and then; their ​earnestness is in other directions, their ideas of happiness are peculiar, their aim is not one that every hand with five fingers can grasp. Still further, they should be allowed on occasion to break their solitude by speaking to one another (they will be somewhat like men lost in the woods) and encouraging one another, even if they say some things which jar on ears for which they were not intended. Despite all this, Nietzsche thinks it perfectly natural and legitimate that the many should act with a view to their own interests; it is to be expected that, through the great parliamentary majorities they are likely to obtain, they will attack by progressive taxes the capitalistic, commercial, and speculating classes. Indeed in this way they may gradually bring about a condition of things between the extremes of poverty and wealth, in which socialism will be forgotten.
Socialism is a combined economic and political problem, and it may be well to note Nietzsche's views at this point in some detail. Anarchists he looks upon as backward and untamed people who will rule hard, if they get the upper hand—they enjoy the sense of power too much; but for socialists he has a certain limited sympathy—he speaks of them as one of the signs of the "coming century." He practically takes the socialist movement as a "rising of those oppressed and held down for centuries against their oppressors." The problem it presents to us practically is not one of right, "how far should we yield to its demands," but one of power, "how far can we utilize them"—just as with a force of nature, steam, for example, which may either be brought into the service of man or may destroy him. To solve the problem, we must know how strong socialism is, and in what modified form it might be used as a lever in the present play of political forces; in certain contingencies, it might be a duty to do everything to strengthen it. It will first win rights, when war threatens between the old forces and the new, and prudent calculation on both sides creates the desire for a compact or agreement—for compacts ​are the source of all rights (Nietzsche remarks that up to the time of his writing—1877 apparently—there had been no war or compacts, hence there were no rights or "ought" in the matter]. The movement is, of course, a movement of those interested, but Nietzsche recognizes that it may also be espoused by persons from other classes animated simply by sentiments of justice and ready to practise it at their own cost—high-minded (if not just very discerning) representatives of the ruling class might act in this way.
For his own part he admits the socialist contention that the present distribution of property is the consequence of numberless injustices and violences; he simply adds that this is only one instance, the old culture in general being built on a basis of force, slavery, deception, and error. He thinks that the unjust disposition lurks everywhere, in the propertyless as well as propertied, and that the needful thing is not violences, but the gradual alteration of men's minds, justice becoming greater and violent instincts weaker on all sides. He considers the remedies of an equal division of property and common ownership, and finds them both impracticable. Instead he urges that avenues to small ownership should be kept wide open, and that the acquisition of wealth suddenly and without effort should be prevented. In particular should all branches of transportation and trade which are favorable to the amassing of great wealth—he instances especially banking (Geldhandel)—be taken out of private hands: it comes pretty near to practical socialism. He even meets by an illuminating explanation an objection often made to socialism, namely, that it overlooks the matter-of-fact inequalities between men. It does so, he says, much as Christianity overlooks differences in human sinfulness—they are too slight to be taken into account: in the total reckoning all are sinful and need salvation. So socialism regards the common nature and powers and needs of men as so much more important than the respects in which they differ, that it deliberately puts the latter to one side—and in the resolve to ignore differences lies an inspiring force.
And yet on the whole Nietzsche is hostile to socialism. The ​only means of counteracting it which the well-to-do have in their power is, not to provoke it, to live temperately and frugally, to avoid all luxurious display and support the state instead of opposing it when it lays taxes on superfluities and luxuries. If they lack the will to do this, the only difference remaining between them and the socialists is that they possess and the socialists want to—the aims are the same. He gives a scathing description of the lives and pleasures of the present possessing class. The unhappy thing is that the workers are now bent on aping them, are becoming "fellow-conspirators in the present folly of nations, who want before everything else to produce as much and to become as rich as possible." Nietzsche's ideals are elsewhere, and he does not think too much comfort and wealth and security good for man. If the socialists and worshipers of the state had their way, they might with their measures for making life happy and secure bring Europe to Chinese conditions and a Chinese "happiness," with dissatisfaction on any great scale and capacity for transformation gone." Ideals of security and comfort are pre-eminently the mark of a commercial age, which wants to have everything easy for trade and the state a sort of arm-chair. He wishes, indeed, a certain measure of comfort and security for the working class, but to make this an absolute ideal, to leave no free, wild spaces in society where risk and danger exist—this, he feels, would be to banish the conditions under which great men and great enterprises arise. To him socialism seems practically identical with a despotic state, in which individuals with individual instincts and aims appear unjustifiable luxuries, and all are turned into organs of the community—a conception the general form of which we saw him questioning at the end of the last chapter. Minor criticism of socialism I pass over. The greatest benefit coming from it is, he thinks, the stimulus it gives—it entertains men and brings to the lowest strata a species of practico-philosophical discussion; so far it is a spring ​of power to the mind. But from the theory itself he turns away, and while admitting a social revolution to be not unlikely, he thinks that its result will be less than is expected, since man can do so very much less than he wills (as is shown by the French Revolution). He is thus really at home nowhere. While the old aristocratic order is dead, the new commercial order is vulgar and tame, nor does the socialist order which may be coming attract him either. He says in substance, "We [he and his kind] are émigrés, observers of the time,—we wish only to become free of it and understand it, like an eagle flying over it; we have no desire to be citizens or politicians or property-owners, we only want the greatest possible independence; we will be deadly enemies of those of our contemporaries who take refuge in lying and wish reaction; our interest is in individuals and educating them—perhaps humanity will some day have need of them, when the general intoxication of anarchy is past."
IV
Yet, ill-moored as he is to the present time and standing for nothing actual, he has certain expectations—at least, there are better possibilities for the future, to which he more than once recurs.
As for politics, he would like to see it ordered so that moderate intellects might meet its demands, and we should not all have to be continually concerned with it. It is not so great a matter as we sometimes think. We [Germans] rank it so high, because we are deficient in the instincts that make it in the normal man something natural and matter-of-course—we need incitement. He can even imagine an ultimate disappearance of the state—as the old unities of the tribe and the family have disappeared. Its functions might be taken over by private individuals and associations. He admits that it is a different thing to work for such an end: it would be presumptuous and show little knowledge of history to break up old soil, ​till new seeds are at hand, and he hopes that the state will last yet a good while, and that destructive attacks on it by hasty, half-educated people will be averted. The reason for his relatively low estimate of it is, on the one hand, that the ends it serves (security and comfort) are lesser ends in life, and, on the other, that it none the less wishes to call the highest talents to its aid. Mind ought to be free for other things. "Our age that talks so much of economy is a spendthrift: it wastes what is most precious, mind." It is the business people particularly who want the state, and it is they, with their philosophy, who are ruling the world now—artists, scholars, even religion following in their train.
He gives much attention to war—a state-phenomenon. He knows its uses in the past, is far from absolutely condemning it, admits that it may have uses in the future—there is one aphorism with the extravagant title, "War Indispensable." It is a remedy, he thinks, for peoples growing languid and miserable—a remedy, that is, supposing that they really want to live—a sort of brutal cure. It is a return to barbarism, but also to barbaric strength, a kind of hibernating time for culture, out of which one issues stronger both for good and for evil. It may also be a good to a commercialized people, too fond of security and ease. On the other hand, a people living full and strong has no need of war. Its effect is to make the victors stupid and the vanquished malicious. The military system not only involves enormous expense, but, what is worse, it takes the strongest, most capable men in extraordinary numbers away from their proper occupations, to make them soldiers. After drawing a vivid detailed picture of the various inequities and stupidities in military life, he sets down the modern military system as an anachronism, a survival, having for the wheels of present-day society only the value of a drag or brake (i.e., in ​case a nation is going up or down too fast). He even suggests that a strong victorious people might some day disarm. "Perhaps a great day is coming, when a people distinguished by wars and victories and the highest development of military organization and intelligence, accustomed too to bring the heaviest sacrifices to these objects, will voluntarily proclaim, 'We break the sword'—and allow its whole military system down to the last foundations to fall in ruins. To disarm whilst most capable of arms, from an elevation of sentiment—that is the way to real peace, which must always rest on a disposition for peace; while the so-called armed peace, such as we find in all lands now, rests on warlikeness of disposition, which trusts neither itself nor its neighbor, and half from hate, half from fear, refuses to lay its weapons down. Better perish than hate and fear, and twice better perish than make oneself hated and feared—this must some day be the supreme maxim of every individual political society."
Yes, Nietzsche goes still further. He is aware that, as I have said, war is a state-phenomenon, and that the continued possibility of it in Europe is bound up with the system of separate states which exist there, and he deliberately sets himself against the nationalist spirit (or spirits), which has grown ever stronger since the reaction against Napoleon, and calls for a federation of European peoples, a "united Europe." It is interesting to note that his first thought of such a consummation was as a result of the democratizing process now so generally going on. He makes a notable forecast along this line, which I may summarize as follows: The practical outcome of the spreading democratic tendency will be a European federation of peoples. Each people will be like a canton with its own separate rights. Boundaries between cantons will be determined largely by geographical considerations. The historical memories of the various peoples will not be taken greatly into account, for the innovating and experimental spirit of democracy tends to uproot sentiments of this description; while corrections of boundaries that may be necessary will be carried out so as to serve the interests of the large cantons and of the whole federation, they will not be in deference to recollections ​of any hoary past. To find suitable points of view for the corrections will be the task of future diplomats, who will need to be at once adepts in the history of culture, agriculturists, and trade experts, and they will have not armies, but reasons and practical utilities to back them. Some breaks with the past being inevitable, there will be plaints for lost national traits (in dress, customs, legal conceptions, dialects, forms of poetry), but we must not lend too much ear to them. It is the price that has to be paid for rising to the super-national, to universal goals of mankind, yes to a real knowledge and comprehension and enjoyment of other pasts than one's own (des nicht Einheimischen)—in a word, for ceasing to be barbarian. Crude patriotism, such as the Romans had, is now, when quite other and higher tasks than patria and honor await us, either a dishonest thing or else a sign of arrested development (Zurückgebliebenheit). National differences are, much more than is commonly realized, differences in stages of culture, not anything permanent, so that there is little obligation to argue from national character for one who is trying to recreate convictions, i.e., to elevate culture. If, for example, one thinks of all that has been German, the theoretic question, What is German? gets at once the corrected shape, "What is German now?"—and every good German will answer it practically just by overcoming some of his German qualities. When a people goes forward and grows, it breaks the girdle that gave it hitherto its national appearance; if it stays as it was, becomes stunted, a new girdle fastens itself around its soul—the ever hardening crust becomes as it were a prison, whose walls ever grow. Has then a people very much that is fixed, it is a proof that it is ready to petrify and become a monument—as was the case at a certain point of time with ancient Egypt. "Hence he who wishes well to the Germans will for his part see to it, that he ever more and more grows out beyond what is German. Turning to the un-German has ever been the distinguishing mark of the strong (Tüchtigen) among us." Nietzsche entitles this paragraph "To be a good German means to un-Germanize oneself." ​He thinks that already modern tendencies—commerce and industry, the interchange of books and letters, the common features in all higher culture, the easy changing of abode—are weakening nations and tending in the direction of a European man. Not the interest of the many, as is often said, but above all the interests of certain princely dynasties, and then of certain commercial and social classes, push in the nationalist direction.
Taking this larger view, Nietzsche finds the Catholic church suggestive, i.e., the catholicity of it, particularly when it was a sovereign and super-national power in the Middle Ages and made states and nations look petty in comparison! The church met fictitious needs, it is true, but some day there may be equally universal institutes to meet man's real needs. He boldly anticipates "the united states of Europe," holding that while the uniting of the various German governments in one state was a "great idea," this is a still "greater idea." He even broaches the idea of an international ministry of education, which should consider the intellectual welfare of the entire human race, independently of national interests. Europe has a lofty dignity; in his eyes: its task, once united, will be to guide and watch over the development of the entire earth. In this connection an extraordinary suggestion is thrown out that a medical geography of the globe be made, so that, as a physician sends his patients to this and that climate or particular environment for the cure of their varying ailments, so ailing peoples and families may be gradually taken to zones and circumstances favorable to them till their infirmities are overcome—the whole earth becoming thus in time a set of health-stations. One may skeptically ask who is to be the physician for so great a task, and to this Nietzsche gives no formal answer, but may be presumed to have in mind some such organization of the accumulated science and wisdom of mankind as a "united Europe" might effect. Continuing these large prospects, he speaks of an "economy of the earth," of letting poorer races die out and training better ones, of one language—in general, of entirely new conditions for human ​development, particularly for the development of beings of a higher type. He thinks that by the conquest of nature more force may be won than is actually needed, and then something of the luxurious might come among men, of which we have no idea now; great projects would be feasible of which we do not dream. "Aerial navigation alone throws all our old cultural conceptions aside" [he might have added, "undersea navigation," had he lived now]. Instead of our usual works of art, we might try to beautify nature on a great scale by means of labor extending over centuries—for example, bring to perfection suggestions and motives of beauty in the Alps. We might have an architecture, in which we should build for eternity, as the Romans did. We might utilize the backward peoples of Asia, Africa, and elsewhere as laborers. Cyclopic work has been done by other forces in the past; the day of science is to come.
For progress Nietzsche finds an advantage in the free-thinking habits of mind which have arisen in recent times (though he distinguishes free-thinking from what is popularly known as "free-thought"). Prehistoric ages were determined during immeasurable stretches of time by custom, nothing happening; in the historic period the matter of moment has always been some departure from custom, some disagreement of opinion: it is free action of the mind (die Freigeisterei) that makes history. There is corresponding significance in the dissolution of old religious traditions now going on. We are ready to experiment, to take things into our own hands. Our courage rises as we have need of it, and if we fail or err, we believe that it is our own affair—"God," as one to whom we are accountable for mistakes, and "immortal souls," with which we are to pay penalties, have disappeared. And yet, Nietzsche urges, we should be at our work betimes. The aim he proposes few will question the greatness of—he speaks of it as an "ecumenical" one, embracing the whole inhabited globe; he ​reminds us, however, that while time is long, propitious time is not necessarily so. We cannot assume that mankind will always be able to go on in the higher direction. Things do not improve by instinct or any divine destiny. There may be movement down as well as up, and mankind at the end of its career may be on a lower level than it is now. With the downfall of Roman culture and the spread of Christianity, man became increasingly unsightly within the Empire; and human-kind in general, as it has come up from the ape, may at last go down to it. The race may be nearer the heights possible to it in the middle of its journey than at the close—the end of a melody is not its goal, the end of a man's life (above all when it is in weakness) is not its goal. Therefore let us compass the utmost possible now—the chance may not come again.
Nietzsche has certain anticipations even in the religious field—if religion may be taken broadly to cover any kind of a cultus of ideal things. "A Vision" is the title of one aphorism, which reads as follows: "Lectures and hours for meditation set apart for adults, mature and maturest, and these daily, uncompulsory, but visited by every one from force of custom; churches, as the places worthiest and richest in memories, to be used for this purpose; almost daily festivals in honor of the attained or attainable dignity of human reason; a new and fuller blossoming of the ideal of the teacher, in which clergyman, artist, physician, scholar, and wise man, blend in one … this is my vision, which ever comes back to me, and about which I firmly believe that it has lifted a corner of the future's veil." He expresses the desire for a new style of architecture which shall more worthily, more fittingly express the serious ideas of men today—still, ample spaces, where no sound of traffic is heard and a finer decency even forbids praying aloud to the priest, where one can think and for a few moments be by oneself. But the religious suggestions of Nietzsche I must practically leave out of account in the present volume.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 108.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 187.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 85.
* ↑ So Werke (Ist ed.), XI, § 347, as cited by Rlehl, op. cit., p. 153. Human, etc., § 148, is to the same effect.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 108; cf. §§ 147, 148, 159.
* ↑ Ibid., § 108.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 187.
* ↑ Cf. The Wanderer etc., § 232; Dawn of Day, § 179.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 439.
* ↑ W. G. Sumner, Folkways, p. 166.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 310.
* ↑ Ibid., § 317.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 209; Dawn of Day, § 186.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 203.
* ↑ Ibid., § 204.
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 203-4; Joyful Science, § 329. Cf. the characterization of modern "holidays," Dawn of Day, § 178.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 139, § 441.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 42.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 25; cf. 'Dawn of Day, § 175.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 22.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 308.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 282.
* ↑ 'Dawn of Day, § 173; cf. Joyful Science, §§ 188, 329, which continue the tone of Werke, IX, 145-51. On the ancient view, see also Sumner, op. cit., pp. 160-2.
* ↑ 'Dawn of Day, § 206.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., §§ 288, 220, 218.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 141, § 449.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 286.
* ↑ Ibid., XI, 377, § 572.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 369, § 659.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 283.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 40.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 377, § 572.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 206.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 22; Dawn of Day, § 534; cf. Werke, XI, 369, 669.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 318.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 276.
* ↑ He comes nearest to positive sympathy with democracy In Human, etc., § 450.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 176.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 281.
* ↑ Ibid., § 289.
* ↑ Ibid., § 275.
* ↑ Ibid., § 293.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 438.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 292.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 184; Werke, XI, 376, § 571.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 446.
* ↑ Ibid., § 446.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 285.
* ↑ Ibid., § 451.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 141, § 448.
* ↑ Ibid., § 452.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., §§ 304, 510.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 206.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 24.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 174; Werke, XI, 368, § 557.
* ↑ So I interpret the second of the eight reflections on socialism in Werke, XI, 142-4; cf. Human, etc., § 235.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 144.
* ↑ Ibid., XI, 369, § 559. Cf. the allusion to the socialist "ratcatchers" and the "mad hopes" they excite (Dawn of Day, § 206).
* ↑ Werke, XI, 375, § 570.
* ↑ Ibid., X, § 482.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 472.
* ↑ Ibid., § 481; The Wanderer etc., § 232; Dawn of Day, § 179.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 367-9.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 477.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 187.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 444; cf. 463.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 369, § 558.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 187.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 444.
* ↑ Ibid., § 481; cf. § 442.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 279.
* ↑ Ibid., § 284.
* ↑ Cf. Human, etc., § 615.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 292.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 133-4, § 423.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 442.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 323; cf. Werke, XIII, 337, § 836.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 475.
* ↑ Ibid., § 476.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 138, § 439.
* ↑ Ibid., XI, 147-8, § 460.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 87.
* ↑ Ibid., § 188.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 139, § 441.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 7.
* ↑ Ibid., XI, 376-7, § 572.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 138, § 440.
* ↑ Cf. Mixed Opinions etc., § 179; Dawn of Day, § 501.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 179. Cf. the striking paragraph on mankind as a tree which is to overshadow the earth, The Wanderer etc., § 189.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 247.
* ↑ Ibid., § 234; The Wanderer etc., § 204; Dawn of Day, § 349.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 180.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 280.
* ↑ As to a "religion of the future," see Werke, XI, 327, § 439; 373, § 569; 376, § 571; Dawn of Day, §§ 96, 164.