# Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter X

CHAPTER X
GENERAL OUTLOOK, AND ULTIMATE VIEW OF THE WORLD
I
I consider first Nietzsche's general outlook. The tragic background of existence still remains for him; I forbear to quote fresh and varied statements to that effect. His views of the older Greek life as somber, apart from the influence of the myths, is also continued; only through art did man's lot become enjoyable. Nietzsche is now, however, in an unhappy state of mind about art. He has had a disillusioning experience, and art is under a shadow—to this extent, an easement and consolation is gone. It is not that he expressly abandons his former view, but it ceases to have relevance to the existing situation. For the moment he does not know but that the days of art are over. In answer to the question, why it continues in its customary forms—music, theaters, picture-galleries, novels, poetry—he says in a matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical way that idle people find it hard to pass their time without it. He adds that if the needs of these people were not met, either they would not strive so zealously for leisure, and envy of the rich would become rarer—which itself would be a great gain—or else they would employ their leisure in thinking a little—something one can learn and unlearn—thinking, for example, about the sort of lives they are leading, their social relations, their pleasures; in either case, everybody, with the exception of the artists, would be better off. He has more or less satire on artists themselves, or at least criticism of them. Men of science ​are the nobler natures; artists are effeminate in comparison—and he puts himself out of their category, saying that they "find us non-artists a little too sober." Poetry and music alike receive slighting comments. Poets are not worth as much as they seem to be: they throw a veil over ideas, and we have to pay for the veil and for our curiosity to get behind it. Their thoughts often use a festive wagon of rhythm, because of inability to go afoot. He doubts whether it is expedient for philosophers to quote from them, citing Homer's dictum, "Singers lie much." He suggests that poetry may have had a utilitarian and even superstitious origin—rhythm, like musical melody and the dance, being among primitive peoples a way of pleasing the Gods. As for music, he systematically forbade himself for a time all music of a romantic sort, thinking that it begot too many desires and longings, made the mind unclear, feminized, its "eternal feminine" drawing us—down! He has even occasional sarcasm for the genius. A thinker who takes himself in this way may, by begetting distrust in the cautious and sober ways of science, be an enemy to truth—Nietzsche lays stress, as he never has before, on talents and industry. If ever he speaks of "genius" admiringly, he begs us to remember that we must keep the term free of all mythological and mystical associations." The danger is that surrounded by incense, the genius begins to think himself something superhuman; he develops feelings of irresponsibility, of exceptional rights and superiority to criticism." Nietzsche mentions Napoleon in this connection; but the man who is principally in his mind is undoubtedly Wagner. Professor Riehl asserts that wherever the word "artist" occurs in Human, All-too-Human, Nietzsche had first written "Wagner." In fact he contemplated a new book on Wagner—one that would in a way expiate his former laudation (for he felt that he had led many astray); and now that Wagner was victorious, he could criticise him without violating his rules of literary ​warfare—extended preparatory notes for the book are to be found in his published remains. He did not, of course, completely identify the general with the particular—he still feels the greatness of the real genius, sees the place of the poet, and gives a beautiful picture of the poetry of the future (as contrasted with the unripeness and excess mistaken for force and nature now), is not even without appreciation for music of the right sort; but in general, art recedes into the background of his thought, and the realities of the world are faced in their unrelieved somberness and bareness.
II
And yet the concrete results of Nietzsche's facing of reality, with no aid or comfort from art or metaphysical faith, are not pleasant for most of us to contemplate—were not indeed pleasant at the start for him. How gladly, he says, should we exchange false ideas about a God who requires good of us, who sees whatever we do or think, who loves us and wishes our best good in all adversity, for truths that were equally salutary, quieting, and beneficent! But they are not to be had; philosophy at best gives us metaphysical plausibilities, and these at bottom are just as untrue. There is no way of going back to the old ideas without soiling the intellectual conscience. It is a painful situation, but without pain one cannot lead and teach humanity, and woe to him who aspires to do this and has not his conscience pure! This does not mean that Nietzsche is without appreciation of the services of religion in the past. He speaks of the deep indebtedness of music (Palestrina and Bach) to religion, notes the impossibility of the blossoming of another art like that of the "Divine Comedy," Raphael's paintings, Michael Angelo's frescoes, Gothic cathedrals, and does not regret that he lingered a while in the precincts of metaphysics and metaphysical art, and comes into the purely scientific camp a little later than some of his contemporaries. All the same, religion and artist-metaphysics are now past for him. One must have loved religion and art, he declares, as one loves mother and nurse—otherwise one cannot become wise; but one must also be able to see beyond them, to grow away from them—if one remains under their ban, one does not understand them. The simple faith that all goes well for us under a loving God, so that there is no occasion to take life hard or complain, is the best and most vital remainder of the Christian movement, but with it Christianity passes into a gentle moralism—really it is the euthanasia of Christianity. So confident, settled is his ​conviction that he declares that if a man's attitude to Christianity is not critical, we may as well turn our back on him.
In the absence of theistic or metaphysical faith, the world becomes aimless, essentially meaningless to him. It is a kind of welter—history is so, as well as nature. He thinks that an unprejudiced investigator who searches out the development of the eye, and observes the forms it has in the lowest creatures and its gradual growth, comes to the conclusion that seeing was not an end aimed at, but simply happened, when chance brought the requisite apparatus together. Even in man's inventions, accident, i.e., an accidental inspiration or thought, plays a part—only the accident does not happen to most men. Reason itself may have come by accident into the world, i.e., in an irrational way. For with chances of various kinds, it may sooner or later happen that some throws of the dice are so lucky that they have all the appearance of design; the best kind of results may thus arise on occasion—happy hits, we may say, on nature's part. Accordingly Nietzsche speaks of the chaos (rather than cosmos) of existence. He does not mean that things happen without a cause, but apart from any plan or ordering thought: chance is the opposite of design, out of which correlation it means nothing. Chance happenings have causes behind them like everything else, and hence are necessitated like everything else. Law in nature, however, he regards as a questionable conception. If people are fond of it, they must either be thinking that all natural things follow their law in free obedience—in which case they really admire the morality of nature—or else the idea of a ​Creative Mechanician delights them. The conception is really an attempt to humanize necessity—a last refuge of mythological fancy.
In this moving chaos man arises, with no end of causes behind him—but not from any superior design. He arises, and he passes away—he is as perishable as any other creature. Some fancy that man is possessed of a soul in the sense of something separable from his bodily organization and capable of surviving it; Nietzsche does not think so. "In former times the effort was to win a sense of the glory of man, by pointing to his divine origin: it is a forbidden way now, for at the door to it stands, along with other terrible creatures, the ape, who shows his teeth understandingly, as if to say: no further in this direction! So now we look in the opposite direction: the way whither humanity goes shall serve to show its glory and likeness to God. Alas, with this also nothing is proven! At the end of this way stands the funeral-urn of the last man and grave-digger (with the inscription 'nihil humani a me alienum puto'). However high humanity may have developed itself—and perhaps it will be lower at the end than at the beginning—there is no transition for it into a higher order, any more than there is an ascent to god-likeness and eternity for the ant and the earwig at the close of their 'earthly course.' Becoming draws having been in tow after it: why should there be an exception from this eternal play for some little planet, or again for a little species upon it! Away with such sentimentalities!" Another passage is to similar effect. "In the midst of the ocean of becoming, we awake on an island which is not bigger than a boat, we adventuring and wandering birds, and look around us for a little while: we do so as quickly and as curiously as possible, for how quickly may a wind blow us away or a wave sweep over the island, so that nothing is left of us! But here, in this little space, we find other wandering birds and hear of earlier ones—and so we live a precious moment of knowing and of guessing, with happy flapping of wings and twittering with one another, and in spirit venture out on the ocean, no less proud than it." One might turn these pictures ​into abstract philosophemes, but it is unnecessary; nor need one comment on their mournful undertone. Sometimes, indeed, our mortality is spoken of in a different tone. Nietzsche was a man to accept things as they are and make the best of them—and once, after saying that "we have lost one interest, the 'after death' question no longer concerns us," he speaks of this as "an unspeakable benefit, too recent to be fully appreciated." He even asks if it is not shameless to wish an eternal continuance of ourselves. "Have you then no thought of all the rest of things that would have to endure you for all eternity, as they have endured you hitherto with a more than Christian patience?" But I suspect that he makes a virtue of necessity in speaking in this way; his deeper feeling did not really change, and we shall come on traces of it in his last period.
III
Undoubtedly all this has a materialistic sound, and yet when we notice Nietzsche's ultimate philosophical views, we find that he is as far from materialism as ever. This material organization on which our higher life is dependent is itself only statable in mental terms. Matter—the popular (and perhaps I might add, the popular scientific) notion of some kind of permanent self-existing substance—is illusory; it is as much an error as the God (being) of the Eleatics. We deal with phenomena (mental images) in the whole range of our knowledge. One set of them is connected with another set—that is all we can say. We speak of cause and effect, but we simply describe in this way—we explain nothing. The quality resulting from every chemical process is as much a wonder after as before; so is a continuation of motion; nobody has "explained" push. And how could we explain? We deal only with things that do not exist, i.e., lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces, all our own pictures and creations. Science is a humanizing of things—it is ourselves we learn to describe more accurately, as we describe things and their succession. Possibly, yes probably, there never is such a doubleness as we imply in speaking of cause and effect—there being before us in reality a continuum, from which we isolate now this piece and now that—just as, on the other hand, we think that we perceive motion, when we only conclude it, what we perceive being only isolated points. Our very imagery of cause and effect may thus prevent insight into the real connection. All this is said by Nietzsche in general, but it applies to the point now in hand and shows that the assertions of the dependence of the mind upon the body must not be taken too literally.
The fact is, so far as Nietzsche can see at present, we cannot get out of our mental being to explain it. Having concluded, after his analysis of Schopenhauer's metaphysical pretensions, that we do not know reality, but only our sensations or pictures ​of reality, he is as hopelessly shut in to subjectivism as Kant was. Our own actions are essentially unknown, as truly as outer objects are. "In Prison"," he says, "There is absolutely no escaping, no way of slipping or stealing into the actual world. We are in our web, we spiders, and whatever we catch in it, we can catch nothing but what allows itself to be caught in our kind of web." In another place he speaks of the mind as a mirror: "if we attempt to consider the mirror in itself, we discover nothing but the things in it; if we try to lay hold of the things, we come finally to nothing beyond the mirror." "Why does not man see things as they are? He stands in the way of them; he covers the things." Once he even raises the question whether there are any things independent of us,—he only raises it, however, for his practically constant underlying belief is that independent realities exist, however unknown. His attitude is strikingly (I might say, unconsciously) exhibited in a comparison of the world of our experience to a dream, in the midst of which the dreamer becomes sufficiently awake to know that it is a dream, and yet feels that he must go on dreaming, as otherwise, like a sleep-walker who must dream on if he is not precipitously to fall, he might perish. The dream (appearance, Schein) is spoken of indeed as the active, living thing—a world of independent reality is practically ignored. And yet the very fact that he speaks of a dream, and of becoming half-awake in it, shows that the idea of independent reality shimmers in the background of his mind, since a dream that is not contrasted with a waking state is not a dream at all.
Practically then in this second period Nietzsche is shut up in the phenomenalist position, but with reservations or implications which keep us from calling him a phenomenalist. He says on the one hand: we have no knowledge of reality—every metaphysical thought is far from the truth; even in religion, ​art, morality we do not touch the nature of the world in itself—no surmise (Ahnung) we can make takes us beyond the realm of ideas (Vorstellung); while many have died for their convictions, it is probable that no one has ever sacrificed himself for the truth; "philosophical systems" are shining mirages; "metaphysics might be described as the science which treats of the fundamental errors of man, as if they were fundamental truths." But, on the other hand, he always implies that things have another manner of existence than that which they have in us. Even when he asserts that this other manner of existence does not practically concern us and is as much a matter of indifference as a chemical analysis of the water would be to a sailor in a storm, he presupposes the other manner of existence; even when he asserts that the questions of idealism and realism relate to a region where neither belief nor knowledge is necessary, a sort of nebulous swamp-land beyond the reach of investigation and reason, and pleads for our becoming good neighbors to the things that lie near, he implies that the outlying region and swamp-land exist. Realistic implications are also evident in the strange suggestion that things as they exist in themselves may be far less significant than things as they appear, that the independent realities, which we covet so much to know, might, if we came on them, turn out so poor and empty that they would excite an Homeric laughter.
Indeed, he thinks that men have not ordinarily sought truth in the past, but simply ideas that would be serviceable to them—continuing a line of thought on which we have seen him starting in the earlier period. The antithesis is implied in a general remark like the following: "As soon as you wish to act, you must close the door to doubt—says the practical man. And ​do you not fear to be deceived in this way?—answers the theoretic man." For all such warnings, however, the practical man goes on his way, and Nietzsche does not upbraid him. Truth may, of course, be useful, but error may be useful too—we have no guarantee that it is always the true that is helpful to life; there is no pre-established harmony between the two. The illogical man has often been useful or even necessary—and so with the departure from perfect justice in judgments, so with error about the worth of life. Illusions may be a source of force, and it might be well if there were two compartments in man's brain, one for illusions, the other for science to regulate them and keep them from doing harm. Without two capital errors, belief in identity and belief in free-will, mankind, in any distinctive sense, would never have arisen—for, to mention only the second, its ground feeling is that man is free in a world of unfreedom, a marvelous exception, a superanimal, half a God. Doubt, intellectual scrupulousness, only arise late, are always relatively weak factors in human life, and really can only be allowed a limited rôle there. Philosophy itself—what has gone by that name—has ordinarily been animated by concern not so much for "truth," as for health, growth, power, life, and the future—Nietzsche knows that it is a daring proposition to throw out, but he ventures it. Errors may even have a part in making reality—in making character, for instance, and in making history. Pretend to a virtue (kindness, honor), and the result may be in time that you have it; act on a belief, and you may win it—as Böhler said to Wesley, Preach the faith till you have it, and then you will ​preach because you have it." Errors, when useful to life, may in time become incorporated in the living organism and act as impulses there. Yet errors are errors, whatever their effect, whatever their beneficence. The question of the usefulness of an idea is separate from that of its truth. Not only does the agreeableness or comfort of an opinion prove nothing, its necessity to life proves nothing—among the conditions of life, error may be one.
* ↑ Cf., for example, Human, etc., §§ 33, 71, 591; Mixed Opinions etc., § 22.
* ↑ Cf. Human, etc., §§ 261, 154, 222.
* ↑ Cf. Mixed Opinions etc., §§ 99, 174; Human, etc., § 276; also a passage relating to Wagner quoted by Drews (op. cit., p. 163) which I cannot locate.
* ↑ Cf. Human, etc., §§ 222, 223, 236.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 175.
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 205-6.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 236.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 105.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 189.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 84.
* ↑ Ibid., § 84.
* ↑ Preface, § 3, to Mixed Opinions etc.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 635.
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 163, 165.
* ↑ Ibid., § 231.
* ↑ Ibid., § 164; cf. Dawn of Day, § 548.
* ↑ Op. cit., pp. 59, 60.
* ↑ See note b to chap, vi of this volume.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 81-102; more fully in the pocket ed., IV, 436-70.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., §§ 378, 407.
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 99, 111. He is severe against "naturalistic" poetry, saying that the poets of great cities live too near "the sewers."
* ↑ Cf. Dawn of Day, § 461, on the possibilities of a new music, "unschuldige Musik," i.e., genuinely lyric.
* ↑ See §§ 3-7 of the preface alluded to.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 35. Riehl significantly remarks, "Through his disappointment with Wagner, Nietzsche was driven to science. He fled to it to escape from himself" (op. cit., p. 68).
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 550.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 86.
* ↑ Werke (pocket ed.), IV, 445, § 38.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 550.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 34.
* ↑ Ibid., § 292; Joyful Science, § 324.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 429.
* ↑ The results are not really new, but simply now first stated in detail.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 109.
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 219, 220, 234, 273.
* ↑ 'Ibid., § 292; cf. § 280.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 92.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 182.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 238.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 122.
* ↑ Ibid., § 363.
* ↑ Ibid., § 123.
* ↑ Ibid., § 130.
* ↑ Joyful Science, §§ 109, 277.
* ↑ He goes so far as to argue on this basis that in nature at large there is, strictly speaking, no chance: "If you know that there are no aims, you know also that there is no chance: for only in connection with a world of aims has the word 'chance' a meaning" (Joyful Science, § 109).
* ↑ Once, it must be admitted, Nietzsche contrasts chance with necessity (Ecce Homo, II, § 8), relapsing, we must suppose, for the moment into popular modes of expression.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 9.
* ↑ Cf. The Wanderer etc., § 14.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 49.
* ↑ Ibid., § 314.
* ↑ Ibid., § 72.
* ↑ Ibid., § 211.
* ↑ Pp. 173-4.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 11.
* ↑ Will to Power, §§ 117, 126. I quote occasionally from later works, when Nietzsche's present views simply find further statement in them.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 83.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 134—he takes pains to say "the spread of Buddhism (not its origin)." Pessimism is regarded as a symptom rather than a problem in Will to Power, § 38.
* ↑ Cf., on the effect of poor nourishment in general, The Wanderer etc., § 184.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 134.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 538.
* ↑ Genealogy of Morals, III, §§ 16, 17.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 542.
* ↑ Ibid., § 368.
* ↑ Preface, § 2, to Joyful Science.
* ↑ Later (Genealogy of Morals, III, 16) he distinctly says that with a physiological view like that above described, one may still be the strictest opponent of all materialism.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 109.
* ↑ Ibid., § 112; Dawn of Day, § 121.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 116; cf. Will to Power, § 477.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 117; cf. Joyful Science, § 57, where he makes light of the realists and their claim to see things as they are.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 243.
* ↑ Ibid., § 348.
* ↑ Ibid., § 119.
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 54.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 15.
* ↑ Ibid., § 10.
* ↑ Ibid., § 630.
* ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 31.
* ↑ This quotation I borrow from Riehl, op. cit., p. 61, being unable to locate it.
* ↑ Cf. Human, etc., § 9.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 16; cf. Human, etc., § 532. He tries to preach, a gospel of contented ignorance of first and last things in this period, and exalts Epicurus more or less as a model (cf. The Wanderer etc., §§ 7, 16).
* ↑ Cf. also later utterances, Beyond Good and Evil, § 34; Genealogy of Morals, III, § 7; Will to Power, § 586B.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 519.
* ↑ He even asks why, if science were not linked with the usefulness of what is known, we should concern ourselves about science (Mixed Opinions etc., § 98).
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 13, 26.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 517; cf. §§ 30, 36, 38, 227. He even says, "Error has made men out of animals [the reference is to the ideas of responsibility and free-will, see ante, p. 55]; is it possible that truth may turn man again into an animal?" (Human, etc., § 519).
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 31-3.
* ↑ Ibid., § 251.
* ↑ The Wanderer etc., § 12.
* ↑ Joyful Science, §§ 110, 121.
* ↑ Preface, § 2, to Joyful Science.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, §§ 115, 307.
* ↑ Ibid., § 248; cf. Joyful Science, § 356.
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 325.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 425-6.
* ↑ Human, etc., §§ 30, 36.
* ↑ Ibid., §§ 120, 131, 161, 36, 635 (the inspiring and invigorating not thereby true), Dawn of Day, §§ 90, 424, 73, Joyful Science, § 121.