Paul Carus

“ Nietzsche is a Titan and he is truly Titanic in his rebellion against the smallness of everything that means to be an incarnation of what is great and noble and holy. But he does not protest against the smallness of the representatives of truth and right, he protests against truth and right themselves, and thus he is not merely Titanic, but a genuine Titan,—attempting to take the heavens by storm, a monster, not superhuman but inhuman in proportions, in sentiment and in spirit. Being ingenious, he is, in his way, a genius, but he is not evenly balanced ”

“ What became of his own rights, his ownhood, and the sweeping claim that the world was his property, that he was entitled to use or misuse the world and all mankind as he saw fit; that no other human being could expect recognition, nay not even on the basis of contracts, or promises, or for the sake of love, or humaneness and compassion? Did Stirner in his poverty ever act on the principle that he was the owner of the world, that there was no tie of morality binding on him, no principle which he had to respect? ”

“ Think of a man who in his megalomania preaches a doctrine that justifies an irresponsible desire for power! Would he not be ridiculous in his impotence to actualize his dream? and on the other hand, if he were strong enough to practice what he preached, if like another Napoleon, he would make true his dreams of enslaving the world, would not mankind in self-defense soon rise in rebellion and treat him as a criminal, rendering him and his followers incapable of doing harm? ”

“ Nietzsche is on the right track when he ridicules such ideals as "virtue for virtue's sake," and even "truth for truth's sake." Virtue and truth are for the sake of life. They have not their purpose in themselves, but their nature consists in serving the expansion and further growth of the human soul. This is a truth which we have always insisted upon and which becomes apparent when those people who speak of virtue for its own sake try to define virtue, or determine the ultimate standard of right and wrong, of goodness and badness. ”

“ There is no unity of existence to him. The God-idea is dead—not only the old metaphysical notion of a God-individual, but also God in the sense of the ultimate ground of being, the supreme norm of the cosmos. Nietzsche's world is split up into particular selves. He does not ask how they originated; he only knows that they are here. Above all, he knows that his own self is here, and there is no bond of sympathy between it and other selves. The higher self is that which assumes dominion over the world. His ideal is brutal strength, his overman the tyrant who tramples under foot his fellowmen. ”

“ Nietzsche, by nature modest and tractable, almost submissive, was, as a thinker, too proud to submit to anything, even to truth. Schopenhauer had taught him that the intellect, with its comprehension of truth, is a mere slave of the will, ancilla voluntatis. Our cognition of the truth has a [Pg 8] purpose; it must accommodate itself to our own interest. But the self is sovereign; the self wants to assert itself; the self alone has a right to exist; and the self that does not dare to be itself is a servile, menial creature. Therefore Nietzsche preaches the ethics of self-assertion and pride. ”

“ Nietzsche apparently is only familiar with the sanctions of morality and the criterion of good and evil as they are represented in the institutions and thoughts established by history, and seeing how frequently they serve as tools in the hands of the crafty for the oppression of the unsophisticated masses of the people, he discards them as utterly worthless. Hence his truly magnificent wrath, his disgust, his contempt for underling man, for the masses, this muddy stream of present mankind. ”

“ Beethoven knew as well as any other of his contemporaries the value of money and the significance of power, and yet he pursued his own calling, fascinated by his love for music. The same is true not only of every genius in all the different lines of art and science, but also of religious reformers and inventors of all classes. Tom, Dick and Harry in their hankering for pleasure and frivolous amusement are not less under the influence of the conditions under which they have been born than the great men whose names are written in the book of fame. ”

“ His philosophy is well worth studying, but it is not a good guide through life. It is great only as being the gravest error, boldly, conscientiously, and seriously carried to its utmost extremes and preached as the latest word of wisdom.
It has been customary that man should justify himself before the tribunal of morality, but Nietzsche summons morality itself before his tribunal. Morality justifies herself by calling on truth, but the testimony of truth is ruled out, for truth—objective truth—is denounced as a superstition of the dark ages. ”

“ Human reason is deepened in a scientific world-conception, and becoming aware of the moral aspect of universality it broadens out into comprehensive sympathy with all forms of existence that like ourselves aspire after a fuller comprehension of existence.
Thus the personality of man is the reflex of that system of eternalities which sways the universe, and humanity is found to be a revelation of the core of the cosmos, an incarnation of Godhood. ”

“ Thus, Nietzsche, the instinct-philosopher, [Pg 39] appears as an ingenious boy whose very immaturity is regarded by himself as the highest blossom of his existence. Like an intoxicated youth, he revels in his irresponsibility and laughs at the man who has learned to take life seriously. Because the love of truth originates from instincts, Nietzsche treats it as a mere instinct, and nothing else. He forgets that in the evolution of man's soul all instincts develop into something higher than instinct, and the love of truth develops into systematic science. ”

“ Strange that neither of these philosophers of individuality, Nietzsche or Stirner, ever took the trouble to investigate what an individual is! Stirner halts before this most momentous question of his world-conception, and so he overlooks that his ego, his own individuality, this supreme sovereign standing beyond right and wrong, the ultimate authority of everything, is a hazy, fluctuating, uncertain thing which differs from day to day and Anally disappears.
The individuality of any man is the product of communal life. ”

“ But what to me is the right of society, the right of all? What do I care for equality of right, for the struggle for right, for inalienable rights? Right becomes word in law. The dominant will is the preserver of the states. My own will shall upset them. Every state is a despotism. All right and all power is claimed to belong to the community of the people. ”

“ The truth is that our moral sanctions are no longer accepted. People still believe in God, in the authority of church and state, but their belief is no longer a living faith. Whatever they may think of God, the old God, the God of traditional dogmatism, is gone. He is no longer a living power in the hearts of the people; and so, large masses rejoice to have the proclamation frankly stated that God is dead, that they need no longer fear hell, and that the chains of their slavery are broken.
Nietzsche is consistent in his denial of the traditional sanctions. ”

“ Thus it will come to pass that Nietzsche's type of the overman, should it really make its appearance on earth, would be wiped out as surely as the lion, the king of the beasts, the proud pseudo-overbrute of the animals, will be exterminated in course of time. The lion has a chance for survival only behind the bars of the zoölogical gardens or when he allows himself to be tamed by man, that weakling among the brutes whose power has been built up by a comprehension of the sway of the invisible laws of life, physical, mental and moral. ”

“ If the world breaks to pieces, it will only cause him to laugh; on the other hand, if his very self is forced to the wall in this conflict, he will still, from sheer pride, not suffer himself to abandon his principle of the absolute sovereignty of selfhood. He will not be a man, human and humane, but an overman (Uebermensch) , a superhuman despiser of humanity and humaneness. The multitudes are to him like cattle to be used, to be milked, fleeced and butchered, and Nietzsche calls them herds, animals of the flock, Heerdentiere. ”

“ The self is lord. There is no law for the lord, and so he denounces the ethics of Christianity as slave-morality, and preaches the lord-morality of the strong which is self-assertion.
Morality itself is denounced by Nietzsche as immoral. Morality is the result of evolution, and man's moral ideas are products of conditions climatic, social, economical, national, religious, and what not. Why should we submit to the tyranny of a rule which after all proves to be a relic of barbarism? ”

“ How can the teacher claim that he is the standard of truth? Why, the very attempt at setting up a standard of any kind is tyranny and the recognition of it is a self-imposed slavery. There is no rightness save the rightness that can be maintained in a general hand-to-hand contest, for it is ultimately the fist that decides all controversies.
Nietzsche calls himself an atheist; he denies the existence of God in any form, and thus carries atheism to an extreme where it breaks down in self-contradiction. ”

“ Nietzsche is blind to the truth that there is a norm above the self, and that this norm is the source of duty and the object of religion; he therefore denies the very existence of duty, of conviction, of moral principles, of sympathy with the suffering, of authority in any shape, and yet he dares to condemn man in the shape of the present generation of mankind. What right has he, then, to judge the sovereign self of to-day and to announce the coming of another self in the overman? From the principles of his philosophical anarchism he has no right to denounce mankind of to-day, as an underling ”

“ Good-will on earth will render the law redundant; but when you wipe out the ideal of good-will itself together with its foundation, which is truth and the recognition of truth, the struggle for existence will reappear in its primitive fierceness, and mankind will return to the age of savagery. Let the esprits forts of Nietzsche's type try to realize their master's ideal, and their attempts will soon lead to their own perdition. ”

“ Allowing for difference of temperament and language, there is a substantial agreement between Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their intelligence an auxiliary force against the oppressor. But, on the other hand, will any one for a moment seriously contend that Nietzsche and Proudhon march together in general aim and tendency—that they have anything in common except the daring to profane the shrine and sepulcher of superstition? ”

“ A Napoleon or a Cæsar might have preached the doctrine that the sciences, the arts and other accomplishments are of no value if compared with the acquisition of power, but I feel sure that it would not have been much heeded by the mass of mankind, for no one would change his standard of value. A financier might publicly declare that the only way to judge people is according to the credit they have in banking, but it would scarcely change the standard of judgment in society. ”

“ Since evolution has been accepted as a truth, we may fairly trust that we all believe in the overman. All our reformers believe in the possibility of realizing a higher mankind. We Americans especially have faith in the coming of the kingdom of the overman, and our endeavor is concentrated in hastening his arrival. The question is only, What is the overman and how can we make this ideal of a higher development actual?
Happy Nietzsche! You need not trouble yourself about consistency; you reject all ideals as superstitions, and then introduce an ideal of your own. ”