William Mackintire Salter

“ It is plain from utterances like these that Nietzsche thinks that in his standard of value he has something absolutely objective. It is even independent of our chance affirmation of it. To call an action good, he derisively exclaims, because our conscience says yes to it! It is as if a work of art became beautiful because it pleased the artist! As if the value of music were determined by our enjoyment of it, or the enjoyment of the composer! [114] All this subjective way of judging things that have really a law and logic of their own is abhorrent to Nietzsche. ”

“ We want to alleviate men's lot. Our altars are to pity. The idea is abroad that no one should suffer or be sacrificed. All have rights to what pleasure and enjoyment can be got out of life, we say—and they, the great mass, are beginning to say so too. Unconsciously we play into their latent instincts of self-assertion, their egoism—not now the egoism that gives, but the egoism that takes and that takes all it can get. Where do we hear nowadays that men might willingly deny themselves or even disappear for a glory possible to mankind! ”

“ What is love of truth but desire to get it, to make it our own, to be so far enriched—and what does love of new truth often mean but that, acquainted with and perhaps a little tired of what we have, we reach out our insatiable hands for more? Is the love of our neighbors quite destitute of the desire to have something of our own in them? And when with sympathetic heart we help and tend those who are suffering or ill, is there not some secret pleasure in thus extending our power over them, in feeling that for the moment they are ours? ”

“ Suppose that reality had ultimately a tragic character, as Nietzsche early, and in a sense always, believed, that most men could not look on it and live, would it still and none the less be their duty to face it? Would facing it and perishing be better than deception about it and life? It is of course an extreme case, but it may none the less serve as a test, and now as at the beginning Nietzsche puts life first. "We must be conscienceless as regards truth and error, so long as life hangs in the balance." ”

“ Our ordinary ideas (at least our democratic ideas) of right and justice are not the pattern after which the world is made, nor are they the standard in accordance with which society must be constituted, if it is to yield the consummate fruit which Nietzsche desired. Harm and sacrifice are necessities as deep as the finiteness of the world and of its composite forces—if the world were infinite, all might be different. Higher things live off lower things, because it is the only way in which they can live at all—there is no infinite storehouse of power on which the higher can directly draw. ”

“ Music, on the other hand, expresses feeling and has nothing to do directly with objects. It reflects moods, desires, longings, resolves—the whole spontaneous and voluntary side of our nature, which Schopenhauer summed up as will. No doubt most of us are conscious at times of a peculiar intimacy in music—it touches us, takes hold of us, seems to reveal hidden depths within us, as nothing else does. Schopenhauer called it the most metaphysical of the arts, meaning that it comes nearest to expressing the inmost reality of things, which to his mind was will. ”

“ Such is the perspective in which life is seen by Nietzsche. As most of us live it, it is not its own end; men, as we ordinarily find them, have no great value on their own account. Striving simply for comfort, happiness, success is a sorry mistake. Our lives have significance only as they reach out after something beyond them. To speak of man's dignity per se, of his rights as man, is to deceive ourselves; he acquires these only as he serves something higher than himself, as he helps in the production of the "genius"—this being a common term for the philosopher, the artist, and the saint. ”

“ Some may feel that culture and the higher ranges of life are not worth the price that has to be paid for them—that if all cannot rise, it is better that none should. Indeed, the feeling may go deeper still, it may extend to the foundations of life itself—if life is necessarily of the general predatory nature described, we may think it better to be done with it altogether. So felt Schopenhauer, and so, at moments at least, Nietzsche. But a deeper impulse—something wild and unmoral, if you will—urged him finally the other way. He took, chose life, even at this cost. ”

“ As little can we give it a moral justification—life lives off life, immorality is an essential part of its constitution. But take it as an æsthetic phenomenon, look at it as a picture, and you may see some sense in it. Regard its creator not as a Supreme Reason or a Moral Governor, but as a supreme Artist, and you get some real insight into its make-up. For the world is a kind of play, a ceaseless producing and destroying like that of a child making and unmaking his piles of sand for the pleasure of the game, or that of an artist who creates and has ever to create anew. ”

“ Here within what we call humanity is an immense mass of force, accumulated and kept from wasting and self-destruction in no small measure by the influence of past morality—what shall be done with it, what impress shall be put upon it, what direction shall it take? Shall we let it drift? Shall our policy in relation to it be laisser aller, laisser passer—trusting to Providence or to destiny? Nietzsche thinks that confidences like these have an uncertain foundation and that humanity has already drifted too long. ”

“ The community, the mass or collectivity, is not really higher than the individual. It is higher than the ordinary individual, more important than the ordinary individual (with quantitative standards, many are more important than one) ; but the great individual is more important than it—for with him mankind attains a new level of being. The most human aim is not to provide for the comfort and happiness of the mass, but to raise the type—to welcome, then, exceptions to the average, to facilitate their existence instead of putting obstacles and mistrust in their way. ”

“ Nietzsche admits that our institutions no longer fit us, but he says that the trouble is with us, not with them. We live for today, live very fast, very irresponsibly—this is our "freedom"; at the mere mention of "authority" we think we are in danger of a new slavery. But in order that there may be great social growths and institutions that fit them, there must be a species of will, instinct, imperative, which is "antiliberal bis zur Bosheit"; a will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility stretching over centuries, to a solidarity of the generations forward and backward in infinitum. ”

“ Music, on the contrary, stands directly related to it—when we listen to music, only this lightest, most insubstantial, most transparent of all objects, sound, stands between us and the reality.
Now there are feelings of the moment, and there is what we may call the ground-tone of our life—our feeling about life, our attitude to it, whether of affirmation or negation, in short, the set of our will as a whole. It is music of the deeper, more significant sort that interested Nietzsche, and it was this kind of music which he thought lay at the basis of the Greek tragic drama. ”

“ Zarathustra draws a picture of the history of man's mind; there are three stages—it is in turn a camel, a lion, and a child. The camel carries, bears what is heavy, dutifully submits, originates nothing, endures all things. The lion wants freedom, gets it, does away with all masters, still is not able to create. The child, however, can; it arises in innocence and oblivion of the past, is a new beginning, a first motion, a wheel turning of its own energy; the child plays, and is equal to the play of creation. The camel represents the old morality, useful, but limited in power ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gist of our requirements we call our ideal, and the ideal, so far as we make it an end to strive for, becomes our aim. Nietzsche is conscious at the present time of no essential divergence from customary morality, and the ideal he has does not differ from that large vague ideal of good which most of us have, and which, when we hypostatize it, as we commonly do, and strip it of limitations, is much the same as the Divine or God. It includes a justice, a love, a wisdom, a power, a beauty—in short, a total perfection—which are only suggested in anything we see or are. ”

“ We must split up the All, unlearn any particular respect for it, bring back feelings we have given to the unknown and the whole, and devote them to things next us, our own things. The All raises ever the old problems, "How is evil possible?" and so on. To speak bluntly, there is no All, the great sensorium or inventorium or storehouse of power is lacking. [63] Nietzsche is thus altogether a pluralist. Such unities as we find are, to him, derived and created things, and lie in a larger sea of the chaotic. This is true not only of the world at large, but of an individual soul. ”

“ The greater man, the greater people, should rule—in this way, and not by mutual agreement, do organizing force and right arise. As man's bodily organism is not the outcome of any consensus, but of the supremacy of certain parts and the subjection of others, so with a sound social organism; the truth is the same if the organism is co-extensive with mankind—the highest brains, the supreme type of men (in body, soul, and spirit) must organize the world. But how, we ask, are the supreme men to be found out? Well, how are the real rulers in any society found out? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us observe, he urges, nature and history and see in what way notable results have been reached unconsciously and perhaps clumsily and by very slow methods in the past; then, taking things into our own hands, let us see if the results we aim at cannot be reached in a similar way, but more surely and with less waste of time and force. Let an organized mankind test Darwin's assertions by experiment—even if the experimentation covers centuries and millenniums and we have to turn the whole earth into experiment stations. ”

“ First, I may note that Nietzsche gives a distinct place to philosophy. It is not for him merely a vague general term, but has a special meaning. The philosopher is distinct from the scholar or man of science, as well as from the average unthinking run of men; he is also distinct from the reformer. His impulse is that of theoretic curiosity, but the curiosity is not as to anything and everything, a mere blind undiscriminating appetite for knowledge turned loose on the universe; it is curiosity as to things most important, the things worthiest of knowledge. ”

“ Another more daring kind led men, as it were, to live existence over again, to reaffirm even the tragedy in it—change, suffering, death—as a part of the eternal round. This was the most powerful and moving kind of art—in it the Greek found his supreme redemption from practical pessimism. Under the shadow of the Olympian deities, in the presence of great works of plastic art, but above all under the influence of the Dionysian festival and the tragic drama, the pain of existence was transcended, and life ennobled. ”