STUDIES ON FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

O

BY M. D. PETRE.

IV.

SUPERMAN.

THE conception of the superman is not so new as the name, nor did even the latter entirely originate with Nietzsche. But he it was who gave to both a particular and definite shape, and started the superman on his capricious course of adventure. Like the monster of Frankenstein, he now stalks the earth independent of his maker, and we will not make Nietzsche responsible for all the vagaries of his cherished creation. Our task will be rather, as in the other points we have considered, to fix attention on the positive and original elements of Nietzsche's conception, dwelling less on its negative aspect: It is more helpful to ourselves, as it is also more just and more generous and more true, to correct the worst of a writer by his own best, than to satisfy ourselves by triumphantly indicating the weak points of his system.

The superman of Nietzsche is a strange, mixed being; often enough repugnant and self-contradictory. He is ostensibly proposed to us as a substitute for God; a kind of human Tower of Babel, who shall reach from earth to heaven by his own unaided force. It is, in many respects, an impious conception, in others a revolting one, mingled as it is with the advocacy of cruelty and lust. It is also an anti-popular, an anti-democratic conception, based on disregard for the weak and oppressed, on sympathy for the strong and tyrannical. And yet the evil is not altogether unqualified; there is gold as well as clay in the composition of the superman. Some of the best points of Nietzschean philosophy culminated in this, his last and favorite creation.

The conception itself is both real and ideal; Nietzsche looks partly to the production of an individual or individuals, partly to that of a type. The superman was sometimes Nietzsche

himself, in the person of Zarathoustra; sometimes a being that was yet to come. It is not very clear if he believed in a future universal reign of the superman, or if he held that it would always be an exceptional appearance. This point is obscure, as is also that of the connection of this idea with another of his leading theories, the doctrine, namely, of the "Ewige Wiederkehr," or Eternal Recurrence.

This latter belief positively haunted Nietzsche; and, in the person of Zarathou stra, he gives us an account of the agony with which he realized it. Past, present, future, were but the points of a never-ending circular movement, everything past would come again, everything future had already been. We cannot here enter on a consideration of this theory, which has been often discussed in the history of philosophy. We only note it here because, in spite of its apparent lack of harmony with any theory of real progress, such as the superman would eminently represent, it always appears in close connection with this latter idea. It might be possible to harmonize this contradiction, and Nietzsche might say that the superman is he who surmounts this iron law of recurrence by his very acceptance of it; the answer is, however, not wholly satisfactory.

The superman is also obviously connected with Nietzsche's "immoralism"; he is the one who has found his way "beyond good and evil." The moral man is the superbrute; the brute, that is, who has risen to the perception of law. The superman is he who has passed beyond this perception, who unites the instinctive lawlessness of the brute with the intelligent lawlessness and spontaneity of the super-moral man.

I.

THE RIGHTS OF THE MANY AND THE RIGHTS OF THE FEW.

In 1874 we find the following interesting passage in a letter to Nietzsche from his friend Rohde:

December 13.-"Is there anywhere a sensible account of the profound revolution wrought in the condition and aims of intellectual life by the abolition of slavery? Obviously the supreme goal of Greek culture, the right of scholarly leis. ure, was hereby placed out of reach, and, with it, many hardships which were a condition of this principle, so often perverted, like everything that is human. Nevertheless, the fair

est fruits of culture have also been lost thereby, and can never flourish again."

In these words we have the statement of a very real problem, and, however strong our democratic tendencies may be, however little we may be disposed to build even the fairest edifice on the living bodies of our fellow-creatures, the fact still remains, that some of the greatest benefactors of the human race have been its thinkers, and that we owe some of the first of those thinkers, a Socrates, a Plato, to a system we now abhor.

Nor is it only the philosophical, but likewise the aesthetic ideal which thrives under these conditions. There are rare exotic thoughts, delicate shades of feeling and perception, which have a human as well as a personal value, but which can hardly be conceived of as existing under the stress of material necessity.

"Often I find myself saying, in irony is it? or earnest ? 'Yea, what is more, be rich, O ye rich, be sublime in great

houses.

Suffer that service be done you, permit of the page and the valet.

Cast not to swine of the stye the pearls that should gleam on your foreheads.

Live, be lovely, forget them, be beautiful even to proudness, Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you, Live, be uncaring, be joyous, be sumptuous, only be lovely Not for enjoyment truly; for Beauty and God's great glory.'

The problem is here turned on the rights of mere beauty to thrive on a certain forgetfulness of surrounding want and necessity. We cultivate hot-house plants, just for the sake of their loveliness; why not also hot-house souls, souls tempered to every fine perception and emotion, guarded from the sharp east wind of material duties. In the days of Plato, such a notion was accepted without any difficulty; the high thinking of the few was made possible by the plain living and hard work of the many. But with us, however much such a state of things

The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich." By A. Clough.

may exist, we cannot accept the fact with equanimity; we are restless and dissatisfied until we find some solution of the problem.

To Nietzsche this solution was plain and defined; he believed in the few and not in the many. "This," says Zarathoustra, "is what my love for the distant demands of me, to have no care for my nearest." Mercilessness towards the many, the near, the average, in order to contribute to the production of the few, the distant, the eminent. The policy that would pursue "the greatest good of the greatest number" was abhorrent to him, as tending to perpetuate a low standard of attainment. He did not deny the necessity of sacrifice for the sake of a future and higher ideal, but he held that a democratic philosophy was opposed to the attainment of any ideal at all. In his earlier days he had said:

"Every young man should have this sentiment planted and nourished in him, that he is to regard himself as one of Nature's failures, but as also a proof of her great and wonderful intention; she succeeded ill, he must say to himself, but I will honor her intention by serving towards her better future

success.

The end and intention of moral conduct were precisely those elements thereof which Nietzsche most emphatically condemned; but the end and intention of Nature he treated with all reverence and submission. This was because he conceived the intention of Nature as hidden, immeasurable, in a sense infinite; whereas he held that any definite intention of man was essentially limitative.

In the same way to oppose Nature's provision for the destruction of the weak and useless was to put a near and limited aim, such an aim as man by his own power can conceive, in the place of the greater and more remote aim of Nature. Ten thousand average men were not, in his mind, worth one noble specimen.

This is not a doctrine entirely strange to theology, though it is differently interpreted in practice. Nor is it so easy to conciliate, by a superficial consideration, the conflicting rights of the few and the many. When it is sometimes our lot to see a brave and noble man, cramped, diminished, attenuated in his powers of mind and heart, by the service of those whose Schopenhauer als Erzieher. Pp. 61-62.

multitude is paltry beside his single personality, we are sometimes tempted to ask with Nietzsche: "Whence is progress to come, so long as the strong are ever standing back to wait on the steps of the weak?" And yet who would or could say that the noble are to fulfil their destiny by walking over the bodies of their feeble brethren ? What then is the answer to this complex difficulty?

Perhaps the words of Professor Eucken, in which he deals with a different but kindred problem, that of the mutual relations of the individual and society, will help us here. For the rights of the many may be taken as those for which society has chiefly to cater, rights which are common and general; the rights of the few, which Nietzsche so stoutly maintained, may stand for those of the individual, which are private and sometimes exceptional.

Professor Eucken raises the whole discussion to a higher standpoint, when he shows us how the deep, underlying spiritual life of the universe must be the source of both social and individual life and rights, each drawing strength and fullness therefrom, or both grow empty and superficial. Neither is the individual dependent chiefly on society, nor society on the individual; more immediate than they are to each other is that eternal life to both.

So that, we may safely add, in order to apply this lesson · to our own subject, the respective rights and status of the individual in regard to society, as of the few in regard to the many, are to be proportioned, not by their relations to one another, but by their relations to that greater whole.

In so far as the individual depends on society for his share of these nobler goods, he is to be reverent, submissive, obedient to society; and this is the foundation of the obedience of the citizen to the State, of the faithful to the Church. In so far, on the other hand, as the community is dependent on the individual for a higher participation of spiritual life, then the community owes a certain deference and docility to its teachers.

Now to Nietzsche, if we take his teaching in a fair and generous sense, there is no doubt that those few, to whom he would so ruthlessly sacrifice the many, represent just that nobler and more spiritual element; the men of higher perceptions, of wider vision, of stronger will, of richer performance.

* Geistige Strömungen der Gegenwart. By Professor Rudolph Eucken.