Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XXVI

by William Mackintire Salter

 

CHAPTER XXVI

MORAL CONSTRUCTION (Cont.). "PERSONS," OR GREAT MEN

I

"Persons," in the distinctive sense in which Nietzsche uses the term, are a development in human society and do not belong to its beginnings—save in rudimentary form as rulers or leaders of the flock. Most men are not persons now. The fundamental thing in human nature is sociality and social functioning—at least since man ceased to be a roving lawless animal. Individuals are first parts of a whole—they come to exist for themselves late and rarely. They even tend to be like one another, as sheep in a flock do—some sociologists put imitation at the basis of the social process. Indeed, the wonder is, considering the circumstances of men's origin, that persons ever arise. Morality itself (the mores of a group) operates to make men alike—this is perhaps its unconscious purpose, to the end that surprises may be minimized and all feel as secure as possible. Now, as in the past, the more the feeling of unity predominates, the more individuals become uniform—and differences are felt as immoral.^[1] Zarathustra says, "You were once apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes."^[2] Language, a supposed distinguishing mark of man, after all covers only what is communicable, common—words fail for our strictly particular, individual experiences.^[3] The world about us—that which we so call—is what we all see alike: the rarer, personal, perceptions scarcely belong to it. Even "truth" is a matter of agreement: what one thinks is set down as individual simply, what two or more agree in thinking—that is "true."^[4] Our very mind is largely a social product; what others teach us, wish of us, tell us to fear or to follow, makes up the original content of it; we get even our idea of ourselves from others, and the way we judge ourselves only continues others, combined judgment of others.^[5] In other words, human beings in society tend to be standardized, averaged; "so arises necessarily the sand of humanity, all very like one another, very small, very round, very peaceable, very tiresome."^[6] Indeed, since society is a prime condition of existence for the human animal, it must be admitted that when survival for a given society depends on the preponderance of certain average characteristics in it, persons are a kind of waste, a luxury, and wishing for them has no sense.^[7] What would be the use of a sheep's becoming a person, or an ant's? Its whole function (unless it is a leader of the flock or community) is to be the scarcely distinguishable unit of the mass that it is and to continue the type.

 

II

And yet persons do occasionally arise in human society—at least there are attempts in that direction. How does it happen? Nietzsche thinks in the first place that for all that may be said of the socializing, standardizing process, each human being is at bottom in some way peculiar. Schopenhauer had held that, while among the lower orders of being there was no essential difference between individuals, the species alone being particular and peculiar, each man is himself a "particular idea," "an altogether peculiar idea"; and Nietzsche, at least for a time, followed him.^[8] Never did he believe that men were born free and equal, but he recognized that they were born different. "The habit of seeing resemblances, of finding things the same is a mark of weak eyes." This is said in commenting on the effort often made to harmonize contrasted thinkers—which only shows, he adds, that one has not the eye for what happens but once, and stamps one as mediocre.^[9] But it holds, in his view, of our dealing with men in general. We put them all together, leave out of account their differences, and then we call them a species! The individuals, however, are more real than the species—the latter is an abstraction, a more or less artificial thing. But if individuals do really differ, why is it that they do not act accordingly, and instead fall to imitating one another? The reason is partly, as already explained, the social strait-jacket, the pressure of social necessity, but partly also, as Nietzsche thinks, lack of force in individuals themselves. They are afraid, lazy, deficient in energy. "When the great thinker despises men," he says, "he despises their laziness (Faulheit), on which account they have the look of factory products. The man who does not wish to be merely one of the mass, only needs to cease to be easy with himself."^[10] It is the few possessing the surplus vitality and courage that makes them leaders and rulers, who become anywise persons in primitive times. How it happens that while "many are called, few are chosen," I need not now seek to explain—it is a wide and general problem, and nowise peculiar to Nietzsche's set of ideas. ^a The many, however, are not for nought, since even if not persons, they carry on the stream of life from which now and then persons emerge.

Further, societies may be likened to storehouses of energy in which power is gathered and heaped up to a degree that would not be possible if men lived singly—this is the ultimate justification for the restraints put on individuals in them, for rigidly subjecting them to custom and law. But there comes a time in a given society when this accumulation, long quietly going on, reaches its maximum, and the society acquires at last a certain maturity and ripeness. The necessities under which it lived in precarious earlier epochs hold now in less degree. Individuals who, even if they had willed to be self-acting persons, could not have been allowed to be, may now be given liberty with less danger; indeed, the power that has been accumulating in the social storehouse presses for a vent and almost of necessity pours out through special channels of this . description. All of which is equivalent to saying that men of independent force and character, individuals capable of self-direction, tend to appear. This is Nietzsche's second point of view. The material for persons might be said to exist always, but actually they only arise under such favorable historical conditions as these. ^b First, social stability; then an aim is possible in new and higher directions.^[11] When the greatest danger for all is over, individual trees can grow with their own special conditions of existence.^[12] Horticulturists and breeders of animals know that with superabundance of nourishment and a surplus of care and protection, there is an increased tendency to variations and Nietzsche thinks that it is the same with man. When there are no longer enemies to guard against, when the means of life and enjoyment abound, the old strict discipline relaxes, the mores that helped to store surplus power become more or less "out of date," and deviations from the average type appear such as had not been known before—deviations in two directions, indeed, towards what is higher, finer, rarer, and also towards what is lower, or even monstrous. If we observe Venice after it had attained assured supremacy, or an ancient Greek polis like Athens in the fifth century B.C., or the end of the Republican period in Rome,^[13] We find an essentially similar outcome, namely, an astonishing array of marked individualities, some holding themselves together well, others going to pieces.^[14] It is the harvest time of a people, the raison d'être (in Nietzsche's eyes) of the ages of strict discipline that have gone before. Relatively to the old iron-bound order, it in a time of anarchy, and, many would say, of corruption (ripeness and corruption, we must remember, are not remote from one another in the temporal order of things); but it is also a time when the great moral natures appear, not men of the old type who simply obey, but men of power—those who in the old order would have ruled, but now turn their force inward and rule themselves (men like Heraclitus, Plato).^[15]

Paradoxically enough (and here is a third point of view, one already anticipated),^[16] the very restraints of the old régime have prepared for the liberty of the new. The unremitting discipline of the ancient mores has turned men—some men—into beings who can be reckoned on and can reckon on themselves, i.e., are responsible. With this they gain respect for themselves, confidence in themselves. Especially is this the case with those who act as representatives of the group, or who guide it in war or in peace. Yet this respect for themselves and confidence in themselves lead them sooner or later to think that they need not take the law of their conduct from without them, but may give it to themselves. They have learned to act greatly on others' account, they conclude that they might also do so on their own. In short, they become self-acting, self-legislating—that is, persons. The collectivity itself has unwittingly educated them. The altruism bound up with social organization has made this extraordinary, final kind of egoism possible.^[17]

 

III

And yet the new developments, though less dangerous than they would have been at an earlier time, are not without danger. The individuals strong in themselves and conscious of their strength, may contend with one another and endanger social stability.^[18] They may also intoxicate others who are not as strong as they, and make them lose their heads.^[19] But gravest of all, they may themselves go to pieces. They are making a new venture, and with all their antecedent training may not succeed. To direct oneself, to take the law of one's conduct into one's own hands, is a perilous thing. Thomas Hill Green said, indeed, "It is the very essence of moral duty to be imposed by a man on himself,"^[20] and Kant conceived of duty in similar fashion. But both meant little more than that one takes a commonly recognized moral law and re-enacts it in his own person. It is a naïveté, however, to imagine that when a man takes law-giving into his own hands, he is going to legislate just as others do. He may be different from others, have a different end from others, or, with the same end, may see deeper or differently as to how to reach it. ^c To tell a sovereign what law he shall give himself is more than a naveté—it is a contradiction.

"Castilian gentlemen
Choose not their task,—they choose to do it well,"

says George Eliot in The Spanish Gypsy. But a real sovereign chooses his task, as well as the doing of it. He sets himself his duty. At least so Nietzsche conceived the matter. The very thing that urges the type of individual in question to be a law unto himself is the more or less dim sense that he is different from others, and needs, in order to serve those particulars in which he is different, a different regimen and method of procedure. One who feels that he is one of many, all essentially alike, can neither have nor desire to have a peculiar moral law; but he who is conscious of a quantum of being that is unique, may feel that he is even lacking in respect where respect is due, if he owns only a common law. Rather does he ask, What agrees with my conditions of existence? and he may as reverently bend to that duty as any average individual can to his. And yet really to find out oneself and the law that will serve it—what a task!^[21] Just to the extent that the individual is unique, he can get no help from others. Society, or rather societies, know (or think they know) themselves, and the kinds of conduct that will serve them—hence morality or moralities, all socially imposed laws for social purposes; but societies know the individual so little, that they either fail to consider him (save as they try to restrain him or to make him useful), or else they touch merely the surface of him—we have already found Nietzsche remarking on the unfineness of morality's prescriptions for individual well-being.^[22] Hence when men take themselves in hand and attempt to mark out their own course, they may go astray. Nietzsche says that the first tentative individuals generally go to pieces.^[23] They are great enough to feel the inadequacy of the law of the average, but not great enough, or lucky enough to find the law that suits them. There is a law for them as truly as there is one for society, but they do not hit it—and their impulses, still to be trained and unified in the service of the new aim, conflict with one another, or, if one gets on top, it sets up a tyranny, the others being not so much regulated as crushed.^[24] Even so, they are fuller, richer, greater than the ordinary man; but regulation, organization are lacking and so they fail. Nietzsche once drops a despairing remark to the effect that man is not yet good enough for a flight in the air, out of the reach and criticism of others. He cites as examples of higher men who lacked the supreme qualities—strong, rich, but without self-control—Byron, Alfred de Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Heinrich von Kleist, Gogol; he says he could mention greater names. He calls men of this type "rudimentary men"—that is, they are anticipations, beginnings, in the higher direction, but no more.^[25]

And yet there are those who do not go to pieces—at least sooner or later such appear. They can not only command, they can obey—a principle of order and subordination is established in them.^[26] They represent the opposite of the demoralization sometimes produced by freedom—for Zarathustra says, "Alas, I have known noble ones who lost their highest hope, and then they denied all high hopes; they lived shamelessly in momentary pleasures and scarcely had aims beyond the day.… Once they thought to become heroes; now they are voluptuaries!"^[27] They are men able to say Yes, not only in word but in deed, to Zarathustra's challenge, "Canst thou give thyself thy evil and thy good, and hang up thy will over thee as a law?"^[28] They not merely know themselves, but they follow a still greater injunction, "Will [make] a self"—they give their nature a style, mold it, bring it under a law, become masters of their wildness, unbridledness, know both how to speak and how to keep silent, are capable of hardness and severity against themselves.^[29] In short, they are whole men, lawgiver and subject in one; they need no laws from without—indeed, "laws," "rules" are crude, unfine, compared with the intimate character of their self-control.^[30] To them and to them only is freedom given without risk;^[31] they are the justification of the régime of liberty, even if the other fruit of the social tree spoils—better that much should spoil, than that this perfect fruit should not appear. Yes, from this fruit new and fairer social groupings may in time arise.

For though Nietzsche's thought wavers at this point, and he sometimes speaks as if great men were an end, a consummation and not a way to something beyond, his main idea is (to use now another metaphor) that they are eggs, germinal beginnings of new societies and unities.^[32] If the old society is strong enough and plastic enough (a rare combination), it may go on itself, simply assuming new forms or allowing new varieties of life within its own limits;^[33] but if its strength is of the rigid type, then its flowering time is also a beginning of decay, and the great individuals who spring from it can only perpetuate themselves in a new society. The men of the Periclean epoch were an end, the sound alas! alike with the unsound—even Plato formed no new society, though what he might have done, if circumstances had been more favorable in Sicily, "gives us to think." It was much so with men like Cæsar and Cicero in Rome—though a few with more than ordinary proportions succeeded them in the Empire. In fact, with developments like these in mind, Nietzsche is sometimes tempted to the melancholy reflection that great individuals may be no advantage to a society, but rather a detriment—that its growth in power is best guaranteed by a preponderance of the average or lower type, they being the most fertile and having most of the elements of permanence in them.^[34] He only resolves his difficulty by raising the question whether a permanent society is ipso facto a supreme good; whether shorter life and decay, with a flowering time, are not preferable to however long life on a monotonous level. Is China, he asks [of course, as he knew it thirty or more years ago], a desirable form of human existence upon the earth? We are perhaps here in presence of ultimate alternatives, i.e., have to choose between two ultimate social ideals. Along with the desire to eternalize a state, there is instinctively bred, he thinks, a fear of great individuals, and customs and institutions naturally arise which are unpropitious to them; hence the Chinese proverb, before quoted, "The great man is a public misfortune."^[35] But for himself he does not hesitate: if the perpetuity of a state must be purchased at such a price, the game is not worth the candle—better that societies should come to an end than that the higher types should not appear.^[36] And yet great men, though worth having at whatever cost on their own account,^[37] are generally viewed by Nietzsche, as already stated, as the possible beginnings of new and greater societies. They are the variations on which the hope of the future hangs. If it is not merely man as we see him that we have in mind, but a higher type of man and the greatest possible variety of such types, then it is just to these individuals that we must give particular attention, encouraging them, giving them room, not measuring them by ordinary standards, and willing rather to be hurt by them than to prevent their arising, knowing that, whatever immediate harm they do, humanity's possibilities of further development are bound up with them. ^d

 

IV

The ruling tendency of our time is against Nietzsche. The highest thing now is to be a servant of the common life; the community is set above the individual—even the greatest. ^e This may be a wholesome reaction against the vulgar egoism of our wealth-seekers and political adventurers who want to make the rest of the community serve them—the ideal may be good for them, and for all of us so far as vulgar egoism lurks in us. But in any other sense, it rests to Nietzsche's mind on a deep misunderstanding.^[38] 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. For there is no other method of progress than the old one of variation and selection; only (and here Nietzsche departs from the Darwinian school) it is we who must do the selecting henceforth—giving to the rarer, finer, higher, stronger specimens the advantage, even taking them as leaders, instead of chilling and defeating them as alas! we may, and often do (there is always, Nietzsche thinks, a half-conscious, underground conspiracy of the little against the great, of the average against the exception).^[39] The proudest, most human act of the mass would be to array itself in loyalty to what is above it (mere mutual helping and safeguarding are not a peculiarly human thing—all animal societies in some measure practice it). Robert Browning's Paracelsus says,

"Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once! We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted."

But what a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous! What a childlike view of the method of progress in the world, which is always by some starting better than others, by unlike gifts, by giants leading the way where smaller men dare not go, by slow, gradual, painful advance, instead of "at once" or by an Omnipotent Hand. The hope of humanity, the reason for cherishing humanity, the ultimate raison d'être for the great toiling mass of humanity, whose struggles and mutual helpfulness are surely not their own end, is, to those who think with Nietzsche, the emergence of the rarer, higher types preferred to—men who, relatively speaking, will be like Gods on the earth, and once more awaken a sentiment all unfamiliar to our democratic age—reverence.

Nietzsche remarks that the philosopher, in the deeper sense of that word, has ever found himself, and has had to find himself, in opposition to the day in which he lives—his enemy has been the ideal of that day; and it is so now. Against the wild waters of selfishness that were pouring their tumultuous floods in the sixteenth century arose the ideal of a meek, renouncing, selfless humanity. In face of the degenerate aristocratic Athenian society of the fifth century B.C., and against the old high-sounding phrases to the use of which the nobility had forfeited their right by the kind of life they were leading, Socrates stood forth and practised his irony. And now when gregariousness is supreme, when "equality of rights" is preached and easily passes into equality of wrongs, now, when there is a general war against everything exceptional and privileged, a philosopher is needed with a new antithesis—one who will say that greatness consists in standing alone, in taking duties and responsibilities that cannot be common, in being greatly one's very particular and individual self.^[40]

 

V

Let me now give Nietzsche's conception of great men a little more in detail. Though, as persons proper, they are not easily subsumable under a common type, certain very general common characteristics may be noted.

First, they are great, not by carrying ordinary virtues to a high state of perfection; their virtues are more or less different from the ordinary, for they are different men. To a certain extent they come under the same law with others; but the characteristic thing about them is that they have a law of their own, one suitable to their peculiar being. Their virtues might not be virtues for the common man, and the virtues of the common man might conceivably be vices (weaknesses) in them. Their first duty is to respect themselves.^[41] "Thou shalt become that which thou art" is what their conscience says to them.^{[42] f} They have a morality, but it is that paradoxical thing, an autonomous morality ("moral" and "autonomous" being ordinarily opposites); they contradict the Hegelian command that no man shall have a private conscience. They do not accept duties from without; numbers, authority are nothing to them. Their duty is an "I will," the "I must" of overflowing creative strength. It is true that Zarathustra sickens at his "I will" from vulgar mouths—for the mass of men, obedience is safer, better than individual choice; but for great men, "I will" is the sign and seal of their superiority. They are accordingly careless of popular approval or sympathy,^{[43] g} proud though not vain; they have a sense of singular duties and responsibilities, which they do not think of lowering by converting into duties and responsibilities for every man.^[44] However dependent on others for success, their rise in the first place is due to their self-assertion^[45]—they make their rights rather than receive them. They have an unalterable belief that to beings like themselves others are naturally subject and may sacrifice—this without any feeling of harshness, force, or arbitrariness on their part, rather as something founded in the original law of things, as just.^[46]

As is natural, men of this type have a taste for rare things such as ordinarily leave men cold—for art, for science, for high curiosity, for high virtue. While willing to sacrifice them. selves, if need be, this is not what characterizes them—a mad lover of pleasure does it also; nor is following a passion—there are despicable passions; nor is unselfishly doing for others—the consistency of a certain kind of selfishness may be greatest in the highest. What singles out the nobler type (perhaps without their being aware of the singularity) is their rare and singular measure of values, their ardor in spheres where others are indifferent their sacrifice on altars to Gods commonly unknown, their bravery with unconcern for honor, their self-sufficiency which flows over and imparts of its joy to men and things.^[47]

It follows that they are more or less solitary. If the rest of us admire them, it is because they are different from us, not like us—we have the sort of joy in them that we have in nature.^[48] To a certain extent they wish to be by themselves—instincts of self-protection, of purity, tending that way. One accommodates oneself in the world^[49]—as Emerson puts it, "we descend to meet"; in solitude, the soul and mind are easier upright and true. Away from the market and glory happens all that is great; away from the market-place have ever dwelt the inventors of new values.^[50] Nietzsche quotes a Hindu saying: "As Brahma one lives alone; as a God in twos; as a villager in threes; where there are more, it is a noise and a tumult."^[51] He speaks of the hundred deep solitudes one finds in a city like Venice—it was a part of the charm of that city for him, a "symbol for men of the future."^[52] Solitude has practical limits, no doubt; if it is too great, one does not perpetuate oneself—the social many, kindred to one another, perpetuate themselves best, and that is why, perhaps, commonness preponderates in the world.^[53] The great and singular hardly even make a class. They stand apart from one another, as well as from the crowd. They may mask themselves so well that, if they meet on the way, they scarcely know one another. They do not necessarily love one another, though they cannot fail in mutual respect. Nietzsche quotes a grim remark of Abbé Galiani, "Philosophers are not made for loving each other. Eagles do not fly in company. That has to be left to partridges and common birds.… To soar aloft and have claws—that is the lot of great geniuses."^[54] Nor is there anything undesirable in this hostility—in it all their strength comes out.^[55] Tyranny is another matter. When "originality" wishes to tyrannize, it lays its hand, Nietzsche says, on its own life-principle^[56]—and I imagine he would have said the same of a "person." Even when the great agree, they do not follow one another—do not press to or long after one another.^[57] Nietzsche at times carries the thought of independence so far that he departs from his usual conception of the great as the rulers of the rest of mankind, and compares them to Epicurean Gods who live apart from the world.^[58] He really has a twofold classification of great men, the highest, rarest type simply giving direction to mankind, but not actually ruling it—ruling being a function of the others.^[59] Aristotle said that one who was not a citizen was either low in the scale of humanity, or else a superhuman being, either a brute or a God;^[60] it is evident to which category Nietzsche's supreme persons belong.

I have already referred to the fear-inspiring (böse) aspect which great men may have.^[61] Nietzsche warns against a too soft interpretation; there is a certain amount of the brute in them, even a nearness to crime.^[62] They will be independent, even at the risk of subjecting others or sacrificing them—not because they are inhuman, but because independence may be impossible of attainment in any other way and they can transcend feelings of humanity on occasion, as Brutus transcended pity and friendship when for the res publica he murdered Cæsar.^{[63] h}

They can, however, give to men as well as take from them, though doing so in their own way, serving "austerely." All but the very highest of them (who live apart) function in ways that are appreciable, are helpers of their kind as statesmen, commanders, leaders in difficult enterprises. They leave aims of personal security, comfort, and happiness to others. They can endure poverty and want, if need be—also sickness. They represent a new type of sainthood.^[64] Their instinctive attitude to the weak is one of protection; they come naturally to the defense of whatever is misused, misunderstood, or calumniated (whether God or Devil). They have their own kind of goodness and kindness; they take pleasure in the larger justice and in the practice of it.^[65] They are counselors for troubled minds and consciences.^[66] They rise to higher air, not occasionally but they live there; not so much strength as permanence of high sentiment marks them.^[67]

In general a high self-control characterizes these men. They are many-sided, perhaps have the most varied powers, but these are harnessed together to an end. They are not impulsive beings, but collected, cool, reasonable; they do even heroic acts in this spirit, not blindly following feeling.^[68] They like naïveté and naïve people, but as onlookers and higher beings: they find Faust as naïve as Gretchen.^[69] Even giving one's life for something is not necessarily a mark of superiority—it may be from pity or from anger or from revenge; how many have sacrificed their life for pretty women—and even, what is worse, their health!^{[70] i} For in Nietzsche's eyes, greatness of soul is not to be separated from intellectual greatness. The really great look on "heroes, martyrs, geniuses, the inspired" as not "quiet, patient, fine, cold, slow, enough" for them.^{[71] j} Philosophers are the greatest men. They are ever against mere impulse, and first and surface views—the natural antagonists of sensualism, whether in practice or as a theory.^[72] Indeed, Nietzsche thinks that individuals generally are less likely to lose their balance and be insane than groups, parties, peoples, periods.^[73]

Moreover, the great are happy in their lot, thankful for existence.^[74] Though they may suffer—and capacity for suffering is a mark of greatness—they can also play and laugh, laugh at themselves and their failures, make jests of pathetic situations in which they find themselves. Indeed, it was man, the most suffering animal, who invented laughter.^[75] Philosophers may be graded according for their capacity for it—the greatest being those capable of golden laughter; Gods themselves laugh in some superhuman way.^[76] The greatest sin on earth was the word of him who said, "Woe unto you that laugh now!"^[77] Zarathustra knows rather how to sanctify laughter; he puts it as a crown upon his head.^[78] For the secret of laughter is strength, abounding vitality. From this source, too, flow beauty and grace. "The great will not condescend to take anything seriously," said Emerson; and above the hero with his violent struggles and solemn ways, Nietzsche puts the super-hero, who stands with relaxed muscles and unharnessed will, dowered with beauty and grace—above the straining neck of the ox is the angel's eye."^[79]

In their very manners the great betray themselves, as a Greek Goddess did in her walk. The labor that stoops and deforms, affecting even the gait, is foreign to them. They are capable of leisure also, this being understood in a nobler sense than that of mere rest from toil. They may even have an air of frivolity on occasion—in word, dress, bearing. They have a pleasure in forms, are convinced that politeness is one of the great virtues, mistrust all letting oneself go, rank "good nature" low, are disgusted with vulgar familiarity.^[80] In short they are gentlemen, but in an intellectual and spiritual sense. Nietzsche ventures to call his Beyond Good and Evil a school for the gentleman, the conception being taken "more spiritually and radically than ever before." ^k He defines it as one of the marks of the gentleman that he has the sentiment of distance, knows how to distinguish and recognize rank, gradation between man and man everywhere; otherwise one comes hopelessly under the category of the canaille. The Germans, he says in a bitter moment, are, with a few exceptions, canaille; they are so complacent (gutmüthig), that if the most profound spirit of all the ages should appear among them, some savior of the Capitol would imagine that he was to be equally taken into account.^[81] The modern industrial situation has its troublous, threatening side in his eyes, partly because our new magnates are not gentlemen, but show by their vulgar ways, their cunning and unscrupulousness, their "red, fat hands" that they are an upstart class.^{[82] l} As a rule, the gentleman is born and bred, the result indeed of generations of training: it is an ideal intimately connected with an aristocracy,^[83] and manners tend to deteriorate in general, when the influence of an aristocracy declines.^[84]

Such is an incomplete portraiture of great men or "persons," as Nietzsche conceives them. I may add an interesting observation which he makes upon polytheism. This ancient belief rendered, he thinks, a great service in idealizing different types of individuals, and allowing them their rights against one another. While it was counted an aberration for a human being to assert a particular idea of his own and derive from it his law, his joy, and his right, those doing so excusing themselves and saying, "Not I! not I! but a God through me," in the world of higher beings it was admitted to be different. There a number of norms of conduct might exist; one God was not the denial or abuse of another; there for the first time individuals were freely allowed, individual rights revered. The invention of Gods, heroes, and supermen of all kinds, as of dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils, he regards as an inestimable preparation for the justification of the human individual in asserting his rights; the freedom given to one God against others became at last the individual's freedom against statutes, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, on the other hand—really a consequence of the doctrine of a single normal type of man, an assertion of a normal God, beside whom are only false Gods—may be viewed as so far a danger to humanity; it involves a revival of, or rather reversion to, the intellectual atmosphere that existed before the age of varying individuals; it flattens, levels men—tends to give them but one set of eyes, while the glory and privilege of man among the animals has been that there are no eternal, i.e., unchanging, horizons and perspectives for him.^[85] In accordance with this strong feeling Nietzsche expresses the hope that joy in foreign originality, without desire to ape it, will some day be the mark of a new culture.^[86] As for himself, he wants to help all who seek an ideal pattern for their lives simply by showing how to do it; and his greatest joy is in encountering individual patterns that are not like his own. "The Devil take all imitators and followers and eulogists and wonderers and self-surrenderers!"^[87]

1. Werke, XI, 237, § 193.
2. Twilight etc., ix, § 26.
3. Zarathustra, prologue, § 3.
4. Joyful Science, § 260; cf. § 228.
5. Werke, XI, 236, § 191; cf. Dawn of Day, § 105.
6. Werke, XI, 237, § 193.
7. Will to Power, § 886.
8. Cf. Human, etc., § 286. Perhaps I should say "always." In Joyful Science he still calls it the goal that "every one should draw his pattern of life and realize it—his individual pattern," and says that his kind of ethics would ever more and more take from man his general character and specialize him.
9. Joyful Science, § 228.
10. "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 1. During his middle period, marked by a reaction against the cult of "genius," Nietzsche even inclined to the view that great men became so by their own efforts (see Human, etc., § 163).
11. Werke, XIV, 261-2, § 4.
12. Ibid., XII, 110, § 223; cf. XIII, 187.
13. Cf., as to Rome, W. Warde Fowler, Social Life in Rome, p. 101.
14. See the remarkable description, Beyond Good and Evil, § 262; cf. Joyful Science, § 23; Werke, XIV, 76-8.
15. Werke, XI, 242, § 201; 251, § 221.
16. See pp. 221-2, 264.
17. Will to Power, §§ 771, 773; cf. Werke, XII, 110-1, 114-6; Genealogy etc., II, § 2.
18. Werke, XIV, 76.
19. Joyful Science, § 28.
20. Prolegomena to Ethics, p, 354.
21. Cf. Werke, XI, 243, § 203.
22. See ante, p. 216.
23. Werke, XII, 113.
24. Cf. ibid., XII, 119, § 233; 114, § 226.
25. Beyond Good and Evil, § 269; Werke, XII, 119, § 233. Nietzsche remarks that after seeing the tragedy of these "higher men," we are impelled to seek relief and healing in the company of ordinary well-conducted people.
26. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 4.
27. Ibid., I, viii.
28. Ibid., I, xvii.
29. Mixed Opinions etc., § 366; Joyful Science, § 290; Beyond Good and Evil, § 260; Will to Power, § 704.
30. Cf., as to the possible strictness of a sick man with himself. Dawn of Day, § 322.
31. Only to the ennobled man may freedom of spirit be given" (The Wanderer etc., § 350; cf. Zarathustra, I, viii).
32. Will to Power, § 684; Werke, XIII, 114, § 227.
33. Cf. the point of view of Human, etc., § 224.
34. Will to Power, § 685.
35. Werke, XII, 114, § 227; 119, § 232.
36. Sometimes there are compensations of this character for political decline, a people in such circumstances getting again its mind, which had been practically lost in the struggles for power, and culture owing its best to the new situation (Human, etc., § 465).
37. Cf. Will to Power, § 996; Beyond Good and Evil, § 276.
38. Will to Power, § 766.
39. Cf., as to the straits of the higher type. Will to Power, §§ 965, 987.
40. Beyond Good and Evil, § 212.
41. Will to Power, §§ 919, 873, 962.
42. Joyful Science, § 270; cf. §§ 335, 336; also, Zarathustra, IV, i.
43. Will to Power, § 962.
44. Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 261, 272.
45. Cf. Will to Power, § 885 (if the rise of great and rare natures had depended on the will of others, there would never have been a significant man).
46. Beyond Good and Evil, § 265.
47. Joyful Science, § 55. Ibid., XI, 377, § 574.
48. Werke, XII, 125, § 244.
49. Zarathustra, III, ix.
50. Ibid., I, xiii.
51. Werke, XIV, 252, § 536.
52. Ibid., XI, 377, § 574.
53. Ibid., XI, 238-9, § 195.
54. Will to Power, § 989.
55. Werke, XI, 240, § 199.
56. Ibid., XI, 240, § 199.
57. Ibid., XIV, 418, § 300.
58. Ibid., XIV, 262, § 4.
59. See The Antichristian, § 57; Will to Power, §§ 998-9, and later in this volume, pp. 449-51. In Human, etc., § 521, greatness is treated as equivalent to giving direction.
60. Politics, I, ii.
61. Pp. 234-5.
62. Will to Power, § 951; cf. Ecce Homo, IV, § 5.
63. Werke, XI, 239, § 196; Joyful Science, § 98; cf. § 382.
64. Will to Power, §§ 943-4; Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 486, § 36.
65. Beyond Good and Evil, § 213.
66. Werke, XIV, 414, § 298.
67. Mixed Opinions etc., § 397; Beyond Good and Evil, § 72.
68. Will to Power, §§ 883, 928; cf. Werke, XIII, 144, § 335; Dawn of Day, § 215.
69. Will to Power, § 943; cf. the references to Faust, Werke, XIII, 335, § 830.
70. Ibid., § 929.
71. Will to Power, §§ 984, 993; cf. Werke, XI, 379-89, § 579.
72. Beyond Good and Evil, § 14. Cf, two striking pictures of the philosopher, his experiences and manner of life, ibid., §§ 213, 292.
73. Ibid., § 156.
74. A man of genius is unendurable, unless he has two things besides: thankfulness and purity (ibid., § 74).
75. Ibid., § 270; Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 15; Dawn of Day, § 386; Will to Power, § 990.
76. Beyond Good and Evil, § 294.
77. Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 16. Nietzsche is hardly happy in this illustration; Jesus has nothing against laughter—he had said just before, "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh" (Luke vi, 21). It should be said for Nietzsche, however, that he reads "here" for "now," and regards Jesus as pronouncing woe on the joys of earth in general.
78. Ibid., IV, xiii, § 18.
79. Ibid., II, xiii.
80. Will to Power, § 493; cf. Human, etc., § 479.
81. Ecce Homo, III, x, § 4.
82. Joyful Science, § 40.
83. Werke, XI, 367, § 554; cf. the fine detailed picture, Dawn of Day, § 201. A true aristocracy is not, however, a closed caste, but takes new elements into itself continuously (Werke, XIV, 226, § 457).
84. Human, etc., § 250.
85. Joyful Science, § 143; cf. Zarathustra, III, viii, § 2.
86. Werke, XI, 240, § 199.
87. Ibid., XI, 242, § 202.