and if he does not carry things so far as to become a legislator of new mores, he remains in the recollection of men as an instance of 'the evil principle.'"[1] That is, it irritates men to have one question what all believe, and if he is a good man, they do not see why he should. But whether Nietzsche made matters worse for himself by using the term "immoralist" or not, his meaning (at least his initial and fundamental meaning) in using it is clear—and we may now pass on to a detailed consideration of the dissection or critical analysis he gives. The analysis, it must be confessed, is rarely pure—exhibitions of personal feeling, anticipations of his own positive views are frequent; really the distinction between his criticism and his construction in this realm is a more or less arbitrary one—and yet it is convenient and is suggested by himself, and I shall regard it as far as the material to be dealt with will allow.
II
Taking then our stand with Nietzsche outside morality for the time, looking at it with as much of the purely scientific spirit as we can command, what do we find—that is, what does he find?
First, in continuation of the view we have already come upon in considering the second period,[2] morality reveals itself as a phenomenon of society, something strictly social in nature. The classical passage in this connection is Dawn of Day, § 9, which bears the title, "Begriff der Sittlichkeit der Sitte." Every student of Nietzsche should read it carefully, if only to see how much of scientific analysis he can compress on occasion into three or four pages. The ground marks of morality here appear, as not individual utility, but authority on the one hand and obedience on the other. The authority, however, is general or social; and the obedience, like the fear or reverence deepening to superstition from which it springs, is not to any person. c The central thing is the Sitten (mores)[3] of the social group,
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 496.
- ↑ See ante, pp. 120-3.
- ↑ It will be simpler hereafter to use the Latin mores as an equivalent for Sitten—our English word "customs" failing, without some qualifying adjective, to indicate the weight and authority which attach to them. W. G. Sumner was perhaps the first to make extended use of the term in scientific discussion of the subject—see his Folkways, particularly pp. 36-7; cf. also ch. iv of Dewey and Tufts' Ethics.
