CHAPTER XXIV
MORAL CONSTRUCTION. THE MORAL AIM PROPOSED BY NIETZSCHE[1]
I
In passing to Nietzsche's construction in morality I may say at the outset that it is a mistake to suppose that he was by temperament and instinct a radical—traces of a certain natural conservatism are plainly visible in his writings. He mentions with pride that he came of a line of Protestant pastors,[2] and it is evident that it was intellectual necessity more than anything else that led to his departure from the ancient ways, and that even in his mental revolutions he kept something of the old spirit. He once speaks of conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the religious man, as a preparatory school for the scientific character.[3] He says in so many words, "We will be heirs of all the morality that has gone before and not start de novo. Our whole procedure is only morality turning against its previous form."[4] If he speaks of an overcoming of morality, it is a self-overcoming,[5] i.e., not by a foreign and hostile party. "Why do I love free thinking? As the last consequence of previous morality"—and he goes on to indicate how it comes from justice, courage, honesty, loving disposition to all.[6] The demand for a wherefore, a critique of morality, is a form of morality, the most sublimated kind of it.[7] In reflecting over the struggles and changes he had gone through, he says, "at last I discovered in the whole process living morality, driving force—I had only imagined that I was beyond good and
- ↑ The substance of this and the following chapters appeared in The International Journal of Ethics, January and April, 1915.
- ↑ Werke, XIV, 358, § 223.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 469.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 125, § 282; cf. Dolson on this point, op. cit., p. 63.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 32.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 124, § 281.
- ↑ Will to Power, §§ 399, 404.
