(gross or refined) must be the final end of every act, moral action only differing in that it seeks lasting pleasure, or the greatest or the highest pleasure, or others' pleasure as well as our own; that there is no raison d'être for an action save in the agreeable feeling it gives somewhere. e Nietzsche had argued more or less in this way in his purely critical period, but he has now come to give pleasure an entirely subordinate place.[1] He thinks indeed that it is the commoner sort of men who especially seek pleasure, the greater sort wishing above all to expend their force, more or less indifferent to pleasure and pain calculations.[2] He regards marked emphasis on pleasure and particularly craving for enjoyment as "symptomatic": it implies people who lack these things—a more or less suffering and unhappy class.[3] "Utility and enjoyment" are really "slave" theories of life, i.e., of those who are overburdened and want relief from their hard lot.[4] The strong man is not after happiness—but he acts, acts successfully, and in that action is happiness: happiness comes without his seeking it—it is comes, not dux of his virtue.[5] This does not mean contempt of happiness—Nietzsche knows its place as an adjunct in life.[6] He even gives to utilitarianism a certain relative validity—it is the natural doctrine of the great working mass of men, and of those who take their standpoint.[7] But he absolutely refuses to regard happiness (sensation of any kind) as the final measure of what is desirable, and has a kind of contempt for "green pastures and quiet waters" felicity, when made a universal ideal;[8] he even thinks that the "salvation of
- ↑ Cf. Will to Power, § 928.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 177, § 405; Will to Power, §§ 579, 909, 1022.
- ↑ Werke, XII, 152, § 359; cf. Will to Power, §§ 781, 790. Christianity with its vista of future "blessedness" is a typical way of thinking for a suffering and impoverished species of man (Will to Power, § 222).
- ↑ Will to Power, § 758. Hence the running fire on utilitarianism (whether egoistic or universalistic), and, since England is its principal home, the sarcastic references to Englishmen. As to utilitarianism, see Werke, XIII, 150-1; Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 174, 188, 190, 225, 228, 260; as to Englishmen, Will to Power, §§ 930, 944; Twilight etc., i, § 12.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 158, § 367; XII, 137-8, § 266; Will to Power, §§ 1023, 1026. So love is comes of reason and justice, joy in it, pleasure in its possession, desire to possess it wholly and in all its beauty—the æsthetic side of reason and justice, a subsidiary impulse (Werke, XII, 137, § 265).
- ↑ Cf. the recognition of Bentham and particularly Helvetius (Werke, XIII, 107).
- ↑ Cf. Werke, XIII, 150-1, § 356.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 957.
