1883), as had Renouvier and Charles Secrétan before him—see his Nietzsche et l'Immoralisme, pp. 54-5.
c E. and A. Horneffer refer to Wundt, Liebmann, and Riehl, as well as Kant, Schopenhauer, and Lotze, as holding that morality is something well-established and known—the only questions open being as to its formulation or the basis to be given to it (Das klassische Ideal, pp. 213-8). A recent writer on Nietzsche speaks of "moral axioms" (H. L. Stewart, Nietzsche and the Ideals of Modern Germany, pp. 87, 107) .
d A passage from Emerson may be quoted here: "Now shall we, because a good nature inclines us to virtue's side, say, there are no doubts and lie for the right? Is life to be led in a brave or in a cowardly manner, and is not the satisfaction of the doubts essential to all manliness? Is the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which is virtue?" ("Montaigne," in Representative Men).
e William James once confessed something of this feeling to me. The fact that morality (as ordinarily understood) is something customary, plays a part, no doubt, in rendering it uninteresting, Nietzsche remarking that what is expected, usual, neutral for the feelings, makes the greater part of what the people calls its Sittlichkeit (Werke, XI, 212, § 133).
f Cf., for example, the qualifications he makes in offering his etymological derivation of moral terms in Genealogy of Morals, I, and what is implied in speaking of the need of essays under university auspices on the subject (in the note at the close); also the admission of the conjectural nature of his views as to the connection of guilt and suffering (ibid., II, § 6), the origin of "bad conscience" (ibid., II, § 16), and the connection of "guilt" and "duty" with religious presuppositions (ibid., II, § 21). I have already noted the significance of the full title of the Genealogy of Morals, namely, Zur Genealogie der Moral. H. L. Stewart, in attacking Nietzsche for incompetence and "incredible self-confidence," hardly bears these things in mind (op. cit., pp. 43-4).
CHAPTER XVII
a Nietzsche remarks that we cannot solve the problem of the worth of life in general, because, for one thing, we cannot take a position outside life (Twilight of the Idols, v, § 5; cf. ii, § 2).
b Cf. Simmel's comments, op. cit., p. 231; also as he is quoted in Nietzsche's Werke (pocket ed.), V, xxxii. See also Ziegler, op. cit., pp. 180-1, and A. W. Benn, International Journal of Ethics, October, 1908, p. 19. Nietzsche's sister recognizes that it would have been better if he had used expressions like "amoralisch," "Amoralismus" (Werke', pocket ed., IX, XXV) . On the other hand, Nietzsche became somewhat indifferent to misconceptions of his meaning, and said late in life, with a bit of malice, that it had become his habit not to write anything that did not bring those "in a hurry" to despair (preface, § 5, to Dawn of Day; cf. Werke, XIV, 359, § 225).
c This is not inconsistent with the view that the mores to which obedience is given may have originated more or less with ruling persons in the distant past, in accordance with the possible suggestions of Werke, XIII, 190, § 421. It is said there, in a discussion of punishment considered as a reaction of the powerful, that before the morality of the mos (whose canon is "everything traditional must be honored") stands the morality of the ruling person (whose canon is that "the ruler alone shall be honored"). "Before" here may mean in time or in rank and authority—I think the latter. Only if it means "earlier in time," is there basis for Willard Huntington Wright's view that morality, as understood by Nietzsche, "implies the domination of certain
