Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/528

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512
NOTES

(Monist, July, 1899, p. 571). Nietzsche also expresses himself in this way: "The opposite of the heroic ideal is the ideal of all-round development—and a beautiful opposite and one very desirable, but only an ideal for men good from the bottom up (e.g., Goethe)." This was written for Lou Andreas-Salomé, and is quoted by her (op. cit., p. 25).

h Cf. in this connection the striking remarks on the modern educated man, even including Goethe (after all kein Olympier"!) in Will to Power, § 883; cf. 881. Nietzsche's thought is that while the great men must have many sides and a variety of powers, these must all be yoked together in the service of a supreme aim. See also the comments in "Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 2, on two contrasted ideals of education.

i A similar shade of antithetical meaning appears in what Zarathustra says to the higher men who come to him, "Better despair than surrender [i.e., to the small people with small virtues and policies, who are lords of today]. And truly I love you, because you know not how to live today. So do you live—best!" (Zarathustra, IV, xii, § 3). Heinrich Scharren puts the distinction in this way: "Not life as existence in general is the supreme value to Nietzsche, but life as will to power" (Nietzsches Stellung zum Eudamonismus, p. 47).

j Dorner (op. cit., p. 152) calls it a contradiction to turn a pure principle of nature into a principle of value. Valuing is indeed a distinct act of the mind, and an end as such has no independent existence, being wholly relative to the mind and will that set it, but why may not the mind give supreme value to something actually existing (or developing)?

k Cf. a general critical reflection: "Individualism is a modest and as yet unconscious sort of 'will to power'; the individual thinks it enough to liberate himself from the superior power of society (whether state or church). He puts himself in opposition not as person, but purely as individual; he stands for individuals in general as against the collectivity. This means that instinctively he puts himself on the same plane with every individual; what he contends for, he contends for not on behalf of himself as a person, but as the representative of individuals against the whole" (Will to Power, §784). What Nietzsche means by "persons" will appear later.

l See Simmel, op. cit., pp. 233-4; cf. p. 245 ("That this doctrine should be taken for a frivolous egoism, a sanctioning of Epicurean unbridledness, belongs to the most astonishing illusions in the history of morals"—the illusion is shared in striking manner by Paul Carus, op. cit., pp. 34, 61, 104, 138). So G. A. Tienes, "No ordinary egoist can appeal to Nietzsche with even an appearance of right" (Nietzsches Stelltmg zu den Grundfragen der Ethik genetisch dargestellt, p. 30). Ernst Horneffer also has discriminating remarks on the subject, Vorträge über Nietzsche, pp. 80-1; and Carl Lory, Nietzsche als Geschichtsphilosoph, p. 22. As to Stirner, see Richter, op. cit., pp. 345-7; Riehl, op. cit., p. 86; Meyer, op. cit., pp. 89-90; Dolson, op. cit., p. 95; Ziegler, op. cit., pp. 154, 157; R. H. Grützmacher, op. cit., p. 170. A special literature has arisen as to the relation of Stirner to Nietzsche—cf. Robert Schellwein, Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche (1892); A. Lévy, Stirner et Nietzsche (Paris, 1904). It appears doubtful whether Nietzsche had read Stirner's book (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum); if he had, its influence upon him is inappreciable. Of the Greek Sophists it may be said that Nietzsche unquestionably has points of view in common with them (see his own comment on them, Will to Power, §§428-9), but this should not obscure for us the differences. A convenient book for the study of Nietzsche's relation to the early Greek thinkers in general, the Sophists included, is Richard Oehler's Nietzsche und die Vorsokratiker. I may also mention Max Wiesenthal, Friedrich Nietzsche und die griechische Sophistik, and Benedict Lachmann, Protagoras, Nietzsche, Stirner.