Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/84

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68
NIETZSCHE THE THINKER

far as they are useful or dangerous, and goes to the theater and concerts without ever a thought of duties.[1] He even says, "One cannot be happy, so long as everything suffers and creates suffering about us; one cannot be moral, so long as the course of human things is determined by violence, deceit, and injustice; one cannot even be wise, so long as all mankind has not striven for wisdom and does not lead the individual in the wisest way to life and knowledge"[2]—it is almost a socialistic sentiment. He tells us how Wagner "out of pity for the people" became a revolutionist[3] (something many of us may not know, unless perchance we have read Mr. Shaw's The Perfect Wagnerite), and gives an admiring description of Wagner's art, which no longer uses the language of a caste, knows no distinction between the educated and the uneducated, and is contrasted to this extent with the culture of the Renaissance, including that of Leopardi and of Goethe, its last great followers.[4] Indeed under Wagner's spell, he hails a future in which there will be no highest goods and enjoyments which are not common to all.[5] He desires an art—a true art, a true music—which shall be just for those who least deserve it, but most need it.[6] We have already noted his glowing picture of the effect of the ancient Dionysian festivals and dramas in uniting different classes, breaking down the barriers between free men and slaves, making men feel, indeed, their oneness with all that lives—no one without deep human sympathies could have written in this way; and it was a new Dionysiac art, a new Dionysiac age, for which he at this time thought that Wagner was helping to prepare the way.

Sympathy and pity are only forms which love takes in given situations, and love as a principle, as the culmination of justice, and reaching its perfect expression in the saint, is the supreme thing to Nietzsche. The distinctive noble marks of youth are "fire, defiance, self-forgetfulness, and love."[7] Light-bearers seek out men, reluctant to lend their ears, "com-

  1. "Richard Wagner etc.," sect. 4.
  2. Ibid., sect. 5.
  3. Ibid., sect. 8; cf. Ecce Homo, II, 5.
  4. "Richard Wagner etc.," sect. 10.
  5. Ibid., sect. 10.
  6. Ibid., sect. 6.
  7. "Use and Harm of History etc.," sect. 9.