clumsy, unintelligent good ones. In accordance with such an understanding of things, Nietzsche raises the question whether humanity might not transform itself from a moral into a wise humanity.[1] i
Especially is there illusion in the idea of unegoistic actions, by which Schopenhauer, and he himself at the outset, had set such store. He by no means denies the genuineness of the actions which go by that name; he throws no suspicion on the reality of benevolence, self-sacrifice, heroism—his reasoning is different from that of La Rochefoucauld; but he thinks that when we look for the ultimate source of such actions, we find the same desire for personal gratification leading to them which leads to all other actions.[2] A mother, for instance, gives her child what she denies herself—sleep, the best food, on occasion sacrificing her health and her means. Is this to be treated as an exception to the rule of human conduct—a wonder in the world, something, as Schopenhauer said, "impossible and yet actual"? Or is the fact simply that the mother sacrifices certain impulses to other impulses, yielding to the strongest—that she nowise differs, so far as the psychology of the matter goes, from a stubborn person who would rather be shot than go a step out of his way to accommodate some one else?[3] We do not and cannot cease to be egos seeking for personal gratification, no matter what we do. And yet Schopenhauer thought unegoistic motives the essential mark of a moral action—and the idea is not uncommon today.[4] j
Again, morality tends to draw the line so sharply between good and evil that one cannot be supposed to come out of the other. Nietzsche, however, finds evil sometimes passing into good. The passions excited in war, the impersonal hate, the cold-blooded killing with good conscience, the proud indifference to great losses, may in time be translated into spiritual equivalents, and add to the sum of available energy in the workshops of the mind.[5] Destruction and the destructive spirit may prepare the way for new things under the sun, new forms of life.
