Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/250

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234
NIETZSCHE THE THINKER

sunshine! It is not pity here that is needed … but 'a new justice.'"[1] The ideal philosopher of the future will exercise "the great justice" and courteously protect and defend whatever is misunderstood and defamed, whether it be God or Devil.[2] With all this defense of evil, however, good has the supreme place in Nietzsche's estimation. From this standpoint he says that the task of culture is to take all that is fearful into service, singly, tentatively, step by step, although till it is strong enough to do this, it must needs fight or even curse it.[3] In short, evil is not to be destroyed, but turned to account. He even makes the venturesome statement, "all good is an evil of yesterday that has been made serviceable."[4] I have already cited his language about himself: "I am by far the most fearful man that ever existed, which does not exclude my becoming the most beneficent."[5]

III

Nietzsche enlarges on the aspect of fearfulness which great men in particular may have. We do not separate, he says, the great from the fearful.[6] Great men were so through the strength of their affects; a measure of individuals and peoples is how far they can unchain the most fearful impulses without going to pieces—turning them to their advantage instead and making them bear fruit in act and work.[7] Zarathustra fears that the half-formed higher men who come to him would call his superman devil, as there would be something terrible in his goodness.[8] In Napoleon the higher and the fearful man were united; the mightiest instinct, that of life itself, the desire to rule, affirmed itself in him,[9] though he was corrupted by the means he had to use and lost noblesse of character.[10] The good, the noble, and the great (all different categories) rarely come

  1. Joyful Science, § 289.
  2. Beyond Good and Evil, § 213; cf. Werke, XIII, 118, § 161; Will to Power, § 1015.
  3. Will to Power, § 1025; cf. § 896.
  4. Ibid., § 1025.
  5. Ecce Homo, IV, § 2.
  6. Will to Power, § 1015.
  7. Werke, XII, 87, § 170; XIII, 122, § 272.
  8. Zarathustra, II, xxi.
  9. Will to Power, § 1017.
  10. Ibid., § 1026.