the soul" is a better aim and a fuller conception than the happiness which moralists talk about, since it covers the whole willing, creating, feeling self and not merely a secondary accompanying phenomenon like happiness.[1] f
Sixth, Nietzsche's final principle involves judgment on the idea sometime advanced that we are to develop all the impulses of our nature. "Develope all thy powers? but that means: develope anarchy! Go to pieces!"[2] g A ruling principle, a master impulse is necessary, something to bring all the rest of our being into order, and that is what a final aim like Nietzsche's does. h
And now I come to a paradox, Nietzsche makes life supreme and yet honors on occasion those who risk their life or even sacrifice it. Indeed, he says in general that one should part with life as Ulysses did from Nausicaa—more blessing it than in love with it.[3] Is this inconsistent? Let us see. What is life (as he understands it)? Heaped-up force which in turn expends itself, a continuous process of this sort. The acting, expending is the final thing, and doing this in a certain way, for a certain end, is to his mind the moral. But suppose such action puts one's existence in peril, what then? If persisted in, is life thereby despised? In a sense it certainly is—for we no longer set a supreme value on continued existence. If we care for life in that sense above all else we may go far, but shall not actually put it in jeopardy—simple prudence will hold us back. And yet we find Nietzsche on occasion despising prudence. He even honors a strong sinner more than one who is held back by motives of this sort.[4] Those he counts great are always those who can transcend them. "I love him," says Zarathustra, "whose soul is prodigal," who "will not save himself." "What matters long life! What warrior wishes to be spared!" "Myself I sacrifice unto my love, and my neighbors as myself."[5] Nietzsche goes so far [he is careless of formal
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 152, § 361.
- ↑ Ibid., XI, 277, § 304.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 96.
- ↑ Zarathustra, prologue, § 3; cf. Werke, XI, 250, §§ 216-8; Will to Power, § 909. President Wilson said, when Governor-elect of New Jersey (1911), "God defend us against compromise; I would rather be a knave than a coward."
- ↑ Zarathustra, prologue, § 4; 1,x. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 13
