will have no existence apart from it, the particular end which Nietzsche himself chooses is something that belongs to the realm nature itself, and, once turned into an end, it becomes as exacting, and as independent of individual caprice or individual welfare in its requirements, the natural law itself could be. j An American writer from whom many seem to get their ideas of Nietzsche, but who unfortunately more or less vulgarizes him, says that completely rejecting "all fixed codes of morality," he leaves a man to "judge a given action solely by its effects upon his own welfare, his own desire or will to live, and that of his children after him."[1] There could hardly be a greater misunderstanding. For what has the ascending life of humanity necessarily to do with any chance individual's personal welfare, or that of his children, unless indeed they are a part of that ascending life, in which case their welfare is a matter not so much of personal, of general moment? This writer says, "Nietzsche offers the gospel of prudent and intelligent selfishness, of absolute and utter individualism."[2] But Nietzsche expressly declares, "my philosophy aims at an order of rank, not at an individualistic morality";[3] he declares the morals of then individual happiness, it is not science and not wisdom, but mere prudence mixed with stupidity;[4] he calls it the most immodest of arrière-pensées to measure good and evil from the standpoint of our personal selves.[5] Particularly if a man belongs to the descending line of life, as it a horror in Nietzsche's eyes when he says, "all for myself."[6] Ascending life and the highest possible ascent being the measure of things,[7] individuals are themselves good
- ↑ Henry L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, pp. 92-3.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 102. These crudities are retained in the "fully revised, 3rd ed.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 287.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 198.
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 102. Frank Thilly hardly bears this in mind in (speaking of Nietzsche as standing for an extreme form of moral individualism, every one striking for himself (Hibbert Journal, October, 1911, (pp. 262-3); and Paul Carus is absolutely mistaken in speaking (in the announcement of his book on Nietzsche) of Nietzsche's, along with Max Stirner's, "extreme individualism, which regards every single person as an absolutely autonomous sovereign being." On the other hand, Simmel makes all the discriminations needed (op. cit., pp. 242-5).
- ↑ Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 1.
- ↑ Cf. a statement like that of Will to Power, § 354 or § 373.
