Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/473

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POLITICAL VIEWS AND ANTICIPATIONS
457

its interests require does not, however, mean (so far as the logic of Nietzsche's thought is concerned) that it may not of its own accord make contracts or treaties with other states, and then be bound by them as truly as individuals are by contracts with other individuals. It becomes to this extent in effect a member of a larger society, however shadowy and tentative this may be, and the ordinary law governing the relations of parts of a social whole, i.e., morality, applies to it. States that break their word incur the contempt which falls on all liars, as so vividly described in Genealogy of Morals, II, § 2.[1]

II

Nietzsche is sometimes set down as an anarchist. The Social Museum of Harvard University so classes him,[2] and what may rank with some as a higher authority, the Encyclopœdia Brittanica, says that his "revolt against the theory of statesupremacy turned him into an anarchist and individualist."[3] a But this view has a very limited truth. He did indeed think that the modern world is approaching an "age of anarchy," as has been before noted, and he failed to take the situation as tragically as some would, for he thought that compensations would arise—just as there had been compensations for the French Revolution in the rise of a Napoleon and a Beethoven.[4] Anarchy is an opportunity for master-spirits of original force—almost a compulsion to them. But to suppose that anarchy was an ideal to him is to fundamentally misconceive him—save as to one particular feature of his social doctrine. For the general non-political attitude of Nietzsche, his aversion to taking part in the public life of his time, is no more to be set down as anarchism than a similar "apolitie" of some of the Greek philosophers, on which Burckhardt comments. b When he said, "It seems to me useful that there should be some Germans who remain indifferent to the German Empire—not merely as a spectator might, but as those who turn their faces away from

  1. See ante, p. 220.
  2. Publications of the Department of Social Ethics in Harvard University, number 4, p. 8.
  3. Art. "Nietzsche."
  4. Werke, XIII, 361, § 887; cf. XII, 108, § 219. On the possibility of an eventual peaceful disappearance of the state, see ante, p. 141, and Human, etc., § 472.