Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/506

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490
NOTES

no others. See further statements in Human, etc., § 94; The Wanderer etc., § 64, and Beyond Good and Evil, § 32.

l At this time Nietzsche assigns to forgetfulness a great rôle in the development or transformation of moral conceptions. See as to justice. Human, etc., § 92, and even as to intellectual scrupulousness. Mixed Opinions etc., § 26, and generally, The Wanderer etc., § 206.

m Cf., as to motives in returning kindnesses, The Wanderer etc., § 256; in beneficence, ibid., § 253; Beyond Good and Evil, § 194; and the general irony of Dawn of Day, §§ 385, 523; Joyful Science, § 88. Nietzsche questions, however, whether vanity should be condemned to the extent that it ordinarily is (The Wanderer etc., §§ 60, 181)—see the fine analysis, with reasons why vanity should be tenderly treated, in Zarathustra, II, xxi; still he has no real love for it (Joyful Science, §§ 87, 263, 283). Instances of his irony toward moral airs and pretensions may be found in Joyful Science, §§ 27, 88, 214; Dawn of Day, §§ 310, 419—see The Wanderer etc., §§ 14, 304, as to man's taking himself as the end of existence.

In criticism of this kind, no doubt the French moralists such as Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, and Chamfort served more or less as models. He says that their writings have more real thought in them than all the books of German philosophers put together—that they continue the spirit of the Renaissance and of the Greco-Roman world (The Wanderer etc., § 214). He even has words of recognition for Helvetius (ibid., § 216), though later on he reflects on him, together with Bentham (Beyond Good and Evil, § 228) . He does not pass over Rousseau and notes his influence on Kant—Rousseau was in part the author of the moral revival which spread over Europe at the end of the eighteenth century; the revival, however, contributed little to the understanding of moral phenomena, and had rather, from this point of view, an injurious and retrogressive influence (The Wanderer etc., § 216).

n Cf. Dawn of Day, § 516, and Zarathustra's sayings, " Physician, help thyself: so dost thou help thy patient too" (Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 2); "If thou hast a suffering friend, be a resting-place to his suffering, but, as it were, a hard bed, a camp bed; so shalt thou serve him best" (ibid., II, iii).

CHAPTER XII

a Simmel (op. cit., chap, i) finds a fundamental difference between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in their respective attitudes to evolution as a process in time; see also Meyer's comments (op. cit., p. 275), and Nietzsche's own reference to Schopenhauer in Beyond Good and Evil, § 204.

b Schopenhauer, it may be observed, never radically changed in his philosophical views, knew no evolution—once precipitated (and at a comparatively early time in his life), the views remained fixed.

c We scarcely think of the "blessing of labor" just where it would be an unquestionable blessing, namely for one who, having inherited a competence, is without sufficient intellect to know how to use the leisure it gives (Joyful Science, § 359). The principal benefit of labor is in keeping common natures and officials, business people, soldiers, and the like, from being idle, just as it is the principal objection to socialism that it wants to create idleness for common natures—for the idle common individual becomes a burden to himself and to the world (Werke, XI, 367, § 555).

d Nietzsche's picture of the "great men of industry" may seem overdrawn and probably was not based on much personal observation,