Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/521

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NOTES
505

individuals sufficiently marked off to lead and rule have characterized every stage of society, at least above the hunting and nomadic.

f Dewey and Tufts say, "The term good, when used in our judgments upon others (as in a 'good' man), may have a different history [from that in the economic sphere]. As has been noted, it may come from class feeling; or from the praise we give to acts as they immediately please. It may be akin to noble, or fine, or admirable" (op. cit., p. 184). This is a beginning along the line of distinctions and refinements such as Nietzsche's, but only a beginning. On the other hand, Höffding thinks that the doctrine of master- and slave-morality was falsely derived (op. cit., pp. 142, 156). It may be added that Nietzsche does not always use "gut und schlecht" and "gut und böse" in the special senses described in the text, but sometimes quite generally.

g Further descriptions of the subject-class and their type of morality may be found in Werke, XIV, 67, § 133, and Genealogy etc., I, § 14. In Beyond Good and Evil, § 260, they are spoken of as the "subjugated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, uncertain of themselves and weary." In Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 3, their virtues are described as resignation, modesty, prudence, and industry.

h Cf. the striking paragraph. Human, etc., § 81, on the difference in standpoint and feeling between the doer of an injury and the sufferer from it.

i Wundt remarks, "Language is the oldest witness to the course of development of all human ideas. Hence it is to language that we must put our first questions in investigating the origin of moral ideas" (op. cit., I, 23). On the other hand, Westermarck discards all questions of etymology as irrelevant to the subject, adding, "The attempt to apply the philological method to an examination of moral concepts has, in my opinion, proved a failure—which may be seen from Mr. Bayne's book on 'The Idea of God and the Moral Sense in the Light of Language'" (Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, I, 133)—apparently a large conclusion from a slight premise.

j Riehl says that this "class" view of Nietzsche's is not a new one—Paul Rée having advanced it in Die Entstehung des Gewissens (1885—Beyond Good and Evil appeared in the same year, but Genealogy of Morals two years later), and having been able to cite as authorities P. E. Müller, Grote, and Welcker. Nietzsche, in the preface to Genealogy etc., refers only to Rée's earlier work, Der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen (1877), but Lou Andreas-Salomé appears to be of the opinion that he was none the less indebted to Rée, through conversations had with him while the latter was preparing Die Entstehung des Gewissens (op. cit., pp. 189-90). Ziegler traces Nietzsche's view back to Leopold Schmidt's Ethik der alten Griechen (1882).

k Welcker (quoted by Grote, History of Greece, II, 419 ff.) remarks that by this time the political or class senses of "good" and "bad" had fallen into desuetude.

l Riehl argues that a process, which is supposed to be typical, ought always to be met with under similar circumstances, and asks, "But where among the Greeks is the 'slave-morality' to be found along with their master-morality" (op. cit., p. 119)? The argument is plausible, but slightly wooden, for tendencies may exist even if the conditions are not present which allow them to go into effect. Even so, there are not wanting signs that something like a "slave-morality" showed its beginnings in Greece. If what Callicles says in Plato's "Gorgias" relates at all to matter of fact, the mass did sometimes endeavor to put through their own point of view and make laws and moral distinctions in their own interest. This "accomplished Athenian gentleman," as Jowett speaks of him—at least a representative of the old order and out of humor with