Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/524

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508
NOTES


h In Beyond Good and Evil, § 23, he says that there are a hundred good reasons why any one should keep away from his circle of ideas who —can! "We others are the exception and the danger, who never dare be the rule" (Joyful Science, § 76; cf. Dawn of Day, § 507). Interesting in this connection is an enumeration of ways in which antiquity may and may not be useful to us now: for example, it is not for young people; it is not for direct imitation; it is approachable only for few—and morals should comprise some kind of police regulations here, as it should also against bad pianists who play Beethoven (Werke, X, 412, § 273).

CHAPTER XXII

a The word "altruism" is called an "Italian hybrid" by a writer on Nietzsche in the Quarterly Review (October, 1896, pp. 314-5); according to the Grande Encyclopédie, it was invented by Comte.

b Cf . Nietzsche's language: "What is done from love is always beyond good and evil" (Beyond Good and Evil, § 153); "Jesus said to his Jewish followers, 'the law was for servants—love God, as I love him, as his son! what is morality to us'!" (ibid., § 164); "What is done from love is not moral but religious" (Werke, XII, 289, § 296); and the description of the feeling of Paul and the first Christians, "all morality, all obeying and doing, fails to produce the feeling of power and freedom which love produces—from love one does nothing bad (Schlimmes), one does much more than one would do from obedience and virtuous principle" (Will to Power, § 176).

c F. Rittelmeyer, commenting on the fact that Goethe's egoism led him to refuse the importunities of strangers, says, "That Goethe could have committed no greater crime against humanity than to have sacrificed himself to such importunate people, and in this way failed to have produced his immortal works, is not thought of" (Friedrich Nietzsche und die Religion, p. 93).

d This by J. M. Warbeke, Harvard Theological Review, July, 1909, p. 368. Cf. Richard Beyer, Nietzsches Versuch einer Umwerthung aller Werthe, p. 21, and even H. Scheffauer, Quarterly Review, July, 1913, p. 170.

e Paul Elmer More thinks that for a right understanding of Nietzsche we must find his place in the debate between egotism (sic) and sympathy, self-interest and benevolence, which has been going on for two centuries, and devotes nearly a third of his little book already cited (pp. 19-47) to an historical review of the contest as it has been waged in England, mentioning Rousseau, Kant, and Schleiermacher briefly at the close. But it is a mistake to range Nietzsche baldly on the side of egoism against sympathy, self-interest against benevolence; he really leaves that wearisome controversy behind. His problem is pity, and pity particularly as viewed by Schopenhauer. Curiously enough, the author does not even mention Schopenhauer in the connection. In saying the above I do not forget that Nietzsche opposed the overemphasis on sympathy and altruism characteristic of our time. Comte, he remarks, "with his celebrated formula vivre pour autrui has in fact outchristianized Christianity" (Dawn of Day, § 132). "Our socialists are decadents, but also Mr. Herbert Spencer is a decadent—he sees in the triumph of altruism something desirable" (Twilight etc., IX, § 37; cf. Joyful Science, § 373). "We are no humanitarians; we should never dare allow ourselves to speak of our 'love to mankind'—for this one like us is not actor enough or not Saint-Simonist enough, or Frenchman enough!" (Joyful Science, § 377). He even regards the modern softening of manners as a result of decline, speaking of our "morals of sympathy, which might