Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/81

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ETHICAL VIEWS
65

are or tend to become higher individuals, others do not—though it would seem as if all might. Nietzsche himself is involved in more or less contradiction in dealing with the matter. Now he speaks of every one as having the higher possibilities, as being essentially individual and unique,[1] now he says that the mass are always "common and pitifully uniform" and that the "modern man" in particular "suffers from a weak personality"[2]—one thinks of Emerson's plaint with regard to the clergy that they were "as alike as peas," he could not "tell them apart."[3] Perhaps Nietzsche could only have reconciled these discordant utterances by saying that when an aim takes practical shape, it has to adapt itself to matter-of-fact conditions, and make the best of material that is at hand. Sometimes he states his aim as consisting in the furthering of the production of the philosopher, the artist and the saint, "within us and without us,"[4] and doubtless he would fain have seen every man a higher man, and none used for ends outside them;[5] but, as things are, only a few show effectively the higher possibilities, and the rest come nearest to a high value by serving them. I shall recur to the subject in treating his closing period.[6]

Nietzsche gathered encouragement for his hope of a new culture from the old Greek world. The contemplation of that great past made him believe that what he wished for was no empty dream.[7] He says, "The Greeks are interesting and tremendously important (ganz toll wichtig), because they had such a number of great individuals. How was this possible? It is this that we must study." "What alone interests me is the relation of a people to the education of the individual." And yet it must be confessed that in the fragmentary notes[8] from which these remarks are taken, Nietzsche gives us scant light

  1. Ibid., sects. 1, 5.
  2. "Use and Harm of History etc.," sects. 5, 9. Cf. Havelock Ellis's observations on this point, Affirmations, p. 21.
  3. The Preacher," in Lectures and Biographical Sketches.
  4. "Schopenhauer etc.," sect. 5 (the italics are mine).
  5. Cf. the strong feeling he shows about using up individuals for scientific purposes, by narrowly specializing them; "the furthering of a science at the expense of men is the most injurious thing in the world" (Werke, X, 413, §§ 274-5; cf. IX, 325).
  6. See pp. 381-2.
  7. Cf. the remarks of his sister, Werke (pocket ed.), II, xxi.
  8. They were intended for use in "We Philologists."