What Nietzsche Taught

an elucidation of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and a preparatory book for his greatest and most important work, "The Will to Power." In it N

ormulate a workable basis for human conduct. Consequently "Beyond Good and Evil" is one of his most important contributions to a new system of ethics, and touches on many of the deepest principles of his philosophy. As it stands, it is by no means a complete expression of Nietzsche's doctrines, but it is

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hapter because of its intricate and compact reasoning, and the student would do well to read it in its entirety. It establishes Nietzsche's philosophic position and presents a closely knit explanation of the course pursued in the following chapters. The relativity of all truth-the hypothesis so often assumed in his previous work-Nietzsche here defends by analogy and argument. Using other leading forms of philosophy as a ground for exploration, he questions the absolutism of truth and shows wherein lies the difficulty of a final definition. Here we become conscious of that pla

efore he questions the fundamental worth of certainty as opposed to uncertainty, and of truth as opposed to falsity, thus striking at the very foundations reared by those philosophers who have assumed, without substantiation, that only certainty and truth are valuable. Nietzsche calls these absolutists astute defenders of prejudices, and characterises the verbalistic prestidigitation of Kant as a highly developed form of prejudice-defending. Spinoza, with his mathematical system

sophical conclusion has been the outgrowth of a personal instinct. In those cases where an impersonal "impulse to knowledge" may have existed, it has led, not into philosophical channels, but into practical and often commercial activities. The scholar has ever remained personal in his quest for philosophical formulas. In Kant's "Table of Categories," wherein that philosopher claimed to have found the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori, Nietzsche finds only a circle of reasoning which begins and ends in personal instinct. And in Kant's discovery of a new moral fac

hinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking-that I know what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' ass

in the new styles of contemporaneous thought. And in those national schools of philosophy conceived in languages which stem from the same origin, he finds an undeniable resemblance. All of which leads to a conclusion incompatible with Locke's theory. Nietzsche attacks the conclusions of the physicists, denying them any place in phi

n the part of experimenters to account for "good" impulses as distinguished from "bad" ones. And in this desire lies the superimposing of moral prejudices on a science which, more than all others, deals with problems farthest removed from moral influences. These prejudices in psychology, as well as in all branches of philosophy, are the obstacles which stand

as in "Thus Spake Zarathustra," he has been but partially and provisionally defined. Now his instincts and desires, his habits and activities are outlined. Furthermore, we are given an explanation of his relation to the inferior man and to the organisms of his environment. The chapter is an important one, for at many points it is a subtle elucidation of many of Nietzsche's dominant philosophic principles. By inference, the differences of class distinction are strictly drawn. The slave-morality (sklavmoral) and the master-morality (herrenmoral), though as yet undefined, are balanced against each other; and the deportmental standards of the masters and

n religious ecstasy and sensuality; the attempt on the part of religious practitioners to arrive at a negation of the will; the transition from religious gratitude to fear; the psychology at the bottom of saint-worship;-to problems such as these Nietzsche devotes his energies in his inquiry of the religious mood. The geographical considerations which enter into the character and intensity of religious faith form an important basis for study; and the differences between Comte's sociology and Sainte-Beuve's anti-Jesuit utterances are explained from a standpoint of national influences. Nietzsche examines the many phases of atheism and

embers of society. He neither hoped nor desired to wean the mass of humanity from Christianity or any similar dogmatic comfort. On the contrary, he denounced those superficial atheists who endeavoured to weaken the foundations of religion. He saw the positive necessity of such religions as a basis for his slave morality, and in the present chapter he exhorts the rulers to preserve the religious faith of the serving classes, and to use it as a means of government-as an instrument in the work of disciplining and educating. In paragraph 61 he says: "The selecting and disciplining influence-destructive as well as creative and fashionin

more general scale than in his previous books, such as "Human, All-Too-Human" and "The Dawn of Day." Heretofore he had confined himself to codes and systems, to acts of morality and immorality, to judgments of conducts. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he treats of moral prejudices as forces working hand in hand with human progress. In addition, there is a definite attitude of constructive thinking here which is absent from his earlier work. He outlines the course to be taken by the men of the future, and points to the results which have accrued from the moralities of modern nations. He offers the will to power in place

e obstacles may be overcome. Also the man of science and the man of genius are analyzed and weighed as to their relative importance in the community. In fact, we have here Nietzsche's most concise and complete definition of the individuals upon whom rests the burden of progress. These valuations of the intellectual leaders are important to the student, for by one's understanding them, along with the reasons for such valuations, a comprehension of the ensu

ferent types of men. Sacrifice, sympathy, brotherly love, service, loyalty, altruism and similar ideals of conduct are examined, and the results of such virtues are shown to be[Pg 184] incompatible with the demands of modern social intercourse. Nietzsche poses against these virtues the sterner and more rigid forms of conduct, pointing out wherein they meet with the present requirements of human progress. The chapter is a preparatio

egregates the human attributes according to the rank of individuals. The Dionysian ideal, which underlies all the books that follow "Beyond Good and Evil," receives its first direct exposition and application. The hardier human traits such as egotism, cruelty, arrogance, retaliation and appropriation are given ascendency over the softer virtues such as sympathy, charity, forgiveness

M "BEYOND GO

he traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy whic

rdinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength-life itse

ong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being obliged to

or a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone,

lings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is ac

effect of will. Granted, finally, that we succeed in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will-namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the problem of

d be true, although it were in the highest degree injurious and dangerous; indeed, the fundamental constitution of existence might be such that one succumbed by a full knowledge of it-so that the stre

ave a hatred even of figure and likeness. Should not the contrary on

be a "common good." The expression contradicts itself; that which can be common is always of small value. In the end things must be as they are and have always been-th

nd scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas"; all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied; only, they are not fr

m, tempter's art and revelry of every kind,-that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory,

e of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is

bleness of his frail and wretched appearance-the superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they hon

fering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of no more im

so far been the noblest and remotest sen

of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming, betraying and surrende

e majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience,

st snare laid by morality: we are thereby c

deal, precisely ther

harshness and tyranny for

step on the ladder at the end of which

regard himself at present as

impotence of their love, prevents th

l phenomena, but only a moral

not equal to his deed: he e

e points when we gain courage to rebap

shed to turn author-and that he did not learn it better

arrive at six or seven great men-Y

rustworthiness, all good consci

190] precisely for what is most difficult to us.-

ong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain vir

an unseasonable echo of what was formerly co

ve always takes place

love of irony are signs of health; ever

life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. I

ly misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" i

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s such have the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form-because they address themselves to "all," because they generalise where generali

ng mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the n

story of the higher happiness to which the entire century

tion of the community is only kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in what see

er,[Pg 192] partly conventional and arbitrarily man

eighbour, is henceforth called evil; the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equal

is the inheritance of th

t "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take new paths. To teach men the future of humanity as his will, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end

f man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalising of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubted

revels for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one says in their presence: "that thought elevates me, why should it not be true?" or; "that artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine and hermaphroditic; and if any one could look into their inmost heart, he would not easily find therein the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste," or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even

de the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past-they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, become

er duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness-at present it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative; and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal w

also an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that relig

ly is the favourite revenge of the intellect

perhaps something from himself for something from himself; that he relinquished here in

ears open: through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these preache

preme folly and Aristophanic ridicule of the world. Perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here, the domain where even we can still be original,

w ye not that it is only this discipline that has p

96] reflect upon morals, and consequently it is very desir

the facts that the "general welfare" is no ideal, no goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is only a nostrum,-that what is fair to one may not at all be fair to another, that the r

called tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything sublime, up to the highest and most delica

enlightenment about herself-and can desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ornament for herself-I believe ornamentation belongs to the eternally feminine?-why, then, she wishes to make herself feared; perhaps she thereby wishes to get

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Sta?l, or Monsieur George Sand, as though something were proved thereby in favour of "woman as she is." Among men, these are the three

e insists on being cook. If woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise ha

at this dangerous spot-shallow in instinct-may generally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed, as discovered: he will probably prove too "short" for all fundamental questions of life, future as well as present, and will be unable to descend into any of the depths. On the other hand, a man who has depth of spirit as w

amental taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespectfulness to old age-what wonder is it that abuse should be immediately mad

"progress" of woman on her flags and banners, the very opposite realises itself with terrible obviousness: woman retrogrades. Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has declined in proportion as she has increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipation of woman," in so far as it is desired and demanded b

d so will it always[Pg 199] be-a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank an

refore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society

ange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, in

as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive socie

two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is master-morality and slave-morality;-I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilisations, there are a

f: such morality is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the conscientiousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:-the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not-or scarcely-out of pity, but rather f

to one, or "as the heart desires," and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments[Pg 201] can have a place. The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge-both only within the circle of equals,-a

e bad man is regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation-it may be slight and well-intentioned-at last attaches itself even to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Every

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er hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive superabundant nourishment, and in general a surplus of protection an

the unalterable belief that to a being such as "we," other beings mu

to her. Alas, he who knows the heart finds out how poor, helpless, pretentious, and blun

es for everybody; to be unwilling to renounce or to share our responsibiliti

m he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, o

te and at the same time a noble self-control,

ehow, somewhere, or somet

has reverence

olence; a man who has his indignation and his sword, and to whom the weak, the suffering, the oppressed, and even the animals willingly

according to the quality of their laughing-up t

ype="