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Friedrich Nietzsche in this note designated the inspirer of his last work; it was to be Goethe. No nature differed so much from his own, and this very difference determined his choice. Goethe had humiliated no mode of human activity, he had excluded no idea from his intellectual world; he had received and administered as a benevolent lord the immense heritage of human culture. Such was Friedrich Nietzsche's last ideal, his last dream. He wished, in this extremity of life (he knew his destiny), to spread, like the sinking sun, his softest lights; to penetrate everywhere, to justify and illumine everything, so that not one shadow should exist upon the surface of things, not one sorrow in the privacy of souls.
He easily determined the directing ideas of his first two volumes: European Nihilism, The Criticism of Higher Values. For four years he had not written a line which was not a part of this analysis or criticism. He wrote rapidly, angrily. "A little fresh air," he cried; "this absurd state of Europe cannot last much longer." It was only a cry, and very quickly suppressed. Nietzsche put patience behind him, like a weakness; with a song of love that he would answer the attacks of life. He wished to return, and did, in fact, return, to calmer thoughts. He put this question: "Is it true that the condition of Europe is absurd? Perhaps a reason for the facts exists, and escapes us. Perhaps in this debility of the will, in this democratic abasement, one should rightly recognise a certain utility, a certain value of conservation. They seem irrepressible; perhaps they are necessary, perhaps in the long run salutary, though to-day, and, so far as we are concerned, they must be deplored.
"Reflexion: It is madness to suppose that all this victory of values can be anti-biological; one must seek to explain it by a vital interest for the maintenance of the type man, even though it must be attained by the preponderance[Pg 336] of the feeble and the disinherited. Perhaps if things went differently, man would cease to exist?—Problem.
"The elevation of the type is dangerous to the conservation of the species. Why?
"The strong races are the prodigal races.... Here we are confronted by a problem of economy...."
He repressed all disgust, refused to allow himself the use of abusive speech, tried to consider, and did consider, serenely, those tendencies which he condemned. He asked: Must we deny to the masses the right to seek their truths, their vital beliefs? The masses are the basis of all humanity, the foundation of all cultures. Without them, what would become of the masters? They require that the masses be happy. We must be patient; we must suffer our insurgent slaves (for the moment our masters) to invent the illusions which are favourable to them. Let them believe in the dignity of work! If they thus become more docile in work, their belief is salutary.
"The problem," he writes, "is to render man as utilisable as possible, and make him approximate, as far as may be done, as closely as possible to the machine which never makes a mistake; for this, he must be armed with the virtues of the machine, he must be taught to endure ennui, to lend to ennui a superior charm ...; the agreeable sentiments must be put back to a lower rank.... The mechanical form of existence, considered as the noblest, the highest, should adore itself.
"A high culture can only be raised on a vast site, over a firm and well-consolidated mediocrity....
"The sole end must, for a long while yet, be the lessening of man: for there must first be created a large foundation on which the race of strong men may be raised....
"The lessening of the European man is the great process which may not be impeded; it should be accelerated[Pg 337] again. It is the active force which allows one to hope for the arrival of a stronger race, of a race which should possess to excess those very qualities which the impoverished species lack (will, responsibility, certitude, the faculty of fixing an end for oneself)."
Thus at the end of 1887, Nietzsche had succeeded in drawing up a first sketch of the work of synthesis which he had proposed to himself. He concedes a certain right, a certain dignity, to those motives which he formerly reviled. The final rough drafts of Zarathustra had already given us similar indications. "The disciples of Zarathustra," wrote Nietzsche, "give to the humblest, not to themselves, the expectation of happiness. ... They distribute religions and systems, according to a hierarchy." Nietzsche now writes, and the intention is similar: "The humanitarian tendencies are not anti-vital, they suit the masses who live slowly, and thus suit humanity which needs the satisfaction of the masses. The Christian tendencies are also benevolent, and nothing is so desirable," writes Nietzsche, "as their permanence; for they suit all those who suffer, all the feeble, and it is necessary for the health of human societies that suffering, that inevitable weaknesses, be accepted without revolt, with submission, and, if possible, with love." "Whatever I may happen to say of Christianity," wrote Nietzsche in 1881 to Peter Gast, "I cannot forget that I owe to it the best experiences of my spiritual life; and I hope never to be ungrateful to it at the bottom of my heart." This thought, this hope, has never left him; and he rejoices to have found a word of justice for the religion of his childhood, the only one which still offers itself to souls.
On December 14, 1887, he addressed a letter to an old correspondent of the Basle days, Carl Fuchs. The accent is a proud one.
"Almost all that I have written should be erased. During these latter years the vehemence of my internal agitations has been terrible. To-day, at the moment when I should be rising higher, my first task is to modify myself, to depersonalise myself towards higher forms.
"Am I old? I do not know, and moreover I do not know what kind of youth is necessary to me.
"In Germany, people complain strongly of my 'eccentricities.' But as they do not know where my centre is, they can hardly discern when or how I happen to be eccentric."
From the dates of his notes, it seems that Nietzsche approached a different problem in the month of January, 1888. Those humble multitudes whose rights he admits and measures would not deserve to live, if their activity were not, in the last instance, governed by an lite, utilised for glorious ends. What would be the virtues of this lite, what ends would it serve? Nietzsche was thus brought back to the problem which was his torment. Would he define at length this unknown, and perhaps unattainable grandeur, towards which his soul had for so long aspired? He was again a prey to sadness. He complained of his sensibility, of his irritability, which had become such that each day, on the arrival of the post, he hesitated and shivered before opening his letters.
"Never has life appeared so difficult to me," he wrote to Peter Gast on January 15th. "I can no longer keep on terms with any sort of reality: when I do not succeed in forgetting them, they break me.... There are nights when I am overwhelmed with distress. And so much remains to be done—all, so to say!—Therefore I must hold out. To this wisdom I apply myself, at least in the mornings. Music, these days,[Pg 339] gives me sensations which I had never known. It frees me, it lets me recover from the intoxication of myself; I seem to consider myself from a great height, to feel myself from a great height; thus it renders me stronger, and regularly, after an evening's music (I have heard Carmen four times), I have a morning full of energetic perceptions and lucky discoveries. It is quite admirable. It is as though I had bathed myself in a more natural element. Without music life is merely a mistake, a weariness, an exile."
