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It is clear that this applies to all those breathless and hasty “tasters of everything,” who plunge too rashly into the sea of independent thought and “heresy,” and who, having miscalculated their strength, find it impossible to keep their head above water. “A little older, a little colder,” says Nietzsche. They soon clamber back to the conventions of the age they intended reforming. The French then say “le diable se fait hermite,” but these men, as a rule, have never been devils, neither do they become angels; for, in order to be really good or evil, some strength and deep breathing is required. Those who are more interested in supporting orthodoxy than in being over nice concerning the kind of support they give it, often refer to these people as evidence in favour of the true faith.
This is an example of a class of writing which may be passed over too lightly by those whom poetasters have made distrustful of poetry. From first to last it is extremely valuable as an autobiographical note. The inevitable superficiality of the rabble is contrasted with the peaceful and profound depths of the anchorite. Here we first get a direct hint concerning Nietzsche’s fundamental passion—the main force behind all his new values and scathing criticism of existing values. In verse 30 we are told that pity was his greatest danger. The broad altruism of the law-giver, thinking over vast eras of time, was continually being pitted by Nietzsche, in himself, against that transient and meaner sympathy for the neighbour which he more perhaps than any of his contemporaries had suffered from, but which he was certain involved enormous dangers not only for himself but also to the next and subsequent generations (see Note B., where “pity” is mentioned among the degenerate virtues). Later in the book we shall see how his profound compassion leads him into temptation, and how frantically he struggles against it. In verses 31 and 32, he tells us to what extent he had to modify himself in order to be endured by his fellows whom he loved (see also verse 12 in “Manly Prudence”). Nietzsche’s great love for his fellows, which he confesses in the Prologue, and which is at the root of all his teaching, seems rather to elude the discerning powers of the average philanthropist and modern man. He cannot see the wood for the trees. A philanthropy that sacrifices the minority of the present-day for the majority constituting posterity, completely evades his mental grasp, and Nietzsche’s philosophy, because it declares Christian values to be a danger to the future of our kind, is therefore shelved as brutal, cold, and hard (see Note on Chapter XXXVI.). Nietzsche tried to be all things to all men; he was sufficiently fond of his fellows for that: in the Return Home he describes how he ultimately returns to loneliness in order to recover from the effects of his experiment.
Nietzsche is here completely in his element. Three things hitherto best-cursed and most calumniated on earth, are brought forward to be weighed. Voluptuousness, thirst of power, and selfishness,—the three forces in humanity which Christianity has done most to garble and besmirch,—Nietzsche endeavours to reinstate in their former places of honour. Voluptuousness, or sensual pleasure, is a dangerous thing to discuss nowadays. If we mention it with favour we may be regarded, however unjustly, as the advocate of savages, satyrs, and pure sensuality. If we condemn it, we either go over to the Puritans or we join those who are wont to come to table with no edge to their appetites and who therefore grumble at all good fare. There can be no doubt that the value of healthy innocent voluptuousness, like the value of health itself, must have been greatly discounted by all those who, resenting their inability to partake of this world’s goods, cried like St Paul: “I would that all men were even as I myself.” Now Nietzsche’s philosophy might be called an attempt at giving back to healthy and normal men innocence and a clean conscience in their desires—NOT to applaud the vulgar sensualists who respond to every stimulus and whose passions are out of hand; not to tell the mean, selfish individual, whose selfishness is a pollution (see Aphorism 33, “Twilight of the Idols”), that he is right, nor to assure the weak, the sick, and the crippled, that the thirst of power, which they gratify by exploiting the happier and healthier individuals, is justified;—but to save the clean healthy man from the values of those around him, who look at everything through the mud that is in their own bodies,—to give him, and him alone, a clean conscience in his manhood and the desires of his manhood. “Do I counsel you to slay your instincts? I counsel to innocence in your instincts.” In verse 7 of the second paragraph (as in verse I of paragraph 19 in “The Old and New Tables”) Nietzsche gives us a reason for his occasional obscurity (see also verses 3 to 7 of “Poets”). As I have already pointed out, his philosophy is quite esoteric. It can serve no purpose with the ordinary, mediocre type of man. I, personally, can no longer have any doubt that Nietzsche’s only object, in that part of his philosophy where he bids his friends stand “Beyond Good and Evil” with him, was to save higher men, whose growth and scope might be limited by the too strict observance of modern values from foundering on the rocks of a “Compromise” between their own genius and traditional conventions. The only possible way in which the great man can achieve greatness is by means of exceptional freedom—the freedom which assists him in experiencing HIMSELF. Verses 20 to 30 afford an excellent supplement to Nietzsche’s description of the attitude of the noble type towards the slaves in Aphorism 260 of the work “Beyond Good and Evil” (see also Note B.)
(See Note on Chapter XLVI.) In Part II. of this discourse we meet with a doctrine not touched upon hitherto, save indirectly;—I refer to the doctrine of self-love. We should try to understand this perfectly before proceeding; for it is precisely views of this sort which, after having been cut out of the original context, are repeated far and wide as internal evidence proving the general unsoundness of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Already in the last of the “Thoughts out of Season” Nietzsche speaks as follows about modern men: “...these modern creatures wish rather to be hunted down, wounded and torn to shreds, than to live alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with oneself!—this thought terrifies the modern soul; it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear” (English Edition, page 141). In his feverish scurry to find entertainment and diversion, whether in a novel, a newspaper, or a play, the modern man condemns his own age utterly; for he shows that in his heart of hearts he despises himself. One cannot change a condition of this sort in a day; to become endurable to oneself an inner transformation is necessary. Too long have we lost ourselves in our friends and entertainments to be able to find ourselves so soon at another’s bidding. “And verily, it is no commandment for to-day and to-morrow to LEARN to love oneself. Rather is it of all arts the finest, subtlest, last, and patientest.”
