Page 98 of 101
This discourse contains perhaps the boldest of Nietzsche’s suggestions concerning Atheism, as well as some extremely penetrating remarks upon the sentiment of pity. Zarathustra comes across the repulsive creature sitting on the wayside, and what does he do? He manifests the only correct feelings that can be manifested in the presence of any great misery—that is to say, shame, reverence, embarrassment. Nietzsche detested the obtrusive and gushing pity that goes up to misery without a blush either on its cheek or in its heart—the pity which is only another form of self-glorification. “Thank God that I am not like thee!”—only this self-glorifying sentiment can lend a well-constituted man the impudence to SHOW his pity for the cripple and the ill-constituted. In the presence of the ugliest man Nietzsche blushes,—he blushes for his race; his own particular kind of altruism—the altruism that might have prevented the existence of this man—strikes him with all its force. He will have the world otherwise. He will have a world where one need not blush for one’s fellows—hence his appeal to us to love only our children’s land, the land undiscovered in the remotest sea.
Zarathustra calls the ugliest man the murderer of God! Certainly, this is one aspect of a certain kind of Atheism—the Atheism of the man who reveres beauty to such an extent that his own ugliness, which outrages him, must be concealed from every eye lest it should not be respected as Zarathustra respected it. If there be a God, He too must be evaded. His pity must be foiled. But God is ubiquitous and omniscient. Therefore, for the really GREAT ugly man, He must not exist. “Their pity IS it from which I flee away,” he says—that is to say: “It is from their want of reverence and lack of shame in presence of my great misery!” The ugliest man despises himself; but Zarathustra said in his Prologue: “I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.” He therefore honours the ugliest man: sees height in his self-contempt, and invites him to join the other higher men in the cave.
In this discourse, we undoubtedly have the ideal Buddhist, if not Gautama Buddha himself. Nietzsche had the greatest respect for Buddhism, and almost wherever he refers to it in his works, it is in terms of praise. He recognised that though Buddhism is undoubtedly a religion for decadents, its decadent values emanate from the higher and not, as in Christianity, from the lower grades of society. In Aphorism 20 of “The Antichrist”, he compares it exhaustively with Christianity, and the result of his investigation is very much in favour of the older religion. Still, he recognised a most decided Buddhistic influence in Christ’s teaching, and the words in verses 29, 30, and 31 are very reminiscent of his views in regard to the Christian Savior.
The figure of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan’s view, that Christ was “le grand maitre en ironie”; in Aphorism 31 of “The Antichrist”, he says that he (Nietzsche) always purged his picture of the Humble Nazarene of all those bitter and spiteful outbursts which, in view of the struggle the first Christians went through, may very well have been added to the original character by Apologists and Sectarians who, at that time, could ill afford to consider nice psychological points, seeing that what they needed, above all, was a wrangling and abusive deity. These two conflicting halves in the character of the Christ of the Gospels, which no sound psychology can ever reconcile, Nietzsche always kept distinct in his own mind; he could not credit the same man with sentiments sometimes so noble and at other times so vulgar, and in presenting us with this new portrait of the Saviour, purged of all impurities, Nietzsche rendered military honours to a foe, which far exceed in worth all that His most ardent disciples have ever claimed for Him. In verse 26 we are vividly reminded of Herbert Spencer’s words “‘Le mariage de convenance’ is legalised prostitution.”
Here we have a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes, and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and most broad-minded men of to-day. These literally shadow the most daring movements in the science and art of their generation; they completely lose their bearings and actually find themselves, in the end, without a way, a goal, or a home. “On every surface have I already sat!...I become thin, I am almost equal to a shadow!” At last, in despair, such men do indeed cry out: “Nothing is true; all is permitted,” and then they become mere wreckage. “Too much hath become clear unto me: now nothing mattereth to me any more. Nothing liveth any longer that I love,—how should I still love myself! Have I still a goal? Where is MY home?” Zarathustra realises the danger threatening such a man. “Thy danger is not small, thou free spirit and wanderer,” he says. “Thou hast had a bad day. See that a still worse evening doth not overtake thee!” The danger Zarathustra refers to is precisely this, that even a prison may seem a blessing to such a man. At least the bars keep him in a place of rest; a place of confinement, at its worst, is real. “Beware lest in the end a narrow faith capture thee,” says Zarathustra, “for now everything that is narrow and fixed seduceth and tempteth thee.”
At the noon of life Nietzsche said he entered the world; with him man came of age. We are now held responsible for our actions; our old guardians, the gods and demi-gods of our youth, the superstitions and fears of our childhood, withdraw; the field lies open before us; we lived through our morning with but one master—chance—; let us see to it that we MAKE our afternoon our own (see Note XLIX., Part III.).
