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"This ghost which marcheth before thee, my brother, is more beautiful than thou art. Why dost thou not give him thy flesh and thy bones? Thou art afraid and fleest unto thy neighbor.
"Unable to endure yourselves and not loving yourselves enough, you seek to wheedle your neighbor into loving you and thus to gild you with his error.
"My brethren, I counsel you not to love your neighbor; I counsel you to love those who are the most remote."
In perfect agreement with the ideal of the overman is Nietzsche's view of marriage, and verily it contains a very true and noble thought:
"Thou shalt build beyond thyself. But first thou must be built thyself square in body and soul.
"Thou shalt not only propagate thyself but propagate thyself upwards! Therefore the garden of marriage may help thee!
"Thou shalt create a higher body, a prime motor, a wheel of self-rolling,—thou shalt create a creator.
"Marriage: thus I call the will of two to create that one which is more than they who created it I call marriage reverence unto each other as unto those who will such a will.
"Let this be the significance and the truth of thy marriage. But that which the much-too-many call marriage, those superfluous—alas, what call I that?
"Alas! that soul's poverty of two! Alas! that soul's dirt of two! Alas! that miserable ease of two!
"Marriage they call that; and they say marriage is made in heaven.
"Well, I like it not that heaven of the superfluous!"
Nietzsche takes a Schopenhauerian view of womankind, excepting from the common condemnation his sister alone, to whom he once said, "You are not a woman, you are a friend." He says of woman:
"Too long a slave and a tyrant have been hidden in woman. Therefore woman is not yet capable of friendship; she knoweth love only."
Nietzsche is not aware that the self changes and that it grows by the acquisition of truth. He treats the self as remaining the same, and truth as that which our will has made conceivable. Truth to him is a mere creature of the self. Here is Zarathustra's condemnation of man's search for truth:
"'Will unto truth' ye call, ye wisest men, what inspireth you and maketh you ardent?
"'Will unto the conceivableness of all that is,'—thus I call your will!
"All that is ye are going to make conceivable. For with good mistrust ye doubt whether it is conceivable.
"But it hath to submit itself and bend before yourselves! Thus your will willeth. Smooth it shall become and subject unto spirit as its mirror and reflected image.
"That is your entire will, ye wisest men, as a will unto power; even when ye speak of good and evil and of valuations.
"Ye will create the world before which to kneel down. Thus it is your last hope and drunkenness."
Recognition of truth is regarded as submission:
"To be true,—few are able to be so! And he who is able doth not want to be so. But least of all the good are able.
"Oh, these good people! Good men never speak the truth. To be good in that way is a sickness for the mind.
"They yield, these good men, they submit themselves; their heart saith what is said unto it, their foundation obeyeth. But whoever obeyeth doth not hear himself!"
Nietzsche despises science. He must have had sorry experiences with scientists who offered him the dry bones of scholarship as scientific truth.
"When I lay sleeping, a sheep ate at the ivy-wreath of my head,—ate and said eating: 'Zarathustra is no longer a scholar.'
"Said it and went off clumsily and proudly. So a child told me.
"This is the truth: I have departed from the house of scholars, and the door I have shut violently behind me.
"Too long sat my soul hungry at their table. Not, as they, am I trained for perceiving as for cracking nuts.
"Freedom I love, and a breeze over a fresh soil. And[Pg 56] I would rather sleep on ox-skins then on their honors and respectabilities.
"I am too hot and am burnt with mine own thoughts, so as often to take my breath away. Then I must go into the open air and away from all dusty rooms.
"Like millworks they work, and like corn-crushers. Let folk only throw their grain into them! They know only too well how to grind corn and make white dust out of it.
"They look well at each other's fingers and trust each other not over-much. Ingenious in little stratagems, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh on lame feet; like spiders they wait.
"They also know how to play with false dice; and I found them playing so eagerly that they perspired from it.
"We are strangers unto each other, and their virtues are still more contrary unto my taste than their falsehoods and false dice."
Even if all scientists were puny sciolists, the ideal of science would remain, and if all the professed seekers for truth were faithless to and unworthy of their high calling, truth itself would not be abolished.
So far as we can see, Nietzsche never became acquainted with any one of the exact sciences. He was a philologist who felt greatly dissatisfied with the loose methods of his colleagues, but he has not done much in his own specialty to attain to a greater exactness of results. His essays on Homer, on the Greek tragedy, and similar subjects, have apparently not received much recognition among philologists and historians.
Having gathered a number of followers in his cave, one of them, called the conscientious man, said to the others:
"We seek different things, even up here, ye and I. For I seek more security. Therefore have I come unto Zarathustra. For he is the firmest tower and will—
"Fear—that is man's hereditary and fundamental feeling. By fear everything is explained, original sin and original virtue. Out of fear also hath grown my virtue, which is called Science.
"Such long, old fears, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, to-day, methinketh, it is called Science."
This conception of science is refuted by Nietzsche in this fashion:
"Thus spake the conscientious one. But Zarathustra, who had just returned into his cave and had heard the last speech and guessed its sense, threw a handful of roses at the conscientious one, laughing at his 'truths.' 'What?' he called. 'What did I hear just now? Verily, methinketh, thou art a fool, or I am one myself. And thy "truth" I turn upside down with one blow, and that quickly.'
"'For fear is our exception. But courage and adventure, and the joy of what is uncertain, what hath never been dared—courage, methinketh, is the whole prehistoric development of man.
"'From the wildest, most courageous beasts he hath, by his envy and his preying, won all their virtues. Only thus hath he become a man.
"'This courage, at last become refined, spiritual, intellectual, this human courage with an eagle's wings and a serpent's wisdom—it, methinketh, is called to-day—'
"'Zarathustra!' cried all who sat together there, as from one mouth making a great laughter withal."
In spite of identifying the self with the body, which is mortal, Nietzsche longs for the immortal. He says:
"Oh! how could I fail to be eager for eternity, and for the marriage-ring of rings, the ring of recurrence?
