George Nathan - The Collected Works of H. L. Mencken

That this exaltation of sympathy was imprudent, and that its effects, in our own time, are far from satisfactory, Mr. More is disposed to grant freely. It is perfectly true, as Nietzsche argues, that humanitarianism has been guilty of gross excesses, that there is a "danger that threatens true progress in any system of education and government which makes the advantage of the average rather than the distinguished man its chief object." But Mr. More holds that the danger thus inherent in sympathy is matched by a danger inherent in selfishness, that we are no worse off on one horn of Hume's dual ethic than we should be on the other. Sympathy unbalanced by self-seeking leads us into maudlin futilities and crimes against efficiency; self-seeking unchecked by sympathy would lead us into sheer savagery. If there is any choice between the two, that choice is probably in favor of sympathy, for the reason that it is happily impossible of realization. The most lachrymose of the romantics, in the midst of their sentimentalizing, were yet careful of their own welfare. Many of them, indeed, displayed a quite extraordinary egoism, and there was some justice in Byron's sneer that Sterne, for one, preferred weeping over a dead ass to relieving the want (at cost to himself) of a living mother.

But in urging all this against Nietzsche, Mr. More and the other destructive critics of the superman make a serious error, and that is the error of assuming that Nietzsche hoped to abolish Christian morality completely, that he proposed a unanimous desertion of the idea of sympathy for the idea of intelligent self-seeking. As a matter of fact, he had no such hope and made no such proposal. Nothing was more firmly fixed in his mind, indeed, than the notion that the vast majority of men would cling indefinitely, and perhaps for all time, to some system of morality more or less resembling the Christian morality of today. Not only did he have no expectation of winning that majority from its idols, but he bitterly resented any suggestion that such a result might follow from his work. The whole of his preaching was addressed, not to men in the mass, but to the small minority of exceptional men—not to those who live by obeying, but to those who live by commanding—not to the race as a race, but only to its masters. It would seem to be impossible that any reader of Nietzsche should overlook this important fact, and yet it is constantly overlooked by most of his critics. They proceed to prove, elaborately and, it must be said, quite convincingly, that if his transvaluation of values were made by all men, the world would be no better off than it is today, and perhaps a good deal worse, but all they accomplish thereby is to demolish a hobgoblin of straw. Nietzsche himself sensed the essential value of Hume's dualism. What he sought to do was not to destroy it, but to restore it, and, restoring it, to raise it to a state of active conflict—to dignify self-interest as sympathy has been dignified, and so to put the two in perpetual opposition. He believed that the former was by long odds the safer impulse for the higher castes of men to follow, if only because of its obviously closer kinship to the natural laws which make for progress upward, but by the same token he saw that these higher castes could gain nothing by disturbing the narcotic contentment of the castes lower down. Therefore, he was, to that extent, an actual apologist for the thing he elsewhere so bitterly attacked. Sympathy, self-sacrifice, charity—these ideas lulled and satisfied the chandala, and so he was content to have the chandala hold to them. "Whom do I hate most among the rabble of today? The Socialist who undermines the workingman's instincts, who destroys his satisfaction with his insignificant existence, who makes him envious and teaches him revenge." 7In brief, Nietzsche dreamed no dream of all mankind converted into a race of supermen: the only vision he saw was one of supermen at the top.

To make an end, his philosophy was wholly aristocratic, in aim as well as in terms. He believed that superior men, by which he meant alert and restless men, were held in chains by the illusions and inertia of the mass—that their impulse to move forward and upward, at whatever cost to those below, was restrained by false notions of duty and responsibility. It was his effort to break down those false notions, to show that the progress of the race was more important than the comfort of the herd, to combat and destroy the lingering spectre of sin—in his own phrase, to make man innocent. But when he said man he always meant the higher man, the man of tomorrow, and not mere men. For the latter he had only contempt: he sneered at their heroes, at their ideals, at their definitions of good and evil. "There are only three ways," he said, "in which the masses appear to me to deserve a glance: first, as blurred copies of their betters, printed on bad paper and from worn-out plates; secondly, as a necessary opposition; and thirdly, as tools. Further than that I hand them over to statistics—and the devil. 8... I am writing for a race of men which does not yet exist. I am writing for the lords of the earth." 9

1.Author of " Nietzsche et l'Immoralisme " and other books. The argument discussed appears in an article in the International Monthly for March, 1901, pp. 134-165.

2.In the North American Review for Dec., 1904.

3.A more extended treatment of this point will be found in "Men vs. the Man," by Robert Rives La Monte and the present author: New York, 1910.

4.In "The Kingdom of Man," London, 1907.

5.John XIII, 34.

6."Nietzsche," Boston, 1912. Reprinted in "The Drift of Romanticism," pp. 147-190, Boston, 1913.

7." Der Antichrist ," 57.

8." Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben ," IX.

9." Der Wille zur Macht ", 958.

Table of Contents

Through the diligence and enthusiasm of Dr. Oscar Levy, author of "The Revival of Aristocracy," a German by birth but for some time a resident of London, the whole canon of Nietzsche's writings is now to be had in English translation. So long ago as 1896 a complete edition in eleven volumes was projected, and Dr. Alexander Tille, lecturer on German in the University of Glasgow, and author of " Von Darwin bis Nietzsche ," was engaged to edit it. But though it started fairly with a volume including "The Case of Wagner" and "The Antichrist," and four more volumes followed after a year or so, it got no further than that. Ten years later came Dr. Levy. He met with little encouragement when he began, but by dint of unfailing perseverance he finally gathered about him a corps of competent translators, made arrangements with publishers in Great Britain and the United States, and got the work under way. His eighteenth and last volume was published early in 1913.

These translations, in the main, are excellent, and explanatory prefaces and notes are added wherever needed. The contents of the various volumes are as follows:

I. "The Birth of Tragedy," translated by Wm. A. Haussmann, Ph. D., with a biographical introduction by Frau Förster-Nietzsche, a portrait of Nietzsche, and a facsimile of his manuscript.

II. "Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays," translated by Maximilian A. Mügge, Ph. D., author of "Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Work." Contents: "The Greek Woman," "On Music and Words," "Homer's Contest," "The Relation of Schopenhauer's Philosophy to a German Culture," "Philosophy During the Tragic Age of the Greeks," and "On Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense."

III. "On the Future of Our Educational Institutions" and "Homer and Classical Philology," translated by J. M. Kennedy, author of "The Quintessence of Nietzsche," with an introduction by the translator.