Recent Tendencies in Ethics | Page 6

means when he speaks of the morality of the slave.
In the second place, therefore, what is distinctive of Nietzsche is this: that he explicitly rejects the Christian morality, in particular the virtues of benevolence, of obedience, of humility: these are regarded by him as belonging to a type of morality which is to be overcome and which he calls the servile morality. He deliberately sets in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls noble virtues: meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage, force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic. He would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of conduct to the Christian valuation.
In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of all values. Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old. And with this claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will evolve a superior kind of men--"Over-men" or "Uebermenschen"--to whom, therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for subsequent conduct.
Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of morality which he demands. So far as I can make out, there is only one point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and that point seems to cause him no little difficulty. No thinker can afford to question the binding nature of the law of Truth, least of all a thinker so obviously in earnest about his own prophetic message as Nietzsche was. All his investigations presuppose the validity of this law for his own thought; all his utterances imply an appeal to it; and his influence depends on the confidence which others have in his veracity. And on this one point only Nietzsche has to confess himself a child of the older morality. "This book," he says in the preface to one of the least paradoxical of his works, 'Dawn of Day,' "This book ... implies a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in it we break with the faith in morals--why? In obedience to morality! Or what name shall we give to that which passes therein? We should prefer more modest names. But it is past all doubt that even to us a 'thou shalt' is still speaking, even we still obey a stern law above us--and this is the last moral precept which impresses itself even upon us, which even we obey: in this respect, if in any, we are still conscientious people--viz., we do not wish to return to that which we consider outlived and decayed, to something 'not worthy of belief,' be it called God, virtue, truth, justice, charity; we do not approve of any deceptive bridges to old ideals, we are radically hostile to all that wants to mediate and to amalgamate with us; hostile to any actual religion and Christianity; hostile to all the vague, romantic, and patriotic feelings; hostile also to the love of pleasure and want of principle of the artists who would fain persuade us to worship when we no longer believe--for we are artists; hostile, in short, to the whole European Femininism (or Idealism, if you prefer this name), which is ever 'elevating' and consequently 'degrading.' Yet, as such conscientious people, we immoralists and atheists of this day still feel subject to the German honesty and piety of thousands of years' standing, though as their most doubtful and last descendants; nay, in a certain sense, as their heirs, as executors of their inmost will, a pessimist will, as aforesaid, which is not afraid of denying itself, because it delights in taking a negative position. We ourselves are--suppose you want a formula--the consummate self-dissolution of morals." [1]
[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, 'Werke,' iv. pp. 8, 9 (1899). The translation is taken (with corrections) from the English version by Johanna Volz (1903). Nietzsche has so shocked and confused the English printer that when the author writes himself an 'immoralist' the compositor has made him call himself an 'immortalist.' And errors of the sort do not affect the