Recent Tendencies in Ethics | Page 6

other hand, there are the
qualities which form the characteristic features of Christian
morality--such as benevolence or love of one's neighbour, the
fundamental precept of the Gospels, and the humility and obedience
which have been perhaps unduly emphasised in ecclesiastical ethics.
These are the qualities which he 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).