Youth and Egolatry | Page 8

the human animal, it is an
evil which can scarcely be called evil.

THE ROOT OF DISINTERESTED EVIL
Tell a man that an intimate friend has met with a great misfortune. His
first impulse is one of satisfaction. He himself is not aware of it clearly,
he does not realize it; nevertheless, essentially his emotion is one of
satisfaction. This man may afterward place his fortune, if he has one, at
the disposition of his friend, yes, even his life; yet this will not prevent
his first conscious reaction upon learning of the misfortune of his friend,
from being one which, although confused, is nevertheless not far
removed from pleasure. This feeling of disinterested malice may be
observed in the relations between parents and children as well as in
those between husbands and wives. At times it is not only disinterested,
but counter-interested.
The lack of a name for this background of disinterested malice, which
does exist, is due to the fact that psychology is not based so much upon
phenomena as it is upon language.
According to our current standards, latent evil of this nature is neither
of interest nor significance. Naturally, the judge takes account of
nothing but deeds; to religion, which probes more deeply, the intent is
of importance; to the psychologist, however, who attempts to penetrate
still further, the elemental germinative processes of volition are of
indispensable significance.
Whence this foundation of disinterested malice in man? Probably it is
an ancestral legacy. Man is a wolf toward man, as Plautus observes,
and the idea has been repeated by Hobbes.
In literature, it is almost idle to look for a presentation of this
disinterested, this passive evil, because nothing but the conscious is
literary. Shakespeare, in his Othello, a drama which has always
appeared false and absurd to me, emphasizes the disinterested malice of
Iago, imparting to him a character and mode of action which are
beyond those of normal men; but then, in order to accredit him to the
spectators, he adds also a motive, and represents him as being in love
with Desdemona.

Victor Hugo, in _L'Homme qui Rit_, undertook to create a type after
the manner of Iago, and invented Barkilphedro, who embodies
disinterested yet active malice, which is the malice of the villain of
melodrama.
But that other disinterested malice, which lurks in the sodden sediment
of character, that malice which is disinterested and inactive, and not
only incapable of drawing a dagger but even of writing an anonymous
note, this no writer but Dostoievski has had the penetration to reveal.
He has shown us at the same time mere inert goodness, lying passive in
the soul, without ever serving as a basis for anything.

MUSIC AS A SEDATIVE
Music, the most social of the arts, and that undoubtedly which
possesses the greatest future, presents enormous attractions to the
bourgeoisie. In the first place, it obviates the necessity of conversation;
it is not necessary to know whether your neighbor is a sceptic or a
believer, a materialist or a spiritualist; no possible argument can arise
concerning the meaning and metaphysics of life. Instead of war, there is
peace. The music lover may argue, but his conceptions are entirely
circumscribed by the music, and have no relation whatever either to
philosophy or to politics as such. The wars are small wars, and spill no
blood. A Wagnerite may be a freethinker or a Catholic, an anarchist or
a conservative. Even painting, which is an art of miserable general
ideas, is not so far removed from intelligence as is music. This explains
why the Greeks were able to attain such heights in philosophy, and yet
fell to such depths in music.
Music has an additional merit. It lulls to sleep the residuum of
disinterested malice in the soul.
As a majority of the lovers of painting and sculpture are second-hand
dealers and Jews in disguise, music lovers, for the most part, are a
debased people, envious, embittered and supine.

CONCERNING WAGNER
I am one of those who do not understand music, yet I am not
completely insensible to it. This does not prevent me, however, from
entertaining a strong aversion to all music lovers, and especially to
Wagnerites.
When Nietzsche, who apparently possessed a musical temperament, set
Bizet up against Wagner, he confessed, of course, premeditated
vindictiveness. "It is necessary to mediterraneanize music," declares the
German psychologist. But how absurd! Music must confine itself to the
geographical parallel where it was born; it is Mediterranean, Baltic,
Alpine, Siberian. Nor is the contention valid that an air should always
have a strongly marked rhythm, because, if this were the case, we
should have nothing but dance music. Certainly, music was associated
with the dance in the beginning, but a sufficient number of years have
now elapsed to enable