But how are we to get a real scale of values to oppose to
an indiscriminate sympathy? It is here that Nietzsche shows that he
is caught in the same fatal coil of naturalism as the humanitarian.
He accepts the naturalistic corruption of conscience which underlies
all other naturalistic corruptions. “The will to overcome an emotion,”
he says, “is ultimately only the will of another or of several other
emotions.”[128] All he can do with this conception of conscience is
to set over against the humanitarian suppression of values a scale
of values based on force and not a true scale of values based on the
degree to which one imposes or fails to impose on one’s temperamental
self a human law of vital control. The opposition between a Nietzsche
and a Tolstoy is therefore not specially significant; it is only that
between the hard and the soft temperamentalist. To be sure Nietzsche
can on occasion speak very shrewdly about the evils that have resulted
from temperamentalism--especially from the passion for an untrammeled
self-expression. But the superman himself is a most authentic
descendant of the original genius in whom we first saw this passion
dominant. The imagination of the superman, spurning every centre of
control, traditional or otherwise, so coöperates with his impulses
and desires as to give them “infinitude,” that is so as to make
them reach out for more and ever for more. The result is a frenzied
romanticism.[129]
“Proportionateness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves,”
says Nietzsche. “Our itching is really the itching for the infinite,
the immeasurable.” How the humanitarian loses proportionateness is
plain; it is by his readiness to sacrifice to sympathy the ninety
per cent or so of the virtues that imply self-control. The superman
would scarcely seem to redress the balance by getting rid of the same
restraining virtues in favor of power. He simply oscillates wildly
from the excess of which he is conscious in others or in himself into
the opposite excess, at imminent peril in either case to the ethical
basis of civilization. The patterns or models that the past had set
up for imitation and with reference to which one might rein in his
lusts and impose upon them proportionateness are rejected by every
type of romantic expansionist, not only as Nietzsche says, because
they do not satisfy the yearning for the infinite, but also, as we
have seen, because they do not satisfy the yearning for unity and
immediacy. Now so far as the forms of the eighteenth century were
concerned the romantic expansionist had legitimate grounds for protest.
But because the rationalism and artificial decorum of that period
failed to satisfy, he goes on to attack the analytical intellect
and decorum in general and this attack is entirely illegitimate. It
may be affirmed on the contrary that the power by which we multiply
distinctions is never so necessary as in an individualistic age, an age
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account