The old morality has been negative and we feel the need of positive
ideals. The old doctrines are formulated in rules which forbid certain
actions and our commandments begin with the words "Thou shalt not...."
Those folk are esteemed moral who obey these restrictions or at least
do not ostensibly infringe upon them, and this practically limits
morality to mediocrity. How often have great and noble people been
condemned as immoral because some irregularities would not fit the
Procrustean bed of customary respectability! Think only of George Eliot
who had to suffer under the prejudices of Sunday-School morality! We
need a higher standard in which we may set aside the paltry views
of the old morality without losing our ideals. We need a positive
norm, the norm which counts in the actual world and in history, where
man is measured not by his sins of omission but by his positive
accomplishments; not by the errors he has or has not committed, but by
his deeds, by the work with which he has benefited mankind. Therefore
the new morality does not waste much time with the several injunctions,
"Thou shalt not ..." but impresses the growing generation with the
demand: "Do something useful; show thyself efficient; be superior to
others in nobility, in generosity, in energy; excel in one way or
another"; and in this sense a transvaluation of the old values is being
worked out at present.
We will grant that Nietzsche's demand of a transvaluation of all values
may mean to criticize the narrow doctrines and views of the religion
of his surroundings. But as he expresses himself and according to his
philosophical principle he goes so far as to condemn not only the husk
of all these religious movements, but also their spirit. In spite of
his subjectivism which denies the existence of anything ideal, and
goes so far as to deny the right even of truth to have an objective
value, Nietzsche establishes a new objectivism, and proposes his own,
and indeed very crude, subjective standard of valuation as the only
objective one worthy of consideration for the transvaluation of all
values.
Nietzsche's real world, or rather what he deemed to be the real world,
is a dream, the dream of a sick man, to whom nothing possesses value
save the boons denied him, physical health, strength, power to dare and
to do.