These deal with Nietzsche’s principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence
upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great
work, “L’Inegalite des Races Humaines”, lays strong emphasis upon the
evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone
would suffice to carry Nietzsche’s point against all those who are
opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have
saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and
which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the
world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED
types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings
Gobineau support from the realm of biology.
The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.
Par. 13.
This, like the first part of “The Soothsayer”, is obviously a reference
to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.
Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.
These are supplementary to the discourse “Backworld’s-men”.
Par. 18.
We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the
previous four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism
here; but it is the pessimism of the hero—the man most susceptible of
all to desperate views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed
against him in a world where men of his kind are very rare and are
continually being sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche
wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until
the last, is at length overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle
for sleep. This is not the natural or constitutional pessimism which
proceeds from an unhealthy body—the dyspeptic’s lack of appetite; it
is rather the desperation of the netted lion that ultimately stops all
movement, because the more it moves the more involved it becomes.
Par. 20.
“All that increases power is good, all that springs from weakness is
bad. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our
charity. And one shall also help them thereto.” Nietzsche partly divined
the kind of reception moral values of this stamp would meet with at
the hands of the effeminate manhood of Europe. Here we see that he had
anticipated the most likely form their criticism would take (see also
the last two verses of par. 17).
Par. 21.