German Problems and Personalities Part 5

XIII.-JUDGMENT ON THE HOHENZOLLERN STATE.

In 1807, after the crushing defeat inflicted by Napoleon on the Prussian armies at Jena, when the Military Monarchy crumbled to pieces in one day like a house of cards, Joseph de Maistre, the most profound and the most prophetic political thinker of his age, wrote the following significant lines from St. Petersburg. To realize the full significance of the judgment, one must remember that Count de Maistre was a fanatic supporter of the old monarchic order. He hated Napoleon with a bitter hatred, but he hated Prussia more:

"Ever since I have started to reason, I have felt a special aversion for Frederick II., whom a frenzied generation has been in a hurry to proclaim a great man, but who was really no more than a _great Prussian_. Posterity will consider this Prince as one of the greatest enemies of the human species that has ever lived. His monarchy, which had inherited his spirit, had become an argument against Providence.

To-day that argument has been converted into a tangible proof of eternal justice. This famous structure built with blood and mud, with debased coin and base libels, has crumbled in the twinkle of an eye."[12]

[12] De Maistre, "Lettres et Opuscules."

Those words were written exactly one hundred and ten years ago, and the world is once more anxiously looking forward to another Jena which will deal a final blow to the Hohenzollern monarchy. When that catastrophe comes, Europe, enlightened by the awful experiences of the last hundred years, and delivered from the black magic of the political necromancers of Potsdam, will unanimously echo the prophetic judgment p.r.o.nounced by Joseph de Maistre. For to-day, even more than in 1807, Prussia has become an "argument against Providence." Even more than in 1807 the Prussia of 1917 "is built with blood and mud."

Even more than in 1807 the chastis.e.m.e.nt of Prussia is demanded by "eternal justice." The whole civilized world will breathe more freely when the sinister and diabolical power will be broken for ever and will oppress and degrade humanity no more.

CHAPTER IV

THE GERMAN WAR-TRIUMVIRATE

I.-NIETZSCHE.

The English reader is now in possession of a complete translation of Nietzsche, in the admirable edition published by T. N. Foulis, and edited by Oscar Levy, of which the eighteenth and concluding volume has just appeared. To the uninitiated I would recommend as an introductory study: (1) Professor Lichtenberger's volume; (2) Ludovici, "Nietzsche" (1s., Constable), with a suggestive preface by Dr. Levy; (3) the very useful summary of Mr. Mugge-an excellent number in an excellent series (Messrs. Jack's "People's Books"); (4) Dr. Barry's chapter in the "Heralds of Revolt," giving the Catholic point of view; (5) Mrs. Forster-Nietzsche, "The Young Nietzsche"; and (6) an essay by the present writer, published as far back as 1897, and which, therefore, may at least claim the distinction of having been one of the first to draw attention in Great Britain to the great German writer. But a searching estimate of Nietzsche in English still remains to be written. And there is only one man that could write it, and that man is Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton. I confidently prophesy that a study of Nietzsche, if he has the courage to undertake it, will be Mr. Chesterton's greatest book. He will find in the German heretic a foe worthy of his steel.

I.

Like the history of most great thinkers, like the history of Kant and Schopenhauer, the biography of Nietzsche is totally barren of incident, and can be disposed of in a few lines. Born in 1844, apparently of n.o.ble Polish extraction ("Nizky" in Polish means humble), the son of a clergyman, and the descendant on both sides of a long line of clergymen, the future "Anti-Christ" spent an exemplary, studious, and strenuous youth. After serving his time in the army-he was considered one of the best riders of his regiment-and after a brilliant University career at Bonn and Leipzig, he was appointed, at twenty-four years of age, Professor of Greek in the University of Bale. His academic activity extended over eleven years, and was only interrupted in 1870 by a few months' service in the Ambulance Corps, during the Franco-German War.

His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy," appeared in 1871. Like most of his books, it was published at his own expense, and, like most of his books, it did not find a public. The three first parts of his masterpiece, "Thus Spake Zarathustra," were such a desperate failure that Nietzsche only ventured to print fifty copies of the fourth and concluding part, and he printed them merely for private circulation amongst his friends, but he only disposed of seven copies!

In 1879 he resigned, owing to ill-health, with a pension of 120.

After his retirement he spent a nomadic life wandering from Nice to Venice, and from the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of health and sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, still preaching in the desert, still plunging deeper and deeper into solitude. And as the world refused to listen to him, Nietzsche became more and more convinced of the value of his message. His last book, "Ecce h.o.m.o," an autobiography, contains all the premonitory symptoms of the threatening tragedy. It is mainly composed of such headings as the following: "Why I am so Wise," "Why I am so Clever," "Why I write such Excellent Books," and "Why I am a Fatalist."

Alas! fatality was soon to shatter the wise and clever man who wrote those excellent books. In 1889 Nietzsche went mad. For eleven years he lingered on in private inst.i.tutions and in the house of his old mother at Naumburg. He died in 1900, when his name and fame had radiated over the civilized world, and when the young generation in Germany was hailing him as the herald of a new age. England, as usually happens in the case of Continental thinkers, was the last European country to feel his influence; but in recent years that influence has been rapidly gaining ground, even in England, a fact abundantly proved by the great and startling success of the complete edition of his works.

II.

Most writers on Nietzsche-and they are legion-begin with extolling him as a prophet or abusing him as a lunatic. I submit that before we extol or abuse, our first duty is to understand. And we can no longer evade that duty. We cannot afford any longer to ignore or dismiss the most powerful force in Continental literature, on the vain pretence that the author was mad, as if the greatest French thinker of the eighteenth century, Rousseau, and the greatest thinker of the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte, had not fallen victims to the same disease.

And, on the whole, Nietzsche is not difficult to understand, although there has arisen a host of commentators to obscure his meaning, although Nietzsche himself delights in expressing himself in the form of cryptic and mystic aphorism, although he continuously contradicts himself. But apart from those difficulties, his message is strikingly simple and his personality is singularly transparent. And his message and his personality are one. He is a convincing ill.u.s.tration of Fichte's dictum, that any great system of philosophy is the outcome, not of the intellect, but of a man's character. Nietzsche is not a metaphysician like Hegel, whom he abhorred. He is not a "logic-grinder," like Mill, whom he despised. He is a moralist, like the French, whom he loved. His culture and learning were French even more than German. He was steeped in Montaigne, to whom he has paid a glowing tribute in "Schopenhauer as Educationalist." He was a careful student of the great French cla.s.sics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He read and annotated Guyau, with whom he had many points in common. By a curious coincidence, a few years before the advent of Nietzsche, a great French thinker had antic.i.p.ated every one of Nietzsche's doctrines, and had expressed them in one of the most striking books of the French language. And by an even more curious paradox, whilst every European critic devotes himself to-day to the interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy, they systematically ignore-as Nietzsche himself ignored-the masterpiece of the Frenchman.

III.

Let us, then, first keep in mind that Nietzsche is not a metaphysician or a logician, but he is pre-eminently a moralist. His one aim is to revise our moral values and to establish new values in their place.

For Nietzsche does both. There are two poles to his thought. He is an iconoclast, but he is also a hero-worshipper. He is a herald of revolt, but he is also a constructive thinker. Even in his earliest work, "Thoughts out of Season," whilst he destroys the two popular idols of the day, the theologian and the historian, he sets up two new heroes, Schopenhauer and Wagner.

IV.

We have said that Nietzsche's philosophy is strikingly simple. Its whole kernel can be expressed in two words. He is a systematic pagan, and he is an uncompromising aristocrat. As a pagan, he is a consistent enemy of Christianity. As an aristocrat, he is a bitter opponent of democracy. He proclaims that Anti-Christ has appeared in his own person. He hails the advent of the Superman.

First, he is a pagan, a pagan of Greece, or, rather, a pagan of the Renascence, and, as a pagan, he considers Christianity the real enemy.

Christianity denies life; Nietzsche a.s.serts it. Christianity mainly thinks of the future world; Nietzsche has his feet firmly planted on Mother Earth. Christianity glorifies meekness and humility; Nietzsche glorifies pride and self-a.s.sertion. Christianity defends the poor and the weak; Nietzsche contends that the strong alone have a right to live. Christianity blesses the peacemakers; Nietzsche extols the warriors. Christianity is the religion of human suffering; Nietzsche is a worshipper of life, and proclaims the joyful science, _die frohliche Wissenschaft_, the _gaya scienza_.

It is impossible within the limits of a short article to discuss Nietzsche's view of Christianity. We are concerned here not with discussion, but with exposition. At an early opportunity we hope to deal at some length in the columns of _Everyman_ with Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity. For the present, let it be sufficient to say that no theologian would be prepared to accept his interpretation of the Christian religion. The everlasting conflict of spirit against sense and brutal force, which is the essence of Christianity, is hardly conducive to pa.s.sivity. It is, on the contrary, a consistent discipline in modern heroism. There is not much meekness about the Jesuits or the warrior Popes. Nor is there much melancholy about St.

Francis of a.s.sisi or St. Theresa. The only smiling countenance in a hospital is the Sister of Mercy. The only active resisters under the despotism of Henry VIII. were Sir Thomas More and a broken octogenarian priest, Cardinal Fisher.

V.

The same fundamental instinct or principle, the same defiant optimism, the same exultation in the pride of life, which makes Nietzsche into an opponent of Christianity, also makes him into an opponent of democracy. The same belief in force, in the will to power, which makes Nietzsche into a pagan, also makes him into an aristocrat. For the political expression of Christianity must needs be democracy. We are democrats because we are Christians, because we believe in the essential dignity of man. On the contrary, the political outcome of paganism must needs be despotism and aristocracy. We believe in despotism and aristocracy because we believe in the natural inequality of man, because we believe in force and pride and self-a.s.sertion, in the power of the strong to oppress the weak. Nietzsche is against the oppressed and for the oppressor; for the Superman against humanity.

For in Nietzsche's view an aristocracy is the ultimate purpose of life.

But Nietzsche is not an aristocrat, like the ordinary Darwinian. He does not believe in the survival of the fittest, like the typical evolutionist. He does not believe that a survival of the fittest will come about mechanically by the mere play of blind forces. Regression is as natural as progression. No one has pointed this out more convincingly than Huxley in his "Evolution and Ethics." The progress of the race is not natural, but artificial and accidental and precarious. Therefore Nietzsche believes in artificial selection. The Superman is not born, he must be bred. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and forerunner of the Eugenists.

And he is also the spiritual father of the Imperialists and latter-day Militarists. The gospel of the inequality of the individual implies the gospel of the inequality of race. The gospel of Nietzsche has not only been antic.i.p.ated by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, but by his much more influential German namesake, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the author whose books the Kaiser liberally distributed amongst his Generals and advisers. The doctrine of force, the belief in the German people as the salt of the earth, the self-gratification of the modern Teuton, can be traced directly to the influence of Zarathustra, and it is significant that the latest German exponent of Imperialism, General von Bernhardi, should have selected an aphorism of Nietzsche as the quintessence of his political philosophy:

"War and courage have achieved more great things than the love of our neighbour. It is not your sympathy, but your bravery, which has. .h.i.therto saved the shipwrecked of existence.

"'What is good?' you ask. 'To be braced is good.'"[13]

[13] Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," First Part, 10th Speech.

VI.

Quite apart from any elements of truth contained in Nietzsche's ethics, the first reason for his popularity is, no doubt, the perfection of his form and style. Nietzsche is one of the supreme masters of language, in a literature which counts very few masters of language, and the beauty of his style is transparent even in the disguise of a foreign translation.

The second reason is that Nietzsche, who imagined that he was fighting against the times, was in reality thinking with the times, and he has met with a ready response, in the dominant instincts of the present age, in the aggressive materialism, in the race for wealth and power.

The Supermen and the Super-races of to-day only too cordially accept a philosophy which seems to justify extortion, aggression, and oppression in the name of a supreme moral principle.

The third and most important reason, and the real secret of Nietzsche's influence, is the fine quality of his moral personality.

However much we may be repelled by the thinker, we are attracted by the magnetism of the man, by his n.o.ble courage, by his splendid integrity, by his love of truth, his hatred of cant. Even though he has himself misunderstood Christianity, he has done a great deal to bring us back to the fundamental ideals of the Christian religion. He has done a great deal to undermine that superficial and "rose-water"

view of Christianity current in official and academic Protestant circles. He has done a great deal to convince us that whatever may be the essence of Christianity, it has nothing in common with that silly and pedantic game which, for half a century, has made Eternal Religion depend on the conclusions of "Higher Criticism," and which has made theology and philosophy the handmaidens of archaeology and philology.

Nietzsche is a formidable foe of Christianity, but he is a magnanimous foe, who certainly brings us nearer to a comprehension of the inmost meaning of the very doctrines he attacks. And it is quite possible that the Christian champion of the future may incorporate Nietzsche in his apologetics, even as St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle, even as Pascal incorporated Montaigne. It was in the fitness of things that Nietzsche should be the descendant of a long line of Protestant ministers. For, indeed, he is the last of the true German Protestants, ever ready to protest and to defy and to challenge. He is the n.o.blest of modern German heretics.

II.-MONTAIGNE AND NIETZSCHE.

I.

There is a continuity and heredity in the transmission of ideas as there is in the transmission of life. Each great thinker has a spiritual posterity, which for centuries perpetuates his doctrine and his moral personality. And there is no keener intellectual enjoyment than to trace back to their original progenitors one of those mighty and original systems which are the milestones in the history of human thought.

It is with such a spiritual transmission that I am concerned in the present paper. I would like to establish the intimate connection which exists between Montaigne and Nietzsche, between the greatest of French moralists and the greatest of Germans. A vast literature has grown up in recent years round the personality and works of Nietzsche, which would already fill a moderately sized library. It is therefore strange that no critic should have emphasized and explained the close filiation between him and Montaigne. It is all the more strange because Nietzsche himself has acknowledged his debt to the "Essays"