Chapter LXXI. The Greeting.
Here I think I may claim that my contention in regard to the purpose and aim of the whole of Nietzsche's philosophy (as stated at the beginning of my Notes on Part IV.) is completely upheld. He fought for "all who do not want to live, unless they learn again to HOPE—unless THEY learn (from him) the GREAT hope!" Zarathustra's address to his guests shows clearly enough how he wished to help them: "I DO NOT TREAT MY WARRIORS INDULGENTLY," he says: "how then could ye be fit for MY warfare?" He rebukes and spurns them, no word of love comes from his lips. Elsewhere he says a man should be a hard bed to his friend, thus alone can he be of use to him. Nietzsche would be a hard bed to higher men. He would make them harder; for, in order to be a law unto himself, man must possess the requisite hardness. "I wait for higher ones, stronger ones, more triumphant ones, merrier ones, for such as are built squarely in body and soul." He says in par. 6 of "Higher Man":—
"Ye higher men, think ye that I am here to put right what ye have put wrong? Or that I wished henceforth to make snugger couches for you sufferers? Or show you restless, miswandering, misclimbing ones new and easier footpaths?"
"Nay! Nay! Three times nay! Always more, always better ones of your type shall succumb—for ye shall always have it worse and harder."
Chapter LXXII. The Supper.
In the first seven verses of this discourse, I cannot help seeing a gentle allusion to Schopenhauer's habits as a bon–vivant. For a pessimist, be it remembered, Schopenhauer led quite an extraordinary life. He ate well, loved well, played the flute well, and I believe he smoked the best cigars. What follows is clear enough.
Chapter LXXIII. The Higher Man. Par. 1.
Nietzsche admits, here, that at one time he had thought of appealing to the people, to the crowd in the market–place, but that he had ultimately to abandon the task. He bids higher men depart from the market–place.
Par. 3.
Here we are told quite plainly what class of men actually owe all their impulses and desires to the instinct of self–preservation. The struggle for existence is indeed the only spur in the case of such people. To them it matters not in what shape or condition man be preserved, provided only he survive. The transcendental maxim that "Life per se is precious" is the ruling maxim here.
Par. 4.
In the Note on Chapter LVII. (end) I speak of Nietzsche's elevation of the virtue, Courage, to the highest place among the virtues. Here he tells higher men the class of courage he expects from them.
Pars. 5, 6.
These have already been referred to in the Notes on Chapters LVII. (end) and LXXI.
Par. 7.
I suggest that the last verse in this paragraph strongly confirms the view that Nietzsche's teaching was always meant by him to be esoteric and for higher man alone.
Par. 9.
In the last verse, here, another shaft of light is thrown upon the Immaculate Perception or so–called "pure objectivity" of the scientific mind. "Freedom from fever is still far from being knowledge." Where a man's emotions cease to accompany him in his investigations, he is not necessarily nearer the truth. Says Spencer, in the Preface to his Autobiography:—"In the genesis of a system of thought, the emotional nature is a large factor: perhaps as large a factor as the intellectual nature" (see pages 134, 141 of Vol. I., "Thoughts out of Season").
Pars. 10, 11.
When we approach Nietzsche's philosophy we must be prepared to be independent thinkers; in fact, the greatest virtue of his works is perhaps the subtlety with which they impose the obligation upon one of thinking alone, of scoring off one's own bat, and of shifting intellectually for oneself.
Par. 13.
"I am a railing alongside the torrent; whoever is able to grasp me, may grasp me! Your crutch, however, I am not." These two paragraphs are an exhortation to higher men to become independent.
Par. 15.
Here Nietzsche perhaps exaggerates the importance of heredity. As, however, the question is by no means one on which we are all agreed, what he says is not without value.
A very important principle in Nietzsche's philosophy is enunciated in the first verse of this paragraph. "The higher its type, always the seldomer doth a thing succeed" (see page 82 of "Beyond Good and Evil"). Those who, like some political economists, talk in a business–like way about the terrific waste of human life and energy, deliberately overlook the fact that the waste most to be deplored usually occurs among higher individuals. Economy was never precisely one of nature's leading principles. All this sentimental wailing over the larger proportion of failures than successes in human life, does not seem to take into account the fact that it is the rarest thing on earth for a highly organised being to attain to the fullest development and activity of all its functions, simply because it is so highly organised. The blind Will to Power in nature therefore stands in urgent need of direction by man.
Pars. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
These paragraphs deal with Nietzsche's protest against the democratic seriousness (Pobelernst) of modern times. "All good things laugh," he says, and his final command to the higher men is, "LEARN, I pray you—to laugh." All that is GOOD, in Nietzsche's sense, is cheerful. To be able to crack a joke about one's deepest feelings is the greatest test of their value. The man who does not laugh, like the man who does not make faces, is already a buffoon at heart.
"What hath hitherto been the greatest sin here on earth? Was it not the word of him who said: 'Woe unto them that laugh now!' Did he himself find no cause for laughter on the earth? Then he sought badly. A child even findeth cause for it."
Chapter LXXIV. The Song of Melancholy.
After his address to the higher men, Zarathustra goes out into the open to recover himself. Meanwhile the magician (Wagner), seizing the opportunity in order to draw them all into his net once more, sings the Song of Melancholy.
Chapter LXXV. Science.
The only one to resist the "melancholy voluptuousness" of his art, is the spiritually conscientious one—the scientific specialist of whom we read in the discourse entitled "The Leech". He takes the harp from the magician and cries for air, while reproving the musician in the style of "The Case of Wagner". When the magician retaliates by saying that the spiritually conscientious one could have understood little of his song, the latter replies: "Thou praisest me in that thou separatest me from thyself." The speech of the scientific man to his fellow higher men is well worth studying. By means of it, Nietzsche pays a high tribute to the honesty of the true specialist, while, in representing him as the only one who can resist the demoniacal influence of the magician's music, he elevates him at a stroke, above all those present. Zarathustra and the spiritually conscientious one join issue at the end on the question of the proper place of "fear" in man's history, and Nietzsche avails himself of the opportunity in order to restate his views concerning the relation of courage to humanity. It is precisely because courage has played the most important part in our development that he would not see it vanish from among our virtues to–day. "…courage seemeth to me the entire primitive history of man."
Chapter LXXVI. Among the Daughters of the Desert.
This tells its own tale.
Chapter LXXVII. The Awakening.
In this discourse, Nietzsche wishes to give his followers a warning. He thinks he has so far helped them that they have become convalescent, that new desires are awakened in them and that new hopes are in their arms and legs. But he mistakes the nature of the change. True, he has helped them, he has given them back what they most need, i.e., belief in believing—the confidence in having confidence in something, but how do they use it? This belief in faith, if one can so express it without seeming tautological, has certainly been restored to them, and in the first flood of their enthusiasm they use it by bowing down and worshipping an ass! When writing this passage, Nietzsche was obviously thinking of the accusations which were levelled at the early Christians by their pagan contemporaries. It is well known that they were supposed not only to be eaters of human flesh but also ass–worshippers, and among the Roman graffiti, the most famous is the one found on the Palatino, showing a man worshipping a cross on which is suspended a figure with the head of an ass (see Minucius Felix, "Octavius" IX.; Tacitus, "Historiae" v. 3; Tertullian, "Apologia", etc.). Nietzsche's obvious moral, however, is that great scientists and thinkers, once they have reached the wall encircling scepticism and have thereby learned to recover their confidence in the act of believing, as such, usually manifest the change in their outlook by falling victims to the narrowest and most superstitious of creeds. So much for the introduction of the ass as an object of worship.