MUSSOLINI SAYS : "LIVE DANGEROUSLY”

 ACKNOWLEDGES NIETZCHE AS SPIRITUAL MASTER

(By Dr. OSCAR LEVY.)

Dyspeptic critics of this apocalyptic age have often declared it to be grossly materialistic. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. There never was an age more agitated by ideas, theories, opinions, principles than our own. All the great forces which have clashed upon one another in the last ten years have had as the driving power behind them a moral principle. The moral principle, may have used immoral means — what principle is not forced to do that? — but there is no doubt that the principle was there, and that it was for principles that peoples have fought one another.

 It is not true that this driving force was absent behind Germany, that Germany was grossly materialistic, that she indulged in an unashamed "will to power.” Whoever knows anything of the character of the Germans, the most theoretical people of Europe, knows that this could not have been so. Behind Ludendorff (whom we may take as representative of that old and disappearing Germany) there are standing two mighty spiritual forces, those springing from Luther and Hegel— forces, by the way, which have not influenced Germany alone.

 "IT WAS A SAD TALE"

 Two other representative men have appeared (and disappeared) in the last few years, Lenin and Wilson. Behind Wilson there was a tremendous spiritual force, that arising from Christian sectarianism. This sectarianism was a consequence of the teachings of Calvin and Rousseau, the latter of whom, as is well known, inspired the declaration of the rights of men both in 1776 (America) and in 1789 (France). Behind Lenin there stands the spiritual force of German philosophy, above all, and, again, the mighty shade of Hegel, who has had a logical disciple in the Jewish thinker Karl Marx. Hegel, a dignified professor of Berlin University, would of course have denied Karl Marx, but this does not prove that the latter has entirely misinterpreted him. He only pushed the timid professors' principles to their proper conclusions, and thus produced the “fruits,” by which, according to the gospel, “ye shall know them.”

 The fruits of all these systems 'have indeed been terribly bitter.

 It is a sad tale.

 Or, better, it was a sad tale— till 1922. In 1922 there took place an event of the greatest importance — an event of such importance that the world has not even commenced to comprehend it.

 The event was this: That the world revolution— started by Germany, continued by Russia, imported into all the other countries— was bridled by an efficient counter-movement in Italy. This movement has become known by the name of “Il Fascismo.”

 “Il Fascismo “ is not a counter-revolutionary movement, such as was started in 1815 after the disappearance of Napoleon. It is not a reaction of the “Whites” against the ''Reds.'' It is not a Restoration, such as was the Holy Alliance.

 As such it has, and must have, a spiritual force behind it. This spiritual force, however, labors under one great disadvantage — it is yet unknown to the general public. It seems entirely lacking in all those who owe their training to the nineteenth century. Hence Fascism is vastly misunderstood.

 Fascism, as we all know, has found an interpreter of genius in Benito Mussolini, it is not too much to say that all those who have an ear for “new tunes” have been struck to the quick by the speeches of this man. There has been in them what was wanting in all other messages from high quarters — sobriety, lucidity, nobility, sincerity. Yet these speeches have been most atrociously misunderstood. And still worse has been the fate of Mussolini's writings, such as his pungent remarks about his famous countryman Machiavelli. Their reception by a thoroughly senile public all over Europe has been simply deplorable. All the highbrows of press, pulpit, Parliament and pacifism were down upon this one man.

 When, a few weeks ago, I was received in audience by Mussolini he candidly told me: ”I shall write no more. They are too stupid ! They do not understand one word.”

 “But they ought to be made to understand, your Excellency," I objected. “At least, one should try to enlighten them.”

 Mussolini only shrugged his shoulders. 

But I am still of the opinion that people ought to be made to understand. It is important for them to do so. It is likewise important for present-day Italy not to be misunderstood. I shall therefore try to explain that Fascism is not a ”brutalitarian,” not even a utilitarian creed, but one inspired by a very high idea, an ideal which labors under this one disadvantage, that it is a new ideal.

 A ONE-MAN SHOW

 I am aware that the rank and file of “Fascismo” is not quite clear about the nature and origin of this ideal. I have read, for instance, in Fascist papers, that their inspiration is drawn from Hobbes and La Maistre. I beg to doubt that. But it does not matter very much what the soldiers of this movement think. “Fascismo” is more than any other movement a "one-man show" — that of Signor Benito Mussolini.

 This man is of course considered by public opinion as an adventurer. And so he is — and so was Disraeli. Mussolini is even more of an adventurer than Disraeli, for the latter never won his high position by armed force. But there is a striking similarity between Disraeli and Mussolini : before they became adventurers in the realm of this earth both were adventurers in the realms of the spirit. And as an adventurer in the realm of the spirit, Mussolini came across his spiritual master — a master from whom he derived ample profit.

 "In the letter which you wrote me, you alluded to the Nietzschean color of my speeches and writings," said Mussolini. "You are quite right in assuming that I have been influenced by Nietzsche. Fifteen years ago, when I was quite a young man and was expelled from one Swiss canton to the other, I came across his books. I have read them without exception. They made the deepest impression upon me. They cured me of my socialism. They opened my eyes about the cant of statesmen such as 'the conceit of the governed !' and about the inner value of such things as 'Parliament' and 'universal suffrage.' I was also deeply impressed by Nietzsche's wonderful precept : 'Live dangerously.' I have lived up to that, I think. . . ."

 Mussolini smiled. Coming out of his serious, hard-featured face, it was a very extraordinary smile. Thus the sun comes out behind heavy clouds, and by this contrast doubly cheers the observer.

 "I wish," I said, "that people might hear and know what you have said. Unfortunately, there is no witness to our conversation. Contrary to the custom of all other Ministers and Presidents of this earth, you have even sent your secretary away."

 Mussolini again shrugged his shoulders.

 "They really ought to hear your words," I insisted. "Outside Italy— I am pretty sure of this — Fascismo is entirely misunderstood. People do not even suspect the novelty of this movement. They compare it even to the Ku Klux Klan in North America. And even the German reactionaries claim you as a kinsman."

 "I know— I know that Hitler, Wulle and Ludendorff crew. One of them, I forget who, even came here and asked me to receive him. I refused, of course, to have anything to do with them. It is possible to be misunderstood like that?''

 Thinking over these words as I stepped out of the stately Palazzo Chigi into the noisy Piazza Colonna, I asked myself why should not everything be possible now? People never had much time to think, and now they have less than ever. Yet at no time was it more necessary to think than now and to recognise this great fact that behind all modern political movements there are spiritual forces. If we do not know these forces, we are bound to mistake “Il Fascismo” for the Ku Klux Klan.

 HIS ENEMIES EVERYWHERE

 The task in front of him is still formidable. Nearly all the parties of Italy and all the Cabinets of Europe are united against this one man. He has, perhaps, only a few friends, and these friends do not understand him too well. As to his enemies: They are everywhere. Democracy is the toughest of all "Die-hards," for it has nearly become a faith during the nineteenth century. Among his principal Italian enemies is that crowd of superfluous officials, which is the cancer of all democracies and which Italy, thanks to Mussolini's knife, has removed more thoroughly than any other nation. Even his own party gives him trouble, as the latest events have shown.

 But the greatest trouble is the world's blindness toward the spiritual force behind Fascismo. People do not see that it is a revolutionary movement of the first class, a movement vastly more revolutionary than Bolshevism. People do not understand that Fascismo is based upon ideas, just as Bolshevism is based upon ideas. And they further do not understand that ideas can only be fought by ideas, and that consequently the only antidote against Bolshevism is Fascism. But Fascism is not only an antidote, but likewise a remedy against Bolshevism. For Bolshevism is not so much a revolutionary as a reactionary creed. Bolshevism wishes to put the clock back to the old principles of the French Revolution; it even stands up most shamelessly for the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity. These ideals, however, have decayed: no, they have become idols, which are as good as dead. It is for the new Fascist movement to bury them altogether and to enthrone in their place other ideals and living aspirations for the progress and guidance of mankind. Let us learn from Italy and Mussolini !

Bathurst Times (NSW : 1909 - 1925), Thursday 22 January 1925, page 1

TOLSTOY AND NIETZSCHE.

COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS.

 THE SUPERMAN ON TRIAL

By ARCHIBALD T. STRONG.

  In an age of mainly materialistic humanitarianism, of which the thought has for the most part been devoted to political speculation and experiment, two men of mighty genius stand out, each poles apart from the other, yet each embodying the most strenuous reaction against the prevailing tendencies of his time. One of these is the author of "Zarathustra;" the other the great seer last moments have just been watched with interval and sympathy by the whole civilised world.
   Nietzsche took what he believed to be the Greek spirit, which he identified with the Joy of Life, and deduced from this the of the Superman, a being, stronger, blither, and more magnificently selfish than the men of our own day, ruling over a population of serfs by sheer right of strength, mighty of will, a law until himself, and utterly contemptuous of the claims of the weakling majority, of the sickly morality of the herd, of all standards set by which he must needs hate and despise as the faith of cripples and slaves.
 To him the main evil of modern society appeared to consist in its utterly mistaken theory of values, and its reconstruction must, he thought, be preceded by a revaluation. And Tolstoy, up to this point, is quite at one with Nietzsche. Life to be worth the living, must in his eyes become an utterly new thing; and it could only succeed in being this when existing society had been shattered and recast in a new mould.

 BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.

 Nietzsche declared that the Superman must live in a world beyond Good and Evil; hence he scorned and flouted existing themes of morality, and as a token of his hatred of them, styled himself an amoralist. Tolstoy, if he did not do this at all events held himself severely aloof from all schemes of political activity and reform, holding, here again with Nietzsche, that the new order must arise within the individual, and not without. In spite of his so-called Socialism, he has always refused to take part in any project of practical revolution, or reconstruction of the State; and this has been at once his strength, obtaining for him the toleration of the Russian Government, and his weakness, inasmuch as it has put him completely out of touch with the great men of action with whom he might have been otherwise expected to sympathise warmly.
 Nietzsche and Tolstoy are at one, moreover, in wishing, each according to his lights, to evolve from the old man a new one, who should differ from him in kind rather than in degree, and should possess an infinitely higher and finer nature; though each is in exact opposition to the other as to what that nature should be.
 Both agree, too, that such a change as this is impossible under a scheme of society dominated by the standard of women, whom both, here differing again from the general opinion of their day, held to be morally, as well as mentally, inferior to men. Tolstoy, following Proudhon, declared property in any shape or form to be a crime; and if Nietzsche did not do this, he, at any rate, believed it to be criminal that property, as a form of power, should be allowed to remain in hands that were totally unworthy to wield it effectively.
 Both men stood, or endeavored to stand, outside the State which was their natural sphere of action, and both either disregarded or rejected utterly the successive steps by which their predecessors had slowly been endeavoring to build up what they considered to be a sound new order, evolved from the old by a gradual sequence of effort and evolution. Finally each, by rejecting the existing social conditions as a basis of higher construction, and scorning bitterly the "slow degrees" by which "the world soul quickens through the centuries," cut the main nerve of human effect in the centre, and rendered meaningless almost every one of the battles fought and won in the cause of progress by the mighty dead.

THE GOSPELS OF MIGHT AND MEEKNESS.

  Here, however, the resemblance ends: and it is indeed a truism to remark that in essentials the end held up by Tolstoy to man is the exact contrary of that so fiercely preached by Nietzsche. Nietzsche's message was for the strong, and for these alone; and he declared that society was only valuable for the sake of the few Supermen which, if it were properly reconstituted, it might some day hope to produce. To Tolstoy, man may attained his true personality by annihilating the Superman in himself and strenuously denying the Will to power which with Nietzsche had been the cardinal virtue. With Tolstoy, as with Christ, man must be born again and become as a little child: with Nietzsche he must spring from his new birth a giant supremely hard and strong, a Dionysiac being, exulting in his might and eager alike for the fight and the dance. With Nietzsche, warfare of the nobler kind was the natural and normal state of the higher man: but Tolstoy held — to quote the seemingly paradoxical words of Mr Aylmer Maude —that "we must assert that physical force should never be used, even in cases in which a man feels that he ought to use it, for if we once admit any exception to the rule, it breaks to pieces, and all sorts of violence will go on being practised in the world."
 Tolstoy, here following Schopenhauer, that great genius who has deepened and spiritualised the outlook of so many other geniuses, considered humility to be the main virtue, and took for his life's motto. "Blessed are the meek." To Nietzsche this text, which is the very keystone of Christianity, appeared immoral and nauseous, the outcome of a desperate attempt made by the weak to impose their distorted sense of values upon the strong, and to obtain a dispensation of Power which they were neither physically nor spiritually fitted to wield.

 MASTER MORALITY AND SLAVE MORALITY.

 Tolstoy held what are commonly considered to be the more aristocratic forms of activity to be pretentious and inferior, manual labor on the land being the noblest form of human effort: hence till his recent retreat to a monastery he lived and labored like a serf, and among serfs. To Nietzsche, such labor seemed the duty of the lowest, and the laudation of it merely another form of that contemptible and artificial slave morality which had overlain and deadened the true morality of the masters among men, their great artists, great legislators, and great warriors.
 In the realm of Art, both thinkers agreed in detesting the dilettantism which puts forth works of technical perfection from which all higher Form or feeling is absent: but to Nietzsche all art was worthless which did not tend to further the joy of life among the strong ones of this earth; and his objection to Wagner is that his music was effeminate and languorous, supplying a solace to the weak instead of the stirring strains to which the Superman might dance forward in might and mirth towards his goal. With Nietzsche the highest art, like the highest education, could only be for the chosen few: but Tolstoy, as the doctrines of his later years got stronger and stronger hold upon him, came to distrust and despise every form of artistic production In which the peasants could not have an equal share.
 Tolstoy's faith and life were based on the love of his neighbor; Nietzsche, believing such love to make for democracy and weakness, declared :—"Do I advise you to love your neighbor? Rather do I advise you to flee from your neighbor, and to love the most remote. Higher than love unto your neighbor is love unto the most remote future man."
 The whole secret of Tolstoy's life may fairly be said to have consisted in renouncing three things— Voluptuousness, the passion for Power, and what he conceived to be Selfishness; and it was just these three things of which Nietzsche could speak thus:—
"Voluptuousness: Only to the withered a sweet poison; to the lion-willed, however a great cordial, and the reverently saved wine of wines.
"Voluptuousness : The great symbolic happiness of a higher happiness and highest hope.
 "Passion for Power: The earthquake which breaketh and unbreaketh all that is rotten and hollow. The rolling, rumbling, punitive demolisher of whited sepulchres; the flashing interrogative sign beside premature answers.
 "And then it happened and, verily it happened for the first time! — that Zarathustra's word blessed Selfishness —the wholesome, healthy Selfishness that springeth from the powerful soul."
 Finally, to Nietzsche, Christ and Christianity were symbols of weakness and decay which had overlain the world for centuries and must be rooted out ever the new life could begin: to Tolstoy it was exactly in them that the new life must be sought, and the old life had been bad not from following their precepts but from neglecting them : and though he believed as firmly as did Nietzsche that Christ was man and not God, he felt Him to be not weaker than other men, but mightier than all of them through his fuller participation in a higher Power.

 STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF EITHER THINKER.

 So much for the differences between these great geniuses who in their opposite ways are surely the two mightiest spiritual forces of their age. Each in his different way supplies the antidote for certain crying evils of his day, and represents from his own standpoint a reaction against compromise and materialistic contentment. The teaching of Nietzsche, though it may be difficult to accept it as a whole, is intensely valuable as a spur to effort and efficiency, as a reminder that higher culture, mental, spiritual, and physical is a thing ever to be sought after and diligently ensued, and as a counterblast to the chief evils of democracy— its tendency to level down, to distrust and depress its best and wisest and strongest, and to elevate into cardinal virtues the weakness and Inefficiency of the herd. " A man is worth a mob," said Landor: and though Nietzsche may possibly have gone a little too far in drawing the corollary that the mob has no worth at all, he has done great good to his age by reminding it forcibly that it is above all things virile personality that counts In life and thought and art.
 Tolstoy, on the other hand, reminds us of the seemingly paradoxical but perfectly true conclusion that the mob must needs absorb and annihilate the man who lives wholly to himself, that the highest form of personality is only attainable by self-negation, and that spiritual welfare and progress are things ultimately independent of political reconstruction and reform.
 Either thinker is inadequate in himself, and for the same reason — namely, that he disregards the essential unity between the man and the State, cuts himself loose from the only possible sphere of self-expression and realisation, and inculcates, each in his own way, an impossible and unearthly individualism which leaves him out of touch with all but a very few of his kind. Each teacher, indeed, represents an opposite ideal pushed to its extreme: Nietzsche, the Western ideal of the strenuous assertion of personality through Force and Efficiency and Joy : Tolstoy, the Eastern one of its stern negation through passivity and asceticism. Each is in a sense the antidote for the weakness or exaggeration of the other : we may give thanks for each after his kind.

Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 - 1954), Tuesday 29 November 1910, page 6

The Psychology of Toleration.

By J. M. Kennedy.

It is not so very long since the first anti-Jewish riots which have taken place in England in modern times were reported from certain districts in Wales. That Wales is a hot-bed of Nonconformity is known to most people, but few, apparently, have sought to trace the connection between Nonconformity and anti-Semitic riots. Nevertheless, to the psychologist the connection is clear, and it is a connection which is of profound philosophical as well as theological significance.

If we seek to ascertain what particular characteristic has distinguished Jews from the earliest records we possess of their wanderings, we are bound to answer that it is their exclusiveness. Only one race in history has had the moral courage to cut itself off from other races. The Chosen People brought no "message" to the ends of the earth, and undertook no foreign missions. They did not seek to make converts by cunning dialectics and by appeals to the lower instincts of man, like so many mistaken Christians, or by the bolder method of the sword, like the Mohammedans. They were frankly exclusive. They regarded themselves as a high caste among the other nations and races of the earth in the same way as the Brahmans formed themselves into the highest caste among the Hindoos.

Now, this characteristic of Jews is a distinctly aristocratic trait—the trait of a superior people. But, like other aristocratic traits, it naturally fails to meet with the approval of those whose religious principles incline towards democracy in the worst sense of the word. If the characteristic of an aristocratic sect, class or race is exclusiveness, it is obvious, and is amply proved in history, that the characteristic of a democratic people is what Nietzsche has called the herd-instinct ; the passion for equalising, for lowering rather than raising, the "all men-are-brothers" spirit—the very opposite of exclusiveness. If we find Jews at one extreme we find Christians at the other. Jews, following an instinct which has unfortunately been lost in Western Europe, endeavour to keep their race pure just as the Brahmans endeavoured to keep their caste pure. But the genuine Christian cannot conceive such a thing ; he will not be satisfied until the whole world has become Christian. This means, when carried to its logical conclusion, that Christians will not be satisfied until the world has become one vast brotherhood, whose leading principle shall be equality : a torpid, dead-level sluggishness without ideals or ambitions, an equality such as the most daring Socialist never dreamed of.

Although this is the genuine Christian spirit, however, it by no means follows that all Christians conform to it. The Roman Catholics of Southern Europe never lost their magnificent paganism, the traditions of which they took with them to the New World, for centuries of Roman and Greek culture could not fail to have its effect on the development of their imagination. But in the hard, cold north, with its severe climate and difficult soil, no imagination was to be found. The environment of the inhabitants of the northern countries, on the contrary, conduced to the development of what may be called the mechanical faculties and qualities of man, and these qualities are represented, spiritually speaking, by the reason rather than by the imagination. Unleavened by the imagination brought to bear upon it in the south, the New Testament was accepted literally in the north, and with Luther the rationalists gained the victory over the more artistic quality of the imagination. A natural consequence followed—the rise to power of the most democratic sections of the Christian faith and the resultant persecution of the Jews. For at the very time when Jews were beginning to be much better treated in the southern countries, they were persecuted more bitterly than ever in the northern countries. Let the student compare, for example, the treatment meted out to them by Luther and his followers with the treatment meted out to them by one of the greatest Lutheran antagonists, Pope Sixtus V.

And it needs no very recondite study of history to explain this. The period of the Renaissance in the Latin countries restored the old aristocratic feeling of paganism, of Greek and Roman culture, but the almost coincidental period of the Reformation in the Teutonic countries simply meant that the essential principles of Christianity, which are likewise the essential principles of democracy, became much more pronounced. It is a remarkable fact that Jews have, as a general rule, thriven in aristocratic countries, i.e., countries such as Poland up to the time of the partition, where aristocratic instincts predominated—and that they have been abused in democratic countries. The average Christian instinctively recognises that the Jew is his superior in strength of character, and the result is a feeling of envy. But the aristocratic Christian, such as a Polish or English nobleman, feels that his aristocratic instincts set him on a level with the Jew, and the result is a sentiment of equality. Again, people who have disregarded their Christianity altogether (such as Hellenists like Nietzsche and Goethe), or who profess a religion which is essentially aristocratic in its character (such as Mohammedanism, or even the Japanese Bushido), feel themselves to be above even Jews, and the result is toleration. In a word, we are either beneath our enemy, on a level with him, or above him, and our psychological manifestations in the respective cases are envy, respect, and toleration. Envy springs from a feeling of inferiority, respect from a feeling of equality, and toleration from a feeling of contempt.

The psychologist, then, will not be surprised at the anti-Semitic outbreak in Wales, for the Welsh Nonconformists are typical representatives of Christianity carried to its logical conclusions. As a sect they are permeated with all the defects of Christianity—hatred of anything exclusive, superior, or aristocratic. These characteristics, of course, are also exhibited towards the German Jews by the Lutherans, for the national Church of Germany corresponds to our Nonconformist sects, and not to the more aristocratic and Roman Catholic Established Church of England. An admirer of Jews will thus find consolation in times of persecution in the fact that that very persecution is an indication that they are not degenerating to the level of the people among whom they happen to be living. On the other hand, all friends of culture, all those who are interested in raising the human race to higher levels, are glad where they see Jews respected, seeing that this indicates that the people among whom they are living are gradually discarding the teachings of Paul for the teachings of Moses, and becoming more aristocratic.

Let us see, speaking philosophically, what we mean by the words aristocratic and democratic. Taking Nietzsche as a basis, we find that he defines life as "will to power," i.e., not the mere "will to live" of the Christian-minded Schopenhauer, or the "struggle for existence" of Darwin, but a continuous, intense longing and determination to acquire power over others. This is the instinct which, although we may not be aware of it, and usually are not, underlies all forms of living things, and especially the human kind. Any principle that helps us towards the realisation of this ideal is aristocratic ; any instinct that drives us to an opposite ideal is democratic. Starting from this point of view, the point of view which Nietzsche established once and for all in modern philosophy, the distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between Judaism and Christianity, between aristocracy and democracy, will become tolerably clear. The Jewish work is, in spite of apparent lapses here and there, on the whole of an aristocratic tendency ; the Christian work is of a democratic tendency.

While this is obviously not the place for a detailed examination of both Books, a few quotations will show how Christianity deprives us of one of the means of becoming aristocratic, viz., by deprecating our virile fighting qualities, and endeavouring to make us tame. "And the Lord spake unto me, saying .... 'Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon : behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, King, of Heshbon, and his land : begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle.' " Thus the Hebrew ; while the Christian says on the contrary : "Blessed are the peacemakers : for they shall be called the children of God." Again, as we read in the Chronicles, the Jews "made war with the Hagarites, with Jetur, and Nephish, and Nodab. And they were helped against them, and the Hagarites were delivered into their hands, and all that were with them ; for they cried to God in the battle . . . there fell down many slain, because the war was of God." This is the true, virile, aristocratic spirit; but compare it with the words from Matthew ; "Blessed are the meek ; for they shall inherit the earth," " blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." One more instance, which, if read aright, will show the thinker why our aristocrats are high-spirited and our democrats morose (''kill-joys"). Said the God of Battles : "Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine ; and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates." However religiously significant this feast may be, it could only have been devised by people full of the joie de vivre. We find nothing like it in the mournful collection of Christian writings, but we do find a precept which could only have originated among the impotent : "Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Could the guiding principle of modern democracy be summed up more concisely ? Could the feelings of the Lutherans and the Nonconformists be more accurately described ?—"Jewish World."

Jewish Herald (Vic. : 1879 - 1920), Friday 2 February 1912, page 11

NIETZSCHE

By AJAX.

The writings of Nietzsche are so little known to the majority of workers that some reference to them seems essential, especially as his philosophy has a direct bearing on the labor movement. This should not be the case considering the standard works he wrote on master and slave ideals.
Society seemed to him a perpetual struggle for supremacy between the masters, or strong races, and the slaves or weak races. The former— brave, strong, unscrupulous, and intelligent, men who delight in tackling deep problems and dangerous enterprises. Their character reflects their beliefs and values. To them good is synonymous with bravery and culture. The latter— the slaves— are weak, timid and subservient. As Nietzsche points out even the intellectuals of this class are timid in their writings. Kant and Socrates are to a large extent obsessed by the idea of God and "the moral law," two things Nietzsche ridicules. With the slaves weakness is goodness and obedience becomes a virtue. Elsewhere Nietzsche describes the rise of Christianity as the triumph of the slave ideals. He shows how barbaric races were conquered owing to priests instilling into them the deadly poison of "conscience" and "sin."
 Nietzsche's Superman considers patriotism a worn-out superstition and has little time for the Fatherland (Germany). Although apparently free from national prejudice, he welcomes war. War on everything that was antagonistic to the rise of the superman. He predicted that the twentieth century would be an era of great wars, which would establish a strong caste of superior men. Like other aristocratic thinkers, he bases his theories on the assumption that "Humanity exists for the benefits of the elite." Indeed, throughout his works the idea of "the spoils to the victor," and "might is right," is strongly emphasised. He denounced Socialism as Utopian and sentimental, and refers to the Socialists as "that most logical and also most pernicious race of men." Likewise Anarchism he regards as a psychological outbreak of envy and hatred of the rich by the rabble. Of course, his ideals presume a slave society, yet he was accused himself of being an anarchist. His superman is obviously an anarchist, much of his writing is also anarchistic and it is probable that at heart he was an anarchist. One reviewer is at great pains to explain that he was a respectable philosophic anarchist, not to be confounded with anarchists of the slave class. Of course, in reading his works, we have to remember that Nietzsche was rich and of good family, of refined and artistic temperament, a man who had no time for the herd.
In his great work, "The Antichrist," he thundered against sacerdotalism and denounces the priest class with that bitter sarcasm for which he was renowned. Although railing against orthodoxy because its values were in conflict with the values, he advised the master class to cling to Christianity, as it was excellent for the slave class. He says: "I have not declared war on the anaemic Christian; I deal with the purpose of destroying it, but in order to put an end to its tyranny, and to make room for new and more robust ideals." He repeatedly attacked Christian conceptions and morals, and endeavoured to show up the hypocrisy, meanness and slavish superstition in which orthodoxy wallows. He bemoans the destruction of literature and art by the church, and shows how they obliterated in Spain the artistic Moorish civilisation we might have inherited. The following passage is illustrative of his style: — "I will write the eternal indictment of Christianity on every wall. ... I will use letters which even the blind can see. I denounce Christianity as the ONE great curse, as the ONE corruption, as the ONE great instinct of revenge for which no means are too poisonous, treacherous and small — I denounce it as the ONE undying disgrace of humanity."
 Elsewhere he says: — "In the beginning was the nonsense and the nonsense was with God and the nosense was God."
 His principal works were "The Antichrist," "The Will to Power," and "The Geneology of Morals." There were several other volumes and poems, not to mention satirical essays. He was one of the few erudite thinkers who are bold enough to say what they really think. Always interesting, ever versatile and humorous, with a keen sense of candour, and an extensive knowledge of the world, he is perhaps the greatest philosopher of modern times. That he was no commercial journalist is shown by his comments anent industrialism. He scathingly referred to the factory system as "the uglification of Europe."
 Apart from his personality and clever works, Nietzsche has a value to the labor movement. Not only is there a strong vein of truth in most of his works, but he really represents the advanced thought of the aristocrats. He contended for higher types, that is, the finest types, not necessarily the monied man. Another point is he tried to infuse into the decaying aristocracy the idea of "the will to power." He saw clearly that no class can attain and maintain power unless it is virile. It is a travesty on the labor movement that after all these years of agitation and organisation so far labor has not yet produced an intellectual capable of teaching the masses "the will to power" so ably expounded to the rich by Nietzsche. It is true in Industrial Unionism we have "the will to industrial control" taking a concrete form; but this is only a small section of the workers. The great mass or herd, in spite of all the experiences of the past and the cheap literature of to-day, are doped with dogma, sophisticated with politics and bluffed by legality. Labor is also badly in need of a new table of values, at present most working men blindly believe in standard of morals (so-called) laid down for them by exploiters to further the interests of capitalists to the greater degradation of labor. The weakness of labor organisations lies in the psychology of the units; for that reason, if no other, another Nietzsche is badly needed to clarify our vision—transvalue all capitalistic values— and rejuvenate the ranks of labor with a new hope and a definite goal. Not merely the idea of gaining a little more freedom here, or a slight rise in wages there or a political sop somewhere else; but the hope that is born of knowledge—the faith that knows no fear—and the ideal that is born of the will to economic salvation. Nietzsche showed the way for the favored few. We can only live in hope that the hour will bring the man to do likewise for the many.

Direct Action (Sydney, NSW : 1914 - 1930), Saturday 24 June 1916, page 4

THE PROPHET OF THE "UEBERMENSCHEN"

That remarkable man, Friedreich W. Nietzsche, who died recently at Weimar at the comparatively early age of fifty-five, was a mad revolutionist, a destroyer of ideals, a breaker of idols. The son of a clergyman, his natural bent was towards religion, but the disease of his mind distorted his devotional instinct, and made him one of the fiercest and most scornful opponents of Christianity. He was predestined by heredity to be a great moral teacher, but fate cruelly set in his active brain the seeds of insanity, and made him a wanderer on the face of the earth, bringing him to a state of mental oblivion and blindness in the very prime of life. Nietzsche the Rebel, one of the strangest figures of modern times, was the symbol of latter-day unrest. He was all for destruction, without the capacity for raising a more solid, new edifice on the ruins he endeavoured to make of accepted   things. 

* * * 
Nietzsche sought to teach, but he could only destroy. His philosophy was altogether impractical. His was a violent view of life, expressed with violence and incoherence. His teaching was chaotic and conflicting. He kicked wildly over the traces of all accepted ethics and economics and religion, yet failed to formulate any new scheme of life and conduct, scornfully leaving the wreck he thought he had made of the Temple of Faith, sprinkling over the supposed debris a quantity of witty epigrams and shallow aphorisms, like momentary sparks from a quick-dying furnace. His creed has been described as the ruthless substitution of physiology, in the aspects conferred on it by Darwin and other thinkers, for religion and morality." Through the operation of merciless natural law, unrestrained by sympathy or pity, Nietzsche looked for the development of the " Uebermenschen," the beyond-men, the drastic improvement of the race. To this all was to be sacrificed.

*  *  *

"Physiology, as the criterion of value of what ever is human, whether called art, culture, or religion; physiology as the sole arbiter on what is great and what is small, what is good and what is bad." So is Nietzsche's teaching epitomised, and that teaching was given to the world by a system of audacious epigrams, which he called "Apothegms and Darts," of which the following are a few choice specimens : —

" When, one has one's wherefore of life, one gets along with almost every how.
The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a little sin; by way of test, in passing, turning round to look if anybody notices it, and in order that somebody may notice it.

We think woman deep. Why ? Because we never find any bottom in her. Woman is not even shallow.

Contentedness is a prophylactic even against catching cold. Has a woman who knew she was well dressed ever caught cold?—and that even when she was hardly dressed at all.

Formula of my happiness: A Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal."

* * * 

Nietzsche was a shallow thinker, the crazy high-priest of the "Uebermenschen," the "beyond men," who looked out into the void, where chaos dwells, and sought to create substance out of intangible ideals. He tried to make bricks without straw, and their very crumbling set him raging against the solid temples of faith, which still stood, unconscious of his puny attacks. The death of this strange man closes a chapter of pitiable human tragedy and gives to immortality a vexed soul who must have found many torturing philosophical puzzles unsolved beyond the grave. Nietzsche was troubled over many things; his temperament was in continuous conflict with his mind. His mind was ever searching for the ideal, but his nature was so intensely human as to make the cold, calm, analytical attitude of the philosopher impossible.

* * * 

In his early years, as a child, and as a youth Nietzsche was deeply religious, and, underlying all his vehement anti-Christian writing, still lay to the end of his life the slumbering but irradicable idea of a religious sentiment. It was as though he had found upon his idol some marks of the beast, and, in the savagery of his natural temperament, turned upon it to rend it. He could destroy his religious ideal, but, like most of the so-called modern philosophers, he could set up nothing on the vacant pedestal, employing himself merely in cursing the fallen idol of his undisciplined dreams.

* * *   

Nietzsche was by temperament, one of the ever-increasing army of revolters, of those whose scorn is for established things, merely because they were generally accepted. He would destroy. His nature prompted him to insane destruction, and he sought, with perverted justice, to excuse himself, which he did with an elaborateness which was merely obscured. He had a tendency to poetic imagination, but the poetic and the philosophical bent of mind are antagonistic in most minds. Only the greatest, as Plato, may be poets and philosophers at once. In Nietzsche the war of temperaments made only for noise and disorder.

* * *

That he had a genuine poetic sympathy is proved by many passages of great beauty, which may be found in his writings. His famous Clock Prayer from "Thus Spake Zarathustra." is so beautiful as to be worth quotation in this connection, even though it were the only quotation from Nietzsche for which space could be found. It pictures, with a sympathy in strange contrast to his usual attitude of strenuous activity, the yearning for eternal peace which the troubled spirit seeks first in sleep and then in death : —

THE CLOCK PRAYER.

One!—O man! Lose not sight

Two !—What saith the deep midnight?

Three!—I lay in sleep, in sleep ;

Four!—From deep dream I woke to light.

Five!—The world is deep,

Six !— And deeper than ever day thought it might,

Seven!—Deep is its woe

Eight!—And deeper still than woe—delight.

Nine!—Saith woe: Pass, go!

Ten!—Eternity's sought by all delight.

Eleven!—Eternity deep—by all delight!

Twelve!

* * *

Nietzsche sought to draw us back to the Pagan code of morals, to glorify the primitive humanity of the early Jews as set forth in tho Old Testament, and yet at the same time to find religion in the instincts of the individual. Consequently his teaching—if he may be said to have taught—is chaotic rather than suggestive.  He gives the student plenty of food for thought, yet fails to build up in his mind anything approaching a tangible reality of faith or belief Ruskin was a philosopher and a subtle one, yet his teaching is quite coherent, though mainly suggestive, for it is not a Law as Nietzsche tried to formulate but failed so direly. A study of Ruskin leaves in the mind a general scheme of conduct and thought, based on sympathy and beauty, which may almost be accepted as a religion.

* * *

The true philosopher, however, unlike Ruskin, unlike Schopenhauer, unlike Nietzsche is entirely impersonal. Plato, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Kant, have no individuality in their writings ; we are more concerned with their books than with their biographies. But Nietzsche protrudes not only his individual intellect, but his moral nature, his physical as well as his mental qualities, into his writings, and his egotism is all pervading. Were we to credit his own estimate of his powers, then Nietzsche is the truest of all philosophers, and his works are the greatest ever written. The true philosopher is impersonal; Nietzsche is the most personal of writers, as personal as Walt Whitman, and his philosophy is autobiographical, which is as much as to say that it is not practical philosophy at all.

* * *

A recent writer has said : "The simplest way of stating Nietzsche's teaching is to say that the struggle for existence, by tooth and claw, which has evolved man, is accepted by him as the sole principle of human progress. The victory of the strong is the supreme necessity; for the weak there shall he no mercy. It follows that Christianity, the religion of the protection or the weak, was in Nietzsche's eyes the supreme evil—'the collective insurrection against race of all the down-trodden, the wretched, the ill constituted, the misfortunate.' With an extraordinary and melancholy force he bewails the undoing by its agency of 'the whole labour of the Roman world,' which was working out the destinies of the race on the principle of breeding strong men and eliminating the feeble."

Nietzsche's revolt against Christianity was not a revolt against morality; it was a revolt against the practise of Christianity to-day. What is the meaning of 'the world'?" he asked. "Why, that man is a soldier, a judge, a patriot ; that he protects himself; that he stands on his honour; that he wishes his own advantage ; that he is proud—every practice, every movement, every instinct is to-day anti-Christian : what an abortion of fraud must the modern man be, that, in spite of all this, he is not ashamed to call himself a Christian."

* * *

Nietzsche is not the only writer, nor the only thinker, nor the only preacher, nor was he the first, any more than he will be the last, to find in modern conduct a denial of the true tenets of religion. From every pulpit of every faith in the world have issued, and must ever issue, appeals for the reform of worldly action, of the ideals of human life. As the tide of selfishness rolls on, there are found everywhere courageous men who seek to sweep it back, but to the hundreds of thousands of preachers and practisers of the Christian Gospel ideal to-day there is one Nietzsche the Mystic piping out amid the clamour of appealing voices his hollow aphorisms, not even convincing himself.  E.A.V.

Table Talk 25 October 1900

NIETZSCHE. DID HE MAKE THE WAR ?

HIS OPINION OF THE GERMANS

BY ARCHIBALD T. STRONG

During the last few weeks I have repeatedly heard the question asked how far Nietzsche may be held responsible for the present war. It cannot be seriously doubted that a vast body of German public opinion regards, or pretends to regard, it as a struggle after the very heart of him who scouted pity; as the most contemptible of the Christian "virtues," regarded war as one of the main activities of the Superman, and gave unto his chosen ones the supreme commandment "live dangerously."       
Before and since the outbreak of hostilities all sorts of queer statements have been made by public men in Germany from the Kaiser upwards, which sound to any true student of Nietzsche much as the notes of a great singer might sound when transmitted through some cheap and blaring megaphone. To the grotesque misapplication of Nietzsche's teaching regarding the transvaluation of all moral values is in large measure due the mean and cynical repudiation of national honor, which caused Germany to dismiss the Belgian treaty as "a scrap of paper," and to make to England the disgusting proposal that she should stand quietly by while her chief ally was robbed of her colonies.
Nietszche, again, had, in a certain context and with marked reservations, defended slavery, and had declared that the weaklings of this earth existed only for the sake of the Superman, that sovereign incarnation of the Will to Power. It is seemingly to a perverse misrendering of this precept by a hundred brutal militarists and professorial pedants, that we owe the German official policy of "Schrecklichkeit," or "awfulness," which has resulted in a succession of organised horrors probably unparalleled in the world's history.

RECENT ATROCITIES

If anyone still doubts these occurrences, I repeat, let him go up to the newspaper room at the Public Library and consult "The Times" of September 16 for the official report of the Belgian Commission on the behavior of the German army in Belgium. This testimony is confirmed up to the hilt by the special war correspondent of "Nash's Magazine," who, in the current number, describes a few of the horrors he has lately seen. The report just mentioned and the other reports of the Commission should be sufficient proof, of these things even for the most uncompromising Australian Anglophobe, or Teutophil.
I may add that I am not recurring to this subject because I like it, or be cause I, expect other people to like it. The details given are as odious to me as they must be to every normally constituted man or woman. My sole object is to point out to Australians that they have to expect this, and worse if worse were possible—should German troops ever set foot on English or Australian soil: and if I can help in nerving the heart and will of every Australian of fighting age to enlist at once, and make such a hideous contingency impossible, my purpose will have been amply served.

NIETZSCHE ON GERMANY.   

To return to our subject, we have for long been informed that modern Germany is steeped in Nietzsche's teaching, and that his influence has been especially strong in German universities, Gerhart Hauptmann, the leading German playwright of the day, in his contribution to the manifesto recently addressed to America by German writers, enlarged on the "culture"—convenient and elastic word!—of the German army, and said that it was common for a German soldier to go to the front with one of Nietzsche's masterpieces in his knapsack.
One is tempted to ask whether all Nietzsche's works are equally acceptable to the "cultured" spoilers, of Louvain, or whether any are placed on the index by the military censor. Certain it is that if the German army reads Nietzsche extensively, it must get some rude shocks. The following is a literal translation of a passage in Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo," and I would draw special attention to the last sentence:— 
Not only have the Germans entirely lost the breadth of vision which enables one to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture; not only are they one and all political (or church) puppets; but they have also factually put a ban upon this very breadth of vision. A man must first and foremost be German, he must belong to "the race"; then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values in history—then only can he establish them. To be German is itself an argument.
"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" is a principle. The Germans stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history. There is such a thing as writing history according to the lights of Imperial Germany there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history—there is also history written with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of himself. When I listen to such things I lose all patience, and I feel inclined I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience. Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies on their conscience.

SOME TERRIBLE INVECTIVE

The reference to Treitschke is interesting, and bears out what I stated a few weeks ago that in certain German Universities European history is "made to order" at the sweet will of the authorities, and that students are carefully  guarded from those truths which would lead them to favor a peace based on a fair view of their neighbors. But Nietzsche's loathing of the German character was vast, and various. As a writer in "The Times" has recently pointed out, one of his main causes for disliking Wagner was the fact that "he condescended to the Germans, and became German Imperialist."
Nietzsche expressly repudiates any identification of his own teaching with the spirit of modern Prussia, and instances as a sign of that Teutonic stupidity which he despised, the fact that his book, "Beyond God and Evil," was seriously regarded in Prussia as a genuine and typical example of "Junker-Philosophie." He thus repudiated by anticipation the exact misapplication with which I am now dealing. When living in Switzerland he almost hugs himself with joy at his remoteness from Germany.
The following extracts, one imagines, must have caused the volume which contains them — "Ecce Homo" —to weigh rather heavily in the Prussian knapsack:—

It is even part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a despiser of Germans. I express my suspicions of the German character even at the age of six-and-twenty (see "Thoughts Out of Season," Vol. II., pp. 164, 165). To my mind, the Germans are impossible. When I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a German. 

As Nietzsche continues to speak of the Germans, his language becomes "curiouser and curiouser":—

You can scarcely even fathom their depths —they haven't any, and that's the end of it. Thus they cannot even be called shallow. That which is called "deep" in Germany is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness to   wards oneself of which I have just spoken. Might I be allowed, perhaps, to suggest the word "German" as an international epithet denoting this psychological depravity?

And again: —
A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of Germans. The Germans have not the faintest idea of how vulgar they are; but this in itself is the acme of vulgarity—they are not even ashamed of being merely Germans.

It is not my present object either to justify or refute this estimate of the Germans; all that I wish to do is to point out that perhaps some of them are carrying more in their knapsack than they may be aware of.

GERMAN VANDALISM HATED

Enough has probably been said to show that to judge by Nietzsche's utterances, Germany on the whole is somewhat mistaken when she claims him for her prophet and seer, and claims that if he had been living today he would have favored the present war. An esteemed friend of mine has pointed out to me that Nietesche's love of beauty alone would have led him to repudiate utterly the nation which has destroyed Rheims Cathedral, and given to the flames the immemorial treasures of Louvain.
How utterly he detested this kind of thing may be gathered from a letter of his to Baron von Gersdorf, apropos of the German excesses In Paris and the burning of the Louvre in 1871.
The following sentences seem especially striking if read in relation to the crimes of two months ago:—

We shall do wrong if we consider with a peaceful conceit the unchaining of a war against culture, and if we impute the fault merely to the unfortunates who do the deed. When I heard of the firing of Paris I was for some days utterly powerless, lost in tears and doubts; the life of science, of philosophy, and of art appeared to me as an absurdity when I saw a single day suffice for the ruin of the finest works of art.

In his autobiographical notes of 1870 he writes:—"The War : my profoundest affliction, the burning of the Louvre." His biographer, M. Halévy, further tells us that when he heard the news he "walked the roads like a desperate man," and subsequently recalled his own words that "without discipline, without a hierarchy, culture cannot subsist."         

The love of beauty, too, beauty manifested in the moral sphere, would, certainly have kept him from sympathy with the recent German outrages on innocent human life. Transvaluer though he was of moral values, he never wavered in his allegiance to the noble, as he understood nobility, nor strove to transvalue it into the ignoble; and if ever there was a supremely ignoble act; it was surely the German invasion of Belgium. No, as far as the present war is concerned, Nietzsche must be treated as a hostile witness by Germany. I must postpone an analysis of his general teaching till a future article.

Weekly Times 2 January 1915

THE BURIED TEMPLE.

M. Maurice Maeterlinck, author of "The Buried Temple," is one of the newest of the Continental mystics, the representative of Belguim in the "'Perfectionist" school of philosophy—if, indeed, the Perfectionists, can be said to form a school, single and in divisible. For though Maeterlinck and Nietzsche resemble each other in this—that they find in the "perfecting" of the individual the highest good, the highest aim of human existence, in other respects they are as wide as the poles apart. And even such agreement as exists between them does not carry them very far. The perfectionism of Nietzsche was designed for the privileged few. That of Maeterlinck embraces mankind. But the methods also vary. With Maeterlinck, as with Goethe, self-culture, self-suppression, is the supreme good, But the perfectionism of Nietzsche is a development of Darwinian evolution, and is attainable by deliberate selection, or, at least, by the removal of all restrictions upon the working of human nature. If Nietzsche had had his way he would have killed off the unfit (or all whom he regarded as unfit) of the human race by some pleasantly euthanastic process, no doubt, but, anyhow, he would have them made an end of. There was no philanthropy in Nietzsche; no compassion for the weak, but only an ultra-pagan craving (God had no place in his philosophy at all) for physical and mental strength. Maeterlinck's philosophy on the other hand is founded on the innate desire of humanity for justice. Wrong is not made right because it is triumphant. Poland, Denmark, Finland, and other small communities, which through the ages have been the victims of superior force, directed by cupidity, have not, in Maeterlinck's opinion, proved their incapacity to survive under just conditions. These just conditions for nations and for individuals humanity is striving to realise, and the, author of "The Buried Temple" shows how the process may be expedited.

It is true that the book is not a philosophic treatise. As in his previous works, "The Life of the Bee," "The Treasure of the Humble," "Wisdom and Destiny," M. Maeterlinck (like Henry James, the novelist), conveys his meaning by oblique rather than by direct statement. This makes the meaning at times a little difficult to follow. But if the by-ways are somewhat intricate, the main road is clear. The '"buried temple" is the obscure basis of our personality, lying beneath our conscious states of willing, and thinking, and feeling:—

Within us is a being that is our veritable ego, our first-born, immemorial, illimitable, universal, and probably immortal. Our intellect, which is merely a kind of phosphorescence that plays on this inner sea, has as yet but faint knowledge of it. But our intellect is gradually learning that every secret of the human phenomena it has hitherto not understood must reside there, and there alone. This unconscious being lives on another plane than our intellect, in another world. It knows nothing of time and space, the two formidable but illusory walls between which our reason must flow if it would not be hopelessly lost. It knows no proximity, it knows no distance; past and future concern it not, or the resistance of matter. It is familiar with all things; there is nothing it cannot do. To this power, this knowledge, we have, indeed, at, all times accorded a certain varying recognition; we have given names to its manifestations, we have called them instinct, soul, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, reflex action, presentiment, intuition, etc. We credit it more especially with the indeterminate and often prodigious force contained in those of our nerves that do not directly serve to produce our will and our reason; a force that would appear to be the very fluid of life.

It is to this obscure basis and foundation of Self, underlying our conscious states our thoughts, our affections, that we must look for the ultimate solution of such problems as are involved in the range of chance, the oppression of destiny, the conflict of human opinion, and that curious thing called "luck," which plays so momentous a part in the cosmic drama. The minds of most people are more or less dominated by a belief in some unknown force or influence which sways every human life, and M. Maeterlinck is persuaded that the belief has some foundation. But he rejects the current definitions of this influence or force. He can no more accept the Christian explanation, which throws the responsibility for unmerited suffering or unmerited happiness upon a Higher Justice than he can the "Kismet" of the Mohammedans, or the "luck" which answered the purpose of a religious creed with Bret Harte's gambling hero. A man's destiny is to be read, not in external forces, but in his own character. If Judas goes forth tonight it is not under the impulse of some arbitrary, external force dominating his will, oppressing him, and torturing him in his own despite. He is driven not by the author of all evil, but by the character he has allowed to grow up out of his circumstances and opportunities, the fixed disposition of his mind, the settled trend of his will. Still there is a racial as well as an individual responsibility, for heredity plays no unimportant part in M. Maeterlinck's philosophy, and our characters are in part moulded by environment. But if we inherit the developed vices of our forefathers, we inherit their undeveloped virtues also. We have a choice between good and evil, and the power to make the choice. And hard as it may be to resist the influence of an evil environment the difficulty is not insurmountable. The task implies self-sacrifice, in smaller or greater measure, and though in framing his philosophy M. Maeterlinck disavows being under any obligation to Christianity or other creed, he is at one with the Great Teacher in holding virtue to be synonymous with self sacrifice, and to be impossible without it.

It is no virtue to refrain from robbing a till if you do not want the money. And there are degrees in virtue. Resistance to temptation is a lower form of virtue than the devotion which prompts the complete abnegation of self for the sake of kindred, or, still mere, of humanity. What is the touchstone of virtue? With M. Maeterlinck it is conformity to justice; and justice he defines as the prevention or cure of unmerited suffering. Justice is "the central jewel of the human soul;" but, alas! there is nothing less understood by mortal men:—

All men love justice, but not with the same ardent, fierce, and exclusive love; nor have they all the same scruples, the same sensitiveness, or the same deep conviction. We meet people of highly developed intellect in whom the sense of what is just and unjust is yet infinitely less delicate, less clearly marked, than in others whose intellect would seem to be mediocre; for here a great part is played by that little-known, ill-defined side of ourselves that we term character. And yet it is difficult to tell how much more or less unconscious intellect must of necessity go with the character that is unaffectedly honest. The point before us, however, is to learn how best to illumine, and increase within us, our desire for justice; and it is certain that, at the start, our character is less directly influenced by the desire for justice than is our intellect, the development of which this desire in a large measure controls; and the co-operation of the intellect, which recognises and encourages our good intentions, is necessary (or this intention to penetrate into and mould our character. That portion of our love of justice, therefore, which depends on our character, will benefit by its passage through the intellect; for in proportion as the intellect rises and acquires enlightenment, will it succeed in mastering, enlightening, and transforming our instincts and our feelings. But let us no longer believe that this love must be sought in a kind of superhuman, and often inhuman, infinite. None of the grandeur and beauty that this infinite may possess would fall to its portion it would only be incoherent, inactive, and vague. Whereas by seeking it in ourselves, where it truly is; by observing it there, listening to it, marking how it profits by every, acquirement of our mind, every joy and sorrow of our heart, we soon shall learn what we best had do to purify and increase it.

M. Maeterlinck speaks for "those who do not believe in the existence of a unique all powerful, infallible Judge, forever intent on our thoughts, our feelings, and actions, maintaining justice in this world, and completing it in the next." But of the reality of the "thing called justice" (whatever the origin) he has no doubt whatever. Its existence is proved by the retribution which falls upon those who neglect its dictates; as Napoleon paid tragically for his many acts of injustice, including the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, the intrigues which led to the robbery of the Spanish crown, and the "frightful, unpardonable Russian campaign":—

We are punished because our entire moral being, our mind no less than our character, is incapable of living and acting except in justice. Leaving that, we leave our natural element; we are carried, as it were, into a planet of which we know nothing, where the ground slips from under our feet, and all things disconcert us; for while the humblest intellect feels itself at home injustice, and can readily foretell the consequence of every just act, the most profound and penetrating mind loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itself has created, and can form no conception of what results shall ensue. The man of genius who forsakes the equity that the humble peasant has at heart will find all paths strange to him; and these will be stranger still should he overstep the limit his own sense of justice imposes; for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect, creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the same time strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancient barriers of instinct. The moment we cross the primitive frontier of equity all things seem to fail us; one falsehood gives birth to a hundred, and treachery returns to us through a thousand channels.

But how changeable, and, at present, illusory is the ideal of justice!:—

It is lessened by all that is still unknown to us in the universe, by all that we do not perceive or perceive incompletely, by all that we question too superficially. It is hedged round by the most insidious dangers; it falls victim to the strangest oblivion, the most inconceivable blunders. Of all our ideals, it is the one that we should watch with the greatest care and anxiety, with the most passionate, pious eagerness, and solicitude. What seems irreproachably just to us at the moment is probably the merest fraction of what would seem just could we shift our point of view. We need only compare what we were doing yesterday with what we do to-day; and what we do to-day would appear full of faults against equity, were it granted to us to rise still higher, and compare it with what we shall do tomorrow. There needs but a passing event, a thought that rises, a duty to ourselves that takes definite form, an unexpected responsibility that is suddenly made clear, for the whole organisation of our inward justice to totter and be transformed. Slow as our advance may have been, we still should find it impossible to begin life, over again in the midst of many a sorrow whereof we were the involuntary cause, many a discouragement to which we unconsciously gave rise; and yet, when these things came into being around us, we appeared to be in the right, and did not consider ourselves unjust. And even so are we convinced to-day of our excellent intentions, even so do we tell ourselves that we are the cause of no suffering and no tears, that we stay not a murmur of happiness, shorten no moment of peace or of love; and it may be that there passes, unperceived of us, to our right or our left, an illimitable injustice that spreads over three fourths of our life.

The truth is that the ideal of justice is progressive. In the least advanced of the human races glimmerings of it are to be found, and though the existence of abject poverty beside limitless wealth, "the great injustice of life," is one proof to M. Maeterlinck that the "proper relation of justice with conduct" is still imperfectly understood, the "central jewel of the human soul" does shine with lustre of a kind. It is found at the heart of our every ideal. It is at the centre of our love of beauty. It is kindness and pity, it is generosity, heroism, love; for all these are the acts of justice of one who has risen sufficiently high to perceive that justice and injustice are not exclusively confined to what lies before him, to the narrow circle of obligations chance may have imposed, but that they stretch far beyond years, beyond neighboring destinies, beyond what he regards as his duty, beyond what he loves, beyond what he seeks and encounters, beyond what he approves or rejects, beyond his doubts and his fears, beyond the wrong-doing and even the crimes of the men, his brothers.

The Advertiser 28/6/1902,