Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/699

 THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL NIETZSCHEISM 685

where rigorous justice is demanded too often overlook. But humanity is far from being in any immediate danger of erring on the side of altruism and carrying the exercise of sympathy to the point where social discipline is imperiled. To quote from another chapter of Mr. Spencer's Psychology:

.... It was pointed out that during the struggle for existence among societies, originally very intense and even now by no means ended, the con- ditions have been such as to make imperative the readiness to inflict pain, and have correspondingly repressed fellow-feeling. It may here be added that, beyond this checking of the sympathies which the antagonisms of societies have necessitated and still necessitate, there has been a checking of them consequent on the struggle for existence within each society. Not only does this struggle for existence involve the necessity that personal ends must be pursued with little regard to the evils entailed on unsuccessful competitors ; but it also involves the necessity that there shall be not too keen a sympathy with that diffused suffering inevitably accompanying this industrial battle. Clearly, if there were so quick a sympathy for this suffering as to make it felt in anything like its real greatness and intensity, life would be rendered intolerable to all. Familiarity with the marks of misery necessarily produces (or rather maintains) a proportionate indifference ; and this is as inevitable a concomitant of the bloodless competition among members of a society as it is an inevitable concomitant of the bloody competition between societies.

It is hardly necessary to preach to modern societies the strenuous life. Verily, the danger of enervation, impairment of physical and mental vigor from prolonged peace, and the cultivation of charity and mercy, is rather remote. The appre- hension of the few conscious and many unconscious disciples of Nietzsche on this score would be inexpressibly comical if it did not excite a feeling of bitterness and disgust. We do not love one another too much ; personal, national, and social egoism needs no artificial stimulation. An altrurian looking down and seeing the militarism of Europe and even America, the wars and preparations for war, the furious rivalry, the aggressive self- assertion, the struggle for markets and colonies, would never imagine that civilization was threatened by too literal an applica- tion of the religious and ethical doctrines of the Bible.

In truth, if what is best in modern civilization is in jeopardy ; if the advance of humanity is seriously called in question by earnest thinkers ; if the twentieth century opens in gloom and