Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/131



turning to Nietzsche's attitude to morals in this period, I find it convenient to distinguish between his views about morality and his own moral views. For morality may be taken as an historical phenomenon like any other, and studied and analyzed; and it is in fact the critical analysis of morality as an objective fact in history which now chiefly engages him. At the same time he puts forth ethical views of his own to a limited extent.

First, then, as to historical morality. Here too as in the theoretic realm he comes on elements of illusion. Man thinks he is free, and thereby distinguished from the animal world; notions of responsibility, of desert, of guilt, habits of praising and blaming, of rewarding and punishing, arise. But Nietzsche sees no way out of determinism. Causes lie behind human actions as behind all other events in nature. That in given circumstances a given individual might have acted otherwise than as he did is something he cannot admit; and it is only turning this around to say that the consciousness of freedom is illusory. Kant and Schopenhauer had saved themselves from this consequence by postulating a metaphysical being for man—saying that while as a phenomenon in time his actions are determined, his real being is timeless and not subject to the laws of phenomenal succession. But Nietzsche has now left metaphysical views behind (at least, they no longer count for him)—and this way of escape is not open. undefined

Seeing illusion in free-will is nothing novel, undefined and if there is any novelty in Nietzsche's procedure at this point, it is in the thoroughgoing way in which he follows up the consequences of the admission. I mention them simply as he states them—and he hardly more than states them, deeming extended