Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/523

Rh but its rights come in time to be recognized, and duties to it too (cf. Genealogy etc., II, § 17).

undefined In another passage (Will to Power, § 738) he speaks differently, "Every power which prohibits and knows how to awaken fear in the person whom the prohibition affects, produces 'bad conscience' (that is, an impulse to something with a consciousness of the dangerousness of satisfying it and of the necessity thence of secrecy, by-ways, precaution). Every prohibition produces a worse character, in those who do not willingly obey it, but are only forced." But here "bad conscience" is little more than fear.

undefined The worth of Nietzsche's analysis of the general idea of a moral order is sometimes recognized in theological circles. Weinel gives up the idea, remarking, "Actually this form of faith in God occupies the whole foreground of our religious teaching, so that not only the pastor and the religious teacher … but also professors of philosophy and of theology, regard it as the Christian conception. And even our 'atheists,' who no longer believe in God, think that they can still believe in the phantom of this 'moral world-order.' But it is a phantom, and Nietzsche has recognized it as such rightly, and perhaps with more penetration than any one else in our whole generation" (op. cit., p. 197).

undefined The idea that there must be wrong somewhere to account for suffering is given a curious turn by those who charge up their troubles to other people and find a certain easement thereby. Nietzsche notes the way in which socialists and modern decadents generally hold the upper classes or the Jews or the social order or the system of education responsible for the state in which they find themselves: they want to fasten guilt somewhere (Will to Power, § 765). One thinks of Matthew Arnold's subtle line, "With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily."

undefined Nietzsche dissents also from the metaphysical manipulation of "ought," which makes it a means of reaching a transcendental order of things, i.e., "transcendental freedom" in the Kantian and Schopenhauerian sense (Will to Power, § 584; Twilight of the Idols, v, § 6).

undefined It is true that Nietzsche has occasional satirical reflections on the impulse to obey; cf., on the Germans, Dawn of Day, § 207; Werke, XIII, 344-5, § 855; and, generally, Werke, XI, 214-5, § 141; Joyful Science, § 5. And there can be no question that the impulse to command ranks higher than that to obey. All the same, he recognizes the organic place of obedience in the scheme of things.

undefined In what seems a similar spirit John Dewey finds distinctions between men vanishing, when their common "birth and destiny in nature" is remembered. Democracy appears in his eyes accordingly as "neither a form of government nor a social philosophy, but a metaphysic of the relation of man and his experience to nature" (Hibbert Journal, July, 1911, pp. 777-8). This is democracy with a vengeance!

undefined Cf. the language to the working-class of an American socialist poet (Arthur Giovanitti): Think, think! while breaks in you the dawn.
 * Crouched at your feet the world lies still.

It has no power but your brawn.
 * It has no wisdom but your will.

Beyond your flesh and mind and blood.
 * Nothing there is to live and do.

There is no man, there is no God,
 * There is not anything but you."