Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/78

62 impulses of human nature are, as he held with Schopenhauer, the theoretic, the creative or artistic, and the moral—impulses which yield, when they come to any sort of fruition, the philosopher, the artist, and the saint,—the aim is the production in humanity of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint, and not merely as we sometimes find them, but in the fullness and perfection of their idea. We all have in us that which is kindred to these types, and this is why we long for them, and, as it were, see ourselves in them, when any approximation to them passes before our eyes. Yes, they are what nature in a blind way is groping after; they are the final goal of the creative process, the delivering, redeeming agencies not only for us, but for the World-Will itself—if we intelligently strive for them, we to this extent co-operate with nature and help to make up for her shortcomings and mistakes.

Such is the perspective in which life is seen by Nietzsche. As most of us live it, it is not its own end; men, as we ordinarily find them, have no great value on their own account. Striving simply for comfort, happiness, success is a sorry mistake. Our lives have significance only as they reach out after something beyond them. To speak of man's dignity per se, of his rights as man, is to deceive ourselves; he acquires these only as he serves something higher than himself, as he helps in the production of the "genius"—this being a common term for the philosopher, the artist, and the saint. Life as ordinarily lived is on little more than an animal level. Nietzsche draws a striking picture of what our histories and sociologies reveal to us—the vast wanderings back and forth on the earth, the building of cities and states, the restless accumulating and spending, the competing with one another, the imitating of one another, the outwitting of one another and trampling on one another, the cries in straits, and the shouts of joy in victory: it is all to him a continuation of our animality, a senseless and oppressive thing. And yet the whole picture changes when he thinks of men as animated by an aim like that which he projects. Then the most ordinary and imperfect would gain significance and worth. Though still