Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/110

94 can certain branches of the mental sciences be called natural? Beginning with psychology, we find that it has to do only with the nature of man in the sense of the term established above. On the one hand, it establishes laws, types, and peculiarities of the stream of consciousness; and, regarded from the side of content, it has to do with such conscious processes as belong absolutely to the nature of man. The other branches of mental science, such as sociology, ethnology, etc., can also be put down among the natural sciences, at least from their general character and tendency, if not from their actual content.

The philosophy of Zarathoustra is far from being in tune with modern progress. Nietzsche attempts to explain every act of man by the will to be powerful, to overcome obstacles. He adopts Schopenhauer's theory of the will and combines it with Darwin's theory of universal struggle. Individuals are for him centers of will, each one aspiring to be all and to appropriate all. Nietzsche's error lies in his neglect to analyze and fathom the idea of life on which he bases his doctrine of morals. Guyau points out the error. He shows that, if we take Nietzsche's view of 'the will to live, to be powerful,' we are obliged to look for the foundations of morality, first, in the domain of causality, not in that of finality; in the domain of the actually existent desire, not in that of the desirable; and, secondly, in the common domain of the conscious and the unconscious, which is precisely the basis of life. Guyau here seems to be in the right. We cannot, as Nietzsche has done, ignore voluntary aim and the desirable, subjecting all to instinct, to blind will. Nietzsche bids us give ourselves up to the natural evolution of events, to blindly struggle for existence. Both Nietzsche and Guyau regard the ethics of life as an ethics of intensity and vital expansion, but they take entirely different points of view. Nietzsche saw only the natural law of division and opposition; he did not see the more fundamental law of union and harmony. Guyau emphasizes the fact that struggle does not prevent harmony; there should be a 'coincidence' between finality and causality; there should be an organic union, a fusion of the individual and the universal.

Nietzsche has given to the world the new problem of immoralism, but H. Heine should be regarded as a precursor of the movement. Moralism is the subordination of the individual to the ends of the race. The conception of the social group is an abstraction which must give way to the individual. The terms immoralism and individualism can be identified. Immoralism is an attempt to displace the false teleology of the race by emphasizing the rights and ends of the individual. Nietzsche opposes