Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/721

Rh faster!" "What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity with all failures and weaklings." "War and courage have done more great things than love of neighbor. Not your pity, but your courage, has saved the unfortunate thus far. What is good? To be brave is good. Let the little girls say: good is what is both pretty and touching." "There is a stage of morbid softness and effeminacy in the history of society at which it even takes the part of him who injures it, the criminal. To punish—that somehow seems unjust to it—it is certain that the notion of 'punishment' of a 'duty' to punish, causes it pain, terrifies it.—Is it not enough to render him harmless? Why punish anyhow? Punishment is so terrible."

Pity therefore is bad because it hinders the realization of the ideal: the development of the will for power, the creation of strong men, of great individuals, of powerful personalities. It is not an admirable quality, but characteristic of base, petty souls, of weaklings and decadents. It increases misery and suffering, and diminishes life-energy, and by so much weakens the desire for life and power. It hinders the weak from being eliminated as they ought to be, and so interferes with the proper working of the law of life: the destruction of everything that is not worth saving. Yes, it even preserves the sick, the weak, the failures, the decadents, the degenerates, and makes the world uglier, an eye-sore to the strong and efficient. Pity is a temptation and a danger. "We should put the rein to our hearts; for when we let them go, how they run away with our heads. Alas! where in the world do greater follies happen than among those who pity? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the pitying?—Myself I sacrifice to my love and my neighbor as myself—that is the word of all creators. All creators, however, are hard."

Egoism is worth just as much as the person is physiologically worth who has it. Every individual represents the whole line of development. If he is an advance on this line, then his value is extraordinary, and the care for his preservation and for favorable conditions of his growth may be extreme. But if he represents a retrogression, decay, chronic disease, he has little value, and it is only fair that he take away as little elbow-room and power and sunshine from the sound and healthy ones as possible. In this case society has for its task the repression of egoism. From this point of view a doctrine and religion of love, of repression of egoism, of forbearance, of resignation, can have the highest value because it teaches the weak and sick to keep out of the way of the strong, to let themselves be ruled by the strong. But it must not be forgotten that altruism is a symptom of weakness; the weak and feeble preach love of neighbor and benevolence because they need help themselves. The worship of altruism is a form of egoism; it is the egoism of the failures.

We see, Nietzsche portrays the world as a terrible thing. Life is