716 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



full of danger and battle and pain and cruelty. In this he agrees with 

 Schopenhauer. He is not an optimist in the sense of finding everything 

 pleasant and easy and good; it is not a world of sunshine and per- 

 petual joy in which we are living, but a battlefield, a terrible battlefield 

 reeking with blood. But Nietzsche does not conclude from this that 

 we should therefore negate life, that we should fly from it, that we 

 should renounce the world, that we should throw down our arms and 

 give up the fight. All pessimism is a sign of decadence, the expression 

 of a weak will, of a degenerate instinct. The strong and healthy man 

 wills to live — in spite of all suffering and sorrow he wills to live, yes, 

 as we have seen, these very sorrows he makes the means of an intenser, 

 fuller life. " Praised be what makes us hard ! I do not praise the 

 land where milk and honey flow/' Nietzsche's pessimism is a spur 

 to the will ; " with this will in our breast we do not fear the terrible 

 and questionable in all existence, we seek it out." " How did I endure 

 it/' he asks, " how did I recover from such wounds ? How did my soul 

 again rise up out of these graves ? Yea, there is something in me that 

 can not be wounded, that can not be buried, something that can move 

 mountains : that is my will. — Yea, thou art still the destroyer of all my 

 graves : Hail to thee my will ! And only where there are graves can 

 there be resurrections." 



And because the desire for life and power means self-assertion, will- 

 action, the realization of instincts, asceticism or renunciation or the 

 suppression of instinct is bad. Non-being can not be the goal. 

 Asceticism is a symptom of exhaustion, of weakness of will and degen- 

 eracy. There are many forms of asceticism, but all of them ask man 

 to negate his natural instincts, to cease desiring or willing, to do the 

 very thing which according to our philosopher will hinder the realiza- 

 tion of life and the higher type of man. " That, however, the ascetic 

 ideal has meant so much for man is an expression of the fundamental 

 fact of the human will : its horror vacui; it needs a goal — and it would 

 rather will the nothing than not to will at all." But deliverance from 

 life, negation of the will, nirvana, is not the goal, but life, more life. 

 Only when asceticism furthers life, when it makes the will stronger, 

 when it serves as a gymnastic of will, is it good. 



Let us now turn to Nietzsche's anti-democratic teachings and see 

 how they follow from his fundamental principle. If life and power 

 are the ideal, then the strong wills, the great personalities, the higher 

 types of man, the happy few, are better than the many, the masses, the 

 weaklings, the failures, the degenerates. Men are not equal, and it is 

 impossible for them to be made equal. The democratic ideal of equality 

 is a dream. " There is no more venomous poison than the doctrine of 

 equality, for it seems to be preached by justice itself when in fact it is 

 the end of all justice." The equality-theory would make of man a 

 dwarf-animal of equal rights and privileges. The herd, of course, is 



