PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDRICH .NIETZSCHE. 721 



deny/' he says, " that many acts which are called immoral are to be 

 avoided and combatted, likewise that many which are called moral 

 ought to be performed and encouraged — but I think these acts ought 

 to be performed or avoided for different reasons from those given 

 hitherto." Nor does Nietzsche preach a code of license and caprice. 

 His ideal man is not a man of license, an unrestrained force, a wild 

 and lawless savage. He does not wish to bring back the ' blonde beast ' 

 of early times, the ' human beast of prey,' the tyrant, the despot, the 

 usurper. " The noble man," he says, " honors in himself the man of 

 power, the man also who has power over himself, the man who can 

 speak and keep silent, who delights in being strict and hard with him- 

 self and has respect for strictness and hardness everywhere. Confidence 

 in oneself, pride in oneself, belong to aristocratic morality." " As soon 

 as the noble or aristocratic soul is clear on the question of rank, he 

 moves among his equals and those having equal privileges with the 

 same confidence and gentle reverence which he reveals in his inter- 

 course with himself — he honors himself in them and in the rights which 

 he grants them, he does not doubt that the exchange of honors and 

 rights constitutes the essence of all intercourse and the natural condi- 

 tion of things." What is freedom ? " That we have the will to 

 take responsibility. That we keep the distance which separates us. 

 That we become more and more indifferent to toil, hardness, privation, 

 yes even to life itself. That we be ready to sacrifice to our cause human 

 beings, ourselves not excluded. Freedom means that the manly, the 

 warlike and the triumphant instincts dominate the other instincts, for 

 example, the instincts for ' happiness.' " The ideal of personality can 

 only be realized by self-discipline. All morality is a long compulsion. 

 " You ought to obey some one or other and for a long time, otherwise 

 you will go to pieces and lose your self-respect." When you obey your- 

 self, when you are a law unto yourself, then you are a free man. Your 

 act should be your act, the expression of your personality, your self 

 ought to be in it as the mother is in her child. Those are commanded 

 who can not obey themselves, who can not control themselves. " Alas ! 

 there is so much lust for fame ! There are so many convulsions of 

 ambition ! Show me that you are not one of the lustful and ambitious ! 

 Alas! there are so many big ideas, they do nothing but inflate 

 like bellows: they blow up and make more empty. You call yourself 

 free? Your controlling idea let me hear and not that you have shaken 

 off a yoke. Are you one of those who had the right to throw off the 

 yoke? There is many a man who threw away his last worth when he 

 threw away his obedience. Free from what? What does Zarathustra 

 care for that ! Clearly however your eye shall tell me : Free for 

 what ? " 



A great man, a heroic man, a good man, is better than a weakling, 



vol. lxvii. — 46. 



