Reference: The Story of Philosophy
This paper presents Chapter IX Section 2 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.
The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.
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II. Youth
Nevertheless, his father was a minister; a long line of clergymen lay behind each of his parents; and he himself remained a preacher to the end. He attacked Christianity because there was so much of its moral spirit in him; his philosophy was an attempt to balance and correct, by violent contradiction, an irresistible tendency to gentleness and kindness and peace; was it not the final insult that the good people of Genoa should call him Il Santo—“the Saint”? His mother was a pious and Puritan lady, of the same sort that had fostered Immanuel Kant; and, with perhaps one disastrous exception, Nietzsche remained pious and Puritan, chaste as a statue, to the last: therefore his assault on Puritanism and piety. How he longed to be a sinner, this incorrigible saint!
Nietzsche attacked Christianity because there was so much of its moral spirit in him; his philosophy was an attempt to balance and correct, by violent contradiction, an irresistible tendency to gentleness and kindness and peace.
He was born at Rocken, Prussia, on October 15, 1844,—which happened to be the birthday of the reigning Prussian king, Frederick William IV. His father, who had tutored several members of the royal family, rejoiced at this patriotic coincidence, and named the boy after the King. “There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day for my birth; my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing.”
The early death of his father left him a victim to the holy women of the household, who petted him into an almost feminine delicacy and sensibility. He disliked the bad boys of the neighborhood, who robbed birds’ nests, raided orchards, played soldier, and told lies. His school-mates called him “the little minister,” and one of them described him as “a Jesus in the Temple.” It was his delight to seclude himself and read the Bible, or to read it to others so feelingly as to bring tears to their eyes. But there was a hidden nervous stoicism and pride in him: when his school-fellows doubted the story of Mutius Scaevola he ignited a batch of matches in the palm of his hand and let them lie there till they were burnt out. It was a typical incident: all his life long he was to seek physical and intellectual means of hardening himself into an idealized masculinity. “What I am not, that for me is God and virtue.”
Nietzsche’s delight was to seclude himself and read the Bible, or to read it to others so feelingly as to bring tears to their eyes. All his life long he was to seek physical and intellectual means of hardening himself into an idealized masculinity.
At eighteen he lost his faith in the God of his fathers, and spent the remainder of his life looking for a new deity; he thought he found one in the Superman. He said later that he had taken the change easily; but he had a habit of easily deceiving himself, and is an unreliable autobiographer. He became cynical, like one who had staked all on a single throw of the dice, and had lost; religion had been the very marrow of his life, and now life seemed empty and meaningless. He passed suddenly into a period of sensual riot with his college mates at Bonn and Leipzig, and even overcame the fastidiousness that had made so difficult for him the male arts of smoking and drinking. But soon wine, woman and tobacco disgusted him; he reacted into a great scorn of the whole bier gemuthlichkeit (beer coziness) of his country and his time; people who drank beer and smoked pipes were incapable of clear perception or subtle thought.
At eighteen Nietzsche lost his faith in the God of his fathers. He passed suddenly into a period of sensual riot with his college mates at Bonn and Leipzig. But soon wine, woman and tobacco disgusted him as it made one incapable of clear perception or subtle thought.
It was about this time, in 1865, that he discovered Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea, and found in it “a mirror in which I espied the world, life, and my own nature depicted with frightful grandeur.” He took the book to his lodgings, and read every word of it hungrily. “It seemed as if Schopenhauer were addressing me personally. I felt his enthusiasm, and seemed to see him before me. Every line cried aloud for renunciation, denial, resignation.” The dark color of Schopenhauer’s philosophy impressed itself permanently upon his thought: and not only when he was a devoted follower of “Schopenhauer as Educator” (the title of one of his essays), but even when he came to denounce pessimism as a form of decadence, he remained at bottom an unhappy man, whose nervous system seemed to have been carefully designed for suffering, and whose exaltation of tragedy as the joy of life was but another self-deception. Only Spinoza or Goethe could have saved him from Schopenhauer; but though he preached aequanimitas (calmness) and amor fati (love of fate), he never practiced them; the serenity of the sage and the calm of the balanced mind were never his.
When Nietzsche read, World as Will and Idea, the dark color of Schopenhauer’s philosophy impressed itself permanently upon his thought. Though he preached calmness and love of fate, the serenity of the sage and the calm of the balanced mind were never his.
At the age of twenty-three he was conscripted into military service. He would have been glad to get exemption as near-sighted and the only son of a widow, but the army claimed him nevertheless; even philosophers. were welcomed as cannon-fodder in the great days of Sadowa and Sedan. However, a fall from a horse so wrenched his breast-muscles that the recruiting-sergeant was forced to yield up his prey. Nietzsche never quite recovered from that hurt. His military experience was so brief that he left the army with almost as many delusions about soldiers as he had had on entering it; the hard Spartan life of commanding and obeying, of endurance and discipline, appealed to his imagination, now that he was free from the necessity of realizing this ideal himself; he came to worship the soldier because his health would not permit him to become one.
At the age of twenty-three Nietzsche was conscripted into military service. He was soon discharged because of a fall from a horse. The hard Spartan life of commanding and obeying, of endurance and discipline, appealed to his imagination, and he came to worship the ideal of a soldier.
From military life he passed to its antipodes—the academic life of a philologist; instead of becoming a warrior he became a Ph.D. At twenty-five he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at the University of Basle, from whose safe distance he could admire the bloody ironies of Bismarck. He had queer regrets on taking up this unheroically sedentary work: on the one hand he wished he had gone into a practical and active profession, such as medicine; and at the same time he found himself drawn towards music. He had become something of a pianist, and had written sonatas; “without music,” he said, “life would be a mistake.”
Nietzsche passed to the academic life of a philologist; and he was appointed to the chair of classical philology at the University of Basle. He found himself drawn towards music.
Not far from Basle was Tribschen, where that giant of music, Richard Wagner, was living with another man’s wife. Nietzsche was invited to come and spend his Christmas there, in i869. He was a warm enthusiast for the music of the future, and Wagner did not despise recruits who could lend to his cause something of the prestige that goes with scholarship and universities. Under the spell of the great composer, Nietzsche began to write his first book, which was to begin with the Greek drama and end with The Ring of the Nibelungs, preaching Wagner to the world as the modern AeschyIus. He went up into the Alps to write in peace, far from the madding crowd; and there, in 1870, came to him the news that Germany and France had gone to war.
Through music Nietzsche became friends with Richard Wagner. This association inspired to write his first book, The Ring of the Nibelungs. Then came to him the news that Germany and France had gone to war.
He hesitated; the spirit of Greece, and all the muses of poetry and drama and philosophy and music had laid their consecrating hands upon him. But he could not resist the call of his country; here was poetry too. “Here,” he wrote, “you have the state, of shameful origin; for the greater part of men a well of suffering that is never dried, a flame that consumes them in its frequent crises. And yet when it calls, our souls become forgetful of themselves; at its bloody appeal the multitude is urged to courage and uplifted to heroism.” At Frankfort, on his way to the front, he saw a troop of cavalry passing with magnificent clatter and display through the town; there and then, he says, came the perception, the vision, out of which was to grow his entire philosophy. “I felt for the first time that the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower!” Bad eyesight disqualified him from active soldiering, and he had to be content with nursing; and though he saw horrors enough, he never knew the actual brutality of those battlefields which his timid soul was later to idealize with all the imaginative intensity of inexperience. Even for nursing he was too sensitively delicate; the sight of blood made him ill; he fell sick, and was sent home in ruins. Ever afterward he had the nerves of a Shelley and the stomach of a Carlyle; the soul of a girl under the armor of a warrior.
He left the muses of poetry and drama for the call of his country. He went to the front where he had to be content with nursing. He was too sensitive and was sent home in ruins. But out of this experience came his philosophy that the strongest and highest Will to Life does not find expression in a miserable struggle for existence, but in a Will to War, a Will to Power, a Will to Overpower!
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