In a letter to The New Age, 26.4 (27 November 1919), p. 63, Arnold Lunn fires off some aphoristic reflections on human nature in Nietzsche’s direction. I present the text with some light proofreading, including those emendations Lunn himself suggests in a letter to the same paper, 26.5 (4 December 1919), p. 83.
Dr. Levy, I see, appeals to The New Age for a re-opening of the Nietzsche controversy. If I jot down some random thoughts that have been circulating in my head the last few days, some disciple of Nietzsche may, perhaps, rise up and inaugurate the controversy over my corpse.
Nietzsche and Health
Nietzsche’s view of life was determined by the reaction of a
tough assertive nature against severe and long-sustained bodily pain: that is,
Nietzsche was always biting an aching tooth. The more the tooth hurt the harder
he bit, and to emphasise his indomitable nature he insisted that he was
destined to bite his tooth, in successive reincarnations, throughout eternity.
Anyone who consoled himself for an aching tooth by the hope of another
existence, untroubled by toothache, was—ow!—and Nietzsche would bite harder
than ever.
From a man on the rack a healthy undistorted view of life is
not to be expected.
Nietzsche and Humour
Nietzsche had great wit, but no humour. He disliked
Cervantes’ Don Quixote, because he was himself Don Quixote, great of
heart, but crazed and fatuously egotistical. (Don Quixote, by the way, has been
sentimentalised by modern taste into an altruist.)
Nietzsche and Poetry
Nietzsche ground out some good verses, but, on the whole,
this affirmer of life did not understand the best thing in life. His remarks on
Shakespeare are worthless, and he ranked Manfred above Faust.
Nietzsche’s Superman
The superman of Nietzsche is a curious compound of Jesus
Christ, Caesar Borgia, and Lord Chesterfield. He is the ideal of a boy’s fancy.
When Ouida is truer to life than Cervantes, the superman will appear on earth.
Nietzsche and Envy
Nietzsche speaks of envy as the mark of the slave-nature.
Shakespeare with a deeper insight reveals in Iago the connection between envy
and the Will to Power. Napoleon making himself unpleasant to beautiful women at
a ball is Napoleon ill at ease, and therefore envious, and therefore malignant.
Just as the great man is capable of envy, so the mob are
capable of admiration. Had Nietzsche visited a cinema, he would have learnt
that the envious slaves who compose the mass of mankind love nothing better
than the representation of wealth and luxury. “All things are double, the one
against the other”: envy is always balanced by admiration.
Nietzsche’s Merriment
Nietzsche would have disliked the phrase “infectious
laughter.” The laughter of his superman is designed to intimidate the masses.
Nietzsche and Popular Phrases
Nietzsche was, fortunately for his peace of mind, unaware
that the mass of mankind is far more Nietzschean than Christian in sentiment.
“Grin and bear it” is pure Nietzscheanism. “He hasn’t any ‘devil’ in him”
ought, if Nietzsche judged life rightly, to be a phrase of whining commendation.
The girls who admire Becky Sharp more than Amelia Sedley,
the boys who play at pirates instead of enacting a miniature Oberammergau play,
furnish further proofs of Nietzsche’s misapprehension of human nature.
Nietzsche was inept in his relations with men, and still
more inept in his relations with women. His work suffers from his inadequacy to
the problems of ordinary life. It seems as if he wished to balance his personal
shortcomings by verbal aggressiveness, insolence, and overstrained
self-assertion.
None the less, he had flashes of extraordinary insight. He
will always be a stimulus to thought. But those who take him as their master
will lose some qualities important for those who wish to understand life,
balance, good humour, and that love of others which is quite compatible with
regret that they are not sufficiently intelligent to appreciate their
inferiority to oneself.
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