Chapter XLIX. The Bedwarfing Virtue.

This requires scarcely any comment. It is a satire on modern man and his belittling virtues. In verses 23 and 24 of the second part of the discourse we are reminded of Nietzsche’s powerful indictment of the great of to-day, in the Antichrist (Aphorism 43):—“At present nobody has any longer the courage for separate rights, for rights of domination, for a feeling of reverence for himself and his equals,—FOR PATHOS OF DISTANCE.... Our politics are MORBID from this want of courage!—The aristocracy of character has been undermined most craftily by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the ‘privilege of the many,’ makes revolutions and WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE them, it is Christianity, let us not doubt it, it is CHRISTIAN valuations, which translate every revolution merely into blood and crime!” (see also “Beyond Good and Evil”, pages 120, 121). Nietzsche thought it was a bad sign of the times that even rulers have lost the courage of their positions, and that a man of Frederick the Great’s power and distinguished gifts should have been able to say: “Ich bin der erste Diener des Staates” (I am the first servant of the State.) To this utterance of the great sovereign, verse 24 undoubtedly refers. “Cowardice” and “Mediocrity,” are the names with which he labels modern notions of virtue and moderation. In Part III., we get the sentiments of the discourse “In the Happy Isles”, but perhaps in stronger terms. Once again we find Nietzsche thoroughly at ease, if not cheerful, as an atheist, and speaking with vertiginous daring of making chance go on its knees to him. In verse 20, Zarathustra makes yet another attempt at defining his entirely anti-anarchical attitude, and unless such passages have been completely overlooked or deliberately ignored hitherto by those who will persist in laying anarchy at his door, it is impossible to understand how he ever became associated with that foul political party. The last verse introduces the expression, “THE GREAT NOONTIDE!” In the poem to be found at the end of “Beyond Good and Evil”, we meet with the expression again, and we shall find it occurring time and again in Nietzsche’s works. It will be found fully elucidated in the fifth part of “The Twilight of the Idols”; but for those who cannot refer to this book, it were well to point out that Nietzsche called the present period—our period—the noon of man’s history. Dawn is behind us. The childhood of mankind is over. Now we KNOW; there is now no longer any excuse for mistakes which will tend to botch and disfigure the type man. “With respect to what is past,” he says, “I have, like all discerning ones, great toleration, that is to say, GENEROUS self-control.... But my feeling changes suddenly, and breaks out as soon as I enter the modern period, OUR period. Our age KNOWS...” (See Note on Chapter LXX.).