Part I

Divine Art and the Man-God

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."--Genesis i. 28.

Man has ceased from believing in miracles, because he is convinced that the divine power of the miracle-worker has departed from him. At last he has proclaimed the age of wonders to be at an end, because he no longer knows himself capable of working wonders.

He acknowledges that miracles are still needed. He hears the distressing cry for the super-natural everywhere. All about him to-day he feels that wonders will have to be worked if the value of Life, of his fellows, and of himself is to be raised, by however little; and yet he halts like one paralyzed before the task he can no longer accomplish, and finding that his hand has lost its cunning and that his eye has lost its authority, he stammers helplessly that the age of miracles has gone by.

Everything convinces him of the fact. Everybody, from his priest to his porter, from his wife to his astrologer, from his child to his neighbour, tells him plainly that he is no longer divine, no longer a god, no longer even a king!

Not only has the age of miracles gone by; but with it, also, has vanished that age in which man could conceive of god in his own image. There are no gods now; because man himself has long since doubted that man is godlike.

Soon there will be no kings,[2] finally there will be no greatness at all, and this will mean the evanescence of man himself.

To speak of all this as the advance of knowledge, as the march of progress, as the triumph of science, and as the glories of enlightenment, is merely to deck a corpse, to grease-paint a sore, and to pour rose-water over a cesspool.

If the triumph of science mean "The Descent of Man"; if the glories of enlightenment mean, again, the descent of man; and if progress imply, once more, the descent of man; then the question to be asked is: in whose hands have science, enlightenment and the care of progress fallen?

This world is here for us to make of it what we will. It is a field of yielding clay, in which, like sandboys, we can build our castles and revel in our creations.

But what are these people doing? In building their castles they grow ever more like beavers, and ants, and beetles. In laying out their gardens they grow ever more like slugs, and worms, and centipedes. And their joy seems to be to feel themselves small and despised.

Once, for instance, their sky was the mighty god Indra; the clouds were his flock, and he drove his flock across his vast fields--blue and fragrant with delicate flowers. Their fruitful rain was the milk which their god Indra obtained from his herd of cows, and their seasons of drought were times when the god Indra was robbed by brigands of his flock.

Now, their sky is infinite space. Their clouds are masses of vapour in a state of condensation more or less considerable, and their rain is the outcome of that condensation becoming too considerable.

Not so many years ago their Heaven and their Earth were the father and mother of all living things, who had become separated in order that their offspring might have room to live and breathe and move. And thus their mists were the passionate sighs of the loving wife, breathing her love heavenwards; and the dew, the tearful response of her affectionate and sorrowful spouse.

Now, their Heaven is a thing that no one knows anything at all about. Their Earth is an oblate spheroid revolving aimlessly through a hypothetical medium called ether; their mists are vaporous emanations; while their dew is a discharge of moisture from the air upon substances that have irradiated a sufficient quantity of heat.

Their Sun was once a god with long, shining streams of golden hair, of which every year their goddess Night would rob him, thus leaving Winter mistress of the earth.

Now, their sun is the central orb of their Solar system. It consists of a nucleus, it is surrounded by a photosphere and a chromosphere, and has a disease of the face called "spots."

The facts remain the same; the mist still rises, the dew still falls, and the canopy of Heaven still spans the two horizons. Whatever the interpretation of these phenomena may be, this at least is certain, that they are still with us. But there is one thing that changes; one thing that cannot remain indifferent to interpretation--even though the facts do not alter,--and that is the soul of man.

A million times more sensitive to changes in interpretation than the column of mercury is to changes in the atmosphere, the soul of man rises or falls according to the nobility or the baseness of the meaning which he himself puts into things; and, just as, in this matter, he may be his own regenerator, so, also, may he be his own assassin.

[1] Delivered at University College on Dec. 8th, 1910.

[2] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 187: "The time of kings has gone by, because people are no longer worthy of them. They do not wish to see the symbol of their ideal in a king, but only a means to their own ends." See also _Z._, III, LVI.

1. The World "without form" and "void."

For, in the beginning, the world was "without form" and "void," things surrounded man; but they had no meaning. His senses received probably the same number of impressions as they do now--and perhaps more--but these impressions had no co-ordination and no order. He could neither calculate them, reckon with them, nor communicate[3] them to his fellows.

Before he could thus calculate, reckon with, and communicate the things of this world, a vast process of simplification, co-ordination, organization and ordering had to be undertaken, and this process, however arbitrarily it may have been begun, was one of the first needs of thinking man.

Everything had to be given some meaning, some interpretation, and some place; and in every case, of course, this interpretation was in the terms of man, this meaning was a human meaning, and this place was a position relative to humanity.

Perhaps no object is adequately defined until the relation to it of every creature and thing in the universe has been duly discovered and recorded.[4] But no such transcendental meaning of a thing preoccupied primeval man. All he wished was to understand the world, in order that he might have power over it, reckon with it, and communicate his impressions concerning it. And, to this end, the only relation of a thing that he was concerned with was its relation to himself. It must be given a name, a place, an order, a meaning--however arbitrary, however fanciful, however euphemistic. Facts were useless, chaotic, bewildering, meaningless, before they had been adjusted,[5] organized, classified, and interpreted in accordance with the desires, hopes, aims and needs of a particular kind of man.

Thus interpretation was the first activity of all to thinking humanity, and it was human needs that interpreted the world.[6]

The love of interpreting and of adjusting--this primeval love and desire, this power of the sandboy over his castles; how much of the joy in Life, the love of Life, and, at the same time, the sorrow in Life, does not depend upon it! For we can know only a world which we ourselves have created.[7]

There was the universe--strange and inscrutable; terrible in its strangeness, insufferable in its inscrutability, incalculable in its multifariousness. With his consciousness just awaking, a cloud or a shower might be anything to man--a godlike friend or a savage foe. The dome of blue behind was also prodigious in its volume and depth, and the stars upon it at night horrible in their mystery.

What, too, was this giant's breath that seemed to come from nowhere, and which, while it cooled his face, also bent the toughest trees like straws? The sun and moon were amazing--the one marvellously eloquent, communicative, generous, hot and passionate: the other silent, reserved, aloof, cold, incomprehensible.[8]

But there were other things to do, besides interpreting the stars, the sun, the moon, the sea, and the sky above. There was the perplexing multiplicity of changes and of tides in Life, to be mastered and simplified. There was the fateful flow of all things into death and into second birth, the appalling fact of Becoming and never-resting, of change and instability, of bloom and of decay, of rise and of decline. What was to be done?

It was impossible to live in chaos. And yet, in its relation to man Nature was chaotic. There was no order anywhere. And, where there is no order, there are surprises,[9] ambushes, lurking indignities. The unexpected could jump out at any minute. And a masterful mind abhors surprises and loathes disorder. His Will to Power is humiliated by them. To man,--whether he be of yesterday, of to-day or of to-morrow-- unfamiliarity, constant change, and uncertainty, are sources of great anxiety, great sorrow, great humiliation and sometimes great danger. Hence everything must be familiarized, named and fixed. Values must be definitely ascertained and determined. And thus valuing becomes a biological need. Nietzsche even goes so far as to ascribe the doctrine of causality to the inherent desire in man to trace the unfamiliar to the familiar. "The so-called instinct of causality," he says, "is nothing more than the fear of the unfamiliar, and the attempt at finding something in it which is already known."[10]

In the torrent and pell-mell of Becoming, some milestones must be fixed for the purpose of human orientation. In the avalanche of evolutionary changes, pillars must be made to stand, to which man can hold tight for a space and collect his senses. The slippery soil of a world that is for ever in flux, must be transformed into a soil on which man can gain some foothold.[11]

Primeval man stood baffled and oppressed by the complexity of his task. Facts were insuperable as facts; they could, however, be overcome spiritually--that is to say, by concepts. And that they must be overcome, man never doubted for an instant--he was too proud for that. For his aim was not existence, but a certain kind of existence--an existence in which he could hold his head up, look down upon the world, and stare defiance even at the firmament.

And thus all humanity began to cry out for a meaning, for an interpretation, for a scheme, which would make all these distant and uncontrollable facts their property, their spiritual possessions. This was not a cry for science, or for a scientific explanation, as we understand it; nor was it a cry for truth in the Christian sense.[12] For the bare truth, the bare fact, the bald reality of the thing was obvious to everybody. All who had eyes to see could see it. All who had ears to hear could hear it. And all who had nerves to feel could feel it. If ever there was a time when there was a truth for all, this was the time; and it was ugly, bare and unsatisfying. What was wanted was a scheme of life, a picture of life, in which all these naked facts and truths could be given some place and some human significance--in fact, some order and arrangement, whereby they would become the chattels of the human spirit, and no longer subjects of independent existence and awful strangeness.[13] Only thus could the dignity and pride of humanity begin to breathe with freedom. Only thus could life be made possible, where existence alone was not the single aim and desire.

"The purpose of 'knowledge,' "says Nietzsche, "in this case, as in the case of 'good,' or 'beautiful,' must be regarded strictly and narrowly from an anthropocentric and biological standpoint. In order that a particular species may maintain and increase its power, its conception of reality must contain enough which is calculable and constant to allow of its formulating a scheme of conduct. The utility of preservation--and _not_ some abstract or theoretical need to eschew deception--stands as the motive force behind the development of the organs of knowledge.... In other words, the measure of the desire for knowledge depends upon the extent to which the _Will to Power_ grows in a certain species: a species gets a grasp of a given amount of reality in order to master it, in order to enlist that amount into its service."[14]

And thus "the object was, not to know, but to schematize, to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos as our practical needs required."[15]

"The whole apparatus of knowledge," says Nietzsche, "is an abstracting and simplifying apparatus--not directed at knowledge, but at the appropriation of things."[16]

No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than this thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar, familiar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the spirit.[17]

Life without food and drink was bad enough; but Life without nourishment for this spiritual appetite, this famished wonder,[18] this starving amazement, was utterly intolerable!

The human system could appropriate, and could transform into man, in bone and flesh, the vegetation and the animals of the earth; but what was required was a process, a _Weltanschauung_, a general concept of the earth which would enable man to appropriate also Life's other facts, and transform them into man the spirit. Hence the so-called thirst for knowledge may be traced to the lust of appropriation and conquest,[19] and the "will to truth" to a process of establishing things, to a process of making things true and lasting.... Thus truth is not something which is present and which has to be found and discovered; it is something which has to be created and which gives its name to a process, or better still, to the "will to overpower."[20]

For what is truth? It is any interpretation of the world which has succeeded in becoming the belief of a particular type of man.[21] Therefore there can be many truths; therefore there must be an order of rank among truths.

"Let this mean Will to Truth unto you," says Zarathustra, "that everything be made thinkable, visible, tangible unto man!

"And what ye have called the world, shall have first to be created by you:[22] your reason, your image, your will, your love shall the world be! And, verily, for your own bliss, ye knights of Knowledge!"[23]

"The purpose was to deceive oneself in a useful way; the means thereto was the invention of forms and signs, with the help of which, the confusing multifariousness of Life could be reduced to a useful and wieldly scheme."[24]

This was the craving. Not only must a meaning, a human meaning, be given to all things, in order to subordinate them to man's power; but Life itself must also be schematized and arranged. And, while all humanity cried aloud for this to be done, it was humanity's artists and higher men who set to and did it.[25]

[3] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 72: "... Communication is necessary, and for it to be possible, something must be stable, simple and capable of being stated precisely."

[4] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 65.

[5] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Book of Tea_, p. 58: "Adjustment is Art."

[6] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 13. See also Th. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, Vol. I, p. 25. Speaking of interpretation, he says: "And this tendency was notably strengthened by the suspicious circumstances of external life, which awoke the desire for clearness, distinctness and a logical sequence of ideas."

[7] _W. P._, Vol. II, p. 21. See also Max Müller, _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, pp. 198-207, _T. I._,