Good, true and beautiful are therefore not fixed values; they are relative, and there always stands behind them some human type, which by means of them is furthering its own ends. How came they to prevail as absolute values? How came they to pre vail to such an extent that ultimately they were imposed upon all? "Cui bono were these values proclaimed?" Nietzsche asks. And he replies, "Even these, our present values, are the expres sion of a will to power—but of the will of the impotent, the humble, the feeble, the subjected, the peaceloving, who by means of these values wished to predominate and—have succeeded." Our values "good," "true" and "beautiful," which led to Scho penhauer's philosophy and to the gloomy and disintegrated state of the world, came, according to Nietzsche, from the Jews. Among the Jews, the slave people of antiquity, arose the values which, with the help of religion and its moral content, still rule our present-day world. It is true that the Jews themselves once maintained a yea-saying attitude to the world. In the days of their prosperity, when they were still a triumphant and war like people, ruled by capable kings, they too called "good" every thing that was "bold," "vigorous," "joyful," "cruel" and "self reliant." But ultimately these Jews fell under the heel of various foreign invaders, and their faith in the old natural values declined —but not their will to live, which now they fostered under a table of values and judgments the reverse of those they had formerly held.
Thenceforward they gradually and systematically demonetized "good." They called good all that was "cautious," "clever," "hum ble," "pacific," "mendacious" and "adaptable"; while their "evil" became everything that was "strong," "hard," "upright," "ener getic," "exuberant" and "self-respecting." Thus, in the end, the Jews transvalued all values ; thus they corrupted the master moral ity into the slave morality. "The Jews," says Nietzsche, "per formed the miracle of the inversion of valuations; they led the slave-insurrection in morals. Jesus of Nazareth, this 'Redeemer,' bringing salvation and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinful— was he not really temptation in its most irresistible form, tempta tion to seize hold of those very Jewish values and new ideals? `Sub hoc signo' Israel, with its slave morality, triumphed over the noble ideals of master morality. Under Israel's flag the people have triumphed, or the slaves, or the populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them. The 'masters' have been done away with ; the morality of the common man has triumphed." Levelling.—The Jews thus bequeathed the values of their decadence to Christianity, and the latter, for its part, accentuated them, and spread them all over the world through many centuries of preaching and propaganda. Since the Crucifixion of Christ the noble have only been able to assert themselves for brief periods in Europe; i.e., at the Renaissance, under Louis XIV., and under Napoleon I. They were immediately suppressed by the Reforma tion, the French Revolution and the so-called Wars of Liberation against the "Corsican invader." All this occurred gradually, with out mankind becoming aware of what had happened, so that the world never obtained a clear conception of how thoroughly it had been Semitized.
The 19th, Nietzsche's own century, which he assailed most wrathfully, had, according to him, finally let loose all these Chris tian instincts. These instincts, in their political disguise, domi nate all modern movements—the labour, pacifist and feminist movements. "All distinctions must be removed," is the order of the day, even the natural distinction between man and woman. Yet, according to Nietzsche, the emancipation of woman can lead only to her enfeeblement and the destruction of her charm ; and, therefore, only to defective offspring. If healthy children are to be produced, the differences between the sexes should be main tained, even deepened. But modern democracy will have nothing to do with differences, and in this demand is it not the legatee of Christianity? Christianity claims the equality of men before God, democracy, the equality of all men before the law. And as democ racy derives from Christianity, so does socialism, which is little more than the Gospel in modern dress. For the Gospel was origi nally "the announcement that the road to happiness lies open to the poor and lowly—that all that is necessary is emancipation from institutions, tradition, and the tutelage of the ruling classes.
"This Christianity is no more than the typical teaching of the Socialists. Property, acquisition, fatherland, rank and position, courts of law, the police, State, Church, education, art, militarism: all these are so many obstacles in the way of happiness, so many mistakes, snares, and devil's artifices, on which the Gospel passes sentence—all this is typical of socialistic doctrine." (Der Wille zur Macht, Aphorism 209.) The Will to Power.—Is there then no escape from this topsy turvy world? Is there no hope that other than Semitic values will once again prevail, and that other than "herd" men will be born? Are the "meek and the poor in spirit" always to be allowed to "have their say," and thus continue to "torture" the ears of him who "remembers with a shudder that mankind's fate depends upon the success of its highest types?" To the anxious enquirer who puts this question, Nietzsche re plies :—"Yes, there is a way, but new Gods, or resuscitated old Gods can no longer be of any avail. Our only hope lies in new men." And, according to him, these new men are already in process of formation. "The aspect of the European of to-day," says our philosopher, "makes me very hopeful. A daring and ruler race is building itself up, upon the foundation of an extremely intelligent gregarious mass. . . . The same conditions which go to develop the gregarious animal also force the development of the leaders." (Der Wille zur Macht, Aph. 955-56.) "While, therefore, the democratization of Europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense of the term, the strong man will necessarily, in individual and exceptional cases become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before. . . . The democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary preparation for the rearing of tyrants—taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual sense.". . .