Nietzsche the Philosopher--Women and Marriage

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H. L. Mencken's The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche:

Nietzsche the Philosopher

 

 

 

Women and Marriage

NIETZSCHE'S faithful sister, with almost comical and essentially feminine

disgust, bewails the fact that, as a very young man, the philosopher became

acquainted with the baleful truths set forth in Schopenhauer's immortal

essay "On Women." That this daring work greatly influenced him is true, and

that he d to its chief arguments all the rest of his days is also

true, but it is far from true to say that his view of the fair sex was

borrowed bodily from Schopenhauer or that he would have written otherwise

than as he did if Schopenhauer had never lived. Nietzsche's conclusions

regarding women were the inevitable result, indeed, of his own philosophical

system. It is impossible to conceive a man who held his opinions of morality

and society laying down any other doctrines of femininity and matrimony than

those he scattered through his books.

 

Nietzsche believed that there was a radical difference between the mind of

man and the mind of woman and that the two sexes reacted in diametrically

different ways to those stimuli which make up what might be called the

clinical picture of human society. It is the function of man, he said, to

wield a sword in humanity's battle with everything that makes life on earth

painful or precarious. It is the function of woman, not to fight herself,

but to provide fresh warriors for the fray. Thus the exercise of the will to

exist is divided between the two: the man seeking the welfare of the race as

he actually sees it and the woman seeking the welfare of generations yet

unborn. Of course, it is obvious that this division is by no means clearly

marked, because the man, in struggling for power over his environment,

necessarily improves the conditions under which his children live, and the

woman, working for her chilidren, often benefits herself. But all the same

the distinction is a good one and empiric observation bears it out. As

everyone who has given a moment's thought to the subject well knows, a man's

first concern in the world is to provide food and shelter for himself and

his family, while a woman's foremost duty is to bear and rear children.

"Thus," said Nietzsche, "would I have man and woman: the one fit for

warfare, the other fit for giving birth; and both fit for dancing with head

and legs"((1)) - that is to say: both capable of doing their share of the

race's work, mental and physical, with conscious and superbundant

efficiency.

 

Nietzsche points out that, in the racial economy, the place of woman may be

compared to that of a slave-nation, while the position of man resembles that

of a master-nation. We have seen how a weak nation, unable, on account of

its weakness, to satisfy its will to survive and thirst for power by forcing

its authority upon other nations, turns to the task of keeping these other

nations, as much as possible, from enforcing their authority upon it.

Realizing that it cannot rule, but must serve, it endeavors to make the

conditions of its servitude as bearable as possible. This effort is commonly

made in two ways: first by ostensibly renouncing its desire to rule, and

secondly, by attempts to inoculate its powerful neighbors with its ideas in

subterranean and roundabout ways, so as to avoid arousing their suspicion

and opposition. It becomes, in brief, humble and cunning, and with its

humility as a cloak, it seeks to pit its cunning against the sheer might of

those it fears.

 

The position of women in the world is much the same. The business of

bearing and rearing children is destructive to their physical strength, and

in consequence makes it impossible for them to prevail by force when their

ideas and those of men happen to differ. To take away the sting of this

incapacity, they make a virtue of it, and it becomes modesty, humility,

self-sacrifice and fidelity; to win in spite of it they cultivate cunning,

which commonly takes the form of hypocrisy, cajolery, dissimulation and more

or less masked appeals to the masculine sexual instinct. All of this is so

often observed in every-day life that it has become commonplace. A woman is

physically unable to force a man to do as she desires, but her very

inability to do so becomes a sentimental weapon against him, and her

blandishments do the rest. The spectacle of a strong man ruled by a weak

woman is no rare one certainly, and Samson was neither the first nor last

giant to fall before a Delilah. There is scarcely a household in all the

world, in truth, in which the familiar drama is not being acted and reacted

day after day.

 

Now, it is plain from the foregoing that, though women's business in the

world is of such a character that it inevitably leads to physical

degeneration, her constant need to overcome the effects of this degeneration

by cunning produces constant mental activity, which, by the law of exercise,

should produce, in turn, great mental efficiency. This conclusion, in part,

is perfectly correct, for women, as a sex, are shrewd, resourceful and

acute; but the very fact that they are always concerned with imminent

problems and that, in consequence, they are unaccustomed to dealing with the

larger riddles of life, makes their mental attitude essentially petty. This

explains the circumstance that despite their mental suppleness, they are not

genuinely strong intellectually. Indeed, the very contrary is true. Women's

constant thought is, not to lay down broad principles of right and wrong;

not to place the whole world in harmony with some great scheme of justice;

not to consider the future of nations; not to make two blades of grass grow

where one grew before; but to deceive, influence, sway and please men.

Normally, their weakness makes masculine protection necessary to their

existence and to the exercise of their overpowering maternal instinct, and

so their whole effort is to obtain this protection in the easiest way

possible. The net result is that feminine morality is a morality of

opportunism and imminent expediency, and that the normal woman has no

respect for, and scarcely any conception of abstract truth. Thus is proved

the fact noted by Schopenhauer and many other observers: that a woman seldom

manifests any true sense of justice or of honor.

 

It is unnecessary to set forth this idea in greater detail, because

everyone is familiar with it and proofs of its accuracy are supplied in

infinite abundance by common observation. Nietzsche accepted it as

demonstrated. When he set out to pursue the subject further, he rejected

entirely the Schopenhauerean corollary that man should ever regard woman as

his enemy, and should seek, by all means within his power, to escape her

insidious influence. Such a notion naturally outraged the philosopher of the

superman. He was never an advocate of running away: to all the facts of

existence he said "yes." His ideal was not resignation or flight, but an

intelligent defiance and opposition. Therefore, he argued that man should

accept woman as a natural opponent arrayed against him for the benevolent

purpose of stimulating him to constant efficiency. Opposition, he pointed

out, was a necessary forerunner of function, and in consequence the fact

that woman spent her entire effort in a ceaseless endeavor to undermine and

change the will of man, merely served to make this will alert and strong,

and so increased man's capacity for meeting and overcoming the enemies of

his existence.

 

A man conscious of his strength, observes Nietzsche, need have no fear of

women. It is only the man who finds himself utterly helpless in the face of

feminine cajolery that must cry, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" and flee. "It

is only the most sensual men," he says, "who have to shun women and torture

their bodies." The normal, healthy man, despite the strong appeal which

women make to him by their subtle putting forward of the sexual idea -

visually as dress, coquetry and what not - still keeps a level head. He is

strong enough to weather the sexual storm. But the man who cannot do this,

who experiences no normal reaction in the direction of guardedness and

caution and reason, must either abandon himself utterly as a helpless slave

to woman's instinct of race-preservation, and so become a bestial

voluptuary, or avoid temptation altogether and so become a celibate.((2))

 

There is nothing essentially evil in woman's effort to combat and control

man's will by constantly suggesting the sexual idea to him, because it is

necessary, for the permanence of the race, that this idea be presented

frequently and powerfully. Therefore, the conflict between masculine and

feminine ideals is to be regarded, not as a lamentable battle, in which one

side is right and the other wrong, but a convenient means of providing that

stimulation-by-opposition - without which all function, and in consequence

all progress, would cease. "The man who regards women as an enemy to be

avoided," says Nietzsche, "betrays an unbridled lust which loathes not only

itself, but also its means."((3))

 

There are, of course, occasions when the feminine influence, by its very

subtlety, works harm to the higher sort of men. It is dangerous for a man to

love too violently and it is dangerous, too, for him to be loved too much.

"The natural inclination of women to a quiet, uniform and peaceful

existence" - that is to say, to a slave-morality - "operates adversely to

the heroic impulse of the masculine free spirit. Without being aware of it,

women act like a person who would remove stones from the path of a

mineralogist, lest his feet should come in contact with them - forgetting

entirely that he is faring forth for the very purpose of coming in contact

with them.... The wives of men with lofty aspirations cannot resign

themselves to seeing their husbands suffering, impoverished and slighted,

even though it is apparent that this suffering proves, not only that its

victim has chosen his attitude aright, but also that his aims - some day, at

least - will be realized. Women always intrigue in secret against the higher

souls of their husbands. They seek to cheat the future for the sake of a

painless and agreeable present."((4)) In other words, the feminine vision is

ever limited in range. Your typical woman cannot see far ahead; she cannot

reason out the ultimate effect of a complicated series of causes; her eye is

always upon the present or the very near future. Thus Nietzsche reaches, by

a circuitous route, a conclusion supported by the almost unanimous verdict

of the entire masculine sex, at all times and everywhere.

 

Nietzsche quite agrees with Schopenhauer (and with nearly everyone else who

has given the matter thought) that the thing we call love is grounded upon

physical desire, and that all of those arts of dress and manner in which

women excel are mere devices for arousing this desire in man, but he points

out, very justly, that a great many other considerations also enter into the

matter. Love necessarily presupposes a yearning to mate, and mating is its

logical consequence, but the human imagination has made it more than that.

The man in love sees in his charmer, not only an attractive instrument for

satisfying his comparatively rare and necessarily brief impulses to

dalliance, but also a worthy companion, guide, counsellor and friend.The

essence of love is confidence - confidence in the loved one's judgment,

honesty and fidelity and in the persistence of her charm. So large do these

considerations loom among the higher classes of men that they frequently

obscure the fundamental sexual impulse entirely. It is a commonplace,

indeed, that in the ecstasies of amorous idealization, the notion of the

function itself becomes obnoxious. It may be impossible to imagine a man

loving a woman without having had, at some time, conscious desire for her,

but all the same it is undoubtedly true that the wish for marriage is very

often a wish for close and constant association with the one respected,

admired and trusted rather than a yearning for the satisfaction of desire.

 

All of this admiration, respect and trust, as we have seen, may be

interpreted as confidence, which, in turn, is faith. Now, faith is

essentially unreasonable, and in the great majority of cases, is the very

antithesis of reason. Therefore, a man in love commonly endows the object of

his affection with merits which, to the eye of a disinterested person, she

obviously lacks. "Love...has a secret craving to discover in the loved one

as many beautiful qualities as possible and to raise her as high as

possible.Whoever idolizes a person tries to justify himself by

idealizing; and thus becomes an artist (or self-deceiver) in order to have a

clear conscience." Again there is a tendency to illogical generalization.

"Everything which pleases me once, or several times, is pleasing of and in

itself." The result of this, of course, is quick and painful disillusion.

The loved one is necessarily merely human and when the ideal gives way to

the real, reaction necessarily follows. "Many a married man awakens one

morning to the consciousness that his wife is far from attractive."((5)) -

And it is only fair to note that the same awakening is probably the bitter

portion of most married women, too.

 

In addition, it is plain that the purely physical desire which lies at the

bottom of all human love, no matter how much sentimental considerations may

obscure it, is merely a passion and so, in the very nature of things, is

intermittent and evanescent. There are moments when it is over-powering, but

there are hours, days, weeks and months when it is dormant. Therefore, we

must conclude with Nietzsche, that the thing we call love, whether

considered from its physical or psychical aspect, is fragile and

short-lived.

 

Now, inasmuch as marriage, in the majority of cases, is a permanent

institution (as it is, according to the theory of our moral code, in all

cases), it follows that, in order to make the relation bearable, something

must arise to take the place of love. This something, as we know, is

ordinarily tolerance, respect, camaraderie, or a common interest in the

well-being of the matrimonial firm or in the offspring of the marriage. In

other words, the discovery that many of the ideal qualities seen in the

life-companion through the rosy glasses of love do not exist is succeeded by

a common-sense and unsentimental decision to make the best of those real

ones which actually do exist.

 

From this it is apparent that a marriage is most apt to be successful when

the qualities imagined in the beloved are all, or nearly all, real: that is

to say, when the possibility of disillusion is at an irreducible minimum.

This occurs sometimes by accident, but Nietzsche points out that such

accidents are comparatively rare. A man in love, indeed, is the worst

possible judge of his inamorata's possession of those traits which will make

her a satisfactory wife, for, as we have noted, he observes her through an

ideal haze and sees in her innumerable merits which, to the eye of an

unprejudiced and accurate observer, she does not possess. Nietzsche, at

different times, pointed out two remedies for this. His first plan proposed

that marriages for love be discouraged, and that we endeavor to insure the

permanence of the relation by putting the selection of mates into the hands

of third persons likely to be dispassionate and far-seeing: a plan followed

with great success, it may be recalled, by most ancient peoples and in

vogue, in a more or less disguised form, in many European countries today.

"It is impossible," he said, "to found a permanent institution upon an

idiosyncrasy. Marriage, if it is to stand as the bulwark of civilization,

cannot be founded upon the temporary and unreasonable thing called love. To

fulfil its mission, it must be founded upon the impulse to reproduction, or

race permanence; the impulse to possess property (women and children are

property); and the impulse to rule, which constantly organizes for itself

the smallest unit of sovereignty, the family, and which needs children and

heirs to maintain, by physical force, whatever measure of power, riches and

influence it attains."

 

Nietzsche's second proposal was nothing more or less than the institution

of trial marriage, which, when it was proposed years later by an American

sociologist,((6)) caused all the uproar which invariably rises in the United

States whenever an attempt is made to seek absolute truth. "Give us a term,"

said Zarathustra, "and a small marriage, that we may see whether we are fit

for the great marriage."((7)) The idea here, of course, is simply this:

that, when a man and a woman find it utterly impossible to live in harmony,

it is better for thern to separate at once than to live on together, making

a mock of the institution they profess to respect, and begetting children

who, in Nietzsche's phrase, cannot be regarded other than as mere

"scapegoats of matrimony." Nietzsche saw that this notion was so utterly

opposed to all current ideals and hypocrisies that it would be useless to

argue it, and so he veered toward his first proposal. The latter, despite

its violation of one of the most sacred illusions of the Anglo-Saxon race,

is by no means a mere fantasy of the chair. Marriages in which love is

subordinated to mutual fitness and material considerations are the rule in

many countries today, and have been so for thousands of years, and if it be

urged that, in France, their fruit has been adultery, unfruitfulness and

degeneration, it may be answered that, in Turkey, Japan and India, they have

become the cornerstones of quite respectable civilizations.

 

Nietzsche believed that the ultimate mission and function of human marriage

was the breeding of a race of supermen and he saw very clearly that

fortuitous pairing would never bring this about. "Thou shalt not only

propagate thyself," said Zarathustra, "but propagate thyself upward.

Marriage should be the will of two to create that which is greater than

either. But that which the many call marriage - alas! what call I that?

Alas! that soul-poverty of two! Alas! that soul-filth of two! Alas! that

miserable dalliance of two! Marriage they call it - and they say that

marriages are made in heaven. I like them not: these animals caught in

heavenly nets...Laugh not at such marriages! What child has not reason to

weep over its parents?" It is the old argument against haphazard breeding.

We select the sires and dams of our race-horses with most elaborate care,

but the strains that mingle in our children's veins get there by chance.

"Worthy and ripe for begetting the superman this man appeared to me, but

when I saw his wife earth seemed a madhouse. Yea, I wish the earth would

tremble in convulsions when such a saint and such a goose mate! This one

fought for truth like a hero - and then took to heart a little dressed-up

lie. He calls it his marriage. That one was reserved in intercourse and

chose his associates fastidiously - and then spoiled his company forever. He

calls it his marriage. A third sought for a servant with an angel's virtues.

Now he is the servant of a woman. Even the most cunning buys his wife in a

sack."((8))

 

As has been noted, Nietzsche was by no means a declaimer against women. A

bachelor himself and constitutionally suspicious of all who walked in

skirts, he nevertheless avoided the error of damning the whole sex as a

dangerous and malignant excrescence upon the face of humanity. He saw that

woman's mind was the natural complement of man's mind; that womanly guile

was as useful, in its place, as masculine truth; that man, to retain those

faculties which made him master of the earth, needed a persistent and

resourceful opponent to stimulate them and so preserve and develop them. So

long as the institution of the family remained a premise in every

sociological syllogism, so long as mere fruitfulness remained as much a

merit among intelligent human beings as it was among peasants and cattle -

so long, he saw, it would be necessary for the stronger sex to submit to the

parasitic opportunism of the weaker.

 

But he was far from exalting mere women into goddesses, after the

sentimental fashion of those virtuosi of illusion who pass for law-givers in

the United States, and particularly in the southern part thereof. Chivalry,

with its ridiculous denial of obvious facts, seemed to him unspeakable and

the good old sub-Potomac doctrines that a woman who loses her virtue is,

ipso facto, a victim and not a criminal or particeps criminis, and that a

"lady," by virtue of being a "lady," is necessarily a reluctant and helpless

quarry in the hunt of love - these ancient and venerable fallacies would

have made him laugh. He admitted the great and noble part that women had to

play in the world-drama, but he saw clearly that her methods were

essentially deceptive, insincere and pernicious, and so, he held that she

should be confined to her proper rôle and that any effort she made to take a

hand in other matters should be regarded with suspicion, and when necessary,

violently opposed. Thus Nietzsche detested the idea of women's suffrage

almost as much as he detested the idea of chivalry. The participation of

women in large affairs, he argued, could lead to but one result: the

contamination of the masculine ideals of justice, honor and truth by the

feminine ideals of dissimulation, equivocation and intrigue. In women, he

believed, there was an entire absence of that instinctive liking for a

square deal and a fair fight which one finds in all men - even the worst.

 

Hence, Nietzsche believed that, in his dealings with women, man should be

wary and cautious. "Let men fear women when she loveth: for she sacrificeth

all for love and nothing else hath value to her.... Man is for woman a

means: the end is always the child.... Two things are wanted by the true

man: danger and play. Therefore he seeketh woman as the most dangerous toy

within his reach.... Thou goest to women? Don't forget thy whip!"((9)) This

last sentence has helped to make Nietzsche a stench in the nostrils of the

orthodox, but the context makes his argument far more than a mere effort at

sensational epigram. He is pointing out the utter unscrupulousness which

lies at the foundation of the maternal instinct: an unscrupulousness

familiar to every observer of humanity.((10)) Indeed, it is so potent a

factor in the affairs of the world that we have, by our ancient device of

labelling the inevitable the good, exalted it to the dignity and estate of a

virtue. But all the same, we are instinctively conscious of its inherent

opposition to truth and justice, and so our law books provide that a woman

who commits a crime in her husband's presence is presumed to have been led

to it by her desire to work what she regards as her good, which means her

desire to retain his protection and good will. "Man's happiness is: 'I

will.' Woman's happiness is: 'He will.'"((11))

 

Maternity, thought Nietzsche, was a thing even more sublime than paternity,

because it produced a more keen sense of race responsibility. "Is there a

state more blessed," he asked, "than that of a woman with child?... Even

worldly justice does not allow the judge and hangman to lay hold on

her."(12) He saw, too, that woman's insincere masochism(13) spurred man to

heroic efforts and gave vigor and direction to his work by the very fact

that it bore the outward aspect of helplessness. He saw that the resultant

stimulation of the will to power was responsible for many of the world's

great deeds, and that, if woman served no other purpose, she would still

take an honorable place as the most splendid reward - greater than honors or

treasures - that humanity could bestow upon its victors. The winning of a

beautiful and much-sought woman, indeed, will remain as great an incentive

to endeavor as the conquest of a principality so long as humanity remains

substantially as it is today.

 

It is unfortunate that Nietzsche left us no record of his notions regarding

the probable future of matrimony as an institution. We have renson to

believe that he agreed with Schopenhauer's analysis of the "lady," i.e. the

woman elevated to splendid, but complete parasitism. Schopenhauer showed

that this pitiful creature was the product of the monogamous ideal, just as

the prostitute was the product of the monogamous actuality. In the United

States and England, unfortunately, it is impossible to discuss such matters

with frankness, or to apply to them the standards of absolute truth, on

account of the absurd axiom that monogamy is ordained of God - with which

maxim there appears the equally absurd corollary: that the civilization of a

people is to be measured by the degree of dependence of its women. Luckily

for posterity this last revolting doctrine is fast dying, though its

decadence is scarcely noticed and wholly mis-understood. We see about us

that women are becoming more and more independent and self-sufficient and

that, as individuals, they have less and less need to seek and retain the

good will and protection of individual men, but we overlook the fact that

this tendency is fast under-mining the ancient theory that the family is a

necessary and impeccable institution and that without it progress would be

impossible. As a matter of fact, the idea of the family, as it exists today,

is based entirely upon the idea of feminine helplessness. So soon as women

are capable of making a living for themselves and their children, without

the aid of the fathers of the latter, the old corner-stone of the family -

the masculine defender and bread-winner - will find his occupation gone, and

it will become ridiculous to force him, by law or custom, to discharge

duties for which there is no longer need. Wipe out your masculine defender,

and your feminine parasite - haus-frau - and where is your family?

 

This tendency is exhibited empirically by the rising revolt against those

fetters which the family idea has imposed upon humanity: by the growing

feeling that divorce should be a matter of individual expedience; by the

successful war of cosmopolitanism upon insularity and clannishness and upon

all other costly outgrowths of the old idea that because men are of the same

blood they must necessarily love one another; and by the increasing

reluctance among civilized human beings to become parents without some

reason more logical than the notion that parenthood, in itself, is

praiseworthy. It seems plain, in a word, that so soon as any considerable

portion of the women of the world become capable of doing men's work and of

thus earning a living for themselves and their children without the aid of

men, there will be in full progress a dangerous, if unconscious, war upon

the institution of marriage. It may be urged in reply that this will never

happen, because of the fact that women are physically unequal to men, and

that in consequence of their duty of child-bearing, they will ever remain

so, but it may be answered to this that use will probably vastly increase

their physical fitness; that science will rob child-bearing of most of its

terrors within a comparatively few years; and that the woman who seeks to go

it alone will have only herself and her child to maintain, whereas, the man

of today has not only himself and his child, but also the woman. Again, it

is plain that the economic handicap of child-bearing is greatly

overestimated. At most, the business of maternity makes a woman utterly

helpless for no longer than three months, and in the case of a woman who has

three children, this means nine months in a lifetime. It is entirely

probable that alcohol alone, not to speak of other enemies of efficiency,

robs the average man of quite that much productive activity during his three

score years and ten.

 

All of this, of course, is mere speculation, and it is presented as such,

and not as prophecy. To it a thousand answers are possible: that woman,

growing independent, will fall a prey to alcohol, promiscuousness and all

the other evils from which man now protects her, only to be a slave to them

himself; that man's lead in the race toward absolute efficiency is too long

to be overcome; or that, in case woman makes the gains indicated, man will

degenerate, and there will follow a transvaluation of the sexes, with woman

the producer and man the parasite: a condition of affairs obviously

identical, in all its essentials, with that which obtains today.

 

 

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1. Also sprach Zarathustra, III. [56, "Old and New Tables," sect. 23.]

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2. Nietzsche saw, of course (The Genealogy of Morals, III), that temporary

celibacy was frequently necessary to men with peculiarly difficult and

vitiating tasks ahead of them. The philosopher who sought to solve world

riddles, he said, had need to steer clear of women, for reasons which

appealed, with equal force, to the athlete who sought to perform great feats

of physical strength. It is obvious, however, that this desire to escape

distraction and drain differs vastly from ethical celibacy.

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3. Morgenröte, § 346.

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4. Menschliches allzu Menschliches, § 431, 434.

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5. All of these quotations are from Morgenröte.

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6. Elsie Clews Parsons: The Family, New York, 1906. Mrs. Par-sons is a

doctor of philosophy, a Hartley house fellow and was for six years a

lecturer on socioIogy at Barnard College.

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7. Also sprach Zarathustra, III. [56, "Old and New Tables," sect. 24.]

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8. Also sprach Zarathustra, I.

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9. Also sprach Zarathustra, I.

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10. Until quite recently it was considered indecent and indefensible to

mention this fact, despite its obviousness. But it is now discussed freely

enough and in Henry Arthur Jones' play, The Hypocrites, it is presented

admirably in the character of the mother whose instinctive effort to protect

her son makes her a scoundrel and the son a cad.

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11. Also sprach Zarathustra, I.

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12. Morgenröte, § 552

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13. Prof. Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing: "Masochism is a peculiar

perversion...consisting in this, that the individual seized with it is

dominated by the idea that he is wholly and unconditionally subjected to the

will of a person of the opposite sex, who treats him imperiously and

humiliates and maltreats him."

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