The will to beauty

Front matter

CQFffilGKT DEPOSIT.

THE WILL TO BEAUTY

Being a continuation of the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche

Preface

From ancient times an undercurrent of tragedy surged. The beautiful fables of Greece that glorified the human relations to the height of gods that dwelt in Olympus yielded in helplessness in Greek tragedy. The QEdipus of Sophocles shows to us how the attempt to solve the riddle of life "ends in a sea of dire woe"; and in "Anathema," the modern tragic drama of Leonid Andreyev, the speechless one veiled in gray is as unyielding to entreaty as the silent sphinx of old.

Hellenic beauty, because it was incomplete, had to descend and disintegrate itself. Down and down it went until it reached the religion of sorrow. The unconscious Will of the universe was not satisfied with a fable, it needed further amplification in fact and clear reason. It had to descend to the prose of modern science and mechanist invention, to Darwin, to the doctrine of "utility" of Spencer, to the mathematical philosophy of Kant. From the Greek oracle to the dark seance rooms of modern spiritualism, until it could rebound and the scattered fragments be integrated in the present "Will to Beauty." The Greek mythos of beauty is now reborn into a philosophy based on clear reason instead of fable.

This is the New Hellenism to which the religions of human suffering must yield.

The reader is asked not to be satisfied with a hasty reading, but rather to study (at intervals), to read and reread two or three times; it cannot be understood at once.

New York, April i, 192 1.

IV

EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION

If God is a mind, especially an all-knowing mind, as the religious claim, why does he not stop a fire when innocent human beings are burning? If he is all-merciful, why does he permit his children to be buried under the debris of an earthquake or the lava of a volcano? Religious people worship a God that does not have the mercy that they have. If these things are the work of the "devil," then why does not the omnipotent God overpower the devil?

These have been, and will remain forever, the most honest questions that a human being can ask. There is no theologian living that can answer these questions without resorting to a sophistry that is an insult to the human mind.

The true answer to these questions came when Schopenhauer discovered the "Will." The universe is an unconscious force, or motive, seeking a conscious ego. "God" does not know, but by a ponderous evolution it attains to the human mind. "God" is the great unconscious. The question before us now is, What is the aim and object of this unconscious Will of the universe? Schopenhauer was pessimistic because it appeared to him that the Will has no object but to create and destroy, to create and destroy. Nietzsche, who followed Schopenhauer, tried to work up a little enthusiasm. This unconscious Will, according to Nietzsche, is the Will to Power — power trying to exceed itself. It glories in power and in the esthetics of power. But as the Will to Power must finally destroy the ego that it has evolved, the enthusiasm cannot be very great, almost any sensible person will admit.

v

Since the time of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche weak and decadent philosophers have sprung up. They are the weeds that spring up among the vegetation. Whenever the human race makes progress the religious reactionaries utilize that progress for proving their point over again.

We live and have lived in a condition of economic injustice, a condition of rich and poor, masters and servants. In order to sustain this economic chaos, religion and morality are necessary. I call this the "religio-economic arrangement," because they are inseparable.

These weak and decadent philosophers are the Bergsons and the pragmatists like William James. They would have a human being go through all sorts of moral gymnastics until he becomes "spiritual," very much as theosophists would have a human being go through lives and deaths that he may lose that thing most beautiful about his, his naive and human qualities, and become a saintly abstraction. This work is not for them to accomplish. They talk about art without being artists, they talk about "spiritism" without being mediums themselves; and the unconscious "Will" of Schopenhauer offers no obstacle to them. They can evolve a world of gods and Jesuses just the same; all that is necessary is a little more sophistry and you have the religio-economic interpretation over again.

The Will to Beauty is opposed to theism in any form and to the religio-moral. It holds, however, that the unconscious Will of the universe strikes a balance. It teaches an after-life without a God.

vi

"God" is a sincere passion, therefore it attains to beauty.

Force is Invisible (Insensible) until it Produces a Contrast

The unconscious motive of the universe can attain reality only through contrasted action. Sharp contrast, and then lesser contrast, that is all there is to reality. There is no other reality.

* * * *

Contrast is the simplest conception of the mind. Nature cannot be reduced to anything less

simple.

* * * *

There is only one inevitable law in nature, and that is contrast; upon this inevitable law all other so-called law is built.

Concentration into a Center and Radiation from a Center

All the power in the universe seeks to concentrate itself and to hide itself under a garb of impotence into a sincere human ego. After it has attained this center of sincerity, it seeks a condition of security whence it may radiate again.

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Contents

PAGE

Preface iii

Explanatory Introduction v

Preface to the Will in Chemistry 96

The Will in Chemistry 98

Miscellaneous 114

Schopenhauer's " World as Will and Idea" 116

Bergson and Wm. James 117

Herbert Spencer 121

Relativity (Einstein) 121

Nature Changes from Contrast to Motive,

from Motive to Contrast . . . . . 127

Immanuel Kant 129

The Mistakes of Nietzsche 131

The Mind, the Amplifier 133

The Self Creative 135

Free Will 137

Reincarnation 138

The Relation of Subject to Object . . .139 Interpretation as a Means of Discovering the Truth as Opposed to the Scientific

Method 140

Oscar Wilde and Whistler 141

Walt Whitman 143

Contrasted Styles in Art 144

Nietzsche contra Wagner 145

Business 147

Romanticism 150

The Great Principle in Construction . . . 151

The Human All Too Human 152

The Social Order of the Future 164

The Perfect City 167

Obsession 170

Vision and Realism versus Fantastic Imagination 191

The Will to Beauty

DY the Will to Beauty I mean that the uncon- -■-* scious motive of the universe strives and remains dissatisfied until it is able to attain the realization of its energy in the climax of emotion in the human ego, not through sorrow and religion, which is its negative mode of attainment, but by a rationally constructed social order, where the human ego can grow in beauty, and his or her emotion rise gradually through happiness and sex passion to the ecstasy of love and the profound adoration of nature. This is nature's flower.

The Superman and the Superstate

I employ the words superman and superstate to designate the human being in the after-death condition; instead of the word "spirit."

See the section entitled "Obsession" (end of book) for details regarding the after-death state.

Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

The creative Will speaks : "I am only a mystery to those who would not listen. The child who raises its hands to the moon and stars knows my secret. The lovers who walk in silence and beauty know it. The poet who meets me by brooding

ii rivers and weeps tears of joy, he knows it best. From molten chaos I have fashioned this sphere. I have waited for ages until the overhanging vapors might condense into great waters. Coarse vegetation and ponderous animals, hateful to look at, rose up. They devoured each other with great ferocity. For ages they had to continue for I, the helpless one, great in passion but bound by necessity, had no other way to bring my primitive, my dazed, man child. Deep was his woe, deeper his ignorance, for he made for himself strange gods that needed constant prayer and sacrifice. To them he sacrificed his brothers and sisters and his one redeeming procreative passion. But I am not this God. Sacrifice and prayer are hateful to me. Listen to my secret. I am the procreative passion. In the spring come odorous blossoms and birds that sing in the trees. The grass is soft and green at your feet. In the vault of heaven shining spheres float in rhythmic motion. The moon breaks forth from beneath a sweeping cloud and hides again. The hum and lull of the deep-breathing orchestra of night completes my harmony. This is my meaning. This is as much as I could do without your aid. I ask a greater harmony, the conscious man whose religion is beauty. I want the child that will raise its hands to the moon and stars as the poplars and cedars whose branches yearn skyward. I want the beautiful and sincere lovers to grace my landscape, and the poet whose tears mingle with the flowing current."

I see a new civilization arise by the banks of this very river. For ages its restless waves have rushed in despair to unknown seas, for the life by its shores was of the dumb brute and savage man who lived by mutual slaughter. Its bordering shores he denuded of its trees and built an iron city with a heart of stone. But its waters shall not always rush in despair. I see a new civilization to whom death will no longer be a thing of fear that steals upon one as a thief in the night, and throws its dark shadow over a meaningless life. I see a new humanity reclaimed from mechanism, its iron monsters hidden. I see young men, the best-hearted with comely bearded faces, intellectual artists and socialists. I see the lovers with clasped hands exchanging the vow of sincere passion. I see the silent one; he walks brooding by the shore. I see tears flowing from his eyes and he whispers to the tide and the rising trees: "Where are you flowing, my waters? Why are you yearning, my tall trees." "Toward the great harmony," they answer, "toward the

great harmony."

* * * *

I saw the vision of the superman; he came to

me in the night and whispered his name. He

was of my kin, but of his presence, how can I

tell, for there is nothing on earth I can compare

his presence to. He seemed like a fragrant tree

who stood for ages rising to the sun. He came

to me from the virgin forest of God, and I knew

that man is but the seed whose heart must be

torn in pain, whose tears must flow like rivers of

sorrow, and like the black seed, his body must rot

in the earth before he can send forth the first

shoot and receive the dews of heaven, and as the

welcome dews of heaven were the tears I shed

when I saw him of my kin who left the earth an

unknown man come in the holy night to share with me its celestial harmonies. Dark-robed night, to me of all men have you yielded up your secret, folded in veils of azure, and sealed with the silence of the ages. Why do you brood on your deep-toned strings ? O night ! why do you mourn with stately requiem the dying sunset? Why sighs the wind in the swaying tree? What has hushed the song in its branches?

* * * *

Every discovery commences with a vision, a faith, a passion. Its elucidation is but its unfoldment. There is no such thing as reason in itself, for that would mean that one did not desire to prove anything. Vision brings with it faith, for what good can abstract truth be to him who has seen something beautiful? Analysis would be a descent into a negation. Analysis is necessary, but it is of value only with the faith of vision.

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The mistake of philosophers before Schopenhauer (even of Herbert Spencer, who came after) has been that they did not realize that when you arrive to force you arrive to the infinite. It is the searching of a cause for force that is responsible for the idea of a god, the "unknowable," and u the thing in itself." It is like trying to explain what is beauty. Beauty is a force in harmony with itself. Cause, reason, only applies to the components of the harmony. When you attain to the harmony (the motive) you cease to reason, you feel. If you analyze the notes in a melody you lose the melody, you come to mathematics. Throughout nature force is one with the form in which it lives, but man who seeks to reason cannot find the harmonic motive, but runs from cause to effect, like an imprisoned animal, until his strength breaks against the stone wall of the "unknowable."

All philosophers before Schopenhauer started with an infinite that was perfect as the center of the universe. "To become like God" is the religious ideal, and in trying to realize that ideal it was necessary to shut one's eyes to what is going on in God's world. The biologists watched the beasts' "struggle for existence" in the jungle and decided that it was necessary to take pattern after that. Nietzsche seeing "power" decided to place power, both in construction and destruction, on a par, which is another way of imitating God. At last we shall know that man must not copy either God or animals; both are blind and instinctive. The wonder of a human being is his frailty. (See "Human, All Too Human.") His weaknesses, his faults even, are better than all the virtues that moralists ever invented. The highest order of energy hides itself under a garb of impotence.

* * * *

And so I did not take pattern, as Nietzsche did, after a regiment of cavalry, but in a deep forest valley, where the murmur of trees turned to sad music as if by the skill of a composer. I heard the climax of pathos in the song of a bird during the mating season, flutelike and of the profoundest melody, the beautiful lone singer of the valley.

* * * *

From Whistler I learned to see in ensemble by continuous practice for many years. I learned that vision is flexible. The artist reads beauty

*5 into the things he sees. The contour of the face and form of the man or woman he is painting ceases to be physiological, it becomes beauty to his eyes, its shape has actually changed; and so I conceived the Will to Beauty. I further saw that a work of art, a motive, is expressed by sharp contrast and lesser variations. This I applied to the nature of time and space, and cause and effect.

* * * *

How I avoided the snare of the religio-moral, that is the miracle. By means of claroaudience I made friends with the good devil and his wife (the superman and woman) ; I learned that there is no sin. I was advised that the law of contrasts applies to human conduct.

* * * *

A profound emotion overawes and incapacitates the intellect. The person who has felt profoundly is more likely to adopt a religion or philosophy of sorrow, and to look upon the conclusions of the Will to Beauty as wrong and shallow. This is especially so because we live in fear, and our profound emotions are born in sorrow. A person who has never felt at all will weep under pressure of adversity. It is in that dangerous moment (dangerous for the intellect) that a religious philosophy is born: it becomes useless to reason with such a person. He knows that he has felt, and he assumes that another has not felt.

Let this stand as a warning, then, that the point of view of the Will to Beauty was not adopted hastily.

The Contrasted Viewpoints of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche

According to Nietzsche's own admission, there was nothing for him to do but to reverse Schopenhauer. The negation of the "Will to Live" became the ".Will to Power." Schopenhauer still remains the serious philosopher, for he recognized the helplessness of man in his present environment, where his every effort to seek his pleasure meets with a reaction. His extreme of pessimism is the similitude of the Christian religion, in spite of the atheistic basis, for, aside from its encumbrance of fanaticism, Christianity is the idealization of sorrow and self-denial. The work of Nietzsche consisted in utilizing the great discovery of Schopenhauer, i.e., the "Will" ; to this he added the jungle law, the "survival of the fittest" of Darwin; upon this base he built up a grandiloquent, over-strained philosophy of "Power."

Nietzsche's point of view is somewhat foolish, but it corresponds perfectly to the opposite extreme of Christianity, i.e., war. Unconsciously these two continent bachelors repeated the extreme Christian motive without believing in God. The Will to Power, which implies the domination of life by sheer force, is the counter-blast to pessimism. The depression of life at one end only means that it will burst forth in a conflagration at its very opposite. We are led from the rack of self-denial to the anguish of warfare. Here we have two thousand years of that morbid distemper called Christianity culminating in the most cruel world war. Turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, and other such doctrines pale and pallid, actually reversing themselves into the survival of the fittest. This is the true inner explanation of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, although they were sincere men, and the only two philosophers who were intrenched on the solid base of sound metaphysics. 1

The Will to Beauty is the harmonic outlet. (See, for example, in astronomy, the opposite extremes and the balanced harmonic outlet.)

The Unconscious Motive Seeks Itself in Human Emotion

I now put before you the theory of the Will to Beauty.

The universe is a passion that cannot be controlled. All human activity only means that this passion is striving. All this clash of elements, all human conflict and sorrow, only means that the Will has not yet realized itself, and so it remains dissatisfied.

This unconscious passion destroys the form in which it has manifested itself and finds a mode of expression diametrically opposed; it goes from one condition to its very opposite, until it has evolved a conscious ego of profound emotion and clear intellect who is able to employ nature's greatest secret, i.e., contrasted action, for the purpose of expressing his emotions in an environment where there is no sorrow. Man must break with the beliefs that hold him in repression, for there is no God that seeks to dominate over him, to impose upon him his law. The religion that teaches him sorrow, alike with the prosaic mo-

1 Von Hartman's philosophy is a demasculated version of Schopenhauer.

notony of utilitarianism that binds him to drudgery, is false. There is only an unconscious motive that wishes man to find out its secret, i.e., the pleasure of contrasted emotions.

What is called good, forms only one set of emotions, the sincere ecstasies of religion, expression in art, love and the adoration of nature. What is called sin, forms a contrary set of emotions, i.e., sex, passion, drinking, laughter, ridicule. These are beautiful human qualities. For the rest, socialism will stop all the competition, war, crime, and economic worry. For how can the sincere motive of the universe hold within itself that which is contrary to itself? All that we need in order to obtain perfection is a sincere human being in an environment that will not embarrass him. (See "The Will in Eugenics")

The Contrast of Emotions

So strong is the hold of the religio-moral system with its doctrine of self-denial upon the human mind, that during the expression of religious pathos the mind untrained in the philosophy of contrasts will look upon sex expression as being lesser, imperfect, or even wrong; whereas sex beauty with all its intimacy is primal and positive in nature (man and woman are the supreme contrasts) ; while sorrow is negative, it implies that beauty has not been able to come forth exultant, in luxurious pleasure, with all the challenge of a secure environment such as profuse nature guarantees, and for that reason it has taken on a note of sorrow. Not that pathos is out of place in a world such as we live in, where we must wait in patience for every good, but pathos is not nature's fruition. Religious pathos is at best a contrast to sex love.

The luxury of sex beauty and love of the woman should alternate with the love for creation in art, and that, with the knowledge and experience that it necessitates. Under religious influence the sex impulse soon exhausts itself and leaves the woman without a lover, so that the art of life (adoration of woman's beauty in wonderful environment) is not encouraged to flourish as an art that defies by its charm and strength our feeble morality and poor economics.

The emotion of sorrow unbalances the flow of nature's circle of harmonic contrasts and variations; it inevitably reacts into undue humility, anger, ugliness, and inefficiency; it divides the human family into the tyrant and slave.

A religion of sorrow reacts into utilitarian drudgery; its accumulation of anger precipitates war. Beautiful nature transmutes anger into sex passion, but sorrow feeds the emotion of pity with the imperfection it creates. Art may take the imperfection of real life and weave it into sad melodies and dramas that reveal the soul's travail and its yearning after an Eden of beauty. Artists and poets know well that the plaintive note of lament and the theme of pathos augment beauty, as her sorrowful expression enhances the beauty of Niobe; but in the highest life, it is different. Evolution is not satisfied with a state of imperfection; it is for this reason that the Will to Beauty raises man to an environment yielding to his innermost will, where every condition of human life may be touched by art, and realism be robbed of its sordidness.

As soon as man begins to live according to nature's motive, which is beauty-worship, an environment corresponding to his volition is sure to form itself, with mechanism, the invisible servant to aid him. With a knowledge of the true philosophy he can employ the law of contrasted emotions to his advantage and permit his nature to ebb and flow and variate from one order of beauty to another, instead of being divided into good and evil, by a violent religion, driven to mediocrity by smug prosperity, or stupefied into the beast of burden by relentless poverty.

When life reaches its flower, the man worships the woman and is ennobled by it; and the woman, who is the incarnation of beauty, flourishes and is made more wonderful by responding to the phallic ecstasy; from this they react to love (as distinguished from the sexual relationship which we will call life), or else, according to their natures, man reacts to wit and wisdom, and woman to the detail of arrangement, foresight, laughter, or the art of dissimulation. If in the superstate the man may coordinate the corollary of force into a landscape that will show the skill of the artist-creator, or the detail of a beautiful edifice (which is the same as being the owner without its encumbrance, for it can readily be dispersed into dematerialization) and the woman may robe herself in beautiful dress. The perfect man and woman have no God to pray to, for life is only force that evolves until it reaches its climax; but the soul nevertheless is filled with adoration when beholding the universe as the evident expression of a beautiful will.

How comely is the earth to him that went forth in love ! Dear to him are the stones at his feet and dear to him the grass, and as souls in prayer are the swaying trees with their manifold chorus of little leaves. For God is a sincere passion that attains to beauty; it dwells in the brooding tree, it breathes in the overhanging peace. * * * *

I see now that the suffering ones who in the hour of anguish prayed with tearful eyes had their prayers answered by the extent of the emotion they rose to; and he that went forth on a lonely path, robed in beauty as a god, and with overflowing heart and outstretched hand, whispered, "I need nothing," has achieved the object of creation. He who has not yet felt the climax of emotion is like a plant not yet blown into efflorescence. Whatever their age, they are but children who have not yet attained to their prime. The climax of wonderful ecstasy once passed, life arranges itself into esthetic balance, for its rapture is too enthralling to sustain. The man and woman become capable of the poetry and music of delicate feeling, and sincere love sustains their sincere passion. This is the goal of the superman.

Schopenhauer was right, life is vanity; vanity of vanities until life discovers itself in the heart of him that has attained to an intense love; he becomes the crest on the wave of creation; he is like a stately tree in a sacred valley whose rising boughs are swayed by mighty winds, filling the air with the resonance of solemn music, as of many deep-stringed harps.

Explanatory

The Will is a passion — a passion that can neither be realized nor controlled until it realizes itself in an harmonic environment. Such a passion makes trouble because it is dissatisfied with the imperfect condition in which it struggles. It is because the Will seeks its climax of emotion that the life of man is what it is.

We cannot stultify ourselves with apathy or fortify ourselves with wealth and power; our security would not last long. Sorrow would overtake us in one form or another; in other words, something would happen that would awaken our emotion. Many diseases can be traced to the inactivity of the emotions, as inactivity is the basis of all sickness.

The dominant motive in the hierarchy of motives is not the search for bread — that becomes a nether motive after it is attained. (The Will to Beauty employs utility as the nether motive upon which it rises.) The dominant motive force of life is the need of expressing the emotions.

Under the most perfect economic conditions a philosophy of sorrow would soon be evolved, akin to Christianity, if not Christianity itself; or else atheistic, similar to the pessimism of Schopenhauer, unless people discovered the secret of contrasting their emotions; namely, after expressing themselves in religious-poetic emotion, they can turn to sex passion and wine, as a contrast. Hypocrisy is the secret.

Furthermore, without a knowledge of the law of contrasted action decadence would soon show itself. In a condition of ease and wealth the pleasures are carried to that point where they reverse themselves into sorrow; the optimistic and pleasure-loving people soon arrive at the same place as the pessimistic and religious people. They soon begin to write doleful poetry of imperfect love affairs and of the emptiness of pleasure. In fact, a condition of sorrow and difficulty acts as a mainstay against decadence. The unconscious Will has no other way of teaching man the law of the contrast of emotions but by continuous reversion into sorrow; either sorrow, or else it must have varied emotion of beauty, in happiness.

Decadence

Throughout the following pages I shall be obliged to repeat again and again the law of contrasts as it applies to human conduct. (See "Beyond Good and Evil.") At present, one class of people believe in one set of emotions — the religious people, for example — and they oppose the class of people who seek expression through an entirely opposite order of emotion, such as wine, woman, and gayety; the result being that society clashes. The rational solution is that each individual should contrast his or her emotions.

The Will to Beauty is a terrific force that does not exhaust itself through one set of emotions. When it cannot contrast itself, it goes to decadence. The decadence of the religious emotion is its doctrine of self-denial, its fabrication of cruelty in one form or another, devils, evil spirits, a hell, the need of repentance, prayer, etc.

Pleasure, sex, and wine go to decadence also when not contrasted, for the same reason that the Will to Beauty cannot exhaust itself in that one emotion (reality implies contrast), therefore its surplus energy turns into quarrel, jealousy, and even murder; its contrast becomes religious repentance.

Life holds a secret: it is the rational construction of the passion force in man by discovering the contrasts. At present man reforms in sorrow from what he calls immorality into religion; or else he is tempted in fear, from a false religious morality into u sin," but nature has intended man to go from one to the other without sorrow and fear.

That life and everything in nature proceeds by contrasts has been guessed by many before; Socrates in the Phaedo speaks of this most clearly, but it was always a false dualism. Contrasts and variations (lesser contrasts) have never been applied to the nature of time and space and cause and effect (see "Central Doctrine"), much less have moralists had the courage to permit it to apply to human conduct. The contrasts chosen were contrasts that clashed; a false dualism, of god and devil, of good and evil. It was never conceived that the universe may be a harmonic motive whose contrasts go to complete its harmony the same as day and night and the contrast of the seasons. It is because of a false dualism, such as rich and poor, spirit and matter, life and death, that the world suffers. Life must be reinterpreted. The appropriate contrasts must be discovered instead of the contrasts of error. The whole universe, i.e., every part of material reality, is no different than the contrasted tones of a picture. They await interpretation; only then are they right.