A New Star—-Frederich Nietzsche.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 25, 25 August 1911, Page 4

A New Star—-Frederich Nietzsche.

'' EVERY LITTLE WHILE" BOOK STUDY.

By W.R.W.

In all ages the education of the people 'has been in the hands of the dominant master class, and the p<?ople have boon taught only that which supported fclio interests of the dominant class. Education has, owing to this, always hern untrue, or at least mixed with fi groat deal of .falsehood, so that in religion, ethics, and science the masses have been misled; The Egyptian Priesthood. In ancient Egypt the priests were the educated class, and the real rulers of the nation, and they taught tho people just what they themselves desired them to believe. The Egyptian priests knew a good deal about astronomy, but they never told tho people what they knew. They knew when an eclipse of the sun would take place, but they didn't let the. masses know that there was to be an eclipse of the sun. Instead of doing that, they generally warned them that unless they' paid up their arrears (ootid they were always in arrears) to the church, the priests would shut them out from the light of the sun. They protended that their warnings had been disregarded, and when the eclipse occurred they pointed to their power over the heavens and the earth, and threatened further disasters unless the offerings were substantial enough to pacify them. The people generally needed no further proof of priestly power, but hastened to do all they could to propitiate the priests. The will of the priests was the will of Cod, and it was taught how dangerous it was to act in opposition to his j will, especially when such opposition took the form of work in the interests of humanity rather than in. the interests of the. dominant class. To illustrate this danger, the priests invented the fable of Prometheus, showing how the noble Titan was punished by God for daring to steal the intellectual fire from heaven and give it to humanity. All friends of humanity were severely dealt with in those days, even as A\e Socialists are noAV, and the people avoto taught that it Avas God's will. The Hebrews took a great deal of this sort of teaching from the Egyptiaiiis, and incorporated it in their religion, morals, and science, with dire effects to Jews, Greeks, Koman-s, and Christians for ages afterwards. Jesus and the Sadducees. According to the Gospels, Jesus, when he arrived in Jerusalem, found the- aristocratic Sadducees and priests, the dominant class, teaching what appeared to him to be a concoction of barefaced lies. They Avere doing this for the sanfe purpose that the Egyptian priests centuries before had done a similar thing, to mislead the many for the profit of their oavii class. The courtly, Avealthy Sadducees had an unutterable contempt for the lower orders—the Pharisees —and they openly sneered at their religious beliefs and philacteries, though they tolerated them for economic reasons. When Jesus set about exposing the Sadducees and their system of religion, morals, and economics, the Sadducees at iii's* treated him with contempt, but when, the criticism grew too hot and scathing, and the poor commenced to slioaa' signs of being roused, they used the priesthood of the established church to cut short his career. Two outstanding points of Jesus' criticism of the existing order in Jeruealein Avere the. heartlessness of the rich and their eternal damnation, and the patience and degradation of the poor and their easy means of salvation. Ho hurled a biting and bitter criticism at the rule of the rich w-lien he said: "The poor ye haA'c always with you." It wns as if he thought that this in itself was enough to illustrate , the failure of their civilisation. Jesus denounced and cornered the rich as the responsible parties for tho poverty, misery, and degradation of tho Avorld, and he showed lioav false Avas all their teaching, and how hard it Avas for a rich", man to enter the kingdom of Heaven . The French Revolution. From that time doAvn to a more recent day, the rich found it -very hard to look the world in the face while they hid their ill-gotten gains. They hired priests to toll the people that, oAving to our two first parents eating of th/ Tree of: Knowledge, in the Garden of ! Eden, , God had to send his Son Jesus to sa ; ve the world from his wrath. This, they taught, was the real irission "of Jesus. He came not to abolish the Avrongs of the poor, and expose, arid denounce the rich, and to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth, but to point # out that this earthly life wa.s only a prelude or

preparation for the life to come, when the poor would have their reward for their sufferings here. The people listened to this tale for come centuries, but finally they awakened to the enormity of the fraud of it—or at least the French did, and they rose against the rich and their priests, and-the world knew of the French Involution, and the terrible strength of the wrath of an awakened people. The French Revolution terrified t;hw rich exploiters, but after the terrible event had passed, they gathered courage to commence again the education of the people. In Germany and England Christianity and the rich were safe, and their hirelings commenced to show what . a dreadful mistake the French Revolution had been. Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Percy Byssho Shelley were reviled and attacked for their views and defence of the Revolution, but it remained for the Rev. Mr. Mai thus, in the "Essay

on Population," to stem the tide of revolution and revolutionary thought which was flooding Europe and bearing all before it. r The Malthusian Doctrine. The famous doctrine of Malthus was at once seized with delight by the dominant exploiters, for it shifted the responsibility for the poverty of tho people from their shoulders and laid it at the door of Providence, or attributed it to the niggardliness of Nature. The essence of this doctrine is, that population tends to. increase faster than the power of providing food; that wherever population has had. time to exert its power, and is unchecked by Providence, there must exist that degree of want which will keep population within the bounds of subsistence. The Malthusian doctrine achieved a temporary triumph over the revolutionists, Avho traced the wrong in existing conditions to the wealthy exploiters. It menaced no vested interest, .nor antagonised any privilege of the mono- * polists. It soothed and assured zhe classes who, through the power of wealth, dominated thought and education. Just when old' supports were crumbling, it came to the rescue of those who monopolised the good things of the world, and proclaimed a natural cause for the want and misery which .was otherwise being, traced to unjust laws, to the disgrace of the governments of all nations. The Malthusiaai doctrine parried the demand for reform, and sheltered selfishness from inquiry and conscience by interposing inevitable necessity. It was as hopeless to quarrel with the existing state of things as to quarrel with the law of gravitation; and Jesus, when he pictured Lazarus dying with hunger at Dives's door and Qarnned Dives for his sins against Lazarus, had been altogether mistaken. The French Revolutionists had been mistaken, as were all those who clamored for a readjustment of the existing state of things. All the political economists accepted this doctrine. It was given every prominence in the press and pulpit, and it became an important part of education. And while the wealthy classes preached the doctrine, they buttoned up their pockets with a good conscience, and took their seats with confidence in church on Sundays, to listen to the j exposition of a doctrine which to them was more acceptable than the old ono»

The doctrine of Martinis fell in with the hopeless habits of thought of tho poorer classes, while it justified the greed of tlie rich and powerful," and it consequently spread quickly and struck its roots deeply. Even Darwin was so impressed with it that he admitted that it had led him to apply it to tJie lower animals and plants when he discovered the'law ; of evolution. Marxism Appears. But revolutionists 'always felt that the doctrine was- wrong, and refused to accept it. They saw that, contrary to the Darwinian law, it involved not progress, but decay and degeneracy, and they kept on fighting it until the time of Marx, whose philosophy completely destroyed it. Then came Professor; Bonar and Henry George, who supported indirectly the Marxian position, that robbery of the workers is the cause of want and misery. But in our day, . the heaviest blow at the doctrine of the nigga-rc?H-ness of Nature has been struck by Socialist Prince Kropotkin, in ■'Folds, Factories, and Workshops." This work demonstrates what might be done if the special privileges of the exploiters were abolished and men were free to labor on land. Realising that the people can no longer be scared by an. eclipse of tho sun or a fiery comet; that they can no longer be soothed by illusive hopes of a glorious resurrection and happiness after death; that the doctrine or the niggardliness of Nature has been exploded; aoid that the people are marshalling under the red banner of revolutionary Socialism, the wealthy exploiters are casting about for a new prophet and a new doctrine to support their falling claims. In England, Herbert Spencer was for a-time the hope of the exploiters, but "Socialists discovered so many loopholes in the Spencerian armour and anarchists so many thrusts at capitalistic government, that the dominant class was glad to drop Spencerian ism. Nietzsche, Prophet of Aristocracy. In Germany, however, a true prophet of aristocracy has risen in the person or Frederich Nietzsche, who has been accaimed "the king of axiom smashers and the arch dissenter of the age/ Nietzsche, it is said, before he died, utterly routed the Socialists,'.destroyed the foundations of morality and religion,, and placed efficiency and success in an impregnable position. Says Mencken:— "Nietzsche's literalness is the hallmark of his entire philosophy. He is the high priest of the actual, and the divine mysteries seem to him to be but so many grotesque lunacies. Stripping an idea.of its holiness and romance, its antiquity' and authority, he burrows down into the heart of it and tries to estimate it in terms of its actual probability and reasonableness. That a thing is sacred and venerable, or ancient and beautiful, does not interest him. The question is asked invariably, 'Is it true ?' If he concludes that it is not, he says so, and if it happens to be something that is regarded with unusual reverence by the majority of mcn —which means something whose inviolability is accepted without inquiry or the shadow of doubt, he says sc with unusual heat and clamor. He is indeed the king of axiom smashers and the arch dissenter of the age. To him such words - as good and godly have no meaning whatever. He regards them as more, scarecrows and- bugaboos, invento'l and employed by sophisits and doctrinaires to ward off that free inquiry which would throw their fallacies to rout." This is a fair sample of the impression Nietzsche has left on the minds of his followers, and with much of it Socialists can agree. They too build upon the "actual," and take no stock in the."divine mysteries." They also attack what the majority hold as "sacred and venerable" -'■' when they know it is ; false, and they know that much of what is . said .to be "good" and "godly" is merely scarecrow stuff on a par with the ancient Egyptian priestly teaching regarding falling stars and eclipses. But when Nietzsche recommends what is "good" and "godly" in the form of Christianity, which he holds to be false and only fit for degenerates, we part company and contend that there was something the matter with the man and his system. (To be continued.