ABSTRACT
Death. — It is Schopenhauer’s argument in his essay “ On Suicide,” that the possibility of easy and painless self-destruction is the only thing that constantly and considerably ameliorates the horror of human life. Suicide is a means of escape from the world and its tortures — and therefore it is good. It is an ever-present refuge for the weak, the weary and the hopeless. It is, in Pliny’s phrase, “the greatest of all blessings which Nature gives to man,” and one which even God himself lacks, for “ he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die.” In all of this exaltation of surrender, of course, there is nothing whatever in common with the dionysian philosophy of defiance. Nietzsche’s teaching is all in the other direction. He urges, not surrender, but battle; not flight, but war to the end. His curse falls upon those preachers of death ” who counsel “ an abandonment of life ” — whether this abandonment be partial, as in asceticism, or actual, as in suicide. And yet Zarathustra sings the song of “ free death ” and says that the higher man must learn “ to die at the right time.” Herein an inconsistency appears, but it is on the surface only. Schopenhauer regards suicide as a means of escape, 227Nietzsche sees in it as a means of good riddance. It is time to die, says Zarathustra, when the purpose of life ceases to be attainable — when the fighter breaks his sword arm or falls into his enemy’s hands. And it is time to die, too, when the purpose of life is attained — when the fighter triumphs and sees before him no more worlds to conquer. “ He who hath a goal and an heir wisheth death to come at the right time for goal and heir.” One who has “ waxed too old for victories,” one who is “ yellow and wrinkled,” one with a “ toothless mouth ” — for such an one a certain and speedy death. The earth has no room for cumberers and pensioners. For them the highest of duties is the payment of nature’s debt, that there may be more room for those still able to wield a sword and bear a burden in the heat of the day. The best death is that which comes in battle “ at the moment of victory; ” the second best is death in battle in the hour of defeat. “ Would that a storm came,” sings Zarathustra, “ to shake from the tree of life all those apples that are putrid and gnawed by worms. It is cowardice that maketh them stick to their branches ” — cowardice which makes them afraid to die. But there is another cowardice which makes men afraid to live, and this is the cowardice of the Schopenhauerean pessimist. Nietzsche has no patience with it. To him a too early death seems as abominable as a death postponed too long. “ Too early died that Jew whom the preachers of slow death revere. Would that he had remained in the desert and far away from the good and just! Perhaps he would have learned how to live and how to love the earth — and even how to laugh. He died too early. He himself 228would have revoked his doctrine, had he reached mine age! ”1 Therefore Nietzsche pleads for an intelligent regulation of death. One must not die too soon and one must not die too late. “ Natural death,” he says, “ is destitute of rationality. It is really irrational death, for the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel shall exist. The pining, sottish prison-warder decides the hour at which his noble prisoner is to die. . . . The enlightened regulation and control of death belongs to the morality of the future. At present religion makes it seem immoral, for religion presupposes that when the time for death comes, God gives the command.”2
