RONALD HAYMAN
39
to depersonalise the conclusions he drew. His concept of
Verinnerli–
chung
(internalisation) anticipates lung's
introversion,
reviving a
seventeenth-century word to suggest the process by which libido is
turned inwards. As Nietzsche puts it, "All instincts that cannot be
released outwards will turn inwards," but he equates this with the
development of "soul." "The whole inner world, originally as thin as
if stretched between two membranes, expanded outwards and upwards,
acquiring depth, breadth, and height as outward discharge was
blocked." Destructiveness and aggressive cruelty have therefore been
turned inwards against the self. Using himself as a point of departure
for his generalisations, he failed to reason his way back to personal
particulari ty.
In
Twilight of the Idols
(1888) he asks whether the wisest men of
each period are all moribund. Does wisdom appear on earth like a
raven attracted by the smell of carrion? He accuses Socrates and Plato of
being symptoms of decay, agents of dissolution, anti-Greek, negative in
their relation to life. Socrates, who was as ugly and decadent, he says, as
a typical criminal, admitted to all the evil appetites, but claimed to
have mastered them. Did "this shrewdest of self-deceivers" ever under–
stand that "having to combat one's own instincts is the formula for
decadence"? But did Nietzsche not understand that he had himself been
following this formula? In the preface to
Ecce Homo
he claims that he
is both a decadent and the opposite. The typical decadent chooses what
is disadvantageous for him, but Nietzsche had refused to let himself be
cared for, had chosen solitude. Though this could, by his own defini–
tion, be interpreted as evidence of decadence, he adduced it as proof
that he had known how to cure himself. "From the perspective of
illness to
healthier
concepts and va'lues, and, conversely, from the
fullness and self-confidence of a
rich
life to the covert working of the
instinct for decadence-this was my most continuous training, my
most personal experience, which gave me mastery of this, if of any–
thing."
Without ever quite focusing inwards on the "inner pollution," or
questioning whether he might be revenging himself for it in his works,
he punishes himself constantly, as if to expiate the crimes against
humanity he is committing by failing to keep silent. " I want to make
things as hard for myself as they have ever been for anybody: only
under this pressure do I have a
clear
enough
conscience
to possess
something few men have or have ever
had-wings,
so to speak." The
wording is revealing: besides punishing himself, he wants to dis–
sociate himself from the human species, rise above human nature.
