MAKERS OF M O D E R N EUROPE

Edited by DONALD C. McKAY in association with DUMAS MALONE

NIETZSCHE
LONDON : GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
NIETZSCHE
BY

CRANE BRINTON
McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History,
Harvard University

CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS
1948
 COPYRIGHT, I94I

BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

Second Printing

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 To
L. J. HENDERSON
 EDITOR'S PREFACE

T HE present biographical series, initiated by the volume on

Nietzsche by Crane Brinton, has no intention of offering to
the public once again the biographies of men which appear with
almost monotonous regularity — Napoleon, Cavour, Gladstone,
Marx. It proposes instead to present the lives of men for whom
there is no biography, or no adequate biography in English. At
the same time these biographies will deal with men who left a
significant impress on their age, men who may properly be con-
sidered as "Makers of Modern Europe."
Contributors will be invited to keep steadily before them the
view that serious historical biography involves constantly the
relation of its subject to his historical context. They will expose
in adequate detail the problems with which the statesman dealt,
the significant contributions which the thinker made. They
will address themselves constantly to the question: "What was
the significance of this man for his epoch ?"
The conception and development of the present series owes
much to the counsel of others and especially of those here men-
tioned. I have consulted repeatedly various ones of my col-
leagues at Harvard, and have had the helpful advice of
Professor Charles K. Webster of the University of London,
Professors Carl L. Becker and Philip E. Mosely of Cornell, Pro-
fessors Arthur M. Wilson of Dartmouth and Chester W. Clark
of the University of Iowa, and Drs. Edgar P. Dean and Robert
G. Woolbert of the Council on Foreign Relations. In this, as in
vili EDITOR'S PREFACE

my other projects, I have enjoyed the stimulating interest of my

wife and have been saved from many errors by her detached
and candid criticism.
DONALD C . M C K A Y
JOHN W I N T H R O P HOUSE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
January 16, 1941
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I WISH to make quite clear that this study of Nietzsche does

not attempt to analyze his work from the point of view of
a professional philosopher, nor to estimate his place in the long
line of such philosophers. That is a task for which I am not
prepared. This study is rather an attempt to place Nietzsche's
work in the more general currents of "opinion" in our time. It
is a study of Nietzsche as politique et moraliste. Begun before
Munich, finished after the defeat of France, it must bear
some marks of contemporary events. Nazi commentators on
Nietzsche are not agreeable and conciliating writers. There is,
at least to an American brought up before the Four Years'
War, something very unpleasant about the Nazis, and especially
about Nazi intellectuals. Abusive epithets like "barbarous,"
"uncivilized," "insane," "arrogant," "brutal," all carry many
of the right overtones: you cannot fairly use nice words, nor
even neutral words dear to semanticists, about the group that
has made contemporary Germany. Yet I confess I have not
been able to find what seems to me just the right word for the
Nazis: the nearest I can come is the metaphor with which I
close Chapter VIII. I have not, then, written sine ira et studio.
On the other hand, I hope that I have not indulged in the now
once more popular sport of Hun-baiting. This book is not
meant to indict the German nation.
I owe much to odds and ends of conversations with many of
my friends, whom I cannot in these pages do more than thank
as a group. I should like, however, to acknowledge more
X P R E F A C E

specifically numerous debts. To the Macmillan Company I

am grateful for their generous permission to quote liberally
from the authorized English translation of Nietzsche's works,
edited by Dr. Oscar Levy. Dr. Fritz Epstein, Professor Seelye
Bixler, and Professor S. B. Fay have drawn my attention to
specific phases of Nietzsche's life and influence which might
otherwise have escaped me. My editors, Donald McKay and
Dumas Malone, have been most helpful. Mrs. Ruth Harris has
been kind enough to read the whole manuscript, and make sug-
gestions from which I have profited greatly. Mrs. Harriet Dor-
man has prepared the manuscript, read the proof, and made
valuable suggestions. Professor A. O. Lovejoy has consented to
my using in Chapter VIII large parts of my article on "The
National Socialists' Use of Nietzsche," which appeared in the
Journal of the History of Ideas in April, 1940; he has also helped
me greatly in shaping the mass of material on Nietzsche to be
found in Nazi writings. To all these I am especially grateful.
CRANE BRINTON
DUNSTER HOUSE
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
November 7,1940
 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION XV

I. THE STUDENT 3

II. THE PROFESSOR 27

III. THE PROPHET 50

IV. WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 74

V. WHAT NIETZSCHE WANTED II8

VI. NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 142

Vn. THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION I72

VIII. NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 200

IX. NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT: PROPHECY ON A

PROPHET 232

BIBLIOGRAPHY 247

INDEX 263
 ILLUSTRATIONS
NIETZSCHE IN H I S L A S T Y E A R OF L I F E frontispiece
Thanks to photography, we have as good a record of Nietzsche's ap-
pearance as one might expect of a member of a German middle-class
family in the late nineteenth century. He did not, however, become a
subject for artists until the decade of his great fame, the 1890's, by
which time he was insane and bedridden. Elizabeth allowed several
artists to have access to her brother at Jena and Weimar. In 1899 one
of these, Dr. Hans Olde, made this now familiar drawing, showing the
sick Nietzsche gazing sightlessly at the setting sun. There arc several
better-known engravings from this drawing, in which only Nietzsche's
head or head and shoulders are shown.

NIETZSCHE AT SIXTEEN 22
This is the familiar photograph which all good German families have
taken of the son at his confirmation.
RICHARD AND COSIMA W A G N E R 46
The famous couple posed at about the period when Nietzsche first
made their acquaintance — an acquaintance which very rapidly became
friendship.
ELIZABETH NIETZSCHE 112
This is Elizabeth on the edge of middle age, just before she married
Bernhard Förster. She did not assume the name by which she is known
to students of Nietzsche, Frau Förster-Nietzsche, until the 1890'$, when
her husband was dead and her brother famous.
NIETZSCHE IN UNIFORM 170
This photograph was taken in the fall of 1868, about the time of
Nietzsche's appointment to the professorship at Basle.
H I T L E R AT THE NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV IN W E I M A R 208
Elizabeth did all she could to associate both Hitler and Mussolini with
the memory of her brother. The photographer has here, perhaps sym-
bolically, cut Nietzsche's bust in half. The fuehrer is there in full.
 INTRODUCTION

M I G H T , even in this world, must not be allowed to make

right. Ever since Socrates so readily refuted the un-
subtle arguments of Thrasymachus, the best people, and cer-
tainly the best philosophers, have in general agreed that Truth
is great even though it does not prevail. Yet successful might
forces itself on the serious, and indeed indignant, attention of
the firmest believers in the ultimate victory of Truth and Right.
Successful might, perhaps unfortunately, is never comic. Hit-
ler's mustache, which looked funny on the crank who failed
in the Beer-hall Putsch, now looks menacing on the victorious
Fuehrer. Similarly with Hitler's ideas. Mein Kampf, that
hash of racial superstitions, contorted history, odds and ends
of a soap-box orator's culture, crude and cunning rhetorical
violence, and several sorts of neuroses, seemed to most educated
people only a few years ago hardly worthy of serious criticism.
Today, if Mein Kampf still seems to the unconverted no mas-
terpiece of literature or of philosophy, even the unconverted
must admit that Hitler's book is an important part of a National
Socialist canon now established as the faith of millions.
Not all of that canon is derived from culturally disreputable
sources. Mein Kampf itself, if it owes much to bad ethnologists
like Gobineau and to fakers like the anti-Semites, could hardly
have been written without the aid of two of the great names in
the cultural heritage of the West — Richard Wagner and
Friedrich Nietzsche. About both men there has always been
controversy: neither is a serene and Olympian figure like
xvi INTRODUCTION
Goethe, forever safe in any list of the Hundred Best. But both
are respectable in a way that most of the other contributors to
Nazi holy writings are not respectable. Both have followings
outside Germany. The Nietzscheane, if not so numerous nor
so noisy as the Wagnerites, have been quite as worshipful.1
That a subtle and most literate philosopher and an earth-
shaking composer, both of them enshrined among the beautiful
— and therefore — good, should help make the faith professed
by Dr. Goebbels is not the only bit of irony to stare at the
skeptical student of National Socialism.' It is a fact, perhaps too
obvious and too often remarked to be worth much as irony,
that a striking proportion of the names of those who have built
up the canon of the National Socialist faith in the German race
are not German. The Comte de Gobineau, Paul de Lagarde,
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Treitschke, Nietzsche do not
sound very German. Indeed, these French, English, and Slavic
names must ring discordantly through Valhalla. The men who
bote them make a strange band, as disparate as any that ever
made a faith; and if they have come in death to that most
Germanic heaven, they must add appreciably to the pleasurable
confusion of its traditional mêlée. Nietzsche, whose memory
on German earth — and not only German — is now among the
most honored of them all, has certainly fought his share, if not
rather more than his share; but one doubts whether he is happy
among his fellow Supermen. Indeed, since in Valhalla words
presumably kill no more finally than do swords, he must be

*Mr. Peter Viereck first brought to the attention of Americans the Nazi
canonization of Wagner as a thinner and prophet. His articles in Common
Sense for November and December, 1939, are being expanded into a book to
be published shortly.
 INTRODUCTION xvii
most unhappy — unless there is in Valhalla also a Sils-Maria.
For Nietzsche, living, got on very badly with flesh-and-blood
Germans. He loved to badger them, to attack their most as-
sured superiorities.
I shall never admit that a German can understand what music is.
Those musicians who are called German, the greatest and most famous
foremost, are all foreigners, either Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen —
or Jews: or else, like Heinrich Schütz, Bach and Händel, they are Ger-
mans of a strong race which is now extinct.2

He had no use whatever for theories of race superiority, which

he regarded as mere swindles. He wrote of himself as a "good
European," and he lived most of his adult life in Switzerland
and Italy.
A n d yet the writings of this man are in high honor in Na-
tional Socialist Germany. They do not burn his books there:
they print them by the thousands in popular editions. Their
reasons on the whole are consistent with their doctrines, and
worth investigating. Nietzsche's career, in life and in death, is
one of the most curious in modern intellectual history. It is a
career which may help us understand better what goes on in
the minds of the intellectual leaders of National Socialism.
For these revolutionary preachers of the deed, these lovers of
blood and soil, these anti-intellectuals, are in a sense as much
intellectuals as those other revolutionaries, the children of the
Enlightenment, the philosophes who made the articles of faith
of 1776 and 1789. But the Nazi intellectuals are followers, not
of Locke and Voltaire, but of Nietzsche; and Nietzsche,
wherever he led, did not lead towards the Rights of Man.

* Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I am so clever," § 7.

NIETZSCHE
 CHAPTER I
THE STUDENT

N OCTOBER 15,1844, a son was born to the young wife

O of the Lutheran pastor of the little village of Röcken in a
part of Saxony which had fallen to Prussia after the War of
Liberation. It was the birthday of the reigning king of Prussia,
Frederick William IV, towards whom pastor Nietzsche felt
as a clergyman of the Church of Luther should feel towards
his sovereign. Some of these feelings he managed to express
at the christening of his son:
O blissful moment! O exquisite festival! O unspeakable holy duty!
In the name of the Lord I bless thee! From the bottom of my heart do
I utter these words; Bring me, then, this my beloved child, that I may
consecrate him unto the Lord! My son, Friedrich Wilhelm, thus shalt
thou be named on earth, in honor of my royal benefactor on whose
birthday thou wast born. 1

The boy grew up as Fritz to his family and friends; and since,
as a grown man and a philosopher, he came to feel an ordinary
king of Prussia rather far beneath him, he did not customarily
use the royal name, but signed himself simply Friedrich
Nietzsche.
About Nietzsche's heredity biographers have indulged them-
selves in the fine free speculation customary in such matters.
Nietzsche himself set them an example. The Slavic family
1
E . Förster-Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, English translation (1912),
I, 12.
4 NIETZSCHE
name, and some tales of his grandmother, gave his imagina-
tion a few facts to work on, out of which, perhaps with the help
of his always admiring young sister Elizabeth, he spun out a
romantic tale of decent from a family of refugee Polish nobles
named Nicki or Nietzky.
My ancestors were Polish noblemen: it is owing to them that I have
so much race instinct in my blood — who knows? perhaps even the
liberum veto. When I think of the number of times in my travels that
I have been accosted as a Pole, even by Poles themselves, and how seldom
I have been taken for a German, it seems to me as if I belonged to those
only who have a sprinkling of German in them.2

The tremendous mustache, of the kind once known in the

America of bicycle days as a "handle-bar mustache," which
Nietzsche grew with such care and pride, may well have been
worn to accentuate his Polish, and presumably also his noble,
appearance.
There is nothing in the story. There was no Polish blood in
Nietzsche, and no very recent or certain noble blood. Five
generations back of Friedrich in the paternal line, patient
research has found a Christoph Nietzsche in Burkau in Upper
Lusatia some time about the year 1600. There is further evi-
dence to push the family back across the border into Slavic
' Ecce Homo, "Why I am so wise," § 3. Except for his first book, The Birth
of Tragedy, Nietzsche's books are not systematically put together into long
chapters, but are collections of aphorisms, verses, or parables (as in Zarathus-
tra). References to Nietzsche's works are therefore usually given in the follow-
ing form: title of the book, section name or number, and aphorism number.
This is a very convenient form of reference, and will be used in this study of
Nietzsche. Unlike reference to page numbers, it permits the reader to refer
to any edition in the original or in translation. Wherever possible, I have
quoted the English translation in the authorized edition of Nietzsche's works
edited by Dr. Oscar Levy, published in the United States by the Macmillan
Company, who have kindly granted me permission to quote from this edition.
 THE STUDENT 5
Bohemia. The name Nietzsche is probably a variant German
spelling of the diminutive form of a saint's name very popular
among Slavs — Nicholas. Some Czech blood, then flowed in
Nietzsche's veins — or, since modern genetics repudiates the
metaphor of common blood, some Czech chromosomes went
into the making of the man Nietzsche. But not many, at least
no more than is usual among Germans in the middle Elbe
basin. The other names in his ancestry, Oehler, Krause, and
the like, sound German enough.8
Nietzsche's mental collapse has set many of his biographers
the task of finding an hereditary taint of insanity in his family.
They can find one case of mental illness readily enough. In
August, 1848, his father fell on a flight of stone steps and suf-
fered a severe concussion. After a year of illness, during which
he never recovered mental or physical health, Pastor Nietzsche
died. Apart from the fact that we have no satisfactory clinical
reports of his illness, there remains the difficulty that in such
cases it is impossible to assign any precise part to an hereditary
disposition to insanity. There are no known similar cases in
the family history, but beyond the maternal and paternal grand-
parents we have no certain information whatever. Pastor
Nietzsche came later to stand in the minds of his son and
daughter, who could not really remember him in the flesh, as a
sensitive, imaginative, scholarly man, held by fragile health to
a country pastorate unworthy of his endowments of mind and
character. His emotions, to judge from his words at the chris-
tening of his son, were of the kind that frequently required
exclamation points to do them justice; this, however, is no

* M. Oehler, "Nietzsche's angebliche polnische Herkunft," Ostdeutsche

Monatshefte (February, 1938), XVIII, 679.
6 NIETZSCHE
more than good German taste in the romantic 1840's, and is
not in itself evidence even of a mild neurosis.
Nietzsche's ancestors, so far as they can be traced, were ap-
parently substantial middle-class folk, with solid roots in the
soil of Germany where it meets the westernmost bastion of the
Slavs — Saxony, Lusatia, Bohemia. Many of them were Lu-
theran clergymen. In Germany, as in England, pastorates in an
established protestant church tend to be preserved in the fam-
ily, and to give it a kind of distinction well short of that enjoyed
by a landed nobility. Nietzsche's family background was one
of which in his writings he seems now proud, now ashamed:
sturdy, industrious, middle-class, respectable, undistinguished,
a Germanic stock mixed with Slavic elements — in brief, some-
thing echt deutsch.
After the death of her husband Frau Nietzsche retired with
her mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and her two children to
the quiet market-town of Naumburg on the river Saale. There
is no evidence that the family were ever in pinched circum-
stances. Frau Nietzsche had a small pension as a pastor's
widow, and in Naumburg she was in the midst of her own
family, the Oehlers, who were prosperous, well-established
people. Fritz grew up in a household carefully and economi-
cally run in the traditions common to European bourgeois. The
Nietzsches were never allowed to be extravagant. But of the
poverty and uncertainty in which fatherless boys so often grow
up there was none at all. Indeed, the boy's childhood was com-
fortable and sheltered beyond that of most boys, even in the
safe, domestic Germany of the mid-nineteenth century.
Too sheltered, perhaps, for his future stability, Fritz grew up
wholly surrounded by the determined love of five women,
 THE STUDENT 7
grandmother, mother, aunts, and sister. They were all good
women, much too good to distinguish between love and owner-
ship. Aunt Augusta, as she appeared to Elizabeth, will do as a
sample:
For years she suffered from exceedingly painful gastric troubles, which
she bore, however, with great sweetness and patience; and in spite of
her affliction, she did not cease from conducting the affairs of the house-
hold in a truly admirable manner. "Leave me this one solace," she
would say, when she was entreated to spare herself. 4

Though Elizabeth reports that Aunt Rosalie regularly perused

the papers, which was unusual among women in those days,
none of the women seem to have been very intellectual, nor to
have possessed the supreme feminine wisdom which tells them
when to let a man alone. Fritz, as the one boy left in the family,
they worshipped not only with the fervor women in such social
groups commonly display towards the symbolically dominant
male, but with the added fervor German women feel for the
man of the family. The object of such worship is hard to dis-
tinguish from any other object of tyranny. His sister herself
reports her absolute subservience to her brother, her elder by
three years. When she came to study Greek, for instance, she
always translated in her mind αυτός %φα by "Fritz says so."
Yet it is clear throughout her biography of her famous brother
that she always bossed him about, and that never, save in his
philosophical flights, could he twist himself loose from the
bonds of her submissive affection. He lived to write one of the
most innocently transparent bits of wishful thinking in all
literature: "Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!" 8

4 Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 29.

1 Thus Spaile Zarathustra, I, chap, xviii.
8 NIETZSCHE

Fritz was a good little boy, studious, well-behaved, highly

esteemed by his teachers. In Anglo-Saxon countries, he would
have been a horrible little prig, and it is possible that even in
Germany the following anecdote, as told by his sister, suggests
virtues carried rather uncomfortably far:
One day, just as school was over, there was a heavy downpour of
rain, and we looked out along the Priestergasse for our Fritz. All the
little boys were running like mad to their homes — at last little Fritz
also appeared, walking slowly along, with his cap covering his slate and
his little handkerchief spread over the whole. . . . When our mother
remonstrated with him for coming home soaked to the skin he replied
seriously: "But, Mamma, in the rules of the school it is written: on leaving
school, boys are forbidden to jump and run about in the street, but must
walk quietly and decorously to their homes." Fritz had obeyed this rule
under the most adverse circumstances.®

The boy was known in Naumburg as "the little minister," a

title perhaps not given quite in the spirit in which Elizabeth
reports it.
We need not rely wholly on Elizabeth for our knowledge of
this precocious and virtuous childhood. Excellent confirmation
comes from Fritz himself. At the age of fourteen he began an
autobiography. Fragments of this, together with other juve-
nilia, essays, verses, and school exercises, have been published
with the most thorough scholarly editing in the first volumes
of the "Historical and critical edition of the collected works of
Friedrich Nietzsche."7 The lad whose odd scraps of writing

* Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 25.

* Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke und Briefe, Historisch-Britische Gesamtaus-
gabe (1933-), Wer^e. ι Band. "Jugendschriften, 1854-1861." Briefe. 1 Band.
"Briefe der Schüler und Bonner Studentenzeit, 1850-1865." The autobiography,
"Aus meinem Leben," is in Werke, I, 1-32. All these papers were preserved by
the especial care of Elizabeth. No one who has followed her determined use
 THE STUDENT J
have thus against all odds survived and found their way to print
is now and then boyish enough. "I ate lots of cherries yesterday,
and my uncles played several of Beethoven's sonatas for me." 8
He was clearly a bright, bookish boy, omnivorous in his reading,
and already bitten with the desire to write. He can, indeed, al-
ready write; for although the matter of these writings is wholly
conventional, their form shows little of the schoolboy's awkward
stumbling. There are few attempts at purple passages, and
even the conventional romantic soul-searchings are conducted
in amazingly crisp German prose. He reads history, mythology,
travels, poetry, and though Elizabeth reports his fondness for
play-acting, the printed juvenilia are overwhelmingly didactic
or analytical, rather than narrative or dramatic. Nietzsche,
indeed, never was able to get far enough outside himself to be
an effective mime. No one would expect originality in such
early writings; precocity means successful imitation, or it means
nothing. But one might expect a trace of mischievousness,
some faint foreshadowing of the ironic laughter that was to
come. There is, in fact, so little of such foreshadowing that one
wonders what so serious a boy made of Tristam Shandy, which
he resolved to buy for himself as a birthday gift on his fifteenth
birthday.®

of the Nietzsche-Archiv in Weimar to keep to memory of her brother as

spotlessly and innocuously German, Christian, and middle-class as possible —
a very hard job — would dare assert that this represents all the boy Nietzsche
wrote. He may, like other little boys, have had naughty thoughts, and even
put them on paper; but if he did, no trace of them remains, and it is always
possible that he never had them.
* Briefe, I, 9. T o his friend Gustav Krug.
* Wer\e, I, 119.
IO NIETZSCHE

II
At fourteen, the adolescent boy was at last separated from
his adoring womenfolk, and entered on a scholarship at the
boys' school in Pforta, five miles away from Naumburg on the
river Saale. Schulpforta has always had an admirable intellec-
tual tradition, and many writers and scholars have gone from
there to the universities. Lutheran pastors and teachers had
taken over the place from mediaeval monks, and maintained
some of the strictness, sobriety, and devotion to a classical edu-
cational discipline of the mediaeval school. The boys worked
hard at Pforta. But the school did not put its pupils through
the essentially unintellectual social conditioning such nurseries
of a ruling class as Eton or the Prussian cadet schools im-
pose. Nietzsche was probably already at fifteen as proof
against this sort of conditioning as was, at the same age,
the lad Shelley. But Shelley had to undergo Eton and Ox-
ford. Nietzsche never came quite so close to this harsh
world.
Pforta was not of course entirely a cloister, a prison, or a
library. It was filled with adolescent boys who played, strolled
in the garden, swam in the river, joked, and on Sundays and
holidays drank wine from the school's own vineyards. Yet this
kind of play was pleasantly anarchic, with nothing to gall —
or restrain — a lad already precociously intellectual. Fritz had
at first some trouble adapting himself to the routine of early
rising, communal meals, and ordered studying, but he was still
young enough to bend slightly. A fragmentary diary, preserved
as usual by Elizabeth's care, gives an interesting account of the
daily life of this most German school, so different from any-
 THE STUDENT iz
thing young Americans and young Englishmen have ever been
put through. 10
As the boy grows up his letters, journals, and essays — for he
was always writing — begin to lose their straightforward
clarity. With adolescence, the appropriate emotional crisis
seems to come over Fritz, and gets expressed in ways which
are still appropriately conventional. "Vorbei, vorbei! Herz,
willst du zerspringen?" Roses, and the world, must die. He
writes poetry, pages and pages of it, lyric and dramatic. At his
height, in "The Conspiracy of Philotas," he achieves thirty-six
exclamation points in twenty-seven lines, which is rather bet-
ter than his father had done. 11 A new and somewhat less
solemn tone comes into the letters from Pforta. He writes long
letters to his old friends Krug and Pinder, and to a new one,
Granier, letters full of self-conscious and literary jesting, wag-
gish and lively as though they came from a perpetually young
American college professor of English:
The plan for my contrarious novel — Lord! you've already forgotten
it — never mind! — I threw overboard in annoyance as soon as I had
finished the first chapter. I'm sending you the monstrous manuscript
to use for . . . well, what you will. . . . Yours till we meet again soon
F W ν Nietzky (alias Muck)
homme étudié en lettres
{votre ami sans lettres) 12

The lad is clearly capable, at moments, of high spirits, just as,

in his letters to his mother, his aunts, and his sister, he is capable
of strong affection. Yet neither the spirits nor the affection ever
sound very earthy, substantial, straightforward. Nietzsche is
10
Werke, I, 119-125.
u
Wer\e, I, 129; 170.
u
Briefe, I, 193. To Raimund Granier, July 28, 1862.
12 NIETZSCHE
already anointing himself with words. He does not leave the
impression of pose or insincerity — nothing as simple as that.
He is already, perhaps, impatient of the sluggish, wordless,
thoughtless world we humans mostly live in, a world in which
he was not only uncomfortable, but also inconspicuous.
Nietzsche was confirmed at Easter in 1861 at the age of six-
teen, and was, certainly in his womenfolk's mind and probably
in his own for some time after, destined for the Lutheran min-
istry. Yet when he was eighteen, and beginning his last year
at school, the model pupil, the bright boy, began to go wrong.
He lost interest in his classes; he even slipped off during the
school walk on Sunday, and got very drunk in a Bierstube,13
Though existing evidence cannot be pieced together to make
the matter certain, it is more than likely that one very impor-
tant factor in his behavior was doubt over his call to the
ministry. Though the author of The Antichrist is still far off,
Nietzsche may already have been afflicted with doubts about the
existence of the God with whom he had been brought up on
such excellent terms. Certainly he had come to doubt very much
his own aptitude for the pulpit of his fathers. This was not an
easy matter to communicate to his mother. It seems very likely
that the forthright moralist-to-be did some human, all too-
human hedging; he clearly gave his mother to understand that
he would take up the study of theology as well as that of
philology in his approaching university career.
Music, which had always meant much to the boy, occupied
more and more of his attention in adolescence. He played the
u
His contrite letter to his mother shows him still in some ways the school-
boy. Briefe, I, 209. April 16, 1863. A n English translation is in Förster-
Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 105.
 THE STUDENT 13
piano, apparently well short of excellently, and with much
emotion. He wrote Lieder, bits of sonatas, and other short bits
of music, mostly for the piano. The piety which has hitherto
worked such wonders in the Nietzsche-Archiv at Weimar has
spared us the publication of most of these musical outpourings.
Elizabeth did print in her first German biography the score of
a piano composition written by her brother in 1858, entitled
"In the Moonlight on the Pussta." It has not won its way to the
concert-stage.14 Nietzsche's many gifts were not those that
make great musicians or great composers. Music was to
Nietzsche in after life a refuge when words failed him; and
when words failed him he really had very little left.
The boy's academic troubles, whatever their origin, were not
serious, and he rallied to make his school record, in the "certifi-
cate of proficiency" with which he left Pforta for the Univer-
sity, on the whole excellent. In religion, German, and Latin
he was marked excellent·, in Greek good; in French, History
and Geography, and Natural Sciences, satisfactory. Only in
mathematics was he notably deficient. Here his masters had to
report, "As he has never shown any regular industry in mathe-
matics, he has always gone backwards, so to speak, both in his
written and in his oral work." 1 5

III
In October, 1864, at the age of twenty, Friedrich Nietzsche
matriculated in theology and philosophy at the University of
" E . Förster-Nietzsche, Das heben Friedrich Nietzsches (1895), I, 80. There
is also a song of his printed in the same volume, p. 224. The "Hymn to Life,"
words by Lou Salomé, music by Friedrich Nietzsche, can be found at the end
of the English translation of Ecce Homo and the poems.
"Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 119-121.
14 NIETZSCHE
Bonn. The next few months are a crisis in his life, which will
probably remain obscure, and therefore a constant temptation
to his biographers. Nietzsche himself used afterwards to refer
to his "lost year" at Bonn, and to the whole experience as an
almost inexplicable straying from the path of his destiny. His
sympathetic biographers, such as Charles Andler, have regarded
the year at Bonn as an essential part of their hero's Calvary, his
ennobling exposure to the test of withstanding German student-
life in its full comic-opera vulgarity.
Here a simpler explanation may be hazarded. Nietzsche was
making a final and determined effort to be one of the boys.
After his coddled childhood, his cloistral adolescence, after the
long domination of his womenfolk, of the Naumburg proprie-
ties, of all sorts of high seriousness, the young man was ready
for revolt. And his revolt was still, characteristically, very con-
ventional. He was going to sow his wild oats, in our complex
modern society one of the ritual forms through which the
adolescent becomes a man. Nietzsche was still one of the tribe,
still most eager for the applause of the tribe. He would go
through a brave and boisterous initiation.
Such ceremonies, varying in form from tribe to tribe, seem
always a bit ludicrous to an outsider. The current American
form, especially as caricatured in Hollywood moving pictures
of "collegiate" life, may seem ludicrous even to an insider.
Certainly German "student life" of the mid-nineteenth century
takes on today an absurdity mellowed into something roman-
tically enduring. Beer, metaphysics, song and buxom young
love, the manly touch of the duel, the sweetness of a not un-
conquerable nostalgia — this is surely one of the world's great
patterns for ritual, and one likely to survive a number of
 THE STUDENT 15
totalitarian dictatorships. Sowing one's wild oats, never a pur-
suit to give the subtle artistic sensibility much scope for inde-
pendent variation, was in nineteenth-century Germany limited
by the national genius for organization, which seems as apt —
if as unlovely — at organizing youthful jollity as at organizing
a military campaign.
Nietzsche tried his best. He joined a student corps, the Fran-
conia, which was composed mostly of Pforta men. H e drank
beer — a drink for which he later expressed the greatest con-
t e m p t — at noisy student gatherings, took long walks, always
with groups, and even made a pathetic attempt to fight a duel.
For this latter purpose, he challenged a man of whom he was
very fond; perhaps the ironist was already at work within him.
T h e duel produced no scars. H e must also have been appropri-
ately in love, or at least given his fellows some evidence that in
this most important human activity he was what a good Ger-
man ought to be in his student days. H e may merely have
talked about women, which if done at all skillfully, will qualify
the talker among men. H e may have had a go with a prostitute,
and thus unfortunately caught the syphilis which ended his
career twenty-five years later. 16 Nietzsche's actual relations with
women remain a puzzle for most of his life. In spite of the
pathetic efforts of his sister Elizabeth to bring in concrete in-
stances of his puppy loves and his adolescent flames, in spite of
the insistence with which she repeats that her Fritz was in this
as in all matters a sound, normal German lad, the impression

" T h i s subject must later be considered in relation to Nietzsche's collapse

in 1889. Here it will be enough to say that the fact that Nietzsche did have
syphilis may be regarded as proved (as certainly as anything of the kind can
be proved) by the publication of E. F. Podach's book, Nietzsche's Zusammen-
bruch in 1930.
ι6 NIETZSCHE

persists, from a reading of Nietzsche's own youthful writings,

that he hadn't much to do with the girls. 17
Nietzsche's efforts to live up to what his comrades thought
he should be lasted several months. In a long letter to Elizabeth
he describes one of these excursions of jolly fellows:

I write this the first thing in the morning after having just torn myself
from bed, thus flatly disproving the notion that I may have a thick head.
Maybe the expression "thick head" conveys nothing to your mind. Yes-
terday we had a great drinking bout and sang the solemn Landesvater,
and there were endless torrents of punch; guests from Heidelberg and
Göttingen, . . . We numbered over forty men; the public-house was
beautifully decorated. . . . The festival was of a very splendid and
elevating nature. On such evenings, believe me, there is a general spirit
of enthusiasm which has little in common with the mere conviviality
of the beer-table. This afternoon we are all going to march through the
High Street in parade garb, and there will be a good deal of shouting
and singing. Then we go by steamer to Rolandseck, where we have a big
dinner in the Hotel Croyen. . . . The bout began on the evening of
the day before yesterday; we drank until two o'clock in the morning,
assembled yesterday at n a.m. for a morning pint, and then went on a
spree in the market-place, and had lunch and coffee together at Kley's.18

Here already Nietzsche is beginning to find the round of drink-

ing and back-slapping less than "elevating," though on the
whole this letter sounds like the normal young man boasting
sheepishly about his ability to drink. As time went on, how-
ever, he dropped more and more out of the merry doings of the
Franconia, drew more and more into himself — where he al-
ways found plenty of room. His letters home become even

"Elizabeth goes so far as to publish, in the English edition of the Life,

a full-page portrait of the actress Hedwig Raabe, on the grounds that Fritz
worshipped her during his University days. But she admits Fritz had but
the slightest personal acquaintance with the lady. Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche,
I, 161. See also H. W. Brann, Nietzsche und die Frauen (1931), chap. i.
" Briefe, I, 281. Dec. 11, 1864. English translation in Förster-Nietzsche,
Nietzsche, 1, 127-128.
 THE STUDENT 17

more forcedly cheerful. Finally he gives up altogether, and

admits that "the touch of poetry which seemed to hang over
this life had vanished" for him, and that all he could now see
was "the coarse, Philistine spirit, reared in this excess of drink-
ing, of rowdyism, of running into debt." 19
Nietzsche had made his last attempt to accept the world.
Perhaps the world might have been presented to him in a fairer
shape than that of the Franconia Corps of the University of
Bonn in 1864. Yet the mere historian finds it very hard to
conjure up the picture of a world which Nietzsche would have
accepted. The great "Yea-sayer" spent most of his life saying
"No." Such is, perhaps, the mark of the profound moralist.
And yet, from any other than a profound moralist, Nietzsche's
letter of resignation from his corps would sound somewhat
priggish:
I beg to inform the Association, the Franconia, that I herewith return
it my sash, and in so doing send in my resignation. By this I do not
mean that I cease to value the principle of the Association. All I would
frankly declare is that its present features are not very pleasing to me.
This may be in part my own fault; in any case it has proved a great
effort for me to endure my membership over the year. Nevertheless I
regarded it,as a duty to become acquainted with the Society, and now
that no narrow bonds unite me with it I bid it a hearty farewell.
May the Franconia soon grow out of that stage of development at
which it now stands, and may it ever claim high-minded moral men for
its members.
FRIEDRICH N I E T Z S C H E 2 0

Perhaps this letter still sounds a bit priggish, even from Fried-
rich Nietzsche.
Bonn had become unbearable. Well before he composed the
"Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 146.
w
Briefe, II, 12. Oct. 20, 1865. English translation in Förster-Nietzsche,
Nietzsche, I, 147.
ι8 NIETZSCHE

above letter, Nietzsche had left it for the University of Leipzig.

Here he made no attempt to be one of the boys. He found a
study, classical philology, and a professor, Ritschl — himself a
recent refugee from Bonn — worthy of his attention, and in
what seems nowadays the almost incredible academic freedom
of the German Universities in their great period, this was
enough. He might have eaten, drunk, and slept classical
philology. No one would have disturbed him. Actually he had
some relief from work. "Three things make up my recreation
— rare recreation — my Schopenhauer, Schumann's music, and
finally, solitary walks." 21
With his academic work he made out admirably. For these
few years he summoned the patient industry, the care, the
simple Sitzfleisch indispensable for scholarly success. Since he
also had what is vaguely and knowingly called intelligence, a
gift useful if not altogether indispensable for such success, his
work pleased Professor Ritschl very much indeed. The piety
of the Nietzsche-Archiv has spread out in the third and fourth
volumes of the definitive edition of his works whatever is left
of the apparatus of his scholarship, from finished dissertations
to mere dmbryos of notes. To the layman, this mass of Greek
and Latin is impressive, and often incomprehensible. What for
instance lies behind this entry?
Hesiod Homer
16 Bücher 13
Nach Tzetzes
Theogonie Aspis Epithal
Catalog Aigimius Ceyc. gam.
Eoeen Theseus' καταβ wtpl Ίδαίων 22

a Briefe,
Briefe, II, 45. April 7, 1866. To Carl von Gersdorfi.
Werke, IV, 126.
 THE STUDENT 19
Yet it is dear from these notes seen as a whole that Nietzsche
was a careful and a curious worker, that he kept asking himself
questions about his Greeks that went far beyond mere cata-
loguing. His most finished work in the field, De Laertii Di-
ogenis fontibus, was printed in the Rheinisches Museum für
Philologie in 1868 and 1869, and gave the twenty-four year old
scholar a European reputation among professional philologists.
More important in the long run for Nietzsche's career was his
discovery of Schopenhauer's philosophy. In one of his numer-
ous autobiographical fragments he has described how, rum-
maging in a Leipzig bookshop during the lonely days after he
had broken with Bonn and the Franconia, he came across
Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea, took the book
home, and devoured it with increasing excitement. This was
something less than what had happened to St. Paul on the road
to Damascus or to Rousseau on the road to Vincennes, but it
too was a great conversion. Schopenhauer's slightly Bieder-
meier stoicism, though it could not for long satisfy the emo-
tional needs of a man as God-ridcten as Nietzsche, solved in this
crisis and for a moment the problem of the universe. "Here
each line," he wrote a few years later of his first reading of
Schopenhauer, "cried out renunciation, denial, resignation;
here I saw a mirror in which the world, life, my own mind
were reflected in fearful grandeur. Here the wholly disinter-
ested and heavenly eye of art looked at me, here I saw illness
and salvation, banishment and refuge, hell and heaven."28
The world makes no sense intellectually; Kant and the eight-
eenth-century philosophes were no more than whistlers in the
dark. Will, the blind striving of millions of organisms, is what
" Wer\e, III, 298. "Rückblick auf meine zwei Leipziger Jahre."
20 NIETZSCHE

really makes the world go. And it goes crazily, stupidly,

cruelly. A l l that is left for a philosopher is renunciation, the
extinction of the will to live which is the will to evil. Schopen-
hauer came in the end to a kind of Nordic Nirvana most attrac-
tive to the lonely young philologist. Nietzsche decided, not
without pride, that he too was a philosopher.
Yet the Leipzig years were by no means pathologically soli-
tary years. Nietzsche made a few new friends, and especially
Erwin Rohde, like himself young, intellectual, seeking his way.
Rohde found it in the relatively serene paths of German aca-
demic preferment, and though he later lost touch with the
academically outlawed Nietzsche, he remains one of the best
sources of information on Nietzsche's personal history. Old
Pforta friends and especially the Prussian officer and gentleman
Baron von Gersdorfi and the quiet scholarly Paul Deussen, later
a distinguished expert in Sanskrit, remained close to the young
Nietzsche, who wrote them long letters of the kind no one
seems any longer to write. Music still was a solace and a ful-
fillment, though by now Nietzsche probably knew he was not
to be a great composer. He did, however, meet casually a great
composer, Richard Wagner, who with Schopenhauer was to
provide the setting for Nietzsche's flight from scholarship to
philosophy and preaching.
For the present, he was still a very promising philologist, a
favorite pupil of Professor Ritschl, a candidate for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy. He never had to write his thesis. In
1868 a chair in philology at the University of Basle in Switzer-
land fell vacant, and Ritschl managed to have his brilliant
young student chosen, without benefit of the doctorate.24
24 Hewas at once given the degree by Leipzig University on the strength
of his previous record.
 THE STUDENT 21
Nietzsche had an almost incredible start in the profession: at
twenty-four he was Herr Professori His womenfolk were in
raptures. Their little Fritz had justified their loving care; a
university professor is perhaps even higher in the hierarchy of
virtue and respectability than a Lutheran pastor.

IV
Hero-worship has produced flattering descriptions of the
young Nietzsche. W e have some help from photographs, and
notably from one his sister gives us, taken at his confirmation
at the age of sixteen. The portentous Polish cavalryman's
mustache of his maturity is not yet there. The lad's rather large
mouth is set firmly. His eyes look dark and for so young a boy,
surprisingly deep-sunken. His face is round and full, yet sensi-
tive. He is certainly no Nordic, but he might be almost any-
thing else.
He appears at Bonn "a picture of health and strength, broad-
shouldered, brown, with rather thick fair hair, and of exactly
the same height as Goethe." 25 Goethe, of course, is for Ger-
mans strength and beauty made flesh, and to associate him ever
so tenuously with Nietzsche is to make Nietzsche share some-
thing of Olympian health. Elizabeth reports that her brother
swam, skated, and rode horseback, and that only his short-
sightedness prevented his being still more athletic. Later ob-
servers were not struck with any such evidence of physical
prowess. They are, indeed, usually reporting after Nietzsche
had become famous — which was only after he had become

* Quoted in W . K . Salter, Nietzsche the Thinner (1917), 7, from H. Ellis,

Affirmations, 11. Goethe is described as slightly above the average height, but
looking taller than he really was.
22 NIETZSCHE
insane and inaccessible. More than usually, perhaps, their
reports are less of what they saw than of what they thought
they ought to have seen. A t any rate, they describe Slavic
restlessness, high cheek-bones, piercing and unquiet eyes, the
timidity of the scholar and the soul of a prophet.28
The problem of Nietzsche's bodily and mental health has
exercised all his biographers. That he was ill a great deal during
his adult life, and that he died insane, not even Elizabeth and
the faithful workers of the Nietzsche-Archiv have been able to
deny. They insist, however, that he was born and grew up a
splendid example of German youth, normal, healthy, cheerful,
fond of sports. For his later ill-health they must find an honor-
able explanation in circumstances no decent German lad of this
sort could have avoided. It all started, according to Elizabeth,
from Nietzsche's poor eyesight. This, if an organic weakness,
is at any rate one that suggests nobility and spirituality of
character. Poor light at Pforta, over-study, carelessness about
glasses (Fritz would not listen to his mother and his sister!),
led to splitting headaches. Headaches led to sleeplessness.
Later this sleeplessness drove the young professor to drugs, and
to the serious undermining of his health. Moreover, with his
mind on higher things, Nietzsche neglected himself, ate the
wrong things, ate irregularly as bachelors do. Then, with his
natural good health undermined, he took to doctoring him-
self, and gradually developed into a mild hypochondriac. Yet
underneath this ill-health, very real and very tragic in its con-
sequences, but in a sense superficial, there remained a basis of

" One of the most plausible of these descriptions is that made by a French-
man, Edouard Schuré, who saw Nietzsche in Bayreuth in the 1870's, and re-
ported in the 1890*5. It is given in Salter, Nietzsche, 476.
NIETZSCHE AT SIXTEEN
From a photograph, 1861
 THE STUDENT 23
hearty, sane Germanic health. Such is the account Frau
Förster-Nietzsche gives us.27
T h e medical problems of Nietzsche's life are puzzling enough
to the physician. They are quite insoluble to the layman. One
can only note that Elizabeth herself was no physician, and that
she could not bear to think of her brother as in any way abnor-
mal. H e was, she is quite willing to admit, a genius. But
"genius" is a very nice word, and "abnormal" is not. Later in
Nietzsche's career his behavior was clearly that of an extreme
neurotic; and though "neurotic" is also a word of pejorative
overtones, and though it has somewhat different meanings for
physician and for layman, most of us know neurotic behavior
when we see it — and sometimes, even when we indulge in it.
Whatever name we give this behavior of Nietzsche's, it is
evident enough, in milder forms, in what we know of the
school and university student. The young Nietzsche, swim
and skate though he did, seems always to have been awkward
in the use of his body. Sensitive and self-conscious, he did not
like to appear awkward. If you prefer, you may say that he was
a perfectionist, and that he would do nothing he could not
from the first do pretty well. Or you may say that he was proud,
or vain, and that he hated to seem ridiculous. Whatever the
reason, save for a tempestuous facility with the piano, he had
no bodily skills. Bodily energy he had, or at least a kind of
nervous restlessness for which he found an outlet in long walks.

" T h i s explanation is scattered through both volumes of Förster-Nietzsche,

Nietzsche. Most of Elizabeth's points are recorded — for purposes of debate
— by E. F. Podach in the chapter "Das Pathologische bei Nietzsche" in his
Nietzsches Zusammenbruch, 21-35. (There is an English translation of this
book, The Madness of Nietzsche, 1931, and a French translation, L'Effondre-
ment de Nietzsche, published in Les documents bleus in 1931.)
24 NIETZSCHE

Much of his writing was composed during these walks and

noted down hurriedly on his return home.
Again, save for his studies, he had undergone no very im-
portant discipline. A short and uncomfortable period of mili-
tary service in the Prussian cavalry had been brought to an end
by an accident incurred in mounting his horse. The pommel of
his saddle struck his chest, tore muscles and fractured ribs.
Elizabeth informs us that he recovered from this wound only
thanks "to the excellence and the purity of his blood." 28
Neither home, school nor university life gave him the kind of
discipline that tames, if it does not subdue, the self-centered
person. His family had done little but admire him and take
care of him. His womenfolk had been too devoted to leave
him any but intellectual work to do. He seems not to have had
any hand in the family finances, nor to have had any other
kind of responsibility, except that of spending an allowance.
Already, at the beginning of his professorship at Basle, he shows
signs of an inability to attend to the bothersome details of the
external world, an inability not necessarily philosophical in
origin.
Nietzsche, in short, was what it is nowadays fashionable to
call an intellectual. He was, to an extent rare even among
intellectuals, insulated from people whose main concern lies
with things, with rituals and traditions, with handling other
people, with affairs, with dull, undignified, unyielding "real-
ity." He was about to join a group of intellectuals, many of
whom were indeed sober, dull and conforming enough, but
who in general could hardly give the young Nietzsche a taste
for social discipline, for cooperation with his fellows, or even an
* Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 173.
 THE STUDENT 25
abiding sense of self-satisfaction. German university professors
in the later nineteenth century were not infrequently brilliant
men, indeed great men, but as a body they seem notably lack-
ing in cohesion, good manners in controversy, worldly sense,
and most of what else is necessary to make an intellectual
aristocracy an effective aristocracy.
One gift, one skill, Herr Professor Nietzsche had already
shown himself to possess in a very high degree. He could
write. From earliest childhood, he had been developing this
technical skill in handling words, a skill for which we shall
no doubt have to say he had a special, inborn aptitude, and
which increased with exercise and training. Nietzsche had
this gift for words as others have gifts for music, for painting,
for mathematics, for cookery, or for gymnastics. It was, char-
acteristically, a gift for the written word rather than the spoken
word. Nietzsche was far too shy a man for oratory.
This facility with words, not uncommon among bright chil-
dren, is probably only indirectly and obscurely related to the
process of thinking. Like great technical facility in playing a
musical instrument, or like facility in arithmetical calculation,
it may be very highly developed in individuals incapable of
making anything important out of their skills. So far, Nie-
tzsche had done little with the words he poured out so freely.
His youthful writings show an eager, sensitive, dutiful young
German intellectual, who has gone through the appropriate
emotional and religious crises of adolescence. They show, not
very far beneath the surface, an ambitious, self-centered young
man who wants to shine, and who is one day to write about
"the Will to Power." They do not, save to the eye of faith, show
any evidence of originality.
26 NIETZSCHE
Yet the very possession of this command over words was, to
a young man about to become a professor of classical philology,
a danger. Professors, of course, should be able to write, but they
ought not to write well, or at any rate, not freely and easily.
The professor should dig deep for his truths and he ought not
to bring them to the surface without good, honest — and obvi-
ous— sweating. Nietzsche was shortly to find himself badly
adjusted in a dozen ways to the demands of the learned profes-
sion. They were unreasonable, unlovely, unjust demands if
you like, but they were definite and inescapable. As he left
Leipzig for Basle, however, only a very wise man indeed, and
one who knew Nietzsche well, could have foreseen his early
and complete failure as a professor of classical philology. And
even the wise man might have been wrong. Great fluency with
the written word has not always proved a barrier to success in
the learned world, and the will to shine has illuminated many
an academic chair.
 CHAPTER II
T H E PROFESSOR

T H E Basle in which young Professor Nietzsche delivered

on May 28, 1869 his inaugural lecture on "Homer and
Classical Philology" was an old and prosperous town, proud of
its independent past as a South German city-state, content with
its present part in the Swiss Confederation, perhaps a little
conscious, over against the great new Germany to the north, of
being provincial. Its university, though it lacked the wealth,
equipment, and enrollment of the greater German universities,
was by no means an intellectual backwater. The merchant
aristocracy of Basle had long been devoted to the support of
culture. Several generations of the mathematical and scientific
dynasty of the Bernoulli had brought a European distinction
to their native town. Jakob Burckhardt, the great historian of
the Renaissance, was the most famous member of the Univer-
sity Faculty. In 1869, he was at the height of his powers and
reputation, in no sense below the best Leipzig, Heidelberg, or
Berlin could ofier. Bachofen, whose productive studies of the
matriarchate were opening new fields to anthropologists and
legal historians, had occupied a chair of Roman Law in the
university, and was now a scholarly judge in the city. Rüti-
meyer, professor of zoology, was anticipating Mr. G. B. Shaw
in the consoling, if not very fruitful, journey back to La-
marck. A good many others, not earth shakers, but well deserv-
ing of the humble immortality of the biographical dictionary,
28 NIETZSCHE
helped bring distinction to town and gown in Nietzsche's
Basle.1
Into the life of Basle Nietzsche never really entered. He
made a few intimate friends, with whom he led for a while an
almost normal social life. In the first few years, at least, he
carried out faithfully the formal teaching obligations of his
post, which meant, in addition to university lecturing, six hours
a week of classroom work in Greek with picked students in
the Pädagogium, a sort of Gymnasium or high-school attached
to the university. He made the necessary minimum of formal
social calls and attended the necessary minimum of university
meetings. He was not yet the recluse of Sils-Maria and the
Riviera, not yet the Zarathustra en pension of his last years.
But his life at Basle was from the beginning lonely and harassed,
lightened only by his work — or at least his writing — his
ambitions, and his chosen friendships.
Only a few months after his arrival, he wrote to Rohde, "I
feel so alien and indifferent among the mass of my honored
colleagues that I turn down with pleasure the invitations and
requests that flow in daily. Even the enjoyment of mountains,
forest, and lake is somewhat spoiled for me by the herd of my
fellow-teachers." 2 Elizabeth also has frequently to record this
aspect of her brother's behavior, though she tries hard to pre-
tend he was a social success at Basle. O n one of their numerous
1 T h e cultural background of Basle in Nietzsche's day is sketched with —

for Andler — surprising brevity in C. Andler, Nietzsche, II, 113-125.

"Nietzsche, Gesammelte Briefe (1902-1909), II, 148. T o Rohde, June 16,
1869. I have translated Nietzsche's plebecula by "herd," which is perhaps
unduly mild. T h e great Gesamtausgabe is not yet — save for a few letters
of 1869 — available for letters or works after the Leipzig period. This is not
a serious gap as far as the major writings go, but it is a real loss in the
correspondence. T h e above edition, presided over by Frau Förster-Nietzsche
 THE PROFESSOR 29

little vacation trips together, she writes, for instance, that they
ran up a huge bill at Constance because Fritz would not eat in
the table d'hote. He called such meals "the browsing of herds,"
and on this occasion had all their meals served privately. As he
paid the bill, he remarked sadly, "Lizzie, one always has to pay
dearly for grazing away from the herd." 3 One more instance,
close to neurosis. Piccard, a colleague, tells how he advised
Nietzsche to see the cathedral at Lausanne, and how carefully
he described the best way to see the sights of the whole city.
Nietzsche got lost, walked around aimlessly for hours, and
came back to the railway station without having seen anything
of the city itself, let alone the cathedral. "But why didn't you
ask some one the way?" said Piccard. And Nietzsche replied,
"You know, Piccard, they might have laughed at m e ! " 4 .
Nietzsche, then, had a kind of neurotic dislike for mingling
with his fellows, a dislike which the professional psychologist
could no doubt break down into its complex parts. Fear of
ridicule was certainly one of the most important of these.
Nietzsche himself was sure that this feeling of discomfort in
crowds was a most aristocratic trait. His admiring biographers
have repeated the word "aristocratic" in constant admiration of
their hero's behavior. Though this comforting adjective has
not infrequently been given such an application, especially
since the rise of the middle classes, in the general course of
European history aristocratic folk have not behaved like Nie-

is the best single collection of Nietzsche's letters. It has six volumes (volume V
in two parts).
'Förster-Nietzsche, Lije, I, 314.
1 C . A. Bernoulli, Overbec\ und Nietzsche, II, 169. In Lausanne, Nietzsche

would probably have had to use French, a language which he read easily,
but did not speak well.
30 NIETZSCHE
tzsche. There is something insecure, timid, and defeated about
the over-sensitive young professor that in no way seems aristo-
cratic. Aristocrats have to be fairly insensitive in some ways or
they cease to stay up where aristocrats belong. They must not
be afraid of crowds, nor even of vulgarity — least of all in
themselves. Nietzsche was, in simple fact, a middle-clàss in-
tellectual in revolt against most of the ways of his class. "F. W.
von Nietzky," the would-be descendant of Polish noblemen,
was hardly more of an aristocrat than was Keats. Both, no
doubt, belong with the eternal aristocracy of the spirit; but
Nietzsche, one suspects, would have been willing to compro-
mise on some more earthly and more immediate distinction,
which he was never quite to obtain.
Whatever its roots, whatever its explanation, Nietzsche's
inability to lead a conventional social life has important conse-
quences in any estimate of his work. In spite of the many
insights he achieved, in spite of the intensity of his search for
a good way of life for men on this earth, at bottom Nietzsche's
study of man as a social and political animal — and this is most
of his work — suffers from the fact that he knew so little, at
first hand, of other human beings. To a sufficiently transcen-
dental critic, this is of course hardly a serious deficiency. But
Nietzsche himself tried hard not to set up as a transcendentalist,
directed indeed some of his sharpest barbs at innocent old Kant
and other dwellers in the untrodden ways of pure spirit. On
Nietzsche's own grounds, his withdrawal from this world was
a limitation and a weakness.
It was a weakness reflected rather in his attempts at practical
judgments, in his sense of what is possible, than in the actual
materials, in the facts and observations he worked with. Nie-
 THE PROFESSOR 31

tzsche was not, like so many of the philosophically inclined —

Coleridge, for instance — wrapped up, insulated in, the thoughts
that buzzed around inside his skull. He read a good deal, for
a man with chronic eye-trouble, and on the whole he read the
kind of books — histories, memoirs, travels — from which it is
possible to obtain a useful, if vicarious, experience of men and
things.6 He did not altogether avoid the market-place; indeed
he prowled about it quietly, looking and listening, and possibly
even learning. And, though he quarreled with them frequently,
and otherwise plagued them greatly, he had in these years
friends who listened to him, and, indeed, talked back at him.
Distantly and faintly, perhaps, he seems to have heard them,
and for a while to have tried to adjust himself to their worlds as
well as to his own.
Burckhardt was too old to be an intimate, but he was too
distinguished to be neglected. Nietzsche excepted him from
the herd, and cultivated his acquaintance. They walked and
talked together not infrequently. N o doubt Nietzsche's devo-
tion to the heroic was strengthened by the historian of the
athletic age we call the Renaissance. For Burckhardt, too, a
glory had gone from a world in which machines, banks, insur-
ance companies (for which latter Basle was becoming a Euro-
pean center) were more important than virtù. The two must
have spent many pleasant moments together mourning the
world's decay.
In long letters the young professor kept up his ties with
Rohde, still solidly Schoptenhauerian, and on his way to a pro-
fessorship of philosophy in Kiel, and with von Gersdorfï, the

'Nietzsche's Belesenheit is exhaustively treated in the course of Andler's

Nietzsche, and more especially in vols. II and IV.
32 NIETZSCHE
Prussian squire he had known so well at school, and who was
beginning to display a Prussian willingness to rescue the world
from Latin skepticism and decay. Romundt, another of his
Leipzig circle, and a lover of Schopenhauer, he helped to an
appointment as Privat-dozent at the University in Basle, and for
a while lived with him on intimate terms. But for Romundt, a
delicate soul, pessimism led on to Christianity and finally to
holy orders. Nietzsche never forgave him this treason.
Of all Nietzsche's friendships, however, the firmest, longest,
and most unclouded was that with Franz Overbeck, who joined
the faculty at Basle as professor of church history one year
after Nietzsche entered on his professorate. Overbeck, seven
years Nietzsche's senior, was an intelligent, rather conventional,
scholar, a careful research worker, with the professional skep-
ticism his training as a historian had brought, and no great
desire to attain the unattainable in himself or the Universe.
Nietzsche he found full of ideas, willing and able to talk on
almost anything, and, once the barriers were down, extraordi-
narily unreserved. The two had bachelor quarters together in
a little house in the Schützgraben, Nietzsche on the first floor,
Overbeck on the ground floor. Overbeck's marriage a few years
later lessened somewhat the intimacy, though Frau Overbeck
made valiant efforts to get on with the temperamental Nie-
tzsche. Elizabeth Nietzsche never liked the Overbecks, and
when in 1908 Carl Albrecht Bernoulli published in his Franz
Overbec\ und Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine Freundschaft Over-
beck's own honest observations on his friend's character and
behavior, she lost herself in indignation. According to Eliza-
beth, all Overbeck says of her brother is false, and inspired by
jealousy. Overbeck, however, seems to a neutral observer to
 T H E PROFESSOR 33

have had to the end the greatest admiration and love for
Nietzsche, whom he held to be a genius, an unquestioned mem-
b e r — though certainly not the greatest — of the small group
of supremely great German men of letters. But Overbeck
thought he was justified from intimate experience of Nietzsche's
daily life in noting that his friend was also selfish, absurdly
sensitive, a neurotic invalid given to self-doctoring, an awkward
figure in society, a thinker impatient of criticism, assured and
intolerant. For all that, and indeed because of it, Overbeck to
the end cherished towards Nietzsche an affection he himself
called "unclouded." 6 It was, in part, no doubt, the affection
the competent in this narrow world often have for the incom-
petent, an affection that grows on irritation. Nietzsche may
well have been a great man; he was certainly not a competent
one.
Nietzsche's great sensibility was perhaps unduly concentrated
on his few friends. He had no great abstract loyalties to take
up his energies and his vanity, no routine administrative duties,
no hobby, no gift at all for idleness, for doing nothing. Even
the Franco-Prussian War proved for him a confused and un-
profitable interlude. He had had to become a naturalized
Swiss citizen, and so could not join the German armies. A t the
first news, he was proudly cosmopolitan and superior. But soon
the itch to take part in this marvellous redemption of the
Teutonic race from Latin vices and Latin rationalism grew too
strong. He enlisted in the German ambulance service, and
after a short period of training was sent out to the battlefields,
where he promptly took very ill with dysentery and diphtheria,
and had to be invalided out of the service. Elizabeth regards
'Bernoulli, Overbed^ und Nietzsche, I, 63.
34 NIETZSCHE

this as an important part of the martyrdom which broke down

his health. Nietzsche himself took a patriotic pride in the
German victory, though hardly had he come back to his teach-
ing at Basle than he began to have his doubts. This new Em-
pire of Bismarck's seemed a little vulgar and materialistic. He
could think of better things. For a time, he dreamed of a kind
of modern cloister, wherein he and a few choice spirits would
purge themselves, and somehow through themselves the world,
of this vile materialism.7
Friendships, indeed all personal relations, were always ex-
hausting to Nietzsche. They did not free him from his feeling
of his own ineptness, did not make up for the deficiencies of
peoples and empires. How intense and demanding friendship
was for him can be gathered from a description of his farewell
to Romundt, about to take holy orders:
It was horribly sad, wrote Nietzsche to Gersdorfí. Romundt knew,
repeated endlessly that henceforward he had lived the better and the
happier part of his life. He wept and asked our forgiveness. . . . At the
last moment I was seized with a veritable terror; the porters were shut-
ting the doors, and Romundt, wishing to continue to speak to us, wanted
to let down the window, but it stuck; he redoubled his efforts, and while
he tormented himself, trying in vain to make himself heard, the train
went slowly off, and we were reduced to making signs to each other.
The awful symbolism of the whole scene upset me terribly, and Over-
beck as much as it did me: it was hardly endurable. I stayed in bed the
next day with a bad headache that lasted thirty hours, and much vomiting
of bile.8
1
See his letter to Rohde, Dec. 15, 1870. Gesammelte Briefe, II, 214.
8
Gesammelte Briefe, I, 312. To Gersdorfí, April 17, 1875. Romundt's name
is represented by asterisks in the original.
 THE PROFESSOR 35

II
Of all the men and women who touched Nietzsche's life,
Richard Wagner is perhaps the most important, as he is cer-
tainly the most striking. The brief and intense friendship
between the two men takes up most of the early years of
Nietzsche's professorate; its long disintegration filled the rest
of his conscious life. Just before his final madness Nietzsche
printed a series of violent attacks on the now-dead Wagner.
The problems of the relationship, complicated by the fact that
Nietzsche was in some senses in love with Wagner's mistress
and wife, Cosima, have tempted all sorts of writers, and there
is already a large Wagner-Nietzsche literature.9 Both Masters
have their disciples and their defenders, though Wagner, whose
charms are perhaps a little more obvious, has here the numeri-
cal advantage.
Nietzsche had met Wagner briefly at Leipzig, but in the rush
of a mere social occasion had had no chance to impress himself
upon the composer. Now he learned that Wagner, having been
forced into the open in his relations with Cosima, the wife of
Wagner's friend von Biilow, had left the scandal behind him,
and had retreated with Cosima and his Art to the peace of the
near-by Swiss village of Triebschen. Admiration and ambition
aiding, Nietzsche so far overcame his natural diffidence as to
call on the great man. He was politely, and then cordially,
received. He was young, eager, admiring, a professor and
hence perhaps not without some influence on public opinion.
Wagner, who had not yet entirely conquered public opinion,
even in Germany, welcomed a new disciple. Soon Nietzsche
* For a brief discussion of it. see the bibliography, p. 255.
36 NIETZSCHE
was spending as much of his spare time as possible in Trieb-
schen, listening to Wagner's music, discussing the supreme
synthesis of human culture Wagner was preparing — had in-
deed practically achieved — talking, eating, strolling by the
lake, running errands for the household.
Triebschen is removed from us by an awkward interval of
time and its idyll necessarily seems to us to fall short of classic
finish. The setting is wrong: a Swiss villa of the 1870's will do
at best for comic opera. The characters lack serenity and no-
bility. They seem to come from a slightly depressing novel, or
from real — too real — life. Wagner, high-priest even to him-
self, living each moment and each act in a supreme, intense,
and wearing dedication; Frau Cosima, nursing, protecting,
flattering and cajoling this man who had brought her fame,
if he had not quite made her Isolde; the four children of Cosima
and von Bülow, with the fifth, little Siegfried, child of Cosima
and Wagner, all of them lively, and, in such a household, rela-
tively uninhibited; the awkward young professor and philolo-
gist, protective cavalryman's mustache just grown, listening,
admiring, and when opportunity presented — and when Wag-
ner allowed someone else to talk — breaking into long periods
of eloquence in which the Master saved the clean soul of animal
man from the corruptness of Socrates and Christ.
Time has made almost everything about Triebschen slightly
ludicrous. The villa itself, furnished "in accordance with the
style of a Paris furniture company, who had been somewhat
lavish in their use of pink satin and little Cupids," seems no fit
birthplace for a pure Teutonic Siegfried. Then there is Frau
Cosima strolling by the lake, "dressed in a pink cashmere
gown with broad revers of real lace, on her arm a large Tuscan
 T H E PROFESSOR 37

hat trimmed with a crown of pink roses . . . behind her pacing

a dignified, heavy and gigantic, coal-black Newfoundland
dog." And Wagner himself, "in a Flemish painter's costume,
consisting of a black velvet coat, black satin knee-breeches,
black silk stockings, a light blue satin cravat tied in a rich
bow, with a piece of his fine linen and lace shirt showing below,
and a painter's béret on his head." Finally, by no mere meta-
phor the culmination and purpose of Triebschen, there are the
high thoughts, as Cosima recorded them:

W h e n I contemplate our peaceful existence which, in view of the

Master's genius, may well be called sublime, and feel at the same time
that the sufferings we have previously endured are indelibly stamped on
our souls, I say to myself that the greatest joy on earth is vision, and
that this vision has fallen to the lot of us poor creatures. 10

The vision has inevitably dimmed for us, or perhaps merely

altered. W e see the papier-maché in the Master's stage-dragon.
W e hear above the Liebestod, the unpleasant voice of Wagner
the Jew-baiter, Wagner the German fanatic, Wagner the un-
buttoned egotist. W e hear above the commotion other voices,
more recent and even more unpleasant. Triebschen, like Berch-
tesgaden, is not for us an idyllic spot.
What Nietzsche sought from Wagner he undoubtedly got.
The brilliant young philologist was really, like many another
academic light, a professor in spite of himself. He had no deep
love for the patient ways of scholarly research. He wanted to
shine, and as a bookish young fellow he had already shone
academically as long as he could. Now he wanted to illuminate
the world, and Diogenes Laertius obviously did not provide
nearly enough light. He wanted to move and be moved, to
"Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, I, 223-224.
38 NIETZSCHE
scale the heights and sound the depths, to solve the problems
of Eternity and the Universe. He wanted to be a philosopher.
He wanted, as he had wanted at Bonn, tribal initiation and
tribal admiration. The little clan of philologists had not been
enough. This scorner of the crowd could never do without the
homage of the crowd.
Luck or instinct served him well in sending him to Wagner.
The composer was already a national, indeed a world figure.
His music, acclaimed by the fervent groups of Wagnerites as
the supreme experience of human life, was gradually, in the
1870's, coming to be accepted by calmer people for what it is,
great music pieced out with long stretches of dull music. To
Wagner and the Wagnerites, however, the master was no mere
musician. The Ring, notably, was at once a history of Germany
and a prophecy, a program for Germany. Wagner had achieved
a synthesis of all the arts, and the arts were obviously all of life
worth having. Wagner was therefore the supreme teacher,
philosopher, law-giver, prophet. He was, in the aesthetic frame
in which his whole life, like his tam-o'-shantered costume, was
cast, the Master; but he might just as well have been the
Fuehrer.
Nietzsche's first book grew directly out of this association
with Wagner. It was an association at first unquestionably
based on mutual liking and respect, though also from the first
mixed naturally and profitably with a mutual desire to exploit
the partner in the relationship. Nietzsche's great contribution
was his book, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,
published with Wagner's blessing in 1872. And well might the
composer bless a work in which he appeared as the re-discoverer
of the best in Greek art, as the modern heir of Aeschylus, in-
deed, of Dionysos himself.
 THE PROFESSOR 39
Nietzsche's book took a spectacular farewell to philology
and scholarship. It was no careful account of Greek tragedy,
but a brief, lively, and literary defense of an old thesis in
philosophy, an old folk-belief among German intellectuals.
According to Nietzsche, art — and therefore, of course, every-
thing in human life — has two poles, the Dionysian and the
Apollinian. The Dionysian is A Good Thing: it is God's and
Nature's primal strength, the unending turbulent lust and
longing in men which drives them to conquest, to drunken-
ness, to mystic ecstasy, to love-deaths. The Apollinian is A
Bad Thing — though not unattractive in its proper place: it is
man's attempt to stop this unending struggle, to find peace,
harmony, balance, to restrain the brute in himself. But the
brute is life, and cannot be long restrained. Greek life and art,
as we can find if we go back to the sources, was originally
Dionysian. With Socrates and Euripides, however, the Apol-
linian element won a too-conclusive victory. The living springs
of Dionysian strength were cut off. Greek culture became re-
strained, harmonious, gentlemanly, reasonable, beautiful — and
dead.
This is an unduly simple outline of an idea which Nietzsche
developed with all the subtlety of his literary skill. But such an
outline does bare the commonplace, indeed traditional, charac-
ter of Nietzsche's basic assumption. Dionysian against Apol-
linian, romantic against classic, realism against idealism, natural
against artificial, Germanic (or Nordic) against Latin — the
antithesis has provided great fun for critics and philosophers for
generations. Herder, Schiller, Hegel had played with it; Speng-
ler was to take it up, transpose its terms a bit and predict the
downfall of a European civilization at the hands of which his
Germany had suffered temporary defeat in the Four Years'
40 NIETZSCHE

War. For Germans, at least, this favorite antithesis has usually

had a common feature: the Germans possess the quality X
which makes for profundity, strength, union with the World-
Spirit— and survival. Nietzsche is no exception:
. . . in some inaccessible abyss the German spirit still rests and dreams,
undestroyed, in glorious health, profundity, and Dionysian strength, like
a knight sunk in slumber; from which abyss the Dionysian song rises to
our ears to let us know that this German knight even now is dreaming
his primitive Dionysian myth in blissfully earnest visions. . . . Someday
the German spirit will find itself awake in all the morning freshness
following a deep sleep; then it will slay the dragons, destroy the malig-
nant dwarfs, waken Brunhilde — and Wotan's spear itself will be unable
to obstruct its course! 1 1

It is true that Nietzsche gives a twist of his own to this old

theme. The Dionysian is good, but apparently rather exhaust-
ing. What the Dionysos-ridden man wants infinitely he gets —
if he gets anything at all — finitely. Unaware of the predica-
ment in its fresh youth, a Dionysian civilization as it grows
older comes face to face with this most dialectical difficulty.
Awareness of the predicament is tragedy, the brief moment
when the Dionysian wild-man, self-conscious at last, tastes the
delights of the Apollinian gentleman. This is the costly mo-
ment of Verklärung — Verklärung, that nobly German experi-
ence for which we poor Anglo-Saxons have only the inadequate
and borrowed Latin "transfiguration." What tragic myth was
for the Greeks, Wagner's music is for the Germans. Wagner's
artful dissonance expresses our "desire to hear and at the same
time have a longing beyond hearing." Wagner's is "the eternal
and original artistic force." 12
11
The Birth of Tragedy, chap. xxiv.
u
The Birth of Tragedy, chaps, xxiv and xxv.
 T H E PROFESSOR 41

There is, however, a joker in this pack of fine words. Wagner

seems cast for Dionysos. But Dionysos is clearly not enough:
If we could conceive of an incarnation of dissonance — and what else
is man — then, that it might live, this dissonance would need a glorious
illusion to cover its features with a veil of beauty. This is the true artistic
function of Apollo, in whose name we include all the coundess manifesta-
tions of the fair realm of illusion, which at each moment render life
in general worth living and impel one to the experience of the next
moment.

And therefore:
When the Dionysian powers rise with such strength as we are experi-
encing at present, there can be no doubt that, wrapped in a cloud, Apollo
has already descended to us. . . · 1 3

Wrapped in a cloud ? Fanciful language, of course, and a bit

vague. But it would have been most inartistic to write "dis-
guised as a professor of philology at the University of Basle."

Ill
Nietzsche almost from the first seems to have regarded his
duties at the University as an unpleasant interruption of the
serious work of his life. He took maximum advantages of
vacations and holidays; he was ill with increasing frequency,
and in one way or another managed to pare down his actual
teaching to a minimum. The publication of The Birth of
Tragedy and its effect on his reputation further diminished his
teaching load. Serious students began to avoid him. The little
book was hailed favorably by the Wagnerites, neglected by the
general public, and damned almost unanimously by Nietzsche's
professional colleagues in the study of philology. Had Nie-
11 The Birth of Tragedy, chap. xxv.
42 NIETZSCHE

tzsche been a professor of philosophy, his colleagues would

not have been surprised at his unverifiable assertions about the
Dionysian and the Apollinian; but philologists were used to
the methods — if you prefer, the limitations — of exact scholar-
ship. Young Ulrich von Wilamowitz, destined to a great
career as a classical scholar, unburdened himself in a pamphlet,
Philology of the Future, which was a merciless riddling of
Nietzsche's careless and confident prose.14 Rohde, and Wagner
himself, came to Nietzsche's defense, but the result was never
in doubt. The learned gentlemen rose to the defense of their
threatened standards, and shut Nietzsche out. They are still
unrepentant nearly sixty years afterwards. Wilamowitz wrote
in his recollections:
Boyish as much of my work in question is, with the conclusion I hit
the bull's-eye. Nietzsche did what I called on him to do, gave up his
teaching office and science, and became the prophet of a non-religious
religion and an unphilosophical philosophy. His daemon justified him
in that: he had the genius and strength for it. Whether self-worship and
blasphemy against the teaching of Socrates and Christ will give him the
victory, let the future show. 15

Nietzsche was, as a matter of fact, to continue on the faculty

at Basle for another seven years. In the university proper there
were not infrequent periods when he had no students at all:
the philologists were very effective as boycotters. Public lectures
were not a severe strain. In the lower school he continued to
take schoolboys through Greek texts. But his health grew worse
and worse, his absences more frequent, and his unfitness for his
" U . von Wilamowitz-Moellendorfï, Zu\unftsphilologie. Eine Erwiderung
auf F. Nietzsche's Geburt der Tragödie (1872).
U
U . von Wilamowitz-Moellendorfï, My Recollections (English transla-
tion, 1930), p. 152.
 THE PROFESSOR 43

job more apparent. A t last, in the summer of 1879, he was very

generously retired by the university with a pension of 3,000
Swiss francs a year, though he was only thirty-four years old
and had taught at Basle but ten years, and that rather fitfully.
From now on, the genius of Nietzsche was freed from what
everyone then knew to be the worst shackle a poet or a thinker
can wear — a university post.
He had not been a bad teacher, certainly not in his earlier
years at Basle. Shyness, fear of numbers of men, afflicted him
much less once he felt beneath him the security of the lecture-
platform. His delivery was clear and authoritative, if not ora-
torically very skilled. He always had what in this connection
is usually called "ideas," and could hold the attention even of
the pedantic — or cautious — among his classes. Even in the
lower school he seems to have had no serious troubles. Here he
rather shot over the heads of all save the ablest of his pupils.
But though he was absent-minded, near-sighted, and highly
intellectual, these schoolboys at least kept discipline under him.
After all, even in Swiss Basle, they were German schoolboys,
and knew their place.1®
Apart from the visits to Triebschen and a few vacation trips,
the Basle years were to Nietzsche mostly unhappy, and increas-
ingly so. Elizabeth attributes everything to her brother's bad
health and to his irregular life as an unworldly bachelor. There
are all sorts of stories about his eccentricities. He experimented
with various diets, vegetarian and otherwise, cooked for him-
" M y temperate account of Nietzsche as professor is not, of course, in the
tradition of the Nietzsche-Archiv. T o Elizabeth, Fritz was at least as good
at the job as Burckhardt. See her lyrical summing-up in the Lije, II, 61. Over-
beck is here, as usual, sympathetic but critical. See Bernoulli, Overbed^ und
Nietzsche, I, 66-71.
44 NIETZSCHE
self, ate raw food, and doctored himself with a fine array of
medicines. His letters are full of complaints about nausea, head-
ache, sleeplessness. He estimates he is incapacitated for normal
work nearly two-thirds of the time. Traveling seems to bring
him some relief, and returning to Basle to work almost always
starts him on a particularly bad spell. Wilamowitz's attack
made him ill. Wagner's growing preoccupation with the Bay-
reuth scheme affected his health unpleasantly. In general, when
he didn't get what he wanted, he fell ill — or rather, fell more
conspicuously ill. This is by no means an uncommon form of
behavior among human beings, and not in itself an indication
of genius.
The Nietzsche of these years, clear even in the pages of his
adoring sister, still clearer in his correspondence and in Over-
beck's recollections, is a figure rather more unpleasant than
pathetic, a vain, touchy, prematurely old young man, an eccen-
tric, querulous hypochondriac, a preacher unheard, a writer
unread and soured. Yet shift the emphasis ever so slightly, and
a quite different figure emerges, the poet tortured by God and
man, Prometheus exposed not only to the vultures, but to the
myriads of biting insects, a noble soul ripened by martyrdom.
So Nietzsche later regarded himself, and so his followers still
regard him. At any rate, it was a martyrdom, and as such quite
essential to his mission. As martyrdoms go, it now seems a
little inglorious, even shabby. Psychiatry, above all in the sim-
plified forms with which it has penetrated to popular conscious-
ness, has been hard on martyrs. Nietzsche obviously had forty
different kinds of inferiority complex.
 THE PROFESSOR 45

IV
One series of gestures Nietzsche did make, in the middle
seventies, towards reconciling his sense of mission — mission
to do something great, mission to reform the universe — with
his position as a university professor. He projected first as lec-
tures, then as essays, a series of discussions on all the great
issues which, as editorial writers like to put it, confront man-
kind. Of these, four longish essays were actually written, and
published between 1873 and 1876 under a title officially trans-
lated in the English edition of Nietzsche's works as Thoughts
out of Season: the untranslatable German original, Unzeit-
gemässe Betrachtungen, may be roughly given as Considera-
tions contrary to the Spirit of the Age. In these essays praising
Schopenhauer as an educator, damning the philistine and com-
placent rationalism of the famous Strauss of The Life of Jesus,
worrying about the deadening effect of our modern interest in
history on our energies and originality, praising Wagner in
Bayreuth, Nietzsche conscientiously carries out the promise of
his title. Everything is wrong in the nineteenth century. The
age is materialistic, vulgar, corrupt, leveling all distinction of
mind or spirit in a democratic tyranny, doomed to extinction
— and so on in a vein familiar nowadays to everyone. Nie-
tzsche's tone is very much assured, very superior, very earnest
and omniscient. It is a tone recognizable enough for twentieth-
century Americans, among whom it is rather oddly known as
"liberal."
These thoughts were apparently a little too far out of season.
They were not appreciated save by the now narrowing circle
of Nietzsche's own friends. The philologists no longer even
φ NIETZSCHE
bothered to attack the young professor. The Germans, after
1870, felt pretty much in tune with the times. They didn't even
listen to Nietzsche as he urged them to gather behind him and
go somewhere Bismarck couldn't possibly lead. But not only
was Thoughts out of Season a failure. The one great corporate
effort into which the young man had put the devouring en-
thusiasm of his ambition was turning out badly. Wagner was
going wrong; he was succeeding.
The composer had long wanted to build a center wherein his
music-dramas could receive the complete and reverent per-
formance impossible in theatres built for the limited operas of
Gluck and Mozart. It was not fitting, indeed it was hardly
possible, to present Götterdämmerung in a setting meant for
Così fan tutte. In the 1870's, he set seriously to work on what
finally became the shrine of Bayreuth. The money essential to
the undertaking — ultimately supplied by the mad King of
Bavaria — Wagner at first tried to raise by an appeal to his
devotees, an appeal conducted with a very modern apparatus
of publicity, meetings, committees, a "campaign," in short.
Nietzsche, high in the esteem of the Master, was given an
important place in the campaign. His essay on "Richard Wag-
ner in Bayreuth," included in Thoughts out of Season, was
originally campaign literature, though in the three years or so
it was being put together, it lost a bit of its early freshness.
Nietzsche was chosen to write a particularly important piece
of publicity, a direct appeal for funds. His draft was severely
criticized by his co-workers, who found it better philosophy
than advertising. It was cast aside as much too high-falutin',
and Nietzsche received another of the innumerable wounds he
collected all his life — with profit, if not with pleasure.
RICHARD AND COSIMA WAGNER
From a photograph, ι8γο
 THE PROFESSOR 47
More and more people kept discovering Wagner. They were
rich, noble, snobbish, vulgar, worldly. They did not seem to
find Wagner at all superior to the Spirit of the Age. They did
not, unless they had happened to glance at The Birth of Trag-
edy, think of him as Dionysos. They did not, in fact, often
notice Herr Nietzsche. They took up most of Wagner's time.
The Master not only did not mind them: he seemed to like
them. They were helping him build Bayreuth.
Bayreuth was built, and in 1876 the first of the festivals
opened with performances of the whole Ring of the Nibelungen.
Nietzsche could hardly refuse the invitation to be an honored
guest. He came, and was lost in the press of visitors. Bayreuth
was no Heavenly City: it was already no more than a summer
resort, a watering-place.17 Nietzsche took ill, and went off to
the quiet woods of near-by Klingenbrunn to get strength to
face the dress rehearsals and formal performances of the four
operas. He returned to Bayreuth but could not go through
with it. The dress rehearsals were enough. He had been look-
ing for some supreme, unearthly experience, some touch of
eternity. He found himself looking at Grand Opera.
M y blunder was this. I travelled to Bayreuth with an ideal in my
breast, and was thus doomed to experience the bitterest disappointment.
The preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness and strong pepper thor-
oughly repelled me. 1 8

After Nietzsche's sudden departure from the triumph of the

first season of Bayreuth, his friendship with Wagner died a
lingering death, beyond the power of Elizabeth, who retained
an innocent German love of Wagner's music, to keep alive.
" The Case of Wagner, Postscript.
u
The Case of Wagner, Selected aphorisms, § 1.
48 NIETZSCHE
They never really met again on the old terms. Nietzsche said
unkind things about the Master: but he did not as yet print
them. It had always been an unstable friendship, for both men
were egotists, intellectuals, and temperamentvoll Germans —
that is, both lacked most even of the purely outward restraints
that keep men from behaving like game-cocks. On Nietzsche's
part, certainly, the relation had by no means lacked the impul-
sion of high ideals. It is a mistake, common to idealist and
materialist alike, to suppose that men are driven by interests
to the exclusion of ideals, or by ideals to the exclusion of inter-
ests. Friendship, notably, is a relation much too solid to be
based on such abstract distinctions as that between ideals and
interests.
Nietzsche, then, really felt that Wagner at Bayreuth had
betrayed some great ideal he had at Triebschen promised to
serve. What is more important, Nietzsche really felt that the
music-dramas were unsatisfactory, that for him at least they
unlocked no pent-up Dionysian ecstasy. That he also felt
neglected, that he was jealous, that his old fear of the press of
people came back on him in crowded Bayreuth, that he was
not shining in this Germany of Richard Wagner — surely such
considerations can but add to the depth and honesty, as well
as to the completeness, of his revulsion from Wagner-Diony-
sos. Even in 1872, in the Birth of Tragedy, he had hinted
that Nietzsche-Apollo was needed to make a new Hellas of
Germany.
The revulsion led him, as such revulsions have often led
German intellectuals, to France. Those who construct periods
in Nietzsche's life and works discern after his first or
Wagner period a second or critical and rational period, for
which he was in part prepared by careful reading of Montaigne,
 THE PROFESSOR 49
Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, Stendhal and other
masters of French prose. In his travels he had met a bright
young Jewish intellectual, Dr. Paul Rèe, who prided himself
on a cynical realism in the study of men, a realism never
fashionable, he thought, among such sentimental idealists as
the Germans. Rèe was undoubtedly a tenth-rate figure, but he
proved a good foil for Nietzsche emerging from his disillusion
over Wagner. Other new faces came into Nietzsche's circle as
he withdrew from Basle and entered the cosmopolitan group
that shuttled among Swiss and Italian pensions and villas. One
of them was Peter Kösselitz, better known by his assumed
name of Peter Gast, an undistinguished musician devoutly
immersed in his art, a German plunged, as only Germans can
be plunged, in what he thought was Italy, an arty, sensitive
soul, a born disciple. Another was Mathilda von Meysenbug,
an incredibly innocent old lady, a close friend of the Wagners,
a collector of experiences and geniuses, a sort of spiritual, or
possibly only German, Madame de Warens.
In these new surroundings, Nietzsche put together the series
of aphorisms which he published in 1878 under the title of
Human, All Too Human. It was dedicated to Voltaire. For
the German Wagner, who had just published in Parsifal his
reconciliation with priestly Christianity, and who had hated
the French since his failure at Paris, this was indeed an insult.
It was, in a sense, Nietzsche's declaration of independence.
And not only independence of Wagner. It was also a declara-
tion of independence from the professorate. One year later,
Nietzsche was officially retired from a post he was barely occu-
pying. The professor was free to undertake a career which,
even in twentieth-century America, is commonly regarded as a
bit unacademic: that of the prophet.
 CHAPTER III
T H E PROPHET

I E T Z S C H E in 1880 had twenty years of life ahead of

him: a decade of extraordinarily active writing in which
all his greatest works were composed, and another decade of
complete invalidism, the hopeless isolation of the incurably
insane. The marvellous decade of the 1880's in Nietzsche's life
is for his disciples and admirers filled with great moments,
inspired with the high, tragic contrast between the petty details
of his apparent life and the god-like grandeur of his real life.
To the unconverted, blind to this real life, his only too apparent
life is not without elements of comedy.
Financially, at least, Nietzsche never sank into picturesque
want, and the impression current in the 1890's that he had, like
all the really great geniuses of art and letters, been "penniless"
as well as scorned, is not true. His Basle pension of 3,000
Swiss francs went perhaps as far as $1,500 would go in America
today; and to this he could add about as much again from his
mother. For a single man, $3,000 a year is far indeed from
poverty. It permitted Nietzsche, not luxury and display, but
some of the subtle little indulgences in food, clothes, and books
that gave him such aristocratic satisfaction. No doubt it was
an income unworthy of a Polish nobleman. Poor Nietzsche,
even here, was at a level well below his estimate of himself. He
was, in fact, that characteristic nineteenth-century, middle-class
figure, the rentier — the petit rentier, at that.
 THE PROPHET 51
Freed from any settled obligations, he could live where he
wanted to. His great decade was spent mostly in Italy and in
Switzerland, with a few brief visits to Germany. In Italy,
where he spent the long winters, he never quite found the per-
fect spot. One season he had earlier spent at Sorrento, along
with others as a member of Mathilda von Meysenbug's ménage,
and here he had his last constrained interview with Wagner in
1877. After that he stayed alone, with occasional visits from
friends like Peter Gast or from his sister. H e tried Stresa on
Lake Maggiore, and various places along the Riviera, Rapallo,
Genoa, Nice — the latter at that time but recently annexed to
France, and still in many ways Italian. His last winter before
his breakdown he spent at Turin, where he seemed very con-
tented. Wherever he went in Italy, he tried to settle down for
part of the season at least, taking a room in some quiet boarding
house, eating about in inexpensive restaurants, walking, com-
posing, lying in the sun.
In Switzerland he returned time and again to the Engadine,
a region which he used to say "gave me back my life." 1 H e
went there first with his sister in the summer of 1879, to con-
valesce from a more than usually severe bout of illness which
had signalized his last days as a professor. Later he settled in
the little village of Sils-Maria, from which he took long walks
through the high valley of the Inn. T h e piety of the Nietzsche-
ane has associated Nietzsche with the Engadine as Words-
worth is associated with the Lake District, or Thoreau with
Concord. A monument now marks the spot on the lake of
Silvaplana, not far from Surlei, where, "six-thousand feet
beyond Man and Time," Nietzsche was struck with the idea
1 Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 67.
52 NIETZSCHE

of eternal recurrence, "the highest formula of affirmation that

can ever be achieved." 2 N o doubt that Nietzsche loved the
Engadine of his day, before St. Moritz had become too fashion-
able a center; no doubt that its cool, clear air and quiet helped
him to the sustained effort needed for his work. But Thus
Spa\e Zarathustra is only incidentally a book to be associated
with a place. Nietzsche's thoughts were spun out in an at-
mosphere far more rarefied than that at six thousand feet. He
was too good — or too orthodox — a philosopher to notice the
petty facts of his environment, save as they got into his moods.
He hated cold, dampness, dark, and loved the sunshine and clear
air. He was lucky in the Engadine and in the Riviera; but you
would not learn much about those regions if you relied solely
on Nietzsche's works. 3
In some ways, Nietzsche's health did improve in these years.
His correspondence is always spotted with complaints about
his health: "It has been my gloomiest and unhealthiest winter,
except for ten days, which were just enough to allow of my
doing something [writing on Thus Spaile Zarathustra] that
makes up for all my days of sadness and ill health." 4 His
headaches and sleeplessness continued; and about this time,
according to his sister, he began to take a mysterious mixture
she calls the "Javanese sedative." Podach, the most sensible of
those who have written about Nietzsche's diseases, has doubts
about the very existence of this sedative, which he thinks
Elizabeth brought forth as a rebuttal to the unpleasant rumors
' Ecce Homo, "Thus Spake Zarathustra," § ι.
"He could do an occasional descriptive piece, as in Human, All Too
Human, " T h e Wanderer and his Shadow," § 295. But even here, though he
starts with a lake and pines, he ends with Epicurus.
4 Gesammelte Briefe, V , part II, 507. T o his sister, April 27, 1883.
 T H E PROPHET 53

about her brother's syphilis. Even Nietzsche's doses of chloral,

Podach argues, are, to take him at his own word, by no means
heroic, and can hardly have seriously undermined his health.5
That Nietzsche suffered real pain there can be no doubt; but
that he was also a hypochondriac, that he was proud of his
sufferings, that he loved to complain of them, is also undeniable.
He complained almost as much about the way he was de-
serted by his fellows, about his lack of friends, about the absence
in his life of the love so necessary to the genius. Naturally,
Elizabeth got the brunt of these complaints.
So far as friendship is concerned, I have, in fact, altogether managed
to forego a good deal. . . . In the deeper sense I have no comrades
(Genossen) — n o one knows when I need comfort, encouragement, or a
grip of the hand. . . . And if I complain, the whole world thinks it has
a right to wreak its petty sense of power upon me as a sufferer: they call
it consolation, pity, good advice, and so forth. But this has always been
the fate of such men as I.®

Yet with all his complaining, he somehow contrived health

enough to write books. And as time goes on, he complains a
bit less, even admits that he feels somewhat better. Here, too,
there is the touch of exaggeration, the tension of the extreme,
the queer instability rarely absent in Nietzsche's life. He never
seems to write quietly, dutifully, and dully: he is always in
ecstasy, always panting. As madness approaches, the feeling of
euphoria is plain. As far back as Zarathustra, he had felt the
divine touch. He had written under revelation.

A joy, strained to a tremendous pitch which sometimes seeks relief in

a flood of tears — a perfect ecstasy, with the most distinct consciousness
of an endless number of delicate shocks and thrills to one's very toes;

"Podach, Nietzsches Zusammenbruch, 25-28.

" Gesammelte Briefe, V , part II, 541. T o his sister, August, 1883.
54 NIETZSCHE

a feeling of happiness, in which the most gloomy and painful feelings

act, not as a contrast, but as something expected and inevitable, as an
essential coloring within such an overflow of light; an instinct for rhythm
that bridges wide gulfs of form. . . . This is my experience of inspira-
tion. I have no doubt that we should have to go back many thousands
of years before we could find anyone who would dare say to me: "It is
mine as well." 7

It was a strange life, and Nietzsche must have seemed to the

little people among whom he moved — the hotel-keepers, the
waiters, the porters, the chambermaids — a most extraordinary
fellow. Unfortunately, such people rarely write their memoirs.
A few observations from a concierge or a waiter might throw
light on Nietzsche in ways that have not occurred to the high-
minded and highly educated people who have written about
him. With his eyeglasses, his mustaches, his height and his
brownness, he must have been to his Italian hosts the clumsy
German, stupid and exploitable. He was absent-minded, shy,
not given to scraping casual acquaintances, fond of mooning
about alone. Under inspiration, he could talk to himself, com-
pose aloud, even in Genoa. He looked like a German professor,
which, in a sense, he never ceased to be. But, even at the end
in Turin he kept himself neat, well-dressed, almost, in a con-
sciously careless way, dandyish. Eccentric, he never quite lost
a somewhat bewildered dignity: he never wholly looked the
crank.

II
There is not much use trying to follow Nietzsche in the
detail of his wanderings during this decade, nor in trying to

'Written in 1888, and quoted in Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 155-156.

 THE PROPHET 55

trace the ups and downs of his health and his friendships.8 But
there is one phase of his relations to his fellows so characteristic
of the man, and so illuminating, that it is worth dwelling upon.
As at Triebschen, it is a triangular relation, and as at Triebschen,
it is a tragi-comic idyll. The figures were Nietzsche, Paul Ree,
and a young and very intellectual Jewish girl, Russian — or
rather, Finnish — by nationality, Mile. Lou Salome. The three
met first in the circle of Mathilda von Meysenbug. Lou was a
precocious girl, with literary and philosophical aspirations, and
most probably also with a few more ordinary, if not more
specifically feminine, aspirations. She was chaperoned — the
word is a bit strong — by a not too clearly designing mother.
The interplay of emotion among the three is most complicated
and confused, and has not been cleared up very satisfactorily
by the letters, confessions, and memoirs of the participants,
and the debates of Nietzsche's biographers and hagiographers.®
Nietzsche certainly saw in Lou a prospective disciple, a
tender, respectful disciple, ewig weibliche. When, writes And-
ler "she confided to him her intention of sacrificing her life to
Truth, he recognized in her a predestined companion." 10 At
any rate, he made her a formal proposal of marriage, to be
delivered through Rèe. Whether Ree delivered it or not is
uncertain. That Lou was also interested in Ree, whom she must
have found rather easier to get along with than Nietzsche, is

"This is done, moreover, in very great detail in Andler, Nietzsche, IV,

and rather more rapidly in Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II.
* C. A. Bernoulli, "Nietzsches Lou Erlebnis." Raschers Rahrbach (1910),
I, is perhaps the most sensible account. Andler's chapter, entitled "Idylle
tragique," Nietzsche, III, 280-306, is astonishingly sentimental, at once French,
academic, and maudlin.
" Andler, Nietzsche, IV, 284.
56 NIETZSCHE

certain. She seems to have found a very natural pleasure in

keeping both men dangling for a while. N o reply ever came
to the proposal. Lou went off to visit Rée's family, and then to
visit Nietzsche's sister. In the summer of 1882, Nietzsche, Ree,
and Lou lived together for six weeks at Leipzig in a common
pursuit of truth. Nietzsche, already warned by his sister, whose
first good impressions of Lou had been altered when she found
the girl actually thought the philosopher rather funny at times,
began to have unpleasant suspicions. He caught Lou and Rèe
whispering together; he found their language unpleasantly
familiar.
The ménage à trois broke up, and back home in Naumburg
with mother and sister, Nietzsche began writing reproachful
letters to Lou. She hadn't lived up to her promise to sacrifice
herself to Truth. She was irreverent, light-headed, even in the
presence of Zarathustra. In his last letter to her he wrote: 1 1
I have never yet made a mistake about any human being, and in you
I recognize that impulse towards a sublime selfishness which is an in-
stinctive obedience to the highest law. Some curse or other, it seems, has
made you confound it with its opposite, the selfishness and rapacity of
the cat, that wants nothing but life. N o w this feline egotism . . .

Not a lover's letter: not, at any rate, an accepted or an accept-

able lover's letter.
Nietzsche at first held Rèe guiltless of treachery or betrayal.
But reflection, grim, painful chewing over his grievances, with
the help of Elizabeth who did not like Ree, and of Mathilda
von Meysenbug, whose carelessness let Nietzsche see a letter
from Lou's mother complaining that the now altogether too
emancipated young lady had been living with Ree in Berlin, all
"Quoted in Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 140.
 THE PROPHET 57

pointed to Rèe. Nietzsche decided he had been duped and in-

sulted. He drafted a letter to Rèe, a very strong letter though
the one he actually sent may have been milder:
I should very much like to give you a lesson in practical morality with
the help of a f e w bullets. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I shall manage to make
you give up occupying yourself with morality once for all — for this
occupation needs clean hands, Herr D r . Rèe, not muck-raking fingers
like y o u r s ! 1 2

This, even though it came from the pen of a German professor,

would seem to call for a duel. Perhaps Nietzsche never sent the
letter. Perhaps Rèe was not easily insulted. A t any rate, the
duel was never fought.
There are some things fairly clear in this unlovely but not
unamusing episode. Lou possibly, even probably, became the
mistress of Ree; she was almost certainly never the mistress of
Nietzsche. Elizabeth, jealous of her brother, and inclined al-
ready to anti-semitism, interfered deliberately and sharpened
antagonisms that might have tapered off into forgetfulness.
But Nietzsche himself appears almost incredibly inept and
emotionally immature. Perhaps the philosopher-prophet was
too good for the earthly commerce of love and friendship. It is
unfortunate, however, that he felt obliged to attempt a course
of action so much more difficult than putting words together
nicely. Nietzsche simply could not, by this time, leave the
private world he was building for himself, and move about
with people who occasionally, and even habitually, take the
world as they find it. Nietzsche could never relax; he could
hardly expect to love.
The episode -confirmed him in his self-righteousness, in his
"Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 176.
58 NIETZSCHE

fear and hatred of everybody else — even Elizabeth — and in

his determination to build his own private world into some-
thing colossal, overpowering. It may have helped to shake his
already badly shaken nervous system. It must have increased
the feeling of personal inferiority for which his writings are
sometimes an almost absurdly simple form of compensation:

Every defamation, every misunderstanding has made me more free: I

want less and less from humanity, and can give it more and more. The
severance of every individual tie is hard to bear, but in each case a wing
grows in its place. 18

Adler and Jung and Freud are hardly necessary here: almost
any kind of life is clinical experience enough to give an under-
standing of such a case. Even Nietzsche himself could have
understood it — in another.

Ill
This is the decade when Nietzsche's best known books were
written — though "written" is a modest, routine word for what
Nietzsche himself regarded as a cosmic process. He composed
them in all sorts of places and in all sorts of conditions —
sitting on the sea-shore near Genoa, strolling the back-ways of
Nice, striding in ecstasy by Lake Silvaplana, hunched near-
sightedly over a table in a dozen rooming-houses. His habit
was to think out the matter occupying his mind while he was
walking; in times of great excitement he could walk for hours
at a rate apparently quite inconsistent with his invalidism.
Back in his room, he would put his thoughts together in a series
of aphoristic passages, or in a short chapter. A few days, at most
a few weeks, of these erratic efforts would exhaust his strength.
" Forster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 181.
 THE PROPHET 59
Headaches, sleeplessness, and chloral would follow, until calm
returned, and inspiration began again its wearing course.
The books he wrote under these conditions were naturally
not systematic, orderly treatises. They were collections of great
and lesser thoughts, beaded together on the string of Nietzsche's
temperament. Critics have inevitably found a higher unity,
indeed, several higher unities, in his work. But on the surface
— and surfaces are important — a book of Nietzsche's lacks
form and continuity. He is always a bit out of breath. And,
except in small doses, he is likely to weary readers short on
devotion.14 He repeats himself perhaps more often — perhaps
only more obviously — than is usual among more formal
philosophers.
We shall have to return to this problem of how far Nietzsche's
work holds together. Here we are concerned with the cata-
logue of his books. They were not, by a publisher's no doubt
confined standards, successful books. His Birth of Tragedy and
Thoughts out of Season had been published by E. W. Fritsch
of Leipzig, Wagner's own publisher, to whom he had been
recommended as one of the inner circle of Wagnerites. Human,
All Too Human was not the kind of book Fritsch dealt in.
Nietzsche transferred his patronage to Schmeitzner of Chem-
nitz, who continued to publish for him down to 1884. When
Fritsch, after Wagner's death, consolidated his list and took
back Nietzsche's books, there were still "62 hundredweight"
of these earlier writings unsold.15 Nietzsche was hard on pub-
lishers, nagging them over details of printing, always unsatis-

" Overbeck himself notes the limitations of the "books of aphorisms" his
friend wrote. Bernoulli, Overbeck und Nietzsche, I, 228.
"Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 267.
6o NIETZSCHE
fied with sales and promotion, convinced that publishers were
natural slaves and herd-men who owed their unnatural power
over authors to the perverse structure of nineteenth-century
society. In 1884, after years of wrangling with his publishers
— and after finding it very hard if not impossible to get a new
one — he decided to have Part IV of Zarathustra printed and
published at his own expense. Beyond Good and Evil was so
published in 1886, and all the rest of his works to the end of his
sane life. The great man was reduced to the expedient of buy-
ing his way into print. The swinish public wouldn't even root
among his pearls.
Human, All Too Human, published in 1878, inaugurates a
series of books which clearly belong together. All are frankly
aphoristic, modeled as to form on the great French aphorists
like La Rochefoucauld. They are collections of thoughts on
men and morals, at once chaotic and encyclopaedic. They vary
somewhat in tone, but they are all expressions of what Nietzsche
called "the free spirit" — anti-intellectual, but also anti-roman-
tic, contemptuous of the plush civilization of Bismarck's Ger-
many, sure that most men are fools, but still unsure as to just
who are wise. They are part of the field of belles lettres', had
Nietzsche never written anything more, he would certainly not
be known as a philosopher, but at most as a German imitator
of the French aphorists.
Human, All Too Human was followed in 1881 by The Dawn
of Day and in 1882 by The Joyful Wisdom. These are the books
that celebrate Nietzsche's emancipation from teaching and his
discovery of Italy — sunny, classic, smiling Italy, free of damp,
beer, corsetry, Protestantism, and Wagner's music. The Joyful
Wisdom is — or aspires to be — the Provençal gai saber, the
 THE PROPHET 6l
flashing southern wit, never morose, never befuddled with
metaphysics, but capable of tragic depth and penetration. Both
books are more cheerful than Human, All Too Human, less
bitterly critical of life as ordinary people live it, less closely
modeled on French patterns. They are Nietzsche's best-tem-
pered books.
While they were being written, Nietzsche was meditating
much grander things. He was not going to content himself
with being a German Montaigne, resigned to writing wisely
and skeptically about a world he could not change. He was
still the Nietzsche who, in Thoughts out of Season, had really
hoped to change the German season. After all, there were a lot
of clever writers in the world, even in the i88o's, and the world
wasn't very clearly the better for their being in it. What was
wanted was someone of the stamp of the great religious leaders,
Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mohammed, but someone who could
do the job much better than they had done.
Nietzsche set himself up as prophet in Thus Spa\e Zara-
thustra: A Boo\ for All and None, published in four short parts
between 1883 and 1885. The book is in form no more unified
than all his other books after The Birth of Tragedy. It is a
collection of parables, sermons, and reflections, written in what
is, no doubt justly, called poetic prose, and giving an account of
the mission of Zarathustra to pave the way for the coming of
the Superman. Zarathustra has no more than the name in
common with his historical original, Zoroaster, and is as much
nineteenth-century Nietzsche as the Persians, Hottentots, or
Hurons of eighteenth-century letters were Montesquieu, Vol-
taire, or Diderot. The style throughout is exceedingly elevated;
Zarathustra would be lost without his "saith," and "thou" and
62 NIETZSCHE
"ye," helpless without his exclamation points. In English
translation he sounds very pseudo-biblical, like the King James
version gone wrong, and almost inevitably suggests the literary
style of the angel Moroni, as transcribed by another and less
highly educated prophet, Joseph Smith. Indeed, Thus Spa\e
Zarathustra has become, for a certain type of half-educated in-
tellectual throughout the world, a kind of Enchiridion.
This is, of course, the report of an unbeliever. For the
Nietzscheans, Thus Spa\e Zarathustra is an undoubted master-
piece, a sacred writing inferior in depth and dignity to none.
Nietzsche himself was of this opinion. "Whenever I dip into
my Zarathustra," he said, "I walk up and down my room for
half-an-hour, unable to repress my sobs." And his sister con-
tinues, "The figure of Zarathustra is the poet's highest creation,
it is a type of eternal beauty, of a divine transfiguration of the
world — it is the Superman himself." 16
Whatever its depth and beauties — probably, since the world
of the flesh is so limited, because of its depth and beauties —
Thus Spa\e Zarathustra is an enigmatic work. Nietzsche seems
pretty clearly to have set himself next the deliberate task of
bringing it down to earth, of expounding analytically and in
plain prose the elevated obscurities that give the book its first
hold on the seeker. After the Word, comes exegesis. The
result was two books which, to many limited intellects outside
the circles of convinced Nietzscheans, are his masterpieces:
Beyond Good and Evil, published in 1886, and The Genealogy
of Morals, published in 1887, and written, Elizabeth claims, in
twenty days.17
, ™ Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 234.
"Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 277.
 T H E PROPHET 63

Nietzsche himself wrote in the extraordinary biographical

fragment he called Ecce Homo that after the yea-saying of Zara-
thustra he had to turn to the negative, destructive part of his
task, though he looked in vain for help in this work of
destruction:
Thenceforward all my writings are so much bait: perhaps I understand
as much about fishing as most people? If nothing was caught, it was
not I who was at fault. There were no fish to come and bite.1*

Again, and quite naturally, a limited critic whose values have

not been properly transvalued finds that Nietzsche has got
things reversed. Zarathustra is destructive nonsense. Beyond
Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals are relatively
sober and successful efforts to penetrate objectively into some
very important aspects of the behavior of human beings. They
are, in spots, among the best scientific studies of this behavior
ever made. Certainly Nietzsche was wrong in one respect.
How the fish have bitten!
Like his earlier works, these are built up from short aphoristic
passages, but they are built around definite central themes.
Beyond Good and Evil tries to show how men have come to
value certain ways of life, and to name certain forms of be-
havior aristocratic; and in its final book, it urges for a "master-
class" a reversal of these forms of behavior. The Genealogy of
Morals pays especial attention to the rôle of religion, and in
particular Christianity, in forming our standards of behavior,
of "good."
A l l of Nietzsche's "philosophy" was now in print. There
remained to him somewhat more than a year of life, during
which he produced a series of brief books, The Case of Wagner,
" Ecce Homo, "Beyond Good and Evil," § 1.
64 NIETZSCHE

The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo.

These extraordinary books, dashed oflf at high speed in periods
of tense excitement, add nothing to his stock of ideas; they
represent a stepping up of the already high voltage of his other
work. All his gifts, all his faults, as a writer are here exposed
in quivering nakedness — his abruptness, exaggeration, petu-
lance, clarity of line, love of epigram and surprise, his straining
for an unbreaking breaking-point. They are, as all but a very
few of the most extreme Nietzscheans admit, the work of a
madman. Even to the amateur diagnostician, they carry on
almost every page the mark of the paranoiac.
The Case of Wagner was printed by the late summer of 1888,
and Nietzsche, his mind still lucid enough for reading, saw the
little book, and some of the very indignant notices it received
in the German press. Well, they were paying attention to him,
after all! The book — it is hardly more than a pamphlet —
puts in most intemperate language the objections to Wagner
Nietzsche had been sharing with his correspondents for years :
Wagner's music is just German bad manners and indecency,
German romantic longing, German wallowing around in vi-
carious sin and real repentance, German sloppiness and un-
endingness. By contrast "Bizet's music seems to me perfect. It
comes forward lightly, gracefully, stylishly. It is lovable, it does
not sweat." 19
The Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche sent to press, but it was
not printed until January 1889, by which time its author was
beyond reading even his own works. It was put together, as
was much of these four books of 1888, out of materials gathered
19
The Case of Wagner, § i. This is one aspect of Nietzsche's wit at its
best; Wagner's music mostly does sweat.
 THE PROPHET 65
for his projected systematic work, The Will to Power. Its
sub-title, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, is a good sample
of its temper. This book, and the famous Antichrist, also
broken off from The Will to Power, are really twins — both
attacks on Christianity and other European habits, both mere
intensifications, mere maddenings, of Beyond Good and Evil.
Elizabeth, to whom these manuscripts fell on her return
from Paraguay, guarded them with due reverence. But they
were shocking books, especially shocking to poor old Frau
Nietzsche, who outlived her son's sanity by several years. Only
when Nietzsche's fame grew to portentous heights did Eliza-
beth consent to the printing of the Antichrist in 1902. The
Ecce Homo, Nietzsche's last work, she withheld until 1908.
It is a kind of autobiography, wholly unsystematic, reviewing
one after another Nietzsche's books. It is not apologetic, not
an attempt to justify himself. Nietzsche in the fall of 1888 was
well beyond that stage, well beyond a mere sense of martyrdom
and persecution. Some of its chapter headings have become
famous: "Why I am so clever," "Why I write such good books."
And sentences: "I am not a man: I am dynamite."
Later, his sister and her faithful co-workers brought together
many of Nietzsche's fragments into a book they called The
Will to Power. So fragmentary are most of the works he wrote
in his own lifetime that this book hardly seems out of line with
his other books. The mass of his literary remains was enormous.
Much of it has been collected here and there, and a notably
complete arrangement made in 1931 under the title Die
Unschuld des Werdens by Professor Alfred Baeumler.20
20
Nietzsche, Die Unschuld des Werdens [The Innocence of Becoming].
Der Nachlass. Ausgewählt und geordnet von Α. Baeumler. (2 vols., 1931.)
66 NIETZSCHE

Scattered through the works are a number of short poems,

which, put together, make part of a volume of the authorized
English edition of the works of Nietzsche. 21 They are very
German poems, not at all the product of Nietzsche's enthusiasm
for the Provençal and sunny clarity, and they are wholly un-
translatable. A few have found their way into most anthologies
of German poetry, where they must fulfill some need. The
most famous is the very Dionysian and well-named "Drunken
Song" from Zarathustra.

Oh Mensch! Gieb Acht!

Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
"Ich schlief, ich schlief — ,
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: —
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der T a g gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh — ,
Lust — tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit — ,
— will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!" 2 2

This goes at least one better the famous concluding lines of

Fausty the chorus mysticus.
Alles Vergängliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulängliche,
Hier wird's Ereignis;
Das Unbeschreibliche
Hier ist's getan:
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.

" I n the volume Ecce Homo, 149-207.

" Thus Spaile Zarathustra, "The Drunken Song," § 12.
 T H E PROPHET 67

But Goethe also wrote poems like Ueber allen Gipfeln and
Nietzsche did not.
IV
Nietzsche's last few years were spent in loneliness: hotel-
keepers, servants, fellow-guests, a very few casual acquaintances
made the sum of his relations with his fellow-men. It was, if
you are a Nietzschean, the loneliness of a brooding Titan left
alone by ungrateful little men; if you are not a Nietzschean, it
was the loneliness of a man who had quarreled with all his
friends and relatives. Peter Gast remained, and from time to
time stayed with Nietzsche, and helped him with his manu-
scripts. The rest were all gone — Wagner and Cosima long
ago. Ree and Lou Salome, Fräulein von Meysenbug, all the
arty and talkative little folk of her circle had broken with
Nietzsche, or left him to himself. Frau Overbeck had mixed
in the affair of Lou, Elizabeth had replied indignantly, and
though there was no formal break between Nietzsche and Over-
beck, there was a coolness, and a lessening of letter-writing.
Rohde was one of the last to go. But in the spring of 1886
Nietzsche had stayed for a while in Leipzig, and misunder-
standings between the two had come to the surface. To his
sister he wrote from Leipzig:
Neither Rohde nor Overbeck have the slightest idea of what I am
about, let alone a feeling of obligation towards me. In this university
atmosphere the best men decay; I feel it continually in the background
and as an ultimate determinant, even with such men as Rohde and
Overbeck, this damned general indifference and total lack of belief.28

This letter was sent to his sister in Paraguay. Elizabeth, his

beloved "Lama," his mainstay in trouble and illness, had left
* Gesammelte Briefe, V, Part II, 675. To his sister, June 14, 1886.
68 NIETZSCHE

him too, and her leaving had in some ways been a worse blow
than the defection of Lou. Nietzsche had come to regard
Elizabeth as his; she was proof that he, too, owned a woman.
And now, at almost forty, she married Bernhard Förster, an
anti-semitic agitator who had founded a Germanic racial colony
in Paraguay, and was taking her off there to the ends of the
earth. Nietzsche had opposed the engagement, but, as usual
when he attempted to get something done, he behaved very
unskillfully. Elizabeth took literally his sour and self-pitying
assertions that he could get along by himself and married
Förster in 1885. Nietzsche wrote an extraordinary letter to the
bridegroom.

Love is leading the Lama — apologies, but I have called her that up
to now — into many dangers, it seems, far from home, into a life full
of temptations. Some things will go well, others badly: on the whole,
she has a heroic future before her. So have I: it seems that this is char-
acteristic of our stock. A n d if love leads her in a less abstract form
than it leads me, perhaps she has a better taste, and has chosen the better
part: namely Herr Bernhard Förster. In such matters, women are
shrewder than men. W e men run after truth, and similar pallid beauties.
. . . This, to conclude from letters and other psychological documents
has not been my sister's fate.

And to his Lama he sent, in lieu of attendance at her wedding,

a long letter — entirely about himself, and the failure of his
friendships! 24
In comparative loneliness and in intense literary activity,
Nietzsche spent the years 1887 and 1888. For the autumn of
1888-1889 he chose to go to Turin, intending to spend the
winter itself in Nice. Indeed, he had worked out for himself a
pathetically regular schedule of wandering, suited to the great
24 Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 237-239.
 THE PROPHET 69
systematic work — The Will to Power — he was engaged
upon: Sils-Maria, Turin, Nice, Turin, and then Sils-Maria again
for the beginning of another Nietzschean year.25 He did not
get beyond Turin. Sometime in December 1888 or January
1889 he went incurably mad. His terrified landlord was
about to turn him over to the Italian authorities when the
faithful Overbeck, warned by a series of strange letters from
Nietzsche, arrived and took charge of his removal to Switz-
erland.
Signs of what was coming are clear to us now in The Twi-
light of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo, Nietzsche's
last works. They might have been clear then to other cor-
respondents than Overbeck. To August Strindberg, with whom
he had linked correspondence through Georg Brandes, he
wrote : "I have called together at Rome an assembly of princes,
I will have the young emperor [Kaiser Wilhelm II] shot. Au
revoir! For we shall meet again. One condition. Let us
divorce ! — Nietzsche-Caesar." In the last access of madness,
he wrote letters and telegrams to an astonishing variety of
people: some, no doubt, have never been traced. To the King
of Italy he wrote, addressing him as "my dearly beloved son
Umberto"; to the papal secretary of state he wrote requesting
that His Holiness be told of Nietzsche's veneration for him,
and signing himself "the Crucified One." To Brandes he wrote :
"To friend George : When once you had discovered me, it was
easy enough to find me; the difficulty now is to get rid of me
— The Crucified One." To Overbeck and his wife : "Although
hitherto you have shown small faith in my solvency, I never-
theless hope to prove to you again that I am one who pays his
26
Gesammelte Briefe, V, Part II, 793. To his sister, September 14, 1888.
yo NIETZSCHE

debts — to you, for instance. Right now I'm having all the
anti-Semites shot — Dionysos." It was this letter, and a longer
one to Burckhardt which the historian had brought at once to
Overbeck, that sent Overbeck to Turin.
The whole sheaf is no doubt revealing to the professional
psychiatrist, and tempting to the amateur psychiatrist that
lurks, not sufficiently unsuspecting, in almost everyone who
writes today. The illusions of grandeur, the assumption of the
rôle of Napoleon-Caesar, are obvious enough. Dionysos and
the Crucified One are echoes of Nietzsche's own intellectual
history. But the strangest, most revealing, in some ways most
obvious of the letters was a scrawled line to the widowed
«

Cosima: "Ariadne, I love thee Dionysos."

Nietzsche in these later years had worked his relations with
Wagner and with Cosima into an elaborate symbolic tale, hints
of which are frequent in his writings, as for instance: "Who,
besides myself, knows who is Ariadne ? To all enigmas of this
sort, no one has yet learned a clue; I doubt whether anyone has
even seen enigmas there." 26 Cosima was Ariadne, held prisoner
by no mere Minotaur, but by the stale old hero Theseus,
known to the world as Richard Wagner. Nietzsche was the
god Dionysos, the real lover of Ariadne, and loved by her.
This was certainly a projection of the old Triebschen days. It
proves only that Cosima played an important part in Nietzsche's
life of revery. Twenty years before, at Triebschen, it seems
doubtful whether Nietzsche would ever have dared to admit,
even to himself, that he was in love with so impressive — and
so possessed — a woman as Cosima. In his madness, the symbol
kept its life. Examined in the insane asylum at Jena on March
" Ecce Homo, "Thus Spake Zarathustra," § 8.
 THE PROPHET 71
27,1889, he told the physician, "It is my wife, Cosima Wagner,
who brought me here." 27
Overbeck arrived just in time to rescue his friend. Nietzsche,
who was fortunately in a period of docility, allowed himself
to be taken to the train, and was brought safely to Basle, where
he was put into a hospital for the mentally diseased. From
there, courageous old Frau Nietzsche took him to Jena, where
she consulted the best specialists available. Their verdict was
incurable insanity. Elizabeth's husband had died in Paraguay,
and in 1890 she came home to take charge of brother and
mother. For the first few years of his illness, Nietzsche had
occasional lucid intervals. He was usually quiet, and his rare
outbreaks were no worse than petulance or bad temper. After
Frau Nietzsche's death in 1897, Elizabeth moved her brother
to a house in Weimar which she had already destined to be the
shrine of his fame. Perhaps — for the Germans are incurable
in these matters — she moved to Weimar because Goethe and
Schiller had already given the place the right atmosphere. It
was an inept action, a little like trying to move Mr. Mencken
— who is, happily, no invalid — to die in Concord.
Here, in a big, airy room looking out on the sunset, Nietzsche
spent the last years of a steady decline. Paralysis, which had

"Podach, Nietzsches Zusammenbruch, 94. I have used Podach for my

account of the final madness, because he seems the most temperate and sensible
of those who have written on the subject. For the other side, the Nietzsche-
worshipping tradition of the Nietzsche-Archiv, the most modern treatment is
Paul Cohn, Um Nietzsches Untergang ( 1 9 3 1 ) , 13-59· This book also prints
four letters from Elizabeth to Dr. Cohn, letters dealing with the subject of
her brother's health, and the last important word she has to say on the subject
She continues to deny that the Ariadne story relates to Cosima, and to refuse
to believe that Nietzsche was in love with Cosima. Needless to say, she still
denies that her brother had syphilis.
72 NIETZSCHE

struck him in Turin, held his whole right side, and prevented,
one can only say fortunately, his writing. He would lie for
hours, looking fixedly out of the window. Music stirred him
to the end, and to the end he could listen to Peter Gast, who
had followed the Master to Weimar. On August 25, 1900 he
died quietly.
Nietzsche's illnesses were many and varied. It is unlikely
that, even with the full information we have about his daily
life, a trained physician could from such documentary informa-
tion alone make a satisfactory diagnosis of his trouble. Cer-
tainly, it would be rash for a mere historian to attempt such a
diagnosis. But one thing seems fairly clear. He did have
syphilis, and the paresis with which his life ended followed on
a syphilitic infection.28 Some natural and presumably very
useful sentiments, strong even among intellectuals, tend to
focus a disproportionate attention on the fact that a great man
had a venereal disease. With Nietzsche, especially, that atten-
tion is perhaps rather cruelly sharpened by the workings of the
comic spirit. For syphilis is not a philosopher's disease. Even
after we cease in our minds to associate it with sin, it cannot
be dissociated from indignities.
You cannot, however, explain Nietzsche by the spirochetes.
His trouble — and his genius — are not so simple as that. And
even after psychiatrist, psychologist, physician, and biographer
have got through with the man, his printed words remain.
28 T h e explanation of syphilis was first ably and completely put forward

in P. G. Möbius, Ueber das Pathologische bei Nietzsche (1902), and put be-
yond reasonable doubt by Podach's Nietzsches Zusammenbruch, based on an
examination of the papers recording the clinical examination of Nietzsche at
Jena. It has been bitterly denied, even in the face of this evidence, by most
Nietzscheans, or slurred over in silence.
 THE PROPHET 73
They now are Nietzsche. They now are part of what we call
Western culture. And more: they have been incorporated into
the body of beliefs to which the German National Socialists
subscribe. They have, then, become a part of something many
men fear as the mortal enemy of Western culture. Nietzsche's
personal history fades into unimportance compared with the
history of his ideas. We may here leave the nicer disputes over
Nietzsche's life and personality to others, and attempt the
difficult task of analyzing and classifying his ideas.29
29O£ the books which attempt at some length the process of linking
Nietzsche's life and character with his work, I find best among the older
ones C. A . Bernoulli, Overbec\ und Nietzsche, and among the newer ones
K . Jaspers, Nietzsche: Einfuhrung in das Verständnis seines Philosophieren
(1936). Professor Jaspers is certainly not guilty of over-simplification. Neither
of these books is available in English.
 CHAPTER IV
W H A T NIETZSCHE H A T E D

HE mapping of Nietzsche's ideas is a difficult task. We

T are not, to be sure, dealing with a terra incognita. Dozens
of explorers have penetrated this strange land with its contrast-
ing lights and shades, its straining heights and hollow depths.
Many of them, indeed, report that they have acclimated them-
selves to its unearthly atmosphere, that they have found good
living there. Yet their maps vary. The truth is that the car-
tography of ideas is still, and may perhaps remain, no exact
science. Much goes on in the human mind that is beyond
triangulation, and the human spirit will be measured by no
surveyor's spirit-level.
With Nietzsche the major difficulty may be, as he was pleased
to think, that his ideas are greater than the understanding of
other men. "My destiny ordains that I should be the first decent
human being. . . . I was the first to discover truth." 1 Natu-
rally, so remarkable an achievement must still, for a time,
remain a solitary one. In any attempt to measure Nietzsche's
work with the instruments available to ordinary critical think-
ing, there is one very obvious difficulty. The Master poured his
ideas out with no regard for the petty conventions by which
most thinkers arrange their thoughts. He was above contradic-
tion. One of his aphorisms may seem to deny what another has
asserted. He would create a race of Supermen; but whenever,
' B f « Homo, "Why I am a fatality" § x.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 75
as with the "Aryans" in India or the "golden men" of Plato, he
encounters an attempt to create — if only by thinking about it
— a superior ruling class, he is scornful in condemnation. He
loathes all mention of so decadent and English-liberal a word
as "happiness" (Glück) ; yet he likes "instinct," and writes that
"happiness is identical with instinct." In an attack on the
vocabulary of philosophers which must delight our more inno-
cent converts to semantics, he writes of the error "of supposing
the will to be something that actuates — a faculty. Now we
know that it is only a word." 2 Yet he entitled what he hoped
would be his masterpiece "The Will to Power." Even the
"philosopher with a hammer" had also to be a philosopher with
words.
Nietzsche's contradictions can, of course, be resolved in a
"higher unity," of which his followers have found several varie-
ties. But with Nietzsche contradiction usually attains the mad
intensity that marks almost all his work. It is tempting to ex-
plain the piled-up complexities of his writing very simply. His
endless vanity made him reject everything anyone else had
proposed. But to contradict everybody is to contradict yourself.
Nietzsche, who made so many paradoxes, was himself the
victim of this one. He had to take refuge in one of the oldest
and firmest shelters of bewildered men — and Supermen.
"Why ? Thou askest why ? I am not of those who may be asked
after their Why!" 3
The ideas of Nietzsche most certainly have origins in his
experience; and since his experience was above all that of a

"Twilight of the Idols, "The 'Improvers' of Mankind," §3; "'Reason' in

Philosophy," §5.
s
Thus Spalle Zarathustra, Part II, chap, xxxix, "Poets."
 76 NIETZSCHE
German intellectual of the late nineteenth century, his ideas
have in part an origin in the books other men wrote. He did,
indeed, transmute those ideas in the process of working them
over in his mind — or his consciousness, or his temperament,
or his will, or whatever else you like to call what was peculiarly
Nietzsche. What came out of the process was indeed original,
though not quite as original as Nietzsche liked to think.
Many scholars have devoted themselves to the pleasant task
of tracing the affiliation of Nietzsche's ideas in the vast network
of ideas which make up the intellectual heritage of Western
civilization.4 There is, indeed, a fundamental difficulty in such
research. We know perhaps less about the inheritance of ideas
than we do about biological inheritance. Thus, for instance,
Nietzsche's grand and much-prized conception of the "Eternal
Recurrence" — which he considered absolutely unique, snatched
from the pure air of the Engadine — has much in common
with notions prevalent in Eastern philosophy and theology, in
Stoicism, and even in modern mathematical speculation. Yet
we cannot say absolutely that he took it from any of these
sources. He read much, if rather desultorily, in translations of
and commentaries on Indian and Persian philosophy. The
name, at least, of Zarathustra he proudly borrowed from the
East. Greek philosophy he knew very well indeed. Of modern
mathematics he knew very little. It seems likely, then, that he
built the Eternal Recurrence out of confused memories of his
reading, fused together in the ecstasy of poetic composition,
4
As a matter of fact, Charles Andler did the job so thoroughly that it
hardly needs additional work. The first of his six volumes is entirely devoted
to Nietzsche's "precursors"— including Emerson, who wrote of the "Over-
soul." Scattered through the other five volumes are notes on what Nietzsche
read, whom he talked to, what he talked about.
 W H A T NIETZSCHE H A T E D 77

during which he could almost forget himself, to say nothing

of others.
Nietzsche was trained as a classical philologist, and though
his learning was not sufficient to satisfy the exacting standards
of a Wilamowitz, it remained as a solid background for his
later work. Greek and Latin he had mastered as a schoolboy,
and with the classical philosophers and historians, as well as
with the Greek dramatists, he had the kind of familiarity that
cannot be easily acquired unless one begins as a schoolboy.
Nietzsche, like most lovers of classical antiquity, found what
he wanted there — a club with which to belabor his contempo-
raries. He found, especially among the Greeks before they were
corrupted by Socrates-Plato, the Will to Power in all its fierce
violence. The Greeks, he insisted, were not the sober lovers of
the Golden Mean stuffy German academics found them to be,
not the rapt dawn-folk German romantics found them to be,
but energetic fighters, at once disciplined and furious. Burck-
hardt had helped him to this conception.

Fancy judging the Greeks in the German style, from their philoso-
phers; fancy using the suburban respectability of the Socratic schools as
a key to what is fundamentally Hellenic! The philosophers are of course
the decadents of Hellas, the counter-movement directed against the old
and noble tribe (against the agonal instinct, against the polis, against
the value of the race, against the authority of tradition). 6

These old Greeks might almost have read Nietzsche, and

joined the Nazi party.
Much more important than the Greeks and Romans in
Nietzsche's intellectual inheritance were the Germans among
whom he was brought up. He had a good staple German
lThe Twilight of the Idols, "Things I owe to the Ancients," §3 and 4.
78 NIETZSCHE

education in the Bible and Lutheran piety, in Goethe and

Schiller, in the nineteenth-century romantics. Although he
turned against them in later life, finding imperfections even
in Goethe (the poet was all wrong about the Greeks, and his
prose style was often heavy), their stamp was on him. Nietzsche
had to the full that eternal German sense of cultural inferiority
which appears as a perpetual striving, discontent, sense of im-
perfection and incompleteness. He turned in passage after
passage to the dissection of this "German soul" — and his own.
For instance, of Die Meistersinger,
something German in the best and worst sense of the word, something
in the German style, manifold, formless, and inexhaustible; a certain
German potency and superplenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide
itself under the raffinements of decadence — which, perhaps, feels itself
most at ease there; a real, genuine token of the German soul, which is
at the same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity.
This kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they
belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow — they
have as yet no today.9

Among these Germans, Schopenhauer and Wagner were

the two great masters of the young Nietzsche, by his own admis-
sion, men who helped turn him from the safe paths of philology
to the dangers and delights of high thinking and strong feeling.
With truly noble detachment — or ingratitude — he damned
them specifically afterwards:
A large number of the higher and better-endowed men will, I hope,
have in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad
taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against Richard
Wagner as much as against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are lead-
ing us to ruin: they flatter our dangerous qualities. A stronger future

* Beyond Good and Evil, "Peoples and Countries," § 240.

 W H A T NIETZSCHE HATED 79
is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in these
racial aberrations.7

But in his younger days these two were his Masters. They
taught him to distrust the comforts of logic and common-sense,
to seek refuge in something endless, indefinable, and indescrib-
able, which he was to spend his life trying to limit, define, and
describe. They did not make him a romantic, but they con-
firmed his romanticism. He tried to shake off Schopenhauer's
pessimism, but succeeded only in calling it optimism. His
concrete debt to Schopenhauer — his ideas on women, for in-
stance — remained very great. He tried to shake off Wagner's
confused bumbling by going to those masters of clarity, the
French moralistes.
Nietzsche learned much from the French. He did not need to
learn to write, for even as a schoolboy he could write a clear, im-
patient German. But he learned to write better, to mould a
sharper phrase, to twist suddenly into irony, to condense and
to shade. His was still, however, a German style, full of striv-
ing and parentheses, and hitched to all the heavens. He went
to La Rochefoucauld and Beyle for an antidote to German
Gemütlichkeit and idealism, of which he never had much any-
way, just as he went to Bizet for an antidote to Wagner's music.
But an antidote is not in itself a form of nourishment, and in
spite of his "middle period" of aphoristic books like Human,
All Too Human, and The Dawn of Day, he never attained the
sure good judgment of the more serene of his models, like
Montaigne, nor the delicate sensitivity of the more troubled,
like Pascal. Proof of what he failed to get from the French is

' The Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 12.

8o NIETZSCHE

his inability to understand and appreciate the achievement of

so final a Frenchman as Sainte Beuve, of w h o m he wrote,

There is naught of man in him, he is full of petty spite towards all

virile spirits. H e wanders erratically: he is subtle, inquisitive, a little
bored, forever with his ear to key-holes, — at bottom a woman, with
all a woman's revengefulness and sensuality. . . . In his fundamental
instincts he is plebeian, and next of kin to Rousseau's resentful spirit:
consequently he is a Romanticist. 8

A man w h o could write such perverse nonsense was hardly

capable of learning what is best of France. That phrase about
"virile spirits" is the stock German defense against France, in
some ways a good defense, but not a form of understanding.
A n d even as a defense, it has had its weaknesses in the past, and
will have them again. What Nietzsche mistook for a lack of
masculine fire in Frenchmen like Sainte Beuve is really a kind
of tranquillity rarely attained by Germans, and certainly not
by Nietzsche. Here, as so often, the labored originality and
fierce individualism of Nietzsche turns out to be the old feeling
of the tribe.
From Anglo-Saxon thought Nietzsche got very little. He
could not read English well, as he could French, in the original.
H e seems to have read little in translation, though as a good
nineteenth-century intellectual he had picked up, if only from
conversation and reviews, all the necessary names and tags. H e
had what was in the i88o's among Germans a most foresighted
dislike for the English, w h o m he regarded as a shallow race
incapable of philosophy and devoted to the decadent illusions
of Trade and Science. H e took out his dislike in epigrams
which are not among his best: "Carlyle, or pessimism after

* The Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § 3.

 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 81
undigested meals. — John Stuart Mill, or offensive lucidity." 9
Of America he thought very little: we were too innocent to
count. As a young man he had read Emerson in translation,
and he always thought more highly of him than of Carlyle.
His sister read him some of Mark Twain, whom he found
amusing and harmless. But on the whole, he liked to think of
the Anglo-Saxon peoples as not really counting. They were
numerous, and apparently successful, but they lacked Depth.
And only the deep survive — or ought to survive. The judg-
ment of the tribe again.
Like most "imaginative" writers who crusade against what
they call science, Nietzsche had no first-hand acquaintance
with any scientific discipline. He was, however, too much a
child of the nineteenth century he loathed so vocally not to
dabble in writings about biology. He may have read Darwin
in translation; at any rate he read enough about Darwin to
know that Darwin's theories of evolution were wrong. Zara-
thustra, he insisted, was uninfluenced by current doctrines of
evolution; the race of Supermen was not to come by any such
suspiciously British process as natural selection, but by a Dio-
nysian exercise of the Will to Power.
In general, Nietzsche's reading and education, save for his
brief apprenticeship in classical philology, was that of a serious
dabbler — or, if you prefer, a philosopher. In working up to
the Antichrist he read widely in the history of religions, and
especially in that of Christianity and its Eastern antecedents;
but even here he neglected what is perhaps the most important

* The Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § i.

For a long and typical passage blaming England for "the European ignobleness,
the plebeianism of modern ideas," see Beyond Good and Evil, § 253.
82 NIETZSCHE
part of the history of religions, institutional history. He was as
contemptuous of the Middle Ages as any philosopher in the
Age of Enlightenment, and knew little of the actual workings
of the Mediaeval Church. Such study he felt was unnecessary,
and indeed harmful. History, as he explained in one of his first
essays, "On the Use and Abuse of History" in Thoughts out
of Season, can really tell us nothing important about the pres-
ent, and can woefully distract us from the flashing sureness of
the play of instinct and will. Nietzsche, especially in his master-
piece, Beyond Good and Evil, was most critical of the philoso-
pher's habit of taking the word for the deed. Yet in his study
of Christianity he himself concentrated on what the more
articulate and intellectual Christian apologists wrote, and
avoided the difficult study of how ordinary Christians really
behave. Professional habit is strong, even among philosophers
with a hammer.

II
From all this miscellaneous, but on the whole overwhelm-
ingly literary, abstract, and second-hand experience, Nietzsche
produced what is in many ways a unique and original inter-
pretation of what must be grandly called the meaning of life.
It was not, as we shall see, by any means an interpretation as
unzeitgemäss, as contrary to the spirit of the age, as he believed
it to be. Indeed, Nietzsche's importance for us is that he is a
part of a movement among his contemporaries and near-con-
temporaries which is rather unfortunately called anti-intellectu-
alism, a movement which is in some sense at least as old as
Greek thought, but which in our time has taken on a com-
plexity and a thoroughness perhaps new. Nietzsche belongs in
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 83
the history of thought with Marx, Georges Sorel, Freud, Pareto,
and hundreds of lesser men, down to the latest popularizers of
semantics. His work in part differs greatly from theirs. He is
either the enfant terrible or the mad prophet of the movement
— or both. But he is part of a movement, and no solitary. This
scorner of history is a product of history.
Nietzsche himself, at least, could hardly complain too bit-
terly if we accept him on his own grounds, and attempt to
arrange his ideas according to a thoroughly anti-intellectualist
scheme. We shall attempt to see what he hated and what he
wanted; or to use more abstract terms, and perhaps misleading
ones, to distinguish between the negative and the positive
aspects of his work, between Nietzsche the destroyer and
Nietzsche the builder. Again, he has made himself so great a
reputation as the "philosopher with a hammer" that he could
hardly object if we concentrate at first upon what he proudly
regarded as his destructive labors. We shall begin appropriately
with what Nietzsche hated.
He hated extensively and energetically, so that it is hard to
distinguish among his hatreds. One of the most constant of
them, however, one which appears clearly in his very first
book, is a hatred for the tradition of European rationalism.
Socrates, one of the great heroes of that tradition, is for
Nietzsche a villain. Before Socrates, the Greeks had been,
according to Nietzsche, happy creatures of instinct and habit,
fighters, revelers, builders, singers, "the men who fought at
Marathon." With Socrates they began to think — not to think
as healthy animals probably think, and as the old Greeks
thought, simply to find ways of getting what they wanted,
getting what their wills and instincts made them strive for.
84 NIETZSCHE

Socrates actually told them to thin\ about what they wanted I

H e carried the process a step farther, as far indeed as it can
ever be carried, into the final abyss of the unconscious: he
invented in his daemon an intellectualized perversion of
instinct:

This voice, wherever it comes, always dissuades. In this utterly abnor-

mal nature instinctive wisdom only appears in order to hinder here and
there the progress of conscious perception. Whereas in all productive
men it is instinct that is the creatively affirmative force, and consciousness
that acts critically and dissuasively; with Socrates it is instinct that be-
comes critic, and consciousness that becomes creator — a perfect mon-
strosity per defectum.10

A f t e r Socrates and his pupil Plato, Nietzsche thinks, the way

was open for the ravages of Christianity. Still other perversions
were indeed necessary to make Christianity finally victorious,
but the basic perversion was achieved when the Greeks aban-
doned Dionysos for Apollo, Homer and Aeschylus for Socrates
and Plato. In its more or less easily isolated form of rationalism,
the Socratic virus has persisted down to our own day. England,
notably, is hardly more than a mass of infection, with her Dar-
wins, Mills, and Herbert Spencers. But Nietzsche could find
this deadly rationalism almost everywhere he looked — which
is one of the comforts of hating. It was clear to him in the
fashionable critics of Christianity, in men like T o m Paine and
David Strauss, w h o were merely stuffier Christians, ethical-
society bores without the capacity for mystic feeling which gave
Christianity a touch of life. It was even clearer to him in natural
science, the devouring heresy of the age. It was clear too in the
absurd disguise of conventional philosophic idealism. Poor

10 The Birth of Tragedy, chap. xiii.

 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 85
Hegel missed the Life Force by at least as much as did John
Stuart Mill. Jumbled together in the minds of little men, the
European herd-men who believed in science, progress, democ-
racy, bigger and better things ahead, all these ideas were a sign
of the decadence of the age. Nietzsche innocently called it
décadence', his followers today repudiate the corrupt French
word and insist on the good German word Entartung.
Nietzsche's hatred of rationalism, vigorous and clear in his
earlier writings, seems to weaken in his "French" period, when
he wrote Human, All Too Human, The Dawn of Day, and
The Joyful Wisdom. Now and then in these books he sounds
almost like a shallow Englishman. "The most important result
of the past effort of humanity is that we need no longer go
about in continual fear of wild beasts, barbarians, gods, and our
own dreams." 11 His prophetic gifts were in abeyance when he
wrote this aphorism; not only Hitler, but Freud escaped his
foresight. Yet even in these books Nietzsche never really
abandons his anti-intellectualism. He comments on Spinoza's
non ridere, non lugere, ñeque detestari, sed intelligere (not to
laugh, not to lament, nor to abhor, but to understand): "We
think that intelligere is something conciliating, just and good,
something essentially antithetical to the impulses; whereas it is
only a certain relation of the impulses to one another." And he
adds, "Conscious thinking, and especially that of the philoso-
pher, is the weakest, and on that account also relatively the
mildest and quietest mode of thinking; and thus it is precisely
the philosopher who is most easily misled concerning the nature
of knowledge." 12
u
The Dawn of Day, § 5.
" The ¡oyful Wisdom, § 334.
86 NIETZSCHE

In his last years, this hatred for traditional rationalism

reaches the pitch of obsession, and he repeats over and over
again, sometimes in an involved style worthy of any German
philosopher, what Thomas Hardy said so simply: thought is a
disease of the flesh.
It does not suffice for you to see in what ignorance man and beast
now live; you must also have and learn the desire for ignorance. It is
pecessary that you should know that without this form of ignorance life
itself would be impossible, that it is merely a vital condition under which,
alone, a living organism can preserve itself and prosper; a great solid
belt of igiiorance must stand about you. 1 8

Zarathustra was more eloquent and abusive, as is fitting in a

poet:
For fear — that is man's original and fundamental, feeling. . . . Such
prolonged ancient fear, at last become subde, spiritual, and intellectual —
at present, methinketh, it is called Science

Science, then, that fine flower of the Western mind, is for

Nietzsche really but a refinement of feeling — but of a per-
verse form of feeling, the fear which makes for cunning and
arms the weak against the strong. Darwin rightly saw that
thought in this sense is an instrument making for survival; but
he was wrong in claiming that it is an instrument making for
the survival of the fit. On the contrary, "species do not evolve
towards perfection: the weak always prevail over the strong —
simply because they are the majority, and because they are also
the more crafty." 1 5
" The Will to Power, § 609. For an example of Nietzsche at play like
any other philosopher among Being and Becoming, see §617 of this same
work. He is on the side of Becoming.
" Thus Spalle Zarathustra, chap, lxxv, "Science."
" The Twilight of the idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § 14.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 87

III
Nietzsche, then, rejected with contempt that current of Euro-
pean rationalism represented in his time by natural science and,
in ethics, political theory, philosophy in general, by positivism,
materialism, empiricism, by the French philosophes and the
English utilitarians. But he disliked quite as vigorously that
strain in European rationalism which is usually labeled "ideal-
ism," a strain clear in the formal philosophy of Plato, the pupil
of the original rationalist, Socrates, and fixed by Leibnitz and
Kant as the dominant form of German philosophy. In his
attacks on philosophic idealism, Nietzsche's hatred ripens into
some of his most remarkable pages of criticism, pages which
ironically foreshadow the attacks on philosophic idealism made
by such modern scientists as Pareto. We can study best this
phase of Nietzsche's work in his famous comments on Kant in
Beyond Good and Evil.
Kant, says Nietzsche, was proud of having made what he
thought was a discovery, the existence in men of the faculty
of synthetic judgment a priori. In other words, Kant, like
Plato, was hunting for an absolute, a formula in words to which
all men would subscribe as the Truth. He had no trouble in
showing that sense-experience could not provide any such
eternal, changeless, absolute Truth, and that scientific laws
were not truths in this sense. But he dug up an absolute — in
words, where it can always be found.
"How arc synthetic judgments a priori possible?" Kant asks himself
— and what is really his answer? "By means of a means (faculty)" —
but unfortunately not in five words, but so circumstantially, imposingly,
and with such display of German profundity and verbal flourishes, that
one altogether loses sight of the comical niaiserie allemande involved in
88 NIETZSCHE
such an answer. . . . But — is that an answer? An explanation? Or is
it not rather merely a repetition of the question? How does opium in-
duce sleep? "By means of a means (faculty)" namely, the virtus dor-
mativa, replies the doctor in Molière,
Quia est in eo virtus dormativa
Cujus est natura sensus assoupire

Indeed, Nietzsche wrote as bitterly about idealists as he did

about everybody else. He is not always as good-tempered as in
the above passage on Kant. In the midst of The Antichrist,
for instance, he breaks out:
I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard
themselves as "idealists" — among all who, by virtue of a higher point of
departure, claim a right to rise above reality and to look upon it with
suspicion. . . . The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty
concepts in his hand (—and not only in his hand!), he launches them
with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor,"
"good living," "science"; he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious
and seductive forces over which "the soul" soars as a pure thing in
itself. 17

The idealists, then, have, according to Nietzsche, fished in

their own minds — really, in their own desires — and brought
up a lot of nice words like "idea" and "the thing-in-itself."
Nietzsche occasionally admits that this process is even more
delusive, even more remote from normal human experience,
than the processes of common-sense rationalism. Such philoso-
phers let "conceptions, opinions, events, books" come between.
themselves and "things." 1 8 Nietzsche could even, in a moment
of apparent nihilism, admit that "will" is only a word. 19 But
" Beyond Good and Evil, chap, r, § 1 1 .
" The Antichrist, § 8.
18
Thoughts out of Season, "Schopenhauer as Educator," chap. vii.
" See above, p. 75.
 W H A T NIETZSCHE HATED 89

this was no doubt "will" as Schopenhauer and others used the

word — not Nietzsche's own precious Will to Power.
Here Nietzsche rescues himself by a device central to modern
anti-intellectualism. We must not, he says, worry ourselves over
the problems raised by such men as Kant. The classic problems
of philosophy are simply insoluble. The "new" philosophers
so necessary to the world will not ask whether an opinion is
true or false, but whether it is useful or harmful.
The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here,
perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is,
how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving, species-preserving;
perhaps species-rearing; and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain
that the falsest opinions (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong)
are the most indispensable to us; that without a recognition of logical
fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world
of the absolute and immutable . . . man could not live — that the re-
nunciation of false opinion would be a renunciation of life, a negation of
life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that is certainly to im-
pugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philoso-
phy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good
and evil.20

Nietzsche does not, however, consistently accept his conclu-

sion that idealism, though "false," is "indispensable to us."
He admits that such opinions as Kant's have a long history and
a "natural" origin, that they are a product of the philosopher's
instincts, of physiological demands for a mode of life. He even
traces them to a common origin in the language of Indo-
European peoples, a function of the prehistoric formation of
our vocabulary and grammar. 21 But Nietzsche was a hater,
perhaps a lover, and certainly no skeptic. He is soon back in
" Beyond Good and Evil, chap. 1, §4.
11
Beyond Good and Evil, chap. 1, § 20.
90 NIETZSCHE
his old strain. " 'Reason' in language! oh what a deceptive old
witch it has been! I fear we shall never be rid of God, so long
as we still believe in grammar." The idealists have really in-
vented harmful fictions, and the age and long prevalence of
these fictions is far from proof of their usefulness to us now-
adays. On the contrary, that we should so respect them is a sign
of our degeneracy, of our blind attachment to history, that muse
of unprofitable illusions.
The characteristics with which man has endowed the "true Being"
of things are characteristics of non-Being, of nonentity. The "true
world" has been erected on a contradiction of the real world; and it is
indeed an apparent world, seeing that it is merely a moralo-optical delu-
sion. . . . To divide the world into a "true" and an "apparent" world,
whether after the manner of Christianity or of Kant (after all a Christian
in disguise), is only a sign of decadence, a symptom of degenerating life. 22

It is significant that Nietzsche does not put the skeptic's

quotation-marks around "real world" in the above passage.
The fact is that, attack the idealists as he might, he could not
get over a certain fascination for them, notably for Plato and
Spinoza. He wavered much, and it is possible here, as on almost
every point, to find him at some time or other contradicting
himself. But he rarely shows any sympathy with materialistic
or empirical philosophers. He is convinced there is a "real
world" beyond the lying evidence of the senses, beyond the
misleading organization scientific thought gives to the evidence
of the senses. But he cannot accept for long the gentle, orderly
world of love and pity idealistic philosophers always end by
finding. He wanted something better — something more. He
was a German.
B
The Twilight of the Idols, " 'Reason' in Philosophy," § 6.
 W H A T NIETZSCHE H A T E D 91

IV
Nietzsche, then, condemned both the materialistic and the
idealistic philosophical solutions: both were to him essentially
intellectualist at bottom, both were merely more or less in-
genious metaphysical dodging of a problem essentially moral:
right conduct here and now. But he was at least as violent in
condemnation of a solution he, like the late Irving Babbitt and
many other modern thinkers, always associated chiefly with
Rousseau. In spite of his frequent damniñg of "intellect," his
frequent praise of "instinct," "impulse," "nature," he insisted
over and over again that he did not mean by any of these nice
words what Rousseau and his followers seemed to mean by
them. "Rousseau, or the return to nature, in impuris naturali-
busSignificantly, the list of Nietzsche's "impossible people"
from which this malicious characterization is drawn, ends with
a very earnest and unsubtle condemnation: "Zola, or the love
of stinking." 23
The Rousseauists, Nietzsche felt, preached that the lowest
and cheapest human feelings were the best guide to conduct.
They appealed from reason to sentiment, and beyond sentiment
to the deepest well-springs of desire in the animal man, the
plebs, the herd-man. They were justified in attacking the silly
"right reason" of the philosophes and the commonsense school;
but they themselves fell into even sorrier depths when they
appealed from reason and commonsense to common feeling.
Rousseau was really the father of all the worst modern heresies,
democracy, socialism, humanitarianism, pacifism (they had, of
course, many mothers!). He and his followers gave Christian-
" The Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § i.
92 NIETZSCHE
ity, which had become a mere tradition, and hence an almost
harmless, if not actually beneficial, opiate for the people, a new
and baleful energy. This new political Christianity, this appeal
to "natural m a n " and his General Will, aspired to a world at
best mere organized mediocrity, at worst a chaos of stupid
conflicts among dog-men.
T o Nietzsche, Rousseau's influence was not at all limited to
the "romanticists" so labeled in our manuals of literary history,
but extended to "realists" as well. Zola was, in fact, the foster-
son of Rousseau. Take away, as Rousseau preached and as our
modern democracies have done, the restraints of convention
and tradition, of a society organized hierarchically, feudally,
and at least as much according to high aristocratic unreason as
according to priestly reason, and you unchain, not the bright
violence of the saving few, but the meagre ambitions or the
dirty lusts of the many. T h e old feudal society and its Renais-
sance successor did protect a few great souls and bodies, did
allow scope for a Frederick of Hohenstaufen, a Michelangelo,
a Cesare Borgia. T h e new democratic society swamps all such
great spirits. Nietzsche, like many another moralist, was not
sure whether democracy tended to produce a society flatly con-
forming to the dull mediocrity of the greengrocer's actual
habits, or a society madly pursuing the unpleasant extremes of
sensual indulgence which he was sure were the greengrocer's
not very secret desires. H e seems to have felt that democracy
could quite inconsistently be both things at once — both an
organized mediocrity and a disorganized and very vulgar rout.
W e are in Nietzsche's mind on the brink of a volcano, and
ready for several other cliches. Perhaps his general formula pro-
vided for a period of conformity and mediocrity, to be ended by
the catastrophic disintegration of a society in which moral disci-
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 93

pline had so long lacked the sanction of true aristocratic leader-

ship. Nietzsche's attacks on democracy are somewhat confused,
but so are most of those of our prophets of doom. Needless to
say, he had no first-hand knowledge of the working of a demo-
cratic society. His acquaintance with common men was limited
to waiters, hotelkeepers and professors. A l l he knew he learned
from newspapers, and introspection.
Nietzsche's hatreds are hard to weigh. But his hatred for the
Rousseauists was certainly one of his strongest. This romantic
opponent of the great tradition of European rationalism could
not bear his fellow-romantics. His Will to Power, as befits a
philosopher, was really a Will to Belief. Like most strong be-
lievers, he hated heretics even more than unbelievers. He was
his own pope, and infallible. It is strange that so insistent a
psychologist as Nietzsche did not recognize this trait in himself.
Perhaps he did. He was fond enough of self-analysis, and
could write that he too was a decadent, could confess that
"My danger is the loathing of mankind." 24 A t any rate, rail
against "reason" and "idealism" though he did, he could not
bring himself to accept the simple alternative to these con-
cepts, the emancipation of "natural" man, the "natural good-
ness of man," the "life of instinct." He wanted to say "Yea":
"Voluptuousness, passion for power, and selfishness: these three
things have hitherto been best cursed, and have been in worst
and falsest repute — these three things will I weigh humanly
well." But he found himself saying "Nay": "I am distrustful
of your doggish lust." 25 Good voluptuousness and doggish
lust. Do we hear echoes of the virtus dormativai
Nothing in Nietzsche is harder to expound than his position
* Ecce Homo, "Why I am a fatality," § 6; The Case of Wagner, preface.
* Thus Spalle Zarathustra, Part I, chap, xiii; Part III, chap. xliv.
94 NIETZSCHE
on this old question of "reason" versus "instinct." His range
varies with his immediate polemical purpose. He can be quoted,
as Lutheran divines have discovered, in an edifying vein:

T o cling to life, blindly and madly, with no other aim, to be ignorant

of the reason or even of the fact, of one's punishment, nay, to thirst after
it as if it were a pleasure, with all the perverted desire of a fool — this is
what it means to be an animal. If universal nature leads up to man, it is
to show us that he is necessary to redeem her from the curse of the
beast's life. . . . We should consider where the beast ends and man
begins.2®

He could, indeed, be more than edifying: he could be priggish.

He wrote of Lou Salomé: "She told me herself she had no
morals (I thought that, like me, she had stricter morals than
anyone else)." 27 Moreover, and in spite of the ecstatic and
far-fetched comments of followers like Klages, who hold that
Nietzsche actually felt the intellect to be a weakness in men,
Nietzsche himself rarely went the whole way in condemning
the intellect. It was the abuse of thinking by savants, Chris-
tians, and "practical" men he objected to, the making an end
rather than a means of the intellect and of intellectual effort.
Only rarely does he write in the vein of " G e f ü h l ist alles";
usually he employs words like "intellect," "intelligence," and
"reason" in a clearly eulogistic sense.28
Here, as so often, Nietzsche will not be pruned down. He is
complex, refined, subtle, modern, most zeitgemäss ; his thought
is part of what he called the "morbid multiformity of modern

" Thoughts out of Season, "Schopenhauer as Educator," chap. v.

"Quoted in Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 142.
"See for instance the last paragraph of The Antichrist, §21, quoted in
part below, p. 101.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 95
life." 29 Yet, in a final attempt to pin him down, we may take
two texts which reveal, perhaps, a common ground in his hatred
for science and for Rousseauistic romanticism. Both are from
his earlier writings. In one of the essays in Thoughts out of
Season he writes:
Science . . . considers only that view of things to be true and right
and therefore scientific, which regards something as finished- and his-
torical, not as continuing and eternal. Thus it lives in a deep antagonism
towards the powers that make for eternity — art and religion.80

This is a complete misunderstanding of what the practising

scientist does, and it runs counter to such modern theorists of
scientific method as von Mach and Poincaré. But· it is not a
serious misunderstanding of what such contemporaries of
Nietzsche as Herbert Spencer thought science to be. Nietzsche's
outburst is a revulsion against the notion of science as a closed
system of absolute laws which still prevails today among lesser
scientists, and among major non-scientists. In the history of
thought, it places him more or less clearly in the company of
such thinkers as Croce, Bergson, and even Whitehead, who
insist that the "scientific positivism" of the nineteenth-century
tradition provides no place for novelty and adventure.
A second text has an even earlier origin, in the reflections of
the Leipzig student:
Self-observation — it betrays. Know thyself. Through acting, not
through observing. Observation confines and limits energy: it breaks
up, disintegrates. Instinct is the best. Our deeds must be brought about
unconsciously?1

" Thoughts out of Season, "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth," chap. ii.

" Thoughts out oj Season, "On the Use and Abuse of History," chap. x.
11
Wer\e (Historisch-kritische Ausgabe), IV, 126.
96 NIETZSCHE
Both Spencer and Rousseau, both scientist and romanticist, sin
against this precept. Knowing is doing, not formulating nor
enjoying. Laws and lyrics are both evasions, forms of self-
indulgence. Men must act; and for a guide to action they must
seek neither in the lessons of the past — in the too-neat patterns
of science or history, or of that deadening combination, sci-
entific history, — nor in tortured searchings of the heart; but
in a difficult and most human skill, a skill impossible to define,
hard to learn, but which can be recognized in its results.
Nietzsche here takes refuge in the word "unconscious," but
he clearly does not mean the romantic "impulse from a vernal
wood." He means rather the acquired unconscious, the un-
conscious skill of the trained craftsman, an effective adjust-
ment to the complexities of experience which can be gained
only by thinking while acting, never, or never solely, by think-
ing about acting. Here again Nietzsche's position, where he
does not exaggerate it for the purposes of philosophizing with
a hammer, is essentially that of contemporary anti-intellectu-
alism.

V
Before Nietzsche, then, — to simplify, but not to falsify the
Master's own analysis of his predecessors — Western thinkers
immersed in the high problems of philosophy had gone astray
in three ways. Materialistic or empirical rationalists, taking
their cue from Socrates, had falsified and suppressed full
human experience by erecting the dream-world we now call
science. Idealistic rationalists, taking their cue also from
Socrates, had achieved a similar falsification and suppression by
erecting the even more fantastic dream-world of idealism, a
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 97

world especially familiar to Germans, who had produced Kant

and Hegel. Finally, gross men miscalled artists, hardly obliged
to appeal to Greek masters, though Epicurus and others were
there if needed, had tried to do without these intellectual
dream-worlds, and had fallen back on their "doggish lusts"
and sentimental memories as guides to conduct and exhaustive
descriptions of reality. For Nietzsche, all these errors were
combined in Christianity, the historic form in which philo-
sophical speculation had been brought within the capacities of
ordinary men — brought deliberately by designing thinkers,
weaklings perversely turned men of action: that is, by priests.
A l l Nietzsche's more general and abstract hatreds were focussed
in his hatred for what he called Christianity. He found there
the idealist, hardly at all disguised; the sensualist, his simpler
lusts suppressed only to crop up in subtler and more tortured
forms; even the empirical rationalist — did not the English
call themselves Christian?
Nietzsche's most famous attack on Christianity is The Anti-
christ,, written at top speed in the last few months before he was
shut up as a madman, and charged with the full energy of his
hatred, his literary gifts, and his tautened nerves about to
break. If only because of its intensity and skill in invective, it
makes conventional anti-Christian literature seem pale and
lifeless. It has become a kind of handbook for lustier anti-
Christians like Mr. H. L. Mencken and for Nazis, though it is
meat much too strong for the mild, vegetarian radicals who
want to keep Christian ethics while discarding Christian "su-
perstitions." Hardly any of Nietzsche's writings is without
passages directed against the Christian religion; but in The
Antichrist his hatreds, magnificently, madly, indecently gath-
98 NIETZSCHE

ered together, burst in a final explosion. The book ends with a

passage which reveals the overwhelming ambition of the
prophet. The Nietzsche who signed himself in his madness
The Crucified One would supplant Jesus with Nietzsche:
And time is reckoned from the dies nefastus upon which this fatality
came into being — from the first day of Christianity! — why not rather
from its last day? — From today? — Transvaluation of all Values 1 8 2

The base from which Nietzsche works, he had already clearly

laid down in earlier writings. What we call morality among
men, if studied as the natural historian studies the behavior of
other organisms (Nietzsche, by the way, was willing to adopt
"scientific" methods when he found them convenient), this
morality is seen to be no divine command, no thing-in-itself,
but an instrument by which a few men control for their own
benefit the activities of their fellows. The distinction between
"good" and "bad" is wholly man-made; Nature, the universe
revealed to us by our sense-experience and by our desires, knows
nothing of such a distinction. "There are no moral phenomena,
only a moral interpretation of phenomena; the origin of this
interpretation lies beyond the pale of morality."33
All men want. And since we must give names, we shall,
writes Nietzsche, call this wanting, this fundamental attitude
of human consciousness, which uses the intellect as a tool, but is
hardly ever guided by the intellect — though it may be corrupted
and weakened by the intellect — we shall call this wanting The
Will to Power. Now some men are stronger in body, more alert
in mind, more driven by this Will, than others. Very early,
among peoples we call primitive or savage, this fact became
B
The Antichrist, § 62.
88
The Will to Power, § 258.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 99

clear. Nietzsche is uncertain whether this differentiation took

place within all those groups of men we call races, or whether
whole races, in respect to other races, possessed these superior
powers. He inclines to accept both descriptions as true. Within
any group, a few men possess such powers, and become masters;
but au fond the northern peoples of Europe do possess them' in
greater strength than the southern peoples. Whatever their ori-
gins — and Nietzsche is emphatic that they are not at all as sim-
ple as innocent theorists of German racial "purity" make out —
Nordics, Teutons, "blond beasts," do in fact possess this superi-
ority.34 There are purified races, if no pure ones. And these
races, these groups of superior men, if you prefer, have set up
those potent abstractions we call "good" and "bad." "The
pathos of nobility and distance, the chronic and despotic esprit
de corps and fundamental instinct of a higher dominant race
coming into association with a meaner race, an 'under-race,'
this is the origin of the antithesis of good and bad." 3 5
There are, then, a minority of "masters" and a majority of
"herd." This means that there are two moralities, master-
morality and herd-morality. They are different, indeed anti-
theticaL "Good" for the masters is the pure exertion of the

" I know that there is much in Nietzsche that can be quoted against such
a view. He attacked theories of "race" as products of nineteenth-century herd
morality, of unaristocratic looseness of thought and feeling. He wrote bitter
things against the Germans, w h o had so stupidly neglected him. But in one
of his bitterest attacks on the Germans, he wrote that they display "a number
of virtues more manly than any that other European countries can show."
The Twilight of the Idols, "Things the Germans lack," § 1. T o anyone Who
knows the supreme value Nietzsche set on what he called "manly," the above
passage is final. T h e Nazis have had no trouble in adopting him as their
prophet See also Chapter VIII below.
The Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, § 2.
100 NIETZSCHE
Will to Power, which in our decadent times we cannot even
name without using words of ill-repute, like fighting, cruelty,
greed, lying, voluptuousness. " G o o d " for the herd we herd-
men and Christians can describe in nice words, like peace,
compassion, obedience, self-restraint. And similarly, of course,
with "bad."
Already it should be clear, from the terms used above, that
Nietzsche is facing the ineluctable and insoluble problem of
the origin of evil. H e has decided that somehow, sometime,
somewhere — perhaps in Greece before Socrates — men behaved
as he liked to think of them as behaving. This is his Garden of
Eden, a place extraordinarily like Valhalla, where heroes fought
and cheated all day, and, their wounds miraculously no wounds,
feasted all night. Once the distinction between master-morality
and slave-morality had been as clear on earth and in reality as
it was in Nietzsche's mind. But no longer. There had been a
Fall of Man, and the slaves had come to rule the masters. Good
had somehow become evil, evil good. Inexplicably ? Not quite,
unfortunately. History, aided by Nietzsche, was equal to the
explanation.
Christianity is for him the key. Christ, and even more the
apostle Paul, inspired by Jewish malevolence and Greek phi-
losophy, undid the work of Nature, and set slaves over masters.
What they did was indeed no more than priests everywhere
have tried with varying success to do. But they did it more
completely and more disastrously than it has ever been done —
more so even than in India. There Buddha, a natural if some-
what gentle aristocrat, came to the rescue of the victims of
"super-spiritualization." Buddha was primarily a "hygienist,"
" H e understands goodness as being good — as promoting
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED ιοί

health. Prayer is out of the question, as is also asceticism."88

But Christianity, as finally established, was the work of herd-
men who loved their own weaknesses, who strove to further
disease. "Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of
courage, freedom, intellectual libertinage ; Christian is the hatred
of the senses, of the joys of the senses, of joy in general." 37
How can anything so unnatural as the victory of the slaves
over the masters take place ? As easily, surely, as the regrettable
elevation of the Lower Law above the Higher Law noted by
moralists more orthodox than Nietzsche. The slaves are always
vastly more numerous than the masters. Normally they remain
quiet, content with their slave-morality. Indeed, Christianity,
if it were limited to the masses, and used, as it was used during
the best days of the Renaissance, to keep them quiet, might be
a natural and a useful thing. But perversely some of the slaves
are born intelligent, or at least crafty, and they become priests.
Even more perversely, some of the masters are born weaklings,
but intelligent; or at any rate catch the mysterious disease called
moral idealism. They too become priests — Christian, Jacobin,
or socialist. N o w the priest in this broad sense is a man with a
very strong Will to Power, but without the great gifts of bodily
strength, without the capacity for masculine joy in its disci-
plined exercise, without the reverent attachment for this earth
so essential to the true aristocrat — the old Prussian Junker, for
instance. The priest's Will to Power drives him to seek a way
to rule, and his craft finds this way; he invents a religion of
pity, of softness, of equality, and rallies the slaves to the over-
throw of the masters.

" The Antichrist, § 20.

" The Antichrist, § 21.
102 NIETZSCHE
Especially when he is dealing with the origins of primitive
religions and of Christianity, Nietzsche leans rather heavily on
this somewhat outmoded "priest-hypocrite-villain" theory. But
he is far too subtle a psychologist, too good a child of the late
nineteenth century, to repeat here the simplicities of French
anti-clericals of the eighteenth century. Nietzsche's priest is no
plain hypocrite. This priest believes, perhaps from the Very
first, the pious fictions he invents. He really believes the meek
are blessed; hé even believes that he himself is meek, and that
he ought to inherit the earth. His hatred he thinks is love. He
takes joy in his disease, in his weakness. And since joy is one
of the primal sources of strength in men, the priest achieves the
extraordinary and very Christian feat of turning his weakness
into a kind of personal strength, not consciously, not hypo-
critically, but unconsciously. That is the full and paradoxical
horror of religion, and especially of Christianity; it seems re-
grettably natural. When he comes to modern exponents of the
religion of humanity, Nietzsche is sure that no hypocrisy is
involved. Men like Condorcet and Tolstoy have not the intelli-
gence to be hypocrites.
Among all religions of gentleness — that is, among social
diseases — Christianity is for Nietzsche by all odds the worst,
partly because it has succeeded in corrupting the most manly
and capable of the humán race, the peoples of Northern
Europe, partly because it is so perfectly tailored to meet the
desires of the groveling herd. "Faith, hope and charity" make
a complete charter for the domination of the masters by the
slaves. Christian morals are consistently, coherently, the ex-
pression of the basic instincts of low men, instincts that make
them try to avoid reed living — that is, to try to perpetuate
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 103
existence at the lowest possible level. Christianity fouls life at
its very source, in the relations of the sexes. " H o w can one pos-
sibly place in the hands of children and women, a book that
contains those vile words: 'it is better to marry than to burn.
A n d is it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origin of
man is Christianized, — that is to say, befouled by the idea of
the immaculata conceptio ?" 3 8 Christianity is thus the perfect
form of decadence, the denial of life, the use of instinct against
itself. Jesus and Paul finished the deadly work of Socrates's
daemon. "Let us not underestimate the Christians: the Chris-
tian, false to the point of innocence in falsity, is far above the
apes, — with regard to'the Christians a certain well-known
theory of Descent becomes a mere good-natured compliment." 8 9
Nietzsche recognizes many historical reasons for the peculiar
virulence of Christianity: the importance of Paul, whom he
makes the arch-villain of the piece, an insane, vengeful Jew, a
destroyer, a hater; the skill with which Greek idealism was
woven into Christian theology, giving it a specious intellectual
respectability; the perverted discipline of Church organization;
the existence of a great proletariat of slaves, thirsting for salva-
tion and revenge. But he puts particular emphasis on two broad
considerations, the Christian doctrine of personal immortality
and the Jewish origin of Christianity.
T h e doctrine of immortality as it appears in Christianity is
for Nietzsche one of the most diabolical of priestly inventions.
Believers are not promised that pity, self-abnegation, chastity,
asceticism will bring them success in this world. They do not
turn the other cheek to get caresses, but blows. By the ingenious

" The Antichrist, § 56.

" The Antichrist, § 39.
104 NIETZSCHE
device of the Kingdom of Heaven, however, they are promised
complete fulfillment of their crudest desires in an after-life.
Without this promise, even herd-men might come to realize
that the Christian virtues failed to pay dividends on this earth.
The Christian doctrine of personal immortality provides an
almost unbelievably effective way of getting men to accept the
degenerate life in which the priest is supreme. The more
unnatural, the more diseased, the more hopeless the lot of the
believer here below, the more certain his eternal bliss above.
And this is not the worst. Hell is even more effective than
Heaven in preventing men from becoming what they might
become. The more natural, healthy, and hopeful the lot of a
believer here below, the more certain his eternal punishment in
a still lower region. The hope of Heaven and the fear of Hell
combine to botch existence for all men, save for the tiny
minority — is it a minority of one ? — of free spirits (freie
Geister) beyond Heaven and Hell, beyond good and evil. The
real horror of Christianity for Nietzsche is not so much that it
coddles the weak as that it suppresses and cows the strong. In-
deed, he is willing at times to welcome Christianity as a means
by which, in better times, a minority of masters, free spirits,
might keep in useful contentment a majority of slaves, herd-
men. At other times, however, he will have nothing less than
a new race of Supermen, an earth untainted even by the memory
of Christianity, with no men as we now know them left. He
was no Utopian, however, neither a Morris nor a Bellamy. He
does not bother to ask what these Supermen will do about the
mean little routine tasks. Perhaps there will be no such tasks ?
Nietzsche-Zarathustra was a very exalted fellow, who rose
above Nirvana as well as above Heaven.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 105

A second element in the triumph of Christianity, according

to Nietzsche, was its Jewish origin. In The Antichrist, at least,
Nietzsche can write as crudely as any Nazi Jew-baiter.40 The
Jews first invented the lie of monotheism. Their Jehovah was
originally, in the days of Israel's prevailing, a God of dignity
and justice; with the Captivity he became a monstrous god of
jealousy and philosophy, a figure on whom the disappointed
Jewish intellectuals spilled out their wounded pride, their
unrealized ambitions. Jehovah became their revenge on the
world, their flight from the world. But he was still a mere
tribal God, at whose threats the Gentiles could — and did —
laugh. There remained the final step, which Jewish intellec-
tuals like Paul took. This tribal God could, by a gigantic
conspiracy, be foisted on ignorant Gentiles. As the Christian
God, he would sap the strength and confidence of the enemies
of Israel. Jerusalem would be revenged, and the Jews would
rule over a world corrupted by Jewish poison. It would be a
dark, womanish rule over a world sunk in weakness and
despair, but a world of which Jerusalem would once more be
the center.

T h i s was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had ever yet existed
on earth: insignificant little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay
sole claim to the concepts " G o d , " " T r u t h , " " L i g h t , " "Spirit," "Love,"
" W i s d o m , " " L i f e , " as if these things were, so to speak, synonyms of
themselves, in order to fence themselves off from "the w o r l d " ; little
ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in
order to suit themselves just as if the Christian, alone, were the meaning,
the salt, the standard and even the "ultimate tribunal" of all the rest
of mankind. 4 1

" The key passages are in The Antichrist, § 24 and 25.

a
The Antichrist, § 44.
IO6 NIETZSCHE
But another God is coming — may we not say invented? —
and Nietzsche is his prophet. Another megalomania? Has
another people, scorned and humiliated, produced a new and
successful gospel of revenge ? We can only hope that Nietzsche
is as bad a prophet as he is a historian.
For his account of the origins of Christianity is certainly not
good history. The notion that Christianity began as a Jewish
conspiracy is melodramatic nonsense. Conspirators, even in
very recent times, are rarely philosophers of history. Saint John,
and certainly Saint Paul, were not quite innocent enough for
conspiracy. Even the major thesis of Nietzsche's attack on
Christianity contains a paradox that strains the limits of logic.
Christianity, according to him, is the victory of the weak over
the strong. But if the weak are victorious, are they not then
really the strong? Have not they carried out successfully the
supreme demands of the Will to Power ? There is certainly an
obvious reply here. The Will to Power of the Christians is not
the right kind of Will to Power, not a good one. But if there
are good and bad kinds of power, or success, then there are
standards of judgment with which we can criticize the results
of the struggle for power. There is a "higher" power than the
Will to Power. We are back in the company of Kant and
Socrates. Perhaps Nietzsche too had his daemon ?
An analysis of Nietzsche's attitude towards Christianity
would be incomplete without some mention of his attitude
towards what he regarded as the final, and most decadent, form
of Christianity — the contemporary movement towards democ-
racy and socialism. Nietzsche hated all forms of Western
parliamentary governments, lumping together in his hatred
English liberalism and continental socialism. In his opinion,
 W H A T NIETZSCHE HATED 107

the great popular movements of modern times, the English,

American, and French revolutions, represent the herd-men's
attempt to bring the unlovely and impossible Christian heaven
down to earth. No longer content with the vicarious other-
worldly realization of his low desires for comfort and self-
indulgence which the success of the Jewish conspiracy brought
him, the democrat or the socialist is trying to be comfortable
and self-indulgent here and now, trying to remake this earth
in his own image. And the result? A mad scramble for the
cheap wares of the factory, for the pleasures of a vulgarized
art, for the satisfactions of that base form of envy called
patriotism.
An absolute uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and hurry of
life, and the decay of all reflection and simplicity. The waters of religion
are ebbing, and leaving swamps and stagnant pools; the nations are draw-
ing away in enmity again, and long to tear each other to pieces. The
sciences, blindly driving on according to a system of laissez-faire, are
splitting up. . . . The educated classes are swept along in the con-
temptible struggle for wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Everything bows before the coming bar-
barism, art and science included.42

We are ripe for the final disintegration, for universal nihil-

ism. The one saving factor in the older Christianity, the post-
ponement of its deadly egalitarianism to an after-world, which
still permitted a fruitful inequality in this world, is lost. The
equality of souls before God was a doctrine that might have
been made harmless, but the equality of men before Society is
a fatal lure, a final decadence; it is nihilism.
The protraction of Christianity through the French Revolution. The
seducer is Rousseau, he once again liberates woman, who thenceforward
" Thoughts out of Season, "Schopenhauer as Educator," chap. iv.
ΐθ8 NIETZSCHE
is always represented as ever more interesting — suffering. Then come
the slaves and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. Then the poor and the workmen.
Then the vicious and the sick. . . . Then comes the cursing of all
voluptuousness (Baudelaire and Schopenhauer): the most decided con-
viction that the lust for power is the greatest vice; absolute certainty
that morality and disinterestedness are identical things: that the "happi-
ness of all" is a goal worth striving after (i.e. Christ's Kingdom of
Heaven). We are on the best road to it: the Kingdom of Heaven of
the poor in spirit has begun. 43

VI
On such blanket-terms as rationalism, Christianity, and
democracy Nietzsche centered hatreds which, to take him in
his own terms, are rather more than philosophical. There is a
certain consistency in their variety. Nietzsche hates all that
seems to him hostile to Life, to struggling, to the free expres-
sion of a restless energy in men he called the Will to Power.
He hates anything finished, complete, contented, "dead." Per-
haps this worshipper of succeeding hates anything successful ?
At any rate, we shall not stop now to pursue Nietzsche's per-
sonality into its final — and not very well concealed — hiding-
places. Our list of his hatreds has perhaps been a bit too
abstract, has concentrated on their broadest and most general-
ized expression. We shall do well to consider some of his more
specialized hatreds. They are many, and we can but choose a
few among them. They are also, and not unnaturally, greatly
mixed with love. Nietzsche might have written, odi, ergo amo.
He wrote some bitter things, which, values having been
properly transvalued, he regarded as just and kindly things,
about women. Nietzsche's opinions on women are at least as
well-known as the very similar ones expressed by his master
tt
The Will to Power, § 94.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 109
Schopenhauer. Historically, both represent a reaction against
some of the views about women held in the nineteenth century,
especially in England, America, and Germany, and commonly
known as "Victorian." Such views really were held: read John
Stuart Mill's Autobiography if you doubt it. Women, ran the
common version, are really morally superior to men. They are
gentle, kindly, idealistic, yet sensible. Their minds and desires
are on higher things. They put up, because they have to, with
the wicked lusts of men. They are ignorant now of many im-
portant worldly matters because men conspire to keep them
uneducated, and this ignorance gives them a certain charm.
But since they are really so much better than men, they should
be given at least an equal chance with men, for our common
good. They should be given equal educational opportunities,
should be welcomed into the world of business and politics.
This, indeed, is the more radical version dear to men like Mill.
The ordinary Victorian accepted the premises of Mill's version,
the view of women as ministering angels; but he preferred to
keep them in their present satisfactory place, and to continue
to receive their ministrations.
Against such notions Nietzsche wrote aphorisms scattered
through all his works, and the famous eighteenth chapter of
the first part of Thus Spa\e Zarathustra, "Old and Young
Women." It is roughly possible to distinguish two veins in his
writing about women. In the first vein, he attacks Victorian
notions in his usual manner — by affirming loudly their op-
posâtes. Women are unscrupulous, self-centered, sensual; they
make good schemers, liars, and haters. They are admirable
practitioners of the art of slave-morality, using with intelligent
hypocrisy the "Christian" virtues to establish .their regrettable
no NIETZSCHE
domination over men. And they are intelligent, in a low
way. Established European ideas in the nineteenth century
have got the truth just reversed. Men have "character," women
"intelligence."
T h e intellect of women manifests itself as perfect mastery, presence of
mind, and utilization of all advantages. T h e y transmit it as a funda-
mental quality to their children, and the father adds thereto the darker
background of the will. . . . F o r those w h o know h o w to put a thing
properly: women have intelligence, men have character and passion. 44

In his second vein, Nietzsche is directly concerned with put-

ting women in their proper place. Here, as so often when he
has a concrete program, he sounds very like a Nazi. He might
almost have used their formula, Church, Children, Cooking.
Women must not be given an equal voice with men in affairs
of any kind, state, business, or family. The movement for equal
rights for women is one of the sorriest signs of our decadence.
Women are really not good for much of anything. They are
not even good cooks.45 But in the economy of the world they
must be used for something, and, properly mastered, they make
tolerable slaves. The real danger is not the direct rule the
suffragettes and their sympathizers, eunuchs like Mill, want;
it is that women will rule indirectly, in the manner of a
Pompadour — or a Maintenon — by using their talents for
love-making and Christian piety to obtain an unnatural mas-
u
Human, All Too Human, "Wife and Child," § 4 1 1 . The whole of this
division of Human, All Too Human, § 377-437, together with The Joyful
Wisdom, Book II, § 57-75, makes up perhaps the best sample of Nietzsche's
ideas on women, much fuller and more typical than anything in Thus Spalle
Zarathustra.
48
"Stupidity in the kitchen: woman as cook. — W o m a n does not under-
stand what food means." Beyond Good and Evil, § 234. And Nietzsche had
never faced an American female "salad"!
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED hi
tery over their masters. In the new order of society, women
must be kept in their ordained position of inferiors, must be
limited to the functions of child-bearing and housekeeping,
that men may at last become Supermen.46
Nietzsche loved and hated women — from a safe distance.
The determined Elizabeth was the only woman whom he could
have known at all well. Cosima he loved in secret, as the
Ariadne of a most transparent sublimation. The ludicrous
passage with Lou was too brief and wordy to have taught him
much. Fräulein von Meysenbug was not even a good mother-
substitute. In real life, there was always something fumbling
and unsatisfactory in his relations with women. Perhaps this
is why he wrote so assuredly about them. And he never really
owned one, which is perhaps why he was so confident they
should be owned.
Nietzsche also hated professors, and here at least he had
ample opportunity to know intimately the objects of his hatred.
The academic mind, according to this professor of classical
philology, is devoted to the process of embalming; it does not
kill — it has not energy enough for that. What priests and
women kill, the savant embalms, preserves to clutter the world
so that there is no room for anything alive. Professors are
hopeless herd-men, conservatives in the negative sense of mere
" T h i s summary is not wholly fair to Nietzsche, since, especially in The
Joyful Wisdom — his least embittered book — he can occasionally write about
women discerningly, fair-mindedly, almost sympathetically. See for instance
the aphorism ( § 71) " O n Female Chastity" in Book II of The Joyful Wisdom,
where he discusses the "psychic entanglement" of the ordinary upper and
middle-class European woman who faces marriage after being educated "with
as much ignorance as possible in eroticis." Not that Nietzsche is untrue to
his major premises: even in this book, he insists that "Man's attribute is will,
woman's attribute is willingness." ( § 6 8 ) .
112 NIETZSCHE

conforming; they are hostile to novelty, enterprise, adventure;

they form a guild responsible for the spread of Socratic rational-
ism in its modern and deadly forms of science and scholarship;
they conspire against and suppress the rare spirits — like
Nietzsche — who can use the stufi of history to illuminate, nay,
to set fire to, the world.47
All this was not as new and as daring in the 1870's and 1880's
as were Nietzsche's opinions about women. It had all been said
before, and has been said since. It is the eternal complaint of
the adventurous and imaginative free-lance writer, himself
battling for a living among the realities of competitive exist-
ence, while the cloistered professor rests secure in his make-
believe world of academic tenure. It is the cry of the free artist
against the enslaved scholar, of the creator against Dryasdust,
of the thinker against the mere cataloguer. The kind of thing
Nietzsche said about professors has been said so often that it
must be worth saying. It has become almost a piece of ritualistic
consolation for the imaginative and the profound in this dull
world. And this must indeed be a dull world, in which so
brilliant and fascinating a fellow as Nietzsche has to spend so
much energy in warning his fellow men against the contagion,
if not the charm, of academic dullness and stupidity.
Wagner is almost a test case of Nietzsche's capacity for love-
in-hate. In the Triebschen period, Nietzsche felt, às much äs
he could ever feel, the worship of the disciple for the master.
Wagner's music was then the unattainable perfection of Dio-
nysian striving. His emotions never recovered from the crash
of Wagner's music, and to the last he never denied its unholy
" H e r e the locus classicus is Thoughts out of Season, "Schopenhauer as
Educator," chap. vi.
 ELIZABETH NIETZSCHE
From a photograph, about 1880
 W H A T NIETZSCHE HATED "3
greatness. But he came to hate the Theseus w h o still held
Ariadne's body, though her soul must obviously belong to
Dionysos; he came to envy the successful Master w h o had the
admiration of the tribe, always denied to Nietzsche. His taste
in music, too, changed. W e l l ahead of his time, and a little
against the grain, one suspects, of so unbridled a yearner, he
reverted to the "classical" in music. 48 He came to prefer music
before Beethoven to music after Beethoven, though he also
liked the unpretentious clarity and lightness of Bizet's "Car-
men." In this mood, he wrote about W a g n e r as only a disillu-
sioned romantic could:

Wagner's heroines one and all, once they have been divested of their
heroic husks, are almost all indistinguishable from Madame Bovary. . . .
If it were not for Wagner, who would teach us that innocence has a
preference for saving interesting sinners? (the case in "Tannhäuser").
Or that corrupted old females prefer to be saved by chaste young men?
(the case of Kundry). Or that young hysterics like to be saved by their
doctor? (the case in "Lohengrin"). Or that beautiful girls must love
to be saved by a knight who also happens to be a Wagnerite? (the case
in the "Mastersingers"). Or that even married women also like to be
saved by a knight? (the case of Isolde). . . . Let us wander in the
clouds, let us harangue eternity, let us be careful to group great symbols
all around us. Sarsum! Bumbum! — there is no better advice. The
"heaving breast" shall be our argument, "beautiful feelings" our advo-
cates. Virtue still carries its point against counterpoint. 49

According to Nietzsche, then, W a g n e r was no musician; he

was an actor, a panderer to the low tastes of the public w h o

" A remark of Hans von Biilow makes very clear Nietzsche's native taste
in music. Of a "Bacchanal" of Nietzsche's own composing submitted to him
he wrote, "habe ich mehr an den lendemain eines Bacchanals als an dieses
selbst denken müssen" — "it makes me think rather of the day after a Bacchanal
than of a Bacchanal itself." Nietzsche, Gesammelte Briefe, III, 350.
" The Case of Wagner, § 9; 3; 6.
114 NIETZSCHE
assemble at that "Hydro," Bayreuth — "the cultured crétins, the
blasé pigmies, the eternally feminine, the gastrically happy, in
short, the people."50 Wagner's works are an encyclopaedia of
decadence. They end, appropriately, with the worst kind of
decadence — the Christian religiosity of "Parsifal."
Finally, there are the Germans. Nietzsche was fond of call-
ing himself a "good European," but he never forgot that he
was a German. He thought the racial movement a swindle,
but he contributed much to its spread. He was certainly in
the ordinary sense not a good German, and, especially in
his later years, wrote very violently against the Germans —
which is why we have considered this subject among his
hatreds.
It is part of my ambition to be considered as a despiser of Germans
par excellence. . . . The Germans are impossible for me. When I try
to think of a man who runs counter to all my instincts, the result is
always a German. . . . The Germans are canaille. . . . A man debases
himself by consorting with Germans. . . . I cannot endure this race
with which a man is always in bad company, which has no feeling for
nuances (and alas! I am a nuance). . . . The Germans have no idea of
how vulgar they are — which is itself the very acme of vulgarity — they
arc not ashamed of being merely Germans.81

Yet here Nietzsche's hatred is most transparently disappointed

love. He had wooed his fellow-countrymen, and they had
turned him down. They had not followed Zarathustra. They
had not even stoned him; they had simply paid him no atten-
tion at all.
And he had tried very hard. The Germans, in spite of their
weaknesses, had still seemed to Zarathustra the most hopeful
"The Case of Wagner, §6.
aEcce Homo, "The Case of Wagner," § 4.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED I15

stuff out of which to make Supermen. Save for a few professors,

a few dull bourgeois like David Strauss, they had not followed
the false light of Socratic rationalism. Some deep instinct,
something in the German soul, is forever hostile to the shallow
glibness of French philosophe and English utilitarian. The
Germans had, it is true, their philosophical weakness: Kantian
idealism. But according to Nietzsche, even this absurd and
loving dalliance with the thing-in-itself is really for Germans
nothing more than a form of amusement, and perhaps a not
altogether useless and innocent form of amusement, since it
bewilders foreigners into thinking that the Germans really are
good-natured metaphysical maunderers, and conceals from
them the basic German hardness. "German depth — among
ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at it . . .
we should do honor to our name — we are not called the
'tiusche Volk' (deceptive people) for nothing." 62 At the core
of this German race is to be found a fine blond strength, a
capacity for disciplined obedience, for efficient cooperation, an
energy that can be stimulated into Dionysian activity and
enjoyment, a noble discontent — clear even in men like Luther
— with the world as it is. Even the German search for "depth"
is a sign of the German Will to Power. "Wir Deutschen u/ollen
etwas von uns, was man von uns noch nicht wollte — wir
wollen etwas mehr."™
Over against this strength, Nietzsche finds serious German
weaknesses which have hitherto prevented its highest develop-
ω Beyond Good and Evil, § 244. I doubt whether Nietzsche's derivation of

"Teutonic" is good etymology, but it makes fine irony.

™ "We Germans will get something from ourselves, which no one has yet
wanted of us — we want something more" The Will to Power, § 108. This is
understandably a favorite text in Nazi Germany.
Ii6 NIETZSCHE
ment. The right instincts are there, but they do not have full
play; they are suppressed, overlaid by bad habits and institu-
tions. They emerge awkwardly, if at all, into action. Nietzsche
is never quite sure how this regrettable failure came about, but
he knows how it shows itself at present — in Wagner-worship,
in the new Empire with its striving after worldly goods and
empty political prestige, in national arrogance and obtuseness,
in whoring after the strange gods of parliamentary government
and socialism, in decadence, in neglect of Nietzsche. The Ger-
mans are an enigma — even more complex and contradictory
than women.
As a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling
of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element,
as the "people of the center" in every sense of the term, the Germans
are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown,
more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other
peoples are to themselves: — they escape definition, and are thereby alone
the despair of the French. 54

We have, however, spent enough time on Nietzsche's hatreds.

The list could be extended to great length, from Dante, "the
hyena that writes poetry in tombs," to fanatical reformers,
"that 'noble' little community of unbridled, fantastic, half-mad
people — of geniuses, too — who cannot control themselves, or
experience any inward joy, until they have lost themselves
completely." 55 But it will be more profitable to try to under-
" Beyond Good and Evil, § 244. This whole passage is an admirable sum-
mary of Nietzsche's mature position on the Germans. See also the section
"Peoples and Countries," appended to the English translation of The Genealogy
of Morals.
55
The Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § 1 ;
The Dawn of Day, Book I, § 50. There is no sign in the passage from which
the latter quotation is taken that Nietzsche was indulging in self-analysis.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE HATED 117
stand, not what Nietzsche loved — which is, as we have seen,
usually indistinguishable from what he hated — but what
Nietzsche wanted. We shall in the next chapter attempt the
difficult task of finding a program, a platform for concrete
action, in his work.
 CHAPTER V
W H A T NIETZSCHE WANTED

T HE variety — or the confusion — of Nietzsche's thought is

at least as apparent on what we may call, conventionally,
its positive side as on its negative side. There is one constant:
all his life Nietzsche was concerned, as a politique and mo-
raliste, with the problems of men in society. There are many
variables. He is now critic, essayist on aesthetic problems, now
moralist in the French tradition, now preacher, now prophet —
always, perhaps, philosopher. In his first work, he is primarily
interested in ethics as aesthetics. In his last book, the skeleton
Will to Power, he is interested in ethics as high politics, religion.
Throughout his work, he seems torn between the contrary
ideals of anarchy and authority; rarely, if ever, does he solve
the conflict with the common play on words, the assertion that
true liberty is true obedience. He is certainly not fairly labeled
either as anarchist or as authoritarian, though enemies and
friends alike have not hesitated to interpret him as one or the
other. Perhaps he believed in the anarchical solution for an
elite, the Supermen, in the authoritarian solution for the many,
the herd-men? Certainly he is always vividly aware of a con-
trast between the able few and the incompetent many, and the
distinction between "masters" and "slaves" runs throughout his
thinking. But, if it is in general true that for him "slave-
morality" is obedience, it is not true that for him "master-
morality" is what we know as anarchy. We must put the
 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 119

question of his ethics in its simplest form, and ask how he

wanted men to behave.
This seems, at least to an Anglo-Saxon mind trained to ask
just such empirical questions, a perfectly fair question. But it
is surprising, and in a sense no doubt illuminating, to learn
how difficult it is to answer from Nietzsche's writings. He
does not admit sharing Carlyle's noble scorn for any concrete
proposal of reform as a mere "Morrison's pill." He does not in
so many words say that if the soul of man sees the new light,
all will be well, that we need a spiritual revolution in which the
petty details of institutional change will take care of them-
selves. Any such barefaced preaching would seem to be at odds
with his tough-minded attacks on theological and philosophical
idealism. But listen to him:

And it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course
between animal and Superman, and celebrating his advance to the
evening as his highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning.
A t such time will the down-goer bless himself, that he should be an
over-goer; and the sun of his knowledge will be at noontide.
"Dead are all the Gods: now do we desire the Superman to live." —
Let this be our final will àt the great noontide! —
Thus spake Zarathustra. 1

N o doubt it is, in one of Nietzfche's favorite words, hope-

lessly vulgar to ask for some indications of what Supermen will
be like in the flesh — for we understand that they are to have
flesh. The mere asking such a question marks the questioner as
one not chosen to advance to the new morning. Nietzsche is
not going to imitate his Christian opponents, and come down
to details such as the white robes and the harps of the Christian

1 Thus Spa\e Zarathustra, Part I, chap. xxii.

120 NIETZSCHE

heaven. The conception of the Superman is of course pure

eschatology, incomprehensible to the outsider, save as he can
observe the behavior of men who say they "believe in" it.
Nevertheless, in his less exalted moments Nietzsche did write
much about how he wanted men to behave in this transitional
period of the "great noontide." Even when he is dealing with
such problems of conduct, he is more often than not the
preacher, urging the masters to be bold, active, brave, cruel,
hard, voluptuous, manly, and to keep the slaves in their places.
Occasionally he will recommend some vague institutional
frame for such behavior, but not often. And when he does, it
is not at all clear whether he is thinking of masters or slaves,
or of both.
Take, for instance, the family. He believes in monogamy as
the best general rule both for masters and slaves. For both, he
holds that the man must be master within the family, that the
place of woman is in the home. Marriage is an institution for
breeding. It should have nothing to do with love. Modern
bourgeois marriage has been corrupted by romantic notions
about love. In the good society, it may well be necessary to
supervise marriages in order to prevent the birth of the weak,
the misfit.
Society, as the trustee of life, is responsible to life for every botched
life that comes into existence . . . it should in many cases actually pre-
vent the act of procreation and may, without any regard for rank, descent,
or intellect, hold in readiness the most rigorous forms of compulsion and
restriction, and, under certain circumstances, have recourse to castration.
T h e Mosaic law, " T h o u shalt do no murder," is a piece of ingenuous
puerility compared with the earnestness of this forbidding of life to
decadents, " T h o u shalt not beget"!!! 2

"The Will to Power, §734.

 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 121

Note here the vagueness of "under certain circumstances" and

the failure to define "decadents." Both the doctrine and the
vagueness are proving useful to the Nazis, and this passage from
The Will to Power is very popular with their theorists of
Rassenhygiene ?
On education Nietzsche is again vague and often contradic-
tory. He wrote the famous aphorism, "The future of German
culture rests with the sons of Prussian officers."4 What he
admired in the Prussian officer-caste was precisely its rigorous
training and discipline, its acceptance of tradition, its freedom
from "decadent" questionings. And yet he also wrote, "What
is now needed in Germany is independent educational estab-
lishments which actively oppose the State system of slave-
drilling."·5 The Prussians were clearly not quite Supermen.
Nietzsche wants something more: "The education which rears
those ruling virtues that allow a man to become master of his
benevolence and his pity: the great disciplinary virtues . . .
and the passions of the creator, must be elevated to the heights
— we must cease from carving marble!" 6
But although Nietzsche never gives us a curriculum, he
knows what he doesn't want. The kind of formal education
he himself had, for instance. In one of his longer passages —
it is almost an essay — on "The So-called Classical Education"
he writes:
Only think of this wasted youth, when we were inoculated clumsily
and painfully with an imperfect knowledge of the Greeks and the
Romans as well as of their languages, contrary to the highest principle

" See below, p. 215.

1
Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 14.
"Quoted in Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche, II, 250.
• The Will to Power, § 983.
122 NIETZSCHE
of all culture, which holds that we should not give food except to those
who hunger for it. Think of that period in our lives when we had
mathematics and physics forced down our throats, instead of first of
all being made acquainted with the despair of ignorance, instead of
having our little daily life, our activities, and everything occurring in
our houses, our workshops, in the sky and in nature, split up into
thousands of problems, painful, humiliating and irritating problems —
and thus having our curiosity made acquainted with the fact that we
first of all require a mathematical and mechanical knowledge before
we can be allowed to rejoice in the absolute logic of this knowledge!
If we had only been imbued with reverence for those branches of
science, if we had only been made to tremble with emotion at the
struggles, the defeats and the renewed combats of those great men, of
the martyrdom which is the history of pure science! But, on the contrary
we were allowed to develop a certain contempt for those sciences in
favor of historical training, formal education, and "classicism." 7

As for what is called "popular education" (Volksbildung),

the very notion is unspeakable. You cannot "educate" the
masses by submitting them to smatterings and distillations of
what our time calls knowledge. Their true education they do
not get from schoolmasters in their new schools. This educa-
tion they find "there, where the Vol\ cherishes its religious
instincts, where it builds its mythical figures, where it guards
its customs, its sense of right, its home-soil (Heimatsboden),
its speech." The only result of trying to give the people a
formal academic education is to destroy in part this organic
growth which keeps them völkisch and contented. And of
course all "popular educators" are at heart envious radicals and
socialists, bungling little intellectuals who want to destroy the
natural Order of Rank. 8
7
The Dawn of Day, § 195. Even the natural sciences are good, when
Nietzsche wants to use them to club something else!
"From Nietzsche's unpublished literary remains. See Werfe (Grossoctav-
 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 123

One would not cxpect Nietzsche to pay much attention to

economics, to the ordinary details of making a living. The
Supermen will be supported by the herd-men, as aristocratic
classes in the past, foreshadowing the Supermen, have been
supported by the masses. Apparently the deep habits and
instincts of the masses, if undisturbed, will be sufficient to pro-
duce all that is needed in economic goods. Certainly the Super-
men will not even guide the masses in economic life. The true
aristocrat can have nothing to do with trade. "Not to under-
stand trade is noble — To sell one's virtue only at the highest
price, or even to carry on usury with it as a teacher, a civil
servant, or an artist, for instance, brings genius and talent down
to the level of the common tradesman. We must be careful not
to be clever with our wisdom!" 9 Nevertheless, Nietzsche
brings himself to consider such matters now and then. The
importance of the industrialist and the entrepreneur in modern
society is for him a sign of disease. Sudden wealth makes
unnatural leaders, men without taste, without honor, without
the steadying force of tradition — without what Pareto called
"persistent aggregates."
In order that property may henceforth inspire more confidence and
become more moral, we should keep open all paths of work for small
fortunes, but should prevent the effortless [ ! ] and sudden acquisition of
wealth. Accordingly, we should take all the branches of transport and
trade which favor the accumulation of large fortunes — especially, there-
fore, the money-market — out of the hands of private persons and private
companies, and look upon those who own too much, just as upon those
who own nothing, as types fraught with danger to the community. 1 0

ausgabe), IX, 357. The whole long passage is a most interesting anticipation
of what the Nazis call their völkische Weltanschauung.
* The Dawn of Day, § 308.
ω
Human, All Too Human, "The Wanderer and his Shadow," § 285.
124 NIETZSCHE

Here again, Nietzsche stops short very conveniently for him-

self. "Out of the hands of private persons," and into whose
hands? Nietzsche does not say. His Nazi commentators have
answered for him. Into the hands of the National Socialist
state as now organized, writes one of them, who finds that
Nietzsche foresaw the corporative state.11 Not too much, not
too little. Robespierre once said that in the republic to come,
no one should have much over, or much under, 3,000 francs a
year — but Robespierre is strange company for Nietzsche.
Capitalist society, Nietzsche continues, has exploited the
laborer. The socialists for once are right. But their egalitarian
remedies are a poison worse than the disease. The worker
must be restored to his proper place in the Order of Rank. We
have got to get rid of the cash-nexus.
Workmen should learn to regard their duties as soldiers do. They
should receive emoluments, support, but they should not get wages!
There is no relation between wor\ done and money received; the
individual should, according to his \ind, be so placed as to perform the
highest that is compatible with his powers. 12

We need, in order to dissolve this cash-nexus, a revolution, a

great renewal of society. Before economic life can be put in the
modest place where it belongs, it must be properly subordinated
to the moral and political life of the community. Justice, not
wealth, must be the measure of utility.13
And justice? It is at any rate the opposite of the prevailing
capitalistic spirit. Socialism is merely the workman's aping
envy of his masters. To cure the workman of his socialism, the
upper classes must cure themselves of their capitalism.
11
Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nazionalsozialismus (1937), 31.
u
The Will to Power, § 763.
" Human, All Too Human, "The Wanderer and his Shadow," §286.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE WANTED 125

T h e only remedy against Socialism that still lies in your power is to

avoid provoking Socialism — in other words, to live in moderation and
contentment, to prevent as far as possible all lavish display, and to aid
the State as far as possible in its taxing of all superfluities and luxuries.
You do not like this remedy? Then, you rich bourgeois who call your-
selves "Liberals," confess that it is your own inclination that you find so
terrible and menacing in Socialists, but allow to prevail in yourselves as
unavoidable, as if with you it were something different. As you are
constituted, if you had not your fortune and the cares of maintaining it,
this bent of yours would make Socialists of you. Possession alone differ-
entiates you from them. If you wish to conquer the assailants of your
prosperity, you must first conquer yourselves. — A n d if that prosperity
only meant well-being, it would not be so external and provocative of
envy; it would be more generous, more benevolent, more compensatory,
more helpful. But the spurious, histrionic element in your pleasures,
which lie more in the feeling of contrast (because others have them not,
and feel envious) than in feelings of realised and heightened power —
your houses, dresses, carriages, shops, the demands of your palates and
your tables, your noisy operatic and musical enthusiasm; lastly your
women, formed and fashioned but of base metal, gilded but without the
ring of gold, chosen by you for show and considering themselves meant
for show — these are the things that spread the poison of that national
disease, which seizes the masses ever more and more as a Socialistic
heart-itch, but has its origin and breeding-place in you. Who shall now
arrest this epidemic? 1 4

II

No more as to politics than as to family life, education, and

economic life, can one expect from Nietzsche concrete pro-
posals for reform. He is certainly no conventional political
philosopher. He uses the classic terms of political theory —
monarchy, aristocracy, democracy — in no fresh senses. In the
abstract, "democracy" sounds bad to him, "aristocracy" and
"monarchy" good. But with the actual governments of his

" Human, All Too Human, "Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions," § 304.
I2Ó NIETZSCHE
time, no matter what they are called, he is disgusted. France
and England have frankly committed themselves to democracy
and therefore to decadence. Germany, in which the strong old
instincts for a society founded on the Order of Rank were still
alive under Frederick the Great, has since 1813 given way
increasingly to her almost equally old weakness, the desire to
imitate, and excel at their own game, the Western powers.
Even so intelligent and realistic an "old" German as Bismarck
has felt himself obliged to introduce parliamentary government
and in many other ways to compromise with the West. The
result is an unstable mixture of elements natural and unnatural
in Germans, a society enjoying its own peculiar decadence;
"the era of Bismarck — the era of a stupefied Germany" (Aera
der deutschen Verdummung).1B In this sad situation, only
Russia seems to hold a promise, "Russia, the only great nation
today that has some lasting power and grit in her, that can bide
her time, that can still promise something — Russia, the op-
posite of all wretched European petty-statism and neurasthenia,
which the foundation of the German Empire has brought to a
crisis." 16 As for America, all Nietzsche thought we deserved
was an aside, "no American future." It is true he put a ques-
tion-mark after the phrase.17
The politics of all European and American states in the nine-
teenth century, then, — with the possible exception of Russia —
were to Nietzsche impossibly corrupt. And they were deeply
corrupt, not with the petty graft old-maidish reformers worry
about — that was at most a symptom — but with the funda-
15
Werke (Grossoctavausgabe), XIII, 350.
™ The Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § 39.
17
The Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 17.
 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 127

mental corruption of democratized Christianity. They were

organized to achieve the ignoble ends of herd-men, peace,
animal comfort, the survival of the mean, the stupid, the
botched. But they were not even successful in achieving these
ends. The nineteenth century had seen the rise of democratic
nationalism, a new era of wars on a grand scale, wars between
huge armies raised by universal conscription, not between the
small armies of professional fighters of the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance. In these wars, the comfortable decadence of
the bourgeois was made impossible. International politics were
in a worse mess — if that was possible — than domestic politics.
Nietzsche approved wars in principle, and wrote flowingly
in praise of war and warriors.18 But he did not altogether like
the specific wars of his own time. Perhaps here, as so often,
Nietzsche simply displays the unsubtle neurosis that made him
disapprove anything he hadn't invented — and he clearly hadn't
invented Bismarck's wars. He does, however, try hard to
rationalize his feeling that the wars of his time are inglorious
wars.
They are inglorious partly because, of course, they are most
unnaturally fought among the herd-men, who ought to be
limited to their proper function of hewers of wood and drawers
of water for the real warriors, the master-men. European
nationalism is an emotion of the herd, the pooled egotisms of
common men. But not even these emotions are really natural,
really rooted in the strong soil from which grows the Vol\.
Like everything else in this stupid contemporary world of ours,
the emotions we call nationalistic are mere perverse and cor-
rupted sentiments, artificially cultivated by men — mostly "in-
u The classic passage is in Thus Spa\e Zarathustra, Part I, chap. x.
128 NIETZSCHE

tellectuals" — infected with the Socratic virus. The nationalism

that at present holds the Germans together, for instance, is not
a pure love of blood and soil, but a ferment of Rousseau, Wag-
ner, "progress," egalitarianism, hedonism, beer and fine ideals
generally.
This nation has deliberately abused itself for almost a thousand years:
nowhere else have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Chris-
tianity, been so viciously abused as in Germany. Recently a third opiate
was added to the list, . . . our music, our costive and constipating
German music. H o w much peevish ponderousness, paralysis, damp-
ness, dressing-gown languor, and beer, is there not in German intelli-
gence! 1 9

For a Europe so fundamentally ill, Nietzsche will supply no

remedy in the narrow sense of mere clinical experience. That
is not his way: he is nothing so limited as a clinician. But he
will prophesy, he will play with the magic of words. Against
the petty nationalists of his time — he is always against someone
or something — he declares himself to be a "good European."
I see over and above all these national wars, new "empires" and
whatever else lies in the foreground. W h a t I am concerned with — for
I see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the United Europe.
It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls of all broad-
minded and deep-thinking men of this century — this preparation of
the new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future of
"the European." I am thinking of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine,
Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. . . .
But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there
comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small states of Europe —
I refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires" — will in a short time
become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle
ωThe Twilight of the Idols, "Things the Germans Lack," § 2. For a
more moderate discussion of "artificial nationalism," see Human, All Too
Human, Part I, §475.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE WANTED 129
for the possession of local and international trade. . . . In order, how-
ever, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery of the world
with good prospects of victory . . . she must probably "come to an
understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for this
struggle, just as much as modern Germany to play her new role of broker
and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. For no
one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to continue
to act her old part for fifty years more [that is, to 1940] . . . here, as in
other matters, the coming century will be following in the footsteps of
Napoleon, the first man, and the man of greatest initiative and advanced
views, of modern times. 20

This is certainly prophecy in the grand manner. Nietzsche

at times seems to be almost grateful to democratic nationalism:
it is something to overcome. It is, indeed, the necessary prelude
to a better state of affairs. The last few hundred years have
been a time of marvellous and necessary destruction : they have
at last leveled the ground on which the coming Supermen, the
Cyclopeans, can build a noble work of masonry. They have
destroyed, or are destroying, the last remnants of European
barbarism, all the crude and tyrannical instincts of mere ani-
mal man.
Whether we call it "civilization," or "humanity," or "progress," which
now distinguishes the European: whether we call it simply, without
praise or blame, by the political formula: the democratic movement in
Europe — behind all the moral and political foregrounds pointed to by
such formulas, an immense physiological process goes on, which is ever
extending: the process of the assimilation of Europeans; their increasing
detachment from the conditions under which, climatically and heredi-
tarily, united races originate; their increasing independence of every
definite milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself with equal
demands on soul and body; — that is to say, the slow emergence of an
essentially super-national and nomadic species of man, who possesses,
M
The Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 18. See also The
Joyful Wisdom, Part V , § 362.
130 NIETZSCHE
physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and power of adaptation
as his typical distinction. This process of the evolving European . . .
will probably arrive at results on which its naive propagators and pane-
gyrists, the aposdes of "modern ideas," would least care to reckon. The
same new conditions under which on an average a levelling and cheap-
ening of man will take place — a useful, industrious, variously service-
able and clever gregarious man — are in the highest degree suitable to
give use to exceptional men of the most dangerous and attractive quali-
ties. For, while the collective impression of such future Europeans will
probably be that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handy
workmen who require a master, a commander, as they require their
daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to
the production of a type prepared for slavery in the most subde sense
of the term: the strong man will necessarily in individual and exceptional
cases, become stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before
— owing to the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the immense
variety of practice, art, and disguise. I meant to say that the democratising
of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing
of tyrants — taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most spiritual
sense. 21

Therefore: "The leveling of the mankind of Europe is the

great process which should not be arrested; it should even be
accelerated." 22
Nietzsche has achieved the philosopher's favorite task, the
reconciliation of the irreconciliable. Hegel could have found
no better example of the benign workings of the dialectic; out
of democracy, dictatorship; out of the rule of the herd-men, the
rule of the Supermen. The cosmic process is at work smoothly
and surely. It would almost seem as if there were nothing to
get excited about. But the cosmic process needs the aid of
cosmic thinkers. Nietzsche is at least as excited as another, and
more open, Hegelian, Karl Marx. He, too, has blue-prints for
the future, blue-prints a bit vague for mere practising architects
° Beyond Good and Evil, §242.
"The Will to Power, § 898.
 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 131

and builders, but all that a philosopher and a prophet ever need.
Nietzsche foresaw a future which without him might not really
turn out to be a future. The heart of his work is what he sets
forth as a new eschatology, a new morality. Our study of what
Nietzsche wanted in family life, education, economic life, and
politics has led us naturally and inevitably to the traditionally
abstract and generalized form of what this anti-philosopher
wanted — to his philosophy. W e must try now to come to grips
with those famous phrases of Nietzsche's which his followers
have turned into slogans — "the Will to Power,", "immoral-
ism," "the transvaluation of all values," "the Superman"
(Ueber mensch), "the Eternal Recurrence" (ewige Wieder-
kunft).
III
Nietzsche learned from Schopenhauer that Will is the first
principle of the Universe, or at least of human life in the Uni-
verse— and that the intellect is the servant of the Will. But
Schopenhauer's pessimism held human life, and hence Will,
as an evil, to be palliated if not transcended by "living" as little
as possible. This near-death in life he would attain by a kind
of pseudo-oriental quietism, a Nirvana-like state of philosophic
calm and contempt. Nietzsche early decided he would say
"Yea" where his Master had said "Nay," that he would accept
with delight the endless struggles to which his Will invited
him. What Schopenhauer had called the Will to Life, and
A Bad Thing, he would call the Will to Power, and A Good
Thing.
What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to
Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? — a l l that proceeds from
weakness. What is happiness? — the feeling that power is increasing —
that resistance has been overcome.
132 NIETZSCHE

N o t contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war;
not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtù, free from
all moralic acid). T h e weak and the botched shall perish: first principle
of our humanity. A n d they ought even to be helped to perish. 23

T h e W i l l to Power, as Nietzsche used the term, is no doubt

a philosophic rather than a scientific term. It will not satisfy
contemporary logical positivists and students of semantics.
Mr. Stuart Chase might ask in vain for a "referent" for this
W i l l to Power and Mr. P. W . Bridgman might find that no
operational test could be performed on it. Yet Nietzsche
certainly does not use even this grand phrase, the " W i l l to
Power," as Kant used the "Thing-in-itself" or Plato "idea."
H e struggles very hard not to hypostatize the term, not to make
it an absolute; he avoids as meaningless the simple old problem
of free-will versus determinism; and he makes a genuine effort
to attain what he calls an "unphilosophical" definition of the
term. 24 A t any rate, though Nietzsche finds himself falling
back on such fine, vague terms as "good," "bad," "happiness,"
"contentment" and "overcoming" as soon as he tries to define
the W i l l to Power, he is perhaps in a position not much worse
than the physicist struggling with the concept of Energy, of
the economist struggling with the concept of Wealth. T h e W i l l
to Power is for Nietzsche a convenient blanket-term, a generali-
zation, a consciously invented abstraction which saved him
time and enabled him to avoid repetition — well, a certain
amount of repetition.
T h e W i l l to Power manifests itself, according to Nietzsche
* The Antichrist, §2.
" The key passage, in Beyond Good and Evil, § 19, is much too long for
quotation. The reader is advised to go to the passage himself, and to judge
how far Nietzsche avoids the usual philosophical traps — and trappings.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE WANTED 133

(and it is only to be hjiown by its manifestations), very diversely

in the lives of human beings; since it is practically synonymous
with what we call "life," it is to be found in them all. States-
man, artist, priest, peasant and banker are all trying to prevail,
to impose themselves, to arrange their surroundings — includ-
ing surrounding human beings — to suit themselves. In some,
indeed in most men, this effort is a limited one, easily satisfied
by rough-and-ready adjustment which is hardly more than
mere staying alive. But there are a few stronger spirits whom
the Will to Power impels to a wider range of action. These are
the men who mould society, who determine for their own times,
and even for posterity, the conditions of life on this earth.
They must work with recalcitrant material, both human and
non-human, and they do not commonly perform miracles.
They are usually groups of men, "they" rather than "he."
Nietzsche believed firmly, however, in the "great man" theory,
and he held that sometimes individuals like Napoleon, gifted
with an extraordinary Will to Power, intelligent and well-
trained— and favored by luck — have brought about major
changes in the conditions of life on this earth. Saint Paul, too,
was one of these men — which brings us to a very important
point.
It is possible to distinguish from a study of the past, and
especially the past of European men, two broadly antithetical
forms which the Will to Power has taken in the lives of these
makers of history. The dualism is of course a rough one, as
Nietzsche will admit, and there are all sorts of shadings in actual
fact between the two poles we set up for our convenience in
ordering the facts; but the dualism is convenient, since it cor-
responds, however roughly, to facts. A t one pole is the Will to
134 NIETZSCHE
Power as represented by the Warrior; at the other is the Will
to Power as represented by the Priest.
The Warrior is essentially noble. He represents for Nietzsche
the "good" and also, — for Nietzsche was as fond of the word
as any eighteenth-century philosophe — the "natural." The
Warrior is frank and open in his exercise of the Will to Power.
He has a strong body, good health, handsome features, noble
bearing; he delights in the use of his strength in bodily combat,
in the indulgence of all the fine gifts of enjoyment his lusty
senses afford him. He is capable, at his best, of that flashing
physical ecstasy — so different from the spiritual masturbation
of the religious mystic — which Nietzsche liked to call "Dio-
nysian." He is guided by honor, not by interest. He loves form,
punctiliousness, ceremony. He has a keen sense of the Order
of Rank, and will defend his own high place in that order.
He hates as strongly and as much as he loves — perhaps he
hates rather more than he loves ? He has a "loathing of dema-
gogism, of enlightenment, of amiability, and plebeian famil-
iarity." 28 He is not, except when he hates, very much like
Friedrich Nietzsche.
The Priest is essentially ignoble. He represents for Nietzsche
the "bad" and also the "unnatural." He is physically weak,
diseased in mind if not in body. He is incapable of clean,
straightforward voluptuousness. He cannot be truly proud or
honorable, since he lacks the gifts of body and soul which
enable him to establish his pride and honor in open combat
with the Warrior. But his Will to Power is strong, perversely
strong, and his intelligence is sharpened, as compensation for
his bodily weakness, into a craftiness, an ignoble ability to
* The Will to Power, § 943.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE WANTED 135
manipulate words and concepts. This craftiness, the servant of
his Will to Power, he uses to confound and overthrow the
Warrior. He bears in many ways an extraordinary resemblance
to a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche.
Contemporary Europe, or rather, the whole civilized world,
was produced by the collective victory of Priests over Warriors.
Indeed, and in a sense rather oddly, the Warrior has never yet
had his rightful place in society.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough already: but as a
happy accident, as an exception, never as willed. He has rather been
precisely the most feared; hitherto he has been almost the terrible in
itself; —and from the very fear he provoked there arose the will to
rear the type which has now been reared, attained: the domestic animal,
the gregarious animal, the sick animal man, — the Christian.26

The clever and degenerate Priests, realizing that they could not
compete with the Warriors at the Warriors' own level, have
enlisted the aid of the masses against their "natural" masters,
and have established themselves as their "unnatural" masters.
This the priests have achieved by inventing morality and re-
ligion, and especially their masterpiece, Christian morality and
religion. The weak are, in the most literal sense, weak and as
individuals would always go down before the strong — the
good, bodily strong, the nobles, the Warriors. But the weak
are very numerous, and organized into a collectivity, they can
overcome the strong. This organization has been achieved in
the Christian Church and in its contemporary adaptation, the
religion of democracy and progress.
We have already seen how Nietzsche works out his explana-
tion of the nature and triumph of Christianity.27 The upshot
" The Antichrist, § 3. " See above, pp. 97-108.
136 NIETZSCHE

of it all is for Nietzsche that at present the weak, the botched,

the ignoble seem to represent the actual working-out of the
W i l l to Power in human beings. If we loved paradox as much
as Nietzsche did, we might say that the W i l l to Power has
denied, has annihilated, the W i l l to Power. Clearly this is a
shocking state of affairs, for which the word "decadence" is
hardly adequate. W h a t is to be done?
Well, we might try a little juggling with words. It is true
that this is a rather priestly way of doing, but it seems to have
worked for the priests, and we must not be too nice, or the
Will to Power will perish from the earth. W h y not fight fire
with fire ? — a vulgar activity, and certainly expressed in a
vulgar way unworthy of the subtlest aphorist, but these are
times of crisis. A n d it is a simple way, refreshingly, and per-
haps deceptively, simple. Since the priests have given a good
name to bad actions, and called them "moral," we will become
immoralists. Their good shall become our evil, their evil our
good. But we are really better moralists than they; we are really
in the right, and we cannot forego the help the established uses
of language can give us. So we shall call the standards we want
to have prevail among men a transvaluation of all values
(Umwertung aller Werte).
Such a manipulation of words charged with sentiment is by
no means easy to carry out consistently, and Nietzsche is fre-
quently in trouble. Sometimes he is logically and defiantly
consistent: "evil, be thou my good!" H e uses as terms of praise
words that common usage makes terms of blame. H e wants
men to be cruel, hard, ruthless, pitiless, unscrupulous, deceitful,
boastful, truculent, sensual, frivolous. Sometimes, however, he
uses as terms of praise words that common usage makes terms
 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 137

of praise. He wants men to be brave, honorable, strong, serious,

lofty, noble. Sometimes he uses words the Christians them-
selves regard as good words; and then he has to be very careful
to explain that these are indeed transvalued values, that he does
not mean by them what the Christians mean. He can praise
asceticism, even chastity; but he will have men ascetic only
towards the coarser indulgences, ascetic only as the athlete who
trains himself for struggle by disciplining his body; and as for
chastity "it means that a man's taste has remained noble, that
in eroticis he likes neither the brutal, the morbid, nor the
clever." 28 Again, that constant definition by negation.
Nietzsche can rarely keep on in the affirmative for more than a
sentence or so. Listen to him attempt to answer a question
which should bring out to the full his capacity for Dionysian
Yea-saying: "What is noble?"

T h e fact that one is constantly forced to be playing a part. That one

is constantly searching for situations in which one is forced to put on
airs. T h a t one leaves happiness to the greatest number, the happiness
which consists of inner peacefulness, of virtue, of comfort, and of Anglo-
angelic-back-parlor-smugness, à la Spencer. T h a t one instinctively seeks
for heavy responsibilities. T h a t one knows how to create enemies every-
where, at a pinch even in one's self. T h a t one contradicts the-greatest
number, not in words at all, but by continually behaving differently from
them.

Or, from a longer series of answers to the same question :

W e [the noble ones] are not quick to admire. . . . W e are ironical
towards the "gifted"; we hold the belief that no morality is possible with-
out good birth. . . . W e always feel as if we were those w h o had to
dispense honors; while he is not found too often w h o would be worthy of
honoring us. . . . W e are capable of otium, of the unconventional con-

88 The Will to Power, § 947.

138 NIETZSCHE

viction, that although a handicraft docs not shame one in any sense, it
certainly reduces one's rank. . . . W e collect precious things, the needs
of higher and fastidious souls; we wish to possess nothing in common.
W e want to have our own books, our own landscapes.29

Thus is "noble" transvalued — from, shall we say, that which

characterizes the behavior of a conventional, satisfied member
of an aristocratic European family into that which characterizes
the behavior of an unconventional, neurotic, dissatisfied and
intellectual member of a middle-class family, who would like
very much indeed to be considered an aristocrat? There are
words much simpler than "transvaluation of all values" which
one might apply to such a process: "snobbery," for instance.
Assuming, however, that we know what we mean by the
"transvaluation of all values," how can it be brought about?
It seems — there are no end of paradoxes in Nietzsche's thought
— that the present condition of human afïairs is in itself a kind
of transvaluation of values. Somehow the weak have come to
rule the strong; the slaves have overcome the masters. Nature
failed in her first experiment with nobility. We shall have to
aid her — possibly to supplant her — and devise a new nobility,
a new kind of master-class. These we shall call the "Super-
men." They will accomplish the final transvaluation of values.
They will live the bright, clean life their Dionysian prophet
longed for, of which he caught in moments of inspiration such
tantalizing glimpses, and which he struggled so hard to cap-
ture in the feeble words which are all that the greatest of mere
men can command.
Do not ask Nietzsche how to make Supermen. They will
not be made in our time, nor in our children's. They will not
" The Will to Power, § 944, 943.
 W H A T NIETZSCHE W A N T E D 139

come through the kind of biological evolution our Darwinian

superstitions evoke. Evolution in Darwin's sense can perhaps
make Englishmen, but certainly not Supermen. They will not
even be achieved by what later biologists were to call a muta-
tion. And they will certainly not be achieved by "planning,"
by the exercise of our petty little human tricks for making our-
selves comfortable. They will come, these pure creatures of the
Deed, by the miraculous exercise of the Word — the poetic
Word, the prophetic Word. Nietzsche-Zarathustra has not quite
words enough:

1 teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed.

What have ye done to surpass man?
All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves; and
ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the
beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And
just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing
of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within
you is still worm. Once ye were apes, and even yet man is more of an
ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest of you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and
phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The
Superman shall be the meaning of the earth! 80

The Superman is not quite Nietzsche's highest flight. There

is yet the Eternal Recurrence, a concept which Nietzsche seems
to feel will, if held firmly by the strongest of mere men, enable
them to live as a kind of bridge to the Supermen. And the
Supermen themselves, so far -as Zarathustra can achieve the

" Thus Spa\e Zarathustra, Part I, Prologue, § 3.

140 NIETZSCHE

impossible feat of seeing into their minds-to-come, will nourish

and fortify themselves in their superhuman world by their
fearless contemplation of the eternal verity of the Eternal
Recurrence, "somewhere between golden ice and a pure
heaven." 31
Nietzsche's concept of the Eternal Recurrence is an unrefined
mixture of oriental speculation on metempsychosis, old Euro-
pean striving for a metaphysical absolute, and misunderstood
theoretical physics of the late nineteenth century, the latter of
which held for Nietzsche much the same horrifying fascination
it held for Henry Adams. Energy, says Nietzsche, was once
thought to be unlimited. Now we know that it is limited. It is
eternally active, but it cannot eternally create new forms.
Therefore it must repeat itself. "Everything has returned:
Sirius, and the spider, and thy thoughts at this moment, and
this last thought of thine that all things will return." 32 There
is no order in the universe, other than this circular process in
which all things repeat themselves. Notions of growth, of
change in any direction, of purpose in the universe, are all illu-
sions, the notions we call "scientific" as well as the notions we
call "moral." Abandon, as we must, any system of theism, of
belief in a creator, and we have only this endless and almost
unbearable Becoming. A thousand Nietzsches have written a
thousand appeals to create the Superman, and a thousand more

0 "Notes on the Eternal Recurrence," § 42, appended, in the English edition,

10 the volume containing The Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist.
These may be found in German in A . Baeumler's edition of Nietzsche's re-
mains, Die Unschuld des Werdens, II, § 1296-1351. T h e quotation above is
from § 1351.
** "Notes on the Eternal Recurrence," § 22. In Die Unschuld des Werdens,
II, § 1330.
 WHAT NIETZSCHE WANTED 141
will write again the same appeal, world without end and words
without end. But no Nietzsche will ever have the slightest
memory of another Nietzsche.
It would seem that belief in the Eternal Recurrence might
tempt its adept to cease trying to change the universe. But this
grand and complete determinism no more makes Nietzsche
a determinist in the fleeting life of his consciousness than an
almost equally grand determinism made Marx a practising
determinist. On the contrary it spurs him to intense moral
effort. We must live so that we may be worthy of living again.
We must fight theism, fight beliefs that deny this life and this
world. We must struggle to attain the pure heights on which
alone so stark a doctrine as that of the Eternal Recurrence can
be endured. We must put off softness and take on hardness.
We must give up the little hopes, and cherish the great hope of
hopelessness. We must be what has never been before — never,
at least, during our little rondo in the Eternal Recurrence. We
must become Supermen — once more.
 CHAPTER VI
NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF

T H E critic of Nietzsche's work must not infrequently wish

that he could imitate his subject's fine careless freedom,
and cast his reflections in the form of loosely connected apho-
ristic passages — "Nietzsche on being noble," "The best 'Yea'
is an explosive 'Nay,'" "How to exercise the Will to Power
without sweating," "Will the Supermen use exclamation-
marks?" It is dangerous, however, for the critic to desert the
conventions of his craft to follow even so successful a rebel
against these and other conventions as was Nietzsche. He had
better try to bring the Master down to earth, though the Master
himself was always in flight high above Lake Silvaplana, and
seemed never to descend, not even to re-fuel. He did at least
take off from this earth somewhere, sometime.
He took off from the soil of late nineteenth-century Germany.
Nietzsche was so far from being out of tune with the spirit of
his age, unzeitgemäss, that one is tempted to employ mechani-
cally Nietzsche's own favorite intellectual device and declare
that his work is most zeitgemäss, most representative of his age.
He was irritated, indeed infuriated, by the way most of his
fellow men behaved. But so were most intellectuals of his time.
Nietzsche wrote well after the brief era of Victorian peace and
contentment with the world had reached its peak; and besides,
that feeling of contentment with the world had never captured
the intellectuals. The bulk of surviving nineteenth-century
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 143
literature in any language is a literature of protest, and of pro-
test against most of the things Nietzsche hated — middle-class
morality, industrial civilization, materialism, ostentation and
vulgarity in art, the leveling process in manners, morals, and
politics. Nietzsche's originality was largely a matter of intem-
perate vocabulary. He swore at the herd instead of merely dis-
trusting the common man. He not only wore his heart on his
sleeve — he wore much less sentimental organs there. He is
the nineteenth-century intellectual in a frenzy. If you like the
frenzy, you may of course call it a transcendence.
Nietzsche's work fits neatly into the late nineteenth century
in two very broad ways: in its emphasis on growth, develop-
ment, change, and in its anti-intellectualism. In spite of his
contempt for history and historians, he was himself a historian,
or at least a philosopher of history. In spite of his hatred for
Rousseau and the Rousseauists, he was in his distrust for the
instrument of thought a direct descendant of the Genevan —
and, no doubt, of old Adam himself. Nietzsche may indeed
have achieved the transvaluation of all values; but some facts
are more recalcitrant than others to the easy magic of the prefix
"trans," and it seems to be a fact that on this earth a man has
to have contemporaries; which means that a man is contempo-
rary, that his thoughts are contemporary. Nietzsche was, if
you like, unfashionable and unpopular in his day; but he was
very greatly influenced by what was fashionable and popular
in his day. And those influences worked far more subtly than
is implied in Nietzsche's proud boast that he was everything
his contemporaries were not.
We have already outlined briefly Nietzsche's philosophy of
history, the curious and sketchy account of man's long rise from
144 NIETZSCHE
mere animal to decadent European, about to transform him-
self into Superman.1 This sketchy and very intellectual phi-
losophy of history he himself has summed up in a most
characteristic passage, elliptical, sardonic, cryptic, yet under
analysis clear and almost Comtean in its simplicity. It is worth
quoting at length:

T H E H I S T O R Y OF AN ERROR

1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man
of virtue, — he lives in it, he is it.
(The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple,
convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition "I, Plato, am the
truth.")
2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised
to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue ("to the sinner
who repents").
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more
evasive, — it becomes a woman, it becomes Christian.)
3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot
promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obliga-
tion, a command.
( A t bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and
skepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern, Königsber-
gian.)
4. The true world — is it unattainable? A t all events it is unattained.
And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer com-
forts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown con-
strain us to?
(The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first
time. The cock-crow of positivism.)
5. The "true world" — an idea that no longer serves any purpose,
that no longer constrains one to anything, — a useless idea that has
become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of

l See above, pp. 131-141.

 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 145
cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick up a
shindy.)
6. W e have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the
apparent world perhaps? . . . Certainly not! In abolishing the true
world we have also abolished the world of appearance!
( N o o n ; the moment of the shortest shadows; the end of the longest
error; mankind's zenith; Incipit Zarathustra?

There is, apparently, a first stage omitted from this summary,

a period when men lived without worrying about the "true
world," lived in simple acceptance of the world of the senses,
the world of willing — but of willing innocently undisturbed
by the necessity of choice between good and evil. Once men
got to worrying about good and evil, however, the priests could
begin their sorry work. What is most noticeable in this account
of men's overcoming the illusions of abstract thought —
Comte's theological, metaphysical, and positivistic stages all
successively overcome — is its highly intellectualist form. His-
tory seems to be for Nietzsche the working out of an idea,
men's actions for him to be determined by their response to
the "first principles" of abstract thinkers. This of course will
never do, and Nietzsche himself in most of his work goes to
great pains to escape from a position so annoyingly like a cari-
cature of Hegel's.
He falls at other times into what looks like a caricature of
Darwin's position. Life is a struggle among men exercising to
the best of their abilities their Will to Power. In this struggle
the weak and the botched are — or should be — beaten by the
* The Twilight of the Idols, "How the 'True World' ultimately became a
Fable." Nietzsche, who loved to mock himself — a pleasant and easy exercise
of the Will to Power — wrote that in spite of his attacks on history and
historians, "In my own way, I am attempting a justification of history."
The Will to Power, § 63.
146 NIETZSCHE

strong and the competent. What we call morality and religion

are but the instruments with which the strong subdue the weak,
and make them minister to the process of evolution, a process
in which higher and higher types of strength emerge from a
conflict ever more tense. Or should emerge, for as we have
already seen, there is a catch in the process. Something has
gone wrong. Under Christianity, the weak have found a way
to dodge the Will to Power, or to pervert it. They have ham-
strung the strong with a religion of gentleness, love, pity, and
general glorification of weakness.
Christianity is the reverse of the principle of selection. If the degenerate
and the sick man ("the Christian") is to be of the same value as the
healthy man ("the pagan"), or if he is even to be valued higher than
the latter, as Pascal's view of health and sickness would have us value
him, the natural course of evolution is thwarted and the unnatural be-
comes law. . . . In practice this general love of mankind is nothing more
than deliberately favoring all the suffering, the botched and the de-
generate; it is this love that has weakened the power, responsibility, and
lofty duty of sacrificing men. 3

There is an old, old philosophical difficulty unsolved here, the

difficulty of explaining how the unnatural became natural.
But Nietzsche is really a consistent anti-philosopher deep down
underneath, however much he may play with the traditional
methods and vocabulary of philosophers, and he is willing to
let the insoluble stay unsolved. Sufficient for him that the
notion of a struggle for life, so much in the air in his generation,
is one that he finds satisfying and useful.
But he will be no conventional Darwinian. In Nietzsche's
view the English scientist belonged, like all Englishmen, to the
herd. His doctrine of evolution, as Herbert Spencer has un-
* The Will to Power, § 246.
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 147
consciously shown, is no call to battle to prepare the earth for
the Supermen, but a sedative belief that the process of evolution
will take care of itself, that our environment is automatically
turning out better men, that natural selection is still going on.
(It is doubtful whether Nietzsche ever really read Darwin.)
What Darwin, according to Nietzsche, failed to understand is
that the Will to Power is no mere process to be analyzed by
so-called "scientific method," but something that only poets and
prophets can get at and stir up. Such a poet-prophet could,
for instance, find the Will to Power even in the amoebae —
not, of course, by objective observation and the other silly
superstitions of science, but by intuition. "Among the amoebae
propagation appears as a process of jetsam, as an advantage to
them. It is an excretion of useless matter."4 Wherever the
seer looks, he sees the Will to Power. He also sees himself,
perhaps nothing but himself. But that is the prerogative of the
god-like, even if jealous little scholars call it naive anthropo-
morphism.
Nietzsche thought he saw through Darwin as well as through
the amoebae. Darwin depicted organisms as trying to survive,
to adapt themselves to an environment, rather than as trying
to extend their power, to mould their environment, because,
like most inquirers into nature, Darwin was not an aristocrat.
Such men "belong to the people, their forefathers have been
poor and humble persons, who knew too well by immediate
experience the difficulty of making a living." Small wonder
that "over the whole of English Darwinism there hovers some-
thing of the suffocating air of over-crowded England, some-
thing of the odor of humble people in need and in straits."8
4 8
The Will to Power, § 653. The Joyful Wisdom, V, § 349.
148 NIETZSCHE
This, by the way, is typical of the kind of bright idea which
makes interesting reading, the kind of thing one finds in
essayists and critics of the livelier sort. It may even have some
relation to facts. But there is no way of proving such a relation.
On the other hand, its origin in Nietzsche's mind is clear
enough. He was very anxious to show that he was an aristocrat,
that he had always been able to vivre noblement. He could not,
however, altogether resist the plebeian temptation to write.
Nietzsche, then, is a good child of his age. He has a philoso-
phy of history which is also a doctrine of evolution. It is true
that in this field his work is somewhat involved and contra-
dictory, that his evolving organisms and his evolving societies
really have no business evolving as they do. His positive doc-
trine, which is eminently philosophical rather than historical
or biological, comes in the end to a kind of Lamarckianism,
duly "transvalued" to accord with Nietzsche's sentiments. No
species ever evolves, but only fit individuals within a given
species (biologists, being herd-men, have naturally concentrated
on the species).6 The fit individuals are not "selected" because
of any accidental biological variation by which they are pas-
sively adapted to an environment, but because they possess
something of their own, something inside them, something
ultimate and real; not the "consciousness" or the "ego" of com-
mon philosophical talk, but something we might call "soul"
if the Christians hadn't spoiled the word, something we shall
call the "Will to Power." Inspired by the Will to Power, these
happy individuals dominate, increase their domination by
struggle, and since they are, almost by definition, lusty folk,
they exercise the Will to Power in sexual relations, and beget
' The Will to Power, § 679-683.
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 149

strong children who in turn dominate and expound their

domination. This looks like a procession onward and upward
in the best nineteenth-century style. But at just this point the
Devil enters in the shape of Socrates-Paul-Pascal-Spinoza-Kant-
Darwin, wickedly weakens the strong, and reverses the whole
process — makes it, indeed, hardly more than a legend. The
Jews, who are an intelligent as well as vicious race, seem to have
understood matters very well; did they not invent the story of
Samson and Delilah ?

II
Nietzsche's anti-intellectualism makes him as much a child
of his age as does his evolutionism, an eccentric and spoiled
child, perhaps, but certainly no changeling of Time. Indeed,
in Nietzsche as in his tamer contemporaries, both anti-intellec-
tualism and evolutionism are manifestations of a "climate of
opinion" hard to pin down with a single descriptive label. To
use very old philosophical terms, we may say that the nine-
teenth century was very strongly inspired with a Heraclitan
feeling that all things flow. At all times, no doubt, men are
aware of experiencing sameness (or repetition or permanence)
and also of experiencing difference (or change). Ordinary,
unreflecting men are aware of both, and do not much bother
themselves with the question as to which is real, or more real.
Philosophers, of course, have readily discerned that one sort of
experience is real, or more real, and the other unreal, or less
real; but they have not agreed as to which is which. A historian
may content himself with the statement that the manifesta-
tions of human feelings about permanence and change in
observed phenomena vary in different times and places. Note
150 NIETZSCHE
well that the manifestations of men's sentiments and opinions
about change may also be observed phenomena. Plato's opinion
on the matter, as recorded in the famous metaphor of the
prisoners in the cave, for instance, is a phenomenon that can
be observed. Plato, it need hardly be remarked, was all for the
reality of permanence.
Now, although no mathematical formulation is possible, the
historian can be pretty sure of a number of generalizations
about this matter of permanence and change. The physical
aspects of Paris, for instance, changed less rapidly in the thir-
teenth than in the nineteenth century. That is simple and
certain. Parisians in the thirteenth century felt, or were of the
opinion, that changes of this sort, and changes in laws, clothes,
habits, were not very rapid; Parisians in the nineteenth century
felt, or were of the opinion, that such changes were very rapid.
This is almost as simple and certain as the fact of changes in
buildings and streets, and you can verify it from the materials
of recorded intellectual history. We need not bother ourselves
about the question (which is insoluble) as to whether "physi-
cal" change caused "mental" change, or vice versa. We can,
however, safely take another step, and state that in general
thirteenth-century Parisians were less favorable towards, less
desirous of, changes of a great many sorts than were Parisians
of the nineteenth century. We may extend the scope of the
generalization, and state that the climate of opinion in all
Western Europe was less favorable to change in the thirteenth
than in the nineteenth century. This is not of course to deal
with absolutes and to say that nothing changed in the thirteenth
century and that everything changed in the nineteenth century.
It is a cautious and rather platitudinous generalization about a
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 151
series of relations among observed phenomena, which would
need at least a volume to be given a semblance of what we may
unphilosophically call reality.
The anti-intellectualism of the later nineteenth century is a
part of its attitude towards change, an attitude extraordinarily
receptive and eager towards all sorts of change. Perhaps in the
sum total life for Western men changed more rapidly in the
nineteenth century than it has ever before changed for men on
this earth. Certainly in the series of phenomena we group
together as the Industrial Revolution, change was more con-
tinuously obvious than it has ever been before, so obvious that
the intellectuals took over from Renaissance Latin the neutral
term "progress," and made it into an almost-popular religious
belief in the desirability of change. But traditionally the Euro-
pean mind, working at the level of theological, philosophical,
and even, in a sense, "scientific," thought, had tended to reach
conclusions that seemed inconsistent with the facts of change,
that seemed to make change undesirable, impossible, unreal. It
is not by any means clear how far such thought, such "intel-
lectualisai," influenced the course of events. But as a process in
the minds of certain men — and that is after all what Nietzsche
all his life was analyzing — its implications are clear.
They are perhaps clearest of all in that manifestation of
intellectualism Nietzsche attacked as "idealism." 7 The ideal-
ist, in the opinion of such critics as Nietzsche, cannot accept
the evidence of his senses as to the reality of change. He does
not want change. He wants to escape the flow of all things,
and take refuge in the absolute, the eternal, the unchanging.
He can do this by a trick of his mind, by using what we call
' See above, pp. 87-90.
152 NIETZSCHE
the intellect to construct — after all, out of his experience, which
must be an experience of change — a system of absolutes which
he calls the "true world." This "true world" is of course a
false one; but since we critics are good relativists, we must
recognize that it is only relatively false. That is, as a mental
construct it afiects the lives of those who made it and of those
who live in it; it is a part of reality. Its "falseness," its "bad-
ness," means in simplest terms that we don't like the way
people who hold it, who live in it, behave. We don't, for
instance, like the way people behave under the influence of
too much alcohol; we don't like drunks. Similarly, we don't
like the way people behave under the influence of too much
philosophical idealism; we don't like Kantians.
We don't like them because, having persuaded themselves
that change is unreal, they try to prevent the kind of changes
we want to bring about. They do not, of course, Succeed in
preventing change; indeed they commonly let themselves and
us in for the most unforeseen and catastrophic changes. For
the intellect, as these searchers after the absolute use it, is readily
satisfied with over-simple formulae, which it erects into "laws"
of all sorts, moral, political, scientific; it then seeks to make all
human experience conform to these laws. But human experi-
ence cannot be so confined — this is a fact of experience —
and when a prolonged and serious attempt is made to so con-
fine it, it accumulates under pressure and finally blows ofï —
a kind of experience we do not like.
When we relativists feel like exercising our noblest vocabu-
lary— we have one — we accuse the absolutists of trying to
dry up the well-springs of human life, of intolerance towards
all who refuse to repeat their meaningless litanies, of a haughty
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 153
disregard for the fruitful difficulties in attempting the conquest
of which the true scientist and the true artist are one ; we accuse
them of sterility, of verbalism, of seeking death-in-life, of
hating adventurousness, novelty, growth; we accuse them of
being intellectuals, even though we ourselves are by no means
blacksmiths.
Nietzsche in his middle period was fond of this "we" —
"we fearless ones," "we free spirits," "we good Europeans,"
though in his later years the " I " sounds out louder and louder,
until the final crescendo of "Why I am a fatality." But through-
out his career he is crying out against intellectual absolutism,
wherever he finds it — and he finds it not only in the philo-
sophical idealists, but in the historians and in the positivists.
The nineteenth century had, he grants, recognized, though
often reluctantly, the fact of growth. Even Hegel's was a phi-
losophy which aspired to explain growth. That, in fact, was
just the trouble. In his wilder moments, Nietzsche comes close
to saying what some of his Nazi followers put in his mouth,
that one must not try to explain anything, at least not with
words — exclamation-marks are enough. But Nietzsche was
often fairly sober, and as critic rather than as prophet, he
tried to put into words feelings about the inadequacy of
much of the thought of the eighteenth and earlier nineteenth
centuries, feelings which were shared by many of his con-
temporaries.
Nietzsche's major point is that all thinking is an arrange-
ment, an interpretation, of facts (receptor-experiences) which
must be tentative, changing, relative. Thinking is not a form
of magic by which the thinker somehow gets out of himself
and thereby "discovers" static, objective truth. The thing-in-
154 NIETZSCHE

itself of Kant, the past "as it really happened" {wie es eigentlich

gewesen) of von Ranke, the eternal and immutable laws of the
physical universe of the conventional Newtonian physicist, are
all products of the thinking of Kant, von Ranke, and in the
last case, of Newton filtered down into an ordinary mind.
This is not to say that these products of thought are wholly
"subjective." Indeed, the very antithesis of subject and object
is merely one of the simple tools of thought, apparently neces-
sary in the past and perhaps still not useless in the present, but
an imperfect tool we must try very hard to improve, and cer-
tainly no more than a tool — not a final truth, not a certainty.
All knowledge, all theories, are but the attempts of human
organisms to live; and living is inevitably also dying. We may
perhaps live more fully if we give up the quest for the absolute,
for certainty. "The question of values is more fundamental
than the question of certainty." 8
We can, indeed, go further, and as relativists, give a relativist
explanation of the search for the absolute. The categories of
thought, even the transparent dodges of traditional philosoph-
ical thought, have been useful — they have helped men get
what they wanted. Nietzsche put this neatly in one of the bare
notes that were collected after his death and published in The
Will to Power.

"End and means" A s interpretations (not as estab-

"Cause and effect" lished facts) — and in what respect
"Subject and object" were they perhaps necessary inter-
"Action and suffering" pretations? (as "preservative meas-
"Thing-in-itself and appearance" ures") — all in the sense of a Will
to Power. 9

8 The Will to Power, § 588. • The Will to Power, § 589.

 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 155
We may say then, according to Nietzsche, that the attaining
— in words — of the absolute has had a value, since men who
say they have attained it seem to act in some respects differently
from men who do not say they have attained it. We may justi-
fiably criticize that value, the kind of life it tends to promote.
Here we must be concerned rather with moral absolutes than
with the kind of absolute the nineteenth-century physicist
thought he had attained. Nietzsche sometimes comes near sug-
gesting that conception of scientific laws as absolutes — a con-
ception certainly held by men like Herbert Spencer, though
equally certainly not used as a guide by effective practising
experimental scientists of his time — is not a useful one for the
purposes of scientific investigation. But he himself had no sci-
entific training, and shared the contempt for science common
among the aesthetic and the philosophic. He is much more
concerned to note that as private citizens most scientists ac-
cepted the moral values of their time, and it is these values that
he finds most important to attack.
If then we test with Nietzsche these moral "truths," not by
their coherence according to the logic with which they are
spun out, but by the standard of life they set, we shall find that
they represent "the struggle of sickly, desperate life, cleaving
to a beyond, against healthier, more foolish, more false, richer
and fresher life. Thus it is not 'truth' struggling with life, but
one kind of life with another kind. — But the former would
fain be the higher kind!—Here we must prove that some
order of rank is necessary, — that the first problem is the order
of ran\ among kinds of life."10
Here, however, Nietzsche himself becomes an absolutist,
10
The Will to Power, § 592.
156 NIETZSCHE
becomes Zarathustra. Having demolished as mere disguises
for the Will to Power the best and happiest phrases of his
predecessors — the thing-in-itself, scientific laws, objective
reality, free will, utility, force, justice, God — he insists that
the Will to Power is no such disguise. He has found the
philosopher's stone, the neat ultimate to which all human
experience can be reduced. He has been fooling us all along
by pretending to evade the quest for certainty. As if a philoso-
pher— a German philosopher — could be such a renegade!
He has merely been feigning indifference, in order to catch
certainty off its guard, and pounce upon it once and for all.
Kant, it seems to the skeptic, attempted a similar tour de force.
Having pursued with interminable skill certainty as pure rea-
son {reine Vernunft) and proving that it could not be caught,
he turned up with its pelt neatly stuffed in a beautiful job of
taxidermy called practical reason (praktische Vernunft). And
now Nietzsche with his Will to Power. Not only the Eternal
Recurrence repeats itself!
If you are looking for the key to the universe, the Will to
Power may be as good a one as has yet been made. If you must
go to the roots of the matter, the Will to Power may be the
deepest root. But perhaps there is no key? Perhaps there are
no roots ?

Ill
Nietzsche, then, is not only true to his age in his preoccupa-
tion with questions of growth, development, flow; he is true to
his profession of philosopher in his attempt to find for them a
final answer, to sum up in words experiences that are much
more than words. The historian and skeptic — the two can
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 157
perhaps be combined in one person — may, however, refuse to
follow Nietzsche in his final flight to the Will to Power and the
Eternal Recurrence, and content himself with noting and com-
menting upon what Nietzsche fished up out of the flow of all
things.
For Nietzsche's conviction that all things can be reduced to
manifestations of the Will to Power by no means prevented his
recognizing the variety and changefulness of human experi-
ence. In fact, the doctrines of the Will to Power and its curious
companion and derivative, the Eternal Recurrence, merely
served him as buttresses for his private hates and loves, as
colossal extensions of his personality. In his more rapt moods,
they helped him to live in a prophetic and — to his followers
as well as himself — consoling world; in his more polemic
moods, they helped him feel sure of the pettiness and undesir-
ability of what he could make out of other people's worlds; and
at all times they acted as a limitation on his ability to widen and
deepen his experience — that is, they made him intolerant —
but perhaps no more than is essential to make sense out of
experience. At least a small amount of metaphysics is, like the
presence of certain minerals in the human diet, perhaps neces-
sary to human life. And Nietzsche's dose of metaphysics was
not a very big one. The common opinion, which refuses to rank
him with men like Kant and Hegel as all philosopher, but puts
him partly in the field of literature, is well justified.
He belongs in the field of literature because, for one thing,
he could write. This is a gift not always lacking in philosophers.
Plato, James, Santayana, to take a few at random, possess it;
Aristotle — to judge from what we have of him — Bentham,
and Hegel do not. There are great obstacles in the way of a
158 NIETZSCHE

German philosopher's writing well. In a sense, no language,

living or dead, is an adequate instrument for the philosopher.
Unlike the mathematician and the chemist, the philosopher
cannot use a special language. Unless he limits himself to sym-
bolic logic, he has to adapt to his purposes an instrument made
for the coarser work of ordinary men. This adaptation usually
takes the form of a technical jargon superimposed on the con-
ventional vocabulary of the workaday language. The special
difficulty of German as a philosopher's language — or so it
seems to one who is neither a philosopher nor a German — is
that in German the union of the technical jargon and the com-
mon tongue is deceptively easy to make. The resultant hybrid
looks quite healthy and normal, and only with the lapse of
time does it become clear that the hybrid is sterile.
Now Nietzsche often wrote like any other philosophical
German. Much of the two volumes of The Will to Power are
often written in a technical jargon worthy of Kant, and are
full of passages that call for labored concentration on the part
of the reader. But Nietzsche never meant these notes to be
published as they stood, and they are not representative of him
at his best. In his earlier work, written under Wagnerian influ-
ence, he writes like the earnest young German storming the
heavens and sounding the deeps with the aid of a pair of nice
words, "Dionysian" and "Apollinian." But with Human, All
Too Human he learned to shorten his sentences, point them
with irony, color them with unexpected images, season them
with common words too undignified for the conventional
philosopher. With his later works, like The Twilight of the
Idols, he acquired the knack of making his sentences explode.
Sometimes, indeed, they explode rather hollowly, and even
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 159
at his very best Nietzsche's prose always strives a little too hard,
protests a little too much. He never achieved ease, simplicity,
inoffensive clarity. But of course he did not want to — he
wanted to offend. Let others strive for the subtle phrasing that
makes every whisper clear — the womanish Sainte Beuve, for
instance. Nietzsche will shout like a man. We have already
quoted him so much, and in such varied moods, that the reader
will hardly need more examples of his writing. As far as the
limitations of translation will allow, he can come to his own
conclusions on Nietzsche as a writer. But one more specific
illustration may be given, one that shows very well his strength
and his weakness. He is writing of George Sand:
I have been reading the first "Lettres d'un Voyageur"·, like everything
that springs from Rousseau's influence it is false, made-up, blown out,
and exaggerated 1 I cannot endure this bright wallpaper style, any more
than I can bear the vulgar striving after generous feelings. The worst
feature about it is certainly the coquettish adoption of male attributes by
this female, after the manner of ill-bred schoolboys. And how cold she
must have been inwardly all the while, this insufferable artist! She
wound herself up like a clock — and wrote. As cold as Hugo and Balzac,
as cold as all Romanticists are as soon as they begin to write! And how
self-complacendy she must have lain there, this prolific ink-yielding cow.
For she had something German in her (German in the bad sense), just
as Rousseau, her master, had; — something which could only have been
possible when French taste was declining I — and Renan adores her! . . . u

Always the exclamation-mark, of course; perhaps this too is

German in the bad sense — Pelion piled upon Ossa and a few
Matterhorns — but, like Wagner's brasses, it wakes you up.
The things Nietzsche wrote about, and the way in which he
wrote about them, make him a writer as well as a philosopher.
He might, in this respect, be variously catalogued, but we shall
11
The Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," § 6.
i6o NIETZSCHE
consider him briefly as a poet, a critic and — a title he himself
very proudly assumed — a psychologist.
Nietzsche wrote a scattering of poems in verse form, which
collected make a slender volume. They would not in them-
selves have made him a great figure in German literature. The
most famous of them, "The Drunken Song," "Venice," and a
few others, sound well to a foreign ear, and are held by most
German critics to be technically admirable. Nietzsche could
often make good moody music with words, if not with the
medium of formal musical composition. In content his most
successful poems are mournfully mysterious contemplations of
night, eternity, the weary riddle of existence, poems thoroughly
German and romantic. In a lighter vein, poems like the "Songs
of Prince Free-as-a-bird" are a little too self-consciously Medi-
terranean, whistle a little too shrilly.
Also sprach Zarathustra, though written formally in prose, is
Nietzsche's highest poetic flight. In this work he is attempting
not so much to persuade, nor even to annoy, his audience, as to
move it by the incantation of words well beyond logic and the
dictionary. Zarathustra is a poet-prophet, a divine teacher, a
most cultivated medicine-man, and his medium is a didactic,
rhapsodic prose that chants along interminably. To many
people, he is a great poet, a peer of the Hebrew prophets whose
style he has, in the opinion of other people, imitated a little
too deliberately. There is, at any rate, hardly any middle
ground from which to judge the poetry of Also sprach Zara-
thustra. Either the book seems to you a masterpiece of insight
into the highest human aspirations, a brilliant flight into
regions forever shut to the pedestrian calculations and limited
emotions of the unresponsive, or it seems to you the elevated
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF l6l

maunderings of a man struggling to express the inexpres-

sible.
Nietzsche's gifts as a critic, both of literature and of music,
require for their appreciation a less intimate initiation and
discipleship than do his gifts as a poet. They are evident
throughout all his work, scattered everywhere among the un-
systematic reflections that are assembled to make the great
majority of his books. He liked in others almost the opposite
of what he himself produced in his "creative" flights into music,
poetry, and world-shaking in general; that is, he liked clarity,
simplicity, naturalness, restraint, incisive wit, mastery of form.
T o use once more a much-used pair of words, he was a "classic"
critic and a "romantic" practitioner of the arts.
N o doubt because he was himself so self-conscious and arro-
gant a romanticist — a romanticist to the point of squeezing
the ultimate paradox out of his self-torture — he wrote pene-
tratingly and harshly about European romanticism. In a single
passage from The Will to Power — again, a mere note jotted
down for future development and polishing — he packs into
a few words a book of the late Irving Babbitt's.
False "accentuation": ( i ) In romanticism; this unremitting "expres-
sivo" is not a sign of strength, but of a feeling of deficiency;
(2) Picturesque music, the so-called dramatic kind, is above all easier
(as is also the brutal scandal-mongering and the juxtaposition of facts
and traits in realistic novels);
( 3 ) "Passion" as a matter of nerves and exhausted souls; likewise the
delight in high mountains, deserts, storms, orgies, and disgusting details,
— in bulkiness and massiveness (historians, for instance); as a matter
of fact, there is actually a cult of exaggerated feelings ( h o w is it that in
stronger ages are desired just the opposite — a restraint of passion?);
(4) T h e preference for exciting materials (Erotica or Socialistica or
Pathologica): all these things are the signs of the style of public that is
IÔ2 NIETZSCHE
being catered for to-day — that is to say, for overworked, ábsentminded,
or enfeebled people.
Such people must be tyrannised over in order to be affected. 12

Or in a single sentence, "Romantic art is only an emergency

exit from defective 'reality.' " The substance of this remark
can be found in many critical writings before Nietzsche; his
own art and skill, his ability to add spice to a commonplace,
lie revealed in the little word "emergency." 13 Or finally, an
aphorism deceptively simple, "Both classically and romantically
minded spirits — two species that always exist — cherish a
vision of the future; but the former derive their vision from the
strength of their time, the latter from its weaknesses." 14
Nietzsche is at his best in these brief and pungent remarks
about his fellow-artists. He has, it is true, a grand, philosophical
generalization he often uses as a measuring-rod in criticism,
the famous distinction between "Dionysian" and "Apollinian."
He can sometimes pursue the distinction into wordy disquisi-
tions rather remote from concrete works of art, as in the last
part of The Birth of Tragedy, and in The Will to Power, where
he returns to worry this, his first philosophic love. But as such
distinctions go, his is by no means the most sterile effort that
men have made to put into words a contrast as real as any in
experience — the contrast between the cathedral of Chartres
and the Parthenon, between Shakespeare and Sophocles, be-
tween Mozart and Wagner. If there is a possible "philosophy
of art," Nietzsche's deserves a high rank. Here he can forget
to preach, or perhaps better, preach in terms of an emotional
11
The Will to Power, § 826.
" The Will to Power, § 829.
" Human, All Too Human, "The Wanderer and his Shadow," § 217.
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 163

response to things immediately observed, known. Here he can

use to the full his craftsman's skill with words, words that
evoke for most of us earthly — even earthy — experience in a
way that the Will to Power, down-going and over-going to
the Superman, and the Eternal Recurrence, do not. When
Nietzsche says that the music of Wagner sweats, we think,
even if we are offended by having the thought suggested to us
in this way, of Wagner's music; when Zarathustra says "All
'It was' is a fragment, a riddle, a fearful chance — until the
creating Will saith thereto: 'But thus I would have it!'," we
just "think"; unless, indeed, we are already drugged into a
happy stupor well beyond, and possibly above, thought. 16
These same craftsman's gifts — they are hard to describe,
but they include ability to note accurately how men actually
behave, what they do as well as what they say, and to make a
synthesis, a coherent description of that behavior, which in turn
can be verified in experience — these same gifts appear in Nie-
tzsche's work as a psychologist, or as a politique et moraliste.
Here again he is by no means content to do the job of the
observer, the describer. He is perhaps more interested in get-
ting men to behave as he feels they should behave than in
learning how, and if possible why, they behave as they do. The
latter job he sometimes described as the petty task of science.
But he himself was in some ways too much of a scientist or a
"realist" to go ahead planning for men — and Supermen —
without paying any attention to the kind of men surrounding
him. He had not much skill at mixing with these men, and
for the purist in empirical research, he skimped sadly the first
steps in an inquiry, first-hand, intimate, habitual contact with
" See above, p. 64 and Τ Aus Spa\e Zarathustra, Part II, chap. xlii.
164 NIETZSCHE
what is studied. But his shyness and aloofness were rather bars
to his using men than to his understanding them. He was not,
save in his last few years, an actual recluse. He had excellent
opportunities to observe quite a variety of men, especially edu-
cated Germans, and his inability to mingle freely and pleasantly
with them gave him some of the advantages of detachment —
if, indeed, it was not in fact itself a kind of detachment. Wit-
ness, for instance, the basic accuracy with which he sized up
the people who came to Bayreuth.16 He describes these Wag-
nerites in the acid terms of caricature, but it is caricature, and
not fantasy. He can always see enough of himself in others to
recognize their weaknesses.
Nietzsche's great work as a moralist is the study of the "in-
tellectual" as a type; and here his own experience and his own
temperament give him ample clinical materials. The great
generalization which he characteristically produced out of his
study — we have insisted that as a philosopher he was always
aiming at the most comprehensive generalization — is his con-
clusion that the intellectual par excellence, priest in older times,
reformer, politician, writer, professor, socialist, democrat, hu-
manitarian in our own, uses the instrument of thought to build
up out of his desires a neat picture of what he calls the "true
world" (or the beautiful and the good, or right, or the classless
society) and then attempts to persuade, or force, everybody to
live as in his picture; that he is usually quite unconscious of
going through this process; that in the process he commonly
neglects facts that simply are, and that therefore when he and
others try to live as in his picture, they stumble into all sorts of
things they hadn't thought were there at all; and finally, that
" See above, p. 114.
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 165
although in some senses this process seems a necessary part of
human life, in the modern world it has been carried to a point
where it threatens the existence of what we call civilization.
For men do try to live according to the picture the intellectual
makes of the "true world"; or rather, they try to live according
to the pictures the intellectuals make, for there are many of
them, and they are not all the same. It is fortunately true that
the overwhelming majority of the things people do, even in
modern Europe, are not at all influenced by the work of the
intellectuals. The routine of getting a living, of marrying and
begetting, of loving and hating and doing, is still something
older and deeper than our very nicest theories, is something for
which we must use unsatisfactorily vague terms like instinctive,
habitual, traditional; or in post-Nietzschean terms, these things
are a matter of conditioned reflexes, persistent aggregates. But
there remains a marginal area in human affairs, and a very
important one, since it enters into the activities of men organ-
ized in social and political groups, in which the pictures made
by the intellectuals seem to have an effect on men's actual
conduct.
Here Nietzsche's thought bifurcates. At times he assumes a
position which seems the logical result of his previous analysis,
as it does that of most contemporary anti-intellectualist attacks
on political reform, "planning," constitution-making and other
conscious efforts to make blue-prints for conscious political
"builders." This is the position of what must be called con-
servatism. Make no changes, especially no deliberate, logically
worked-out changes. Distrust the theorist; trust the practical
man, the man of affairs, above all the man who has roots, the
peasant and the aristocrat, and the man who has a manual skill,
166 NIETZSCHE
the artisan and the surgeon. Let nature take its course, even if
it is a hard course. There is some power in the world, of which
we only know that we cannot yet know it as we know when
we think according to logic, but which makes for Tightness
if we only let it alone. There is a vis medicatrix naturae, which,
especially in matters moral, economic, political, is a better
physician for ailing humanity than Jefferson, or Mill, or
Spencer, or — in Nietzsche's eyes the most harmful quack of
them all — Saint Paul.17
Nietzsche does not long occupy a position so sensible and
unheroic as this. Having decided that all other physicians to
humanity were quacks, he cannot leave humanity without a
physician. Having shown the inadequacies of all other pic-
tures of the "true world," he makes one of his own. It is not a
very clear picture, but as we shall see, it is well enough drawn
for the Nazis to put it to uses the Master would most probably
have found very objectionable. It is a picture of a world surely
as unreal as ever a German philosopher spun out of his inner
consciousness, a world in which, by a final exercise of the will
to neglect facts, men become Supermen. It is a grand world
of the paradox made flesh, in which the immoral is moral, the
weak strong and the strong weak, and the Fact lies down with
the Ideal, each having devoured the other.
" Nietzsche takes something like this position time and time again through-
out his work, especially in praise of "tradition" and in condemnation of
"theory." It appears very early: "All states are badly managed when other
men than politicians busy themselves with politics, and they deserve to be
ruined by these political amateurs." Thoughts Out of Season, "Schopenhauer
as Educator," chap. vii. A n admirable passage on the authority of tradition
— "which is obeyed, not because it commands what is useful to us, but merely
because it commands" — is in The Dawn of Day, § 9. See also the collected
fragments, vol. X I of the Wer\e (Grossoctavausgabe), 36.
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF l6y
It is not, however, fair to Nietzsche to conclude on such a
note as this. His work is packed with admirable observations
on how men behave here and now, before they give way to the
Supermen. They are one-sided, unsympathetic observations,
not by any means to be recommended as a complete course in
the study of human nature. But they bring to light perhaps
more clearly than anywhere else in our literature, some of the
basic illusions men live by. Had Nietzsche never produced
anything but The Genealogy of Morals, and especially the
admirable chapter on "Ascetic Ideals," he would still have
to be ranked high among writers who have helped us know
ourselves.

IV
Nietzsche's work is a great armory, by no means filled en-
tirely with weapons of precision; there are some fowling-pieces
of great age, and even a few sling-shots, as well as some very
accurate modern pieces. On the whole, his light guns are more
effective than his heavy artillery, though the latter makes a very
loud noise. To drop the metaphor: Nietzsche's work contains
a great variety of ideas, sometimes mutually contradictory,
difficult if not impossible to reduce to a "system," made still
more bewilderingly varied by the aphoristic form in which
they are cast. This variety is the reflection of a many-sided
temperament. Nietzsche had an excellent mind, well if rather
bookishly trained, great aesthetic sensibility, a natural gift for
writing, strong emotions which he could focus in the saeva
indignatio we often call moral purpose, an untrained body, an
unstable nervous system, a total personality never successfully
conditioned to living together with anyone — not in the fam-
ι68 NIETZSCHE
ily, not in the occupational or social group, not in church or
state. He had, finally, a devouring ambition to be admired, a
thirst for disciples, a will to shine which, as the Will to Power,
he built up into a characteristic philosophical ultimate, and
which, syphilis aiding, ended in paranoia.
Among the stresses and strains which compose the unending
conflicts that made Nietzsche, and perhaps made him great,
there is one which will serve well to sum up the man and his
work. This is the conflict between the observer and the re-
former, between the artist and the prophet, between Nietzsche
and Zarathustra. It is a conflict discernible, no doubt, in less
heroic proportions, in the lives of all men. It is a conflict most
of us hardly feel, and which we resolve comfortably in the
routine of living. It is not, by the way, an ultimate. We are
using the dualistic terms in which we describe the conflict as
mere conveniences in putting Nietzsche and his work within
common experience.
The observer has his eye — and all his other organs of sense
— first of all on the immense body of receptor-experiences we
call facts. He does not merely passively record or report these
facts, but tries to arrange them as uniformities put in relation
to a conceptual scheme in such a way that they can be "verified"
— that is, experienced again as receptor-experiences by himself
and others, but this time in an order. The observer's test for
whether his order is "true" is a relational and instrumental one.
Its relation with facts must be continuous; if it ties a falling
barometer and rain together in the formula, a falling barometer
is followed by rain, rain must always follow a falling barometer
or the order ("theory") is not altogether true, and must be
modified, at least to some extent. Its instrumental character is
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 169
a more complicated matter, but is always, for the type of person
we call the observer, subordinated to its relation with facts.
The reformer, on the other hand, subordinates the relational
character of the order he constructs out of experience to its
instrumental character. The extreme type of reformer may
even refuse to bother himself about the relational character of
his "order," his "theories." If he has decided that a falling
barometer ought to be followed by rain, he will do something
about it — almost anything, in fact, but observe the conditions
under which rain actually falls. He will construct complicated
and lovely barometers, and try to make everybody use them;
he will pass a law requiring falling barometers to be followed
by rain; he will define rain to include fair weather; he will
refuse to admit that it is raining, unless the barometer has
fallen, or that the barometer has fallen, unless it is raining.
We have, of course, caricatured the reformer. But any full
treatment of the distinction we have attempted to make be-
tween the observer and the reformer would run into a volume.
The important thing here is to note that though all conscious
thinking is an ordering of experience, some kinds of thinking
are directed by the thinker rather towards sorting experience
into recognizable uniformities which are repetitive, verifiable,
predictable, and which seem to the thinker to possess these
qualities whether he wants them to or not; and that some
kinds of thinking are directed by the thinker towards sorting
experience into an order which is a modification of experience
into something "better," something which he feels can be made
true for himself and others, something which he rather proudly
holds comes from himself (through God, perhaps) or from
"things" independent of himself. We have, perhaps, done no
170 NIETZSCHE
more than put rather confusingly the well-worn distinction
between "objective" and "subjective" which has exhausted
generations of philosophers, but seems itself inexhaustible.
It is a useful distinction, even though no one ever put his
finger — or his mind — on either a subject or an object. Con-
cretely, we can recognize that a biologist attempting to find
order in human heredity is likely to think "objectively" and
that a preacher of eugenics attempting to get human beings to
breed as he wants them to breed is likely to think "subjectively."
The two kinds of thinkers are constantly borrowing one from
the other, are indeed frequently the same person. But as types
they certainly exist, and not only in the stark contrast between
the scientist and the preacher. Literature is as much a matter of
good observing as is science, and some very great writers, like
Shakespeare, have been much more interested in what is than
in what it ought to be. Even philosophers have their grada-
tions; Aristotle was a better observer than was Plato. Nietzsche
was a better observer than Zarathustra.
The contrast we have set up between Nietzsche the observer
and Nietzsche the reformer is by no means an imaginary one.
It was real enough so that it must have contributed to his
mental suffering, to have given him a kind of split personality.
There are people so immersed in understanding and coping
with their experience of what is, that they do not bother them-
selves much with what ought to be; and there are people so
immersed in satisfying themselves about what ought to be that
they are not much disturbed by what is. There are people who
can live happily in this world, and others who can live happily
in any number of other worlds. Nietzsche could do neither.
He was too acute an observer, too sensitive an artist, to spin
NIETZSCHE IN UNIFORM
From a photograph, 1868
 NIETZSCHE-IN-HIMSELF 171
out theories without regard for facts; and he was too bitten
with reforming zeal, too impatient, too exalted, perhaps at
bottom too insanely or divinely convinced that he alone was the
measure of all things, to accept the humbling limitations im-
posed by regard for facts. And so he made his unhappy down-
going and over-going to that strangest of "true worlds," the
world of the Supermen, beyond good and evil, beyond you
and me, beyond himself.
But not beyond an Italian socialist hack, not beyond an
Austrian corporal. One of the strange, and to some of us, dis-
couraging things about the activities of reformers is the unpre-
dictable effects their labors so often have in practice. The
noblest dreams of the prophet turn into nightmares when they
come true. Nietzsche called for the Supermen. Mussolini and
Hitler answered the call. It does not much matter that in all
probability Nietzsche would have scorned them as perverters
of his doctrine, would have opposed them bitterly. It does, not
even matter that had Nietzsche never written these men would
in all probability have come to power much as they did. They
have found a use for Nietzsche, a use he probably never intended
his words to provide. That is a risk all men run who build with
words, but it is a risk peculiarly great for those who out of
their discontents build with grand words a refuge from this
poor world, a noble castle in the philosophic air. Such castles
are often roomy and comfortable, but very hard to keep clean.
 CHAPTER VII
T H E G R O W T H OF A R E P U T A T I O N

I O G R A P H E R S of Nietzsche, including even Charles

B Andler, who took six volumes to tell his story, stop
most inconveniently with the death of their hero in 1900, or
indeed with his entrance into an asylum for the insane in 1889.
Yet — and this is hardly a metaphor, and certainly not a para-
dox — Nietzsche's life only began with his insanity and death.
The depressing notion that the really great thinkers are ignored
or reviled by their own generation, and appreciated only by the
next generation, seems not true generally in the history of
thought. But for Nietzsche it is true in all its simplicity. The
contrast between the obscurity of his name during his lifetime
and the continuing greatness of his reputation since his death
is at least as striking as with a very different, and even more
obscure, contemporary, Gregor Mendel. Nietzsche is still
talked about and written about. Diminishing returns have
not yet set in — at least, not to the point of lessening the pro-
duction of books about him. Heinrich Mann could write in
1939:
One thinker and writer has lived on for fifty years since the con-
clusion of his work, and nearly forty since his death. A s if constantly
present, he has occupied the attention of a world less and less interested
in the past. One cannot be considered present merely because one's works
are still read and historically assimilated. T h e number of a man's adher-
ents and imitators proves nothing for his work or its fruitfulness. W h a t
 T H E G R O W T H OF A REPUTATION 173

is the test? The work of a man who has passed on grows and changes;
he is still finishing it from beyond. It has long since moved from the
point where we once found it, when we were young and Nietzsche was
alive. 1

This passage would no doubt have pleased Nietzsche im-

mensely, so much indeed that he would probably have for-
borne to point out that much of it is nonsense. For Nietzsche,
as we have seen, burned to be read, to have disciples, to make
a stir in the world. Before he went mad only a mere handful
had read him, only the inept Peter Gast still looked like a
disciple, and he had clearly made no stir at all in the world.
Two of his boyhood friends, Rohde and Deussen, nice, straight-
forward German Herren Professoren without any of his gifts
of thought or style, were actually much better known in Ger-
man intellectual circles than the author of Zarathustra. Once,
long ago, he had been one of the bright young men around the
Master of Masters, and such little fame as he had went back to
the book in which he had announced Wagner Dionysos as the
savior of German culture. Certainly none of Nietzsche's sub-
sequent books were successes. Wagner himself is said to have
remarked of the failure of Human, All Too Human, "Now
you see Nietzsche is read only when he defends our cause;
otherwise, no." 2 Wagner, recently dead, was in apotheosis in
the late eighties, and the Wagnerites were conquering the earth.
But Friedrich Nietzsche was still as obscure as if there had
never been a Triebschen. His books, which were to do better
things than Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed had done, had to be

1
H . Mann, "Presenting Nietzsche," The Living Thoughts of Nietzsche
(rçpg), ι.
2
Daniel Halévy, The Lije of Friedrich Nietzsche, 209.
174 NIETZSCHE
brought out at the expense of the author. Publication at the
author's own expense usually marks the author as a dilettante
or an unread scholar, as an unimportant man, perhaps even
as a crank, a crackpot, a failure; and Nietzsche knew, with in-
sane certainty, that he was not an unimportant man, not a
crank, not a failure.
There were, in the last few years of Nietzsche's active life,
some signs of coming fame, Georg Brandes, the Danish critic
whose European reputation was already established, probably
deserves the distinction of having discovered Nietzsche. 3 It is
true that Nietzsche himself helped the discovery by having his
publisher send copies of Beyond Good and Evil to various dis-
tinguished literary persons. This by no means uncommon
practice is rarely, one suspects, very fruitful. But Nietzsche
had the satisfaction of receiving intelligent letters of apprecia-
tion from Taine and Brandes, and through Brandes, from
Strindberg. Brandes actually lectured on Nietzsche's ideas at
Copenhagen, and the two kept up a lively correspondence until
Nietzsche went mad. Nietzsche had, then, the pleasure of hear-
ing the first faint rumblings of the great noise his name was to
make in the world. But by the time Brandes got around to
printing, in 1889, a long article on "Nietzsche: A n Essay on
Aristocratic Radicalism," his subject was no longer able to
understand what fame meant.
There is indeed no danger that the Nietzscheans will let us
forget the way the world neglected the Master. W e must not
exaggerate. Even during his lifetime Nietzsche was not abso-
lutely unheard. The conspicuous critics left him alone, but

* At any rate, Brandes later claimed the distinction for himself. G. Brandes,
Friedrich Nietzsche. Translated from the Danish by A. C. Chater (n.d.), 59.
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 175
every now and then a magazine brought up his name, and in
1880 a writer in the popular weekly Die Gegenwart gave five
whole columns to this "modern 'free spirit' . . . , whose name
is not unknown to our literature."4 His little circle of friends,
and the larger number he no longer considered his friends,
served to spread his reputation. Brandes's article on Nietzsche
the aristocratic radical was translated into German and pub-
lished in April 1890 in the Deutsche Rundschau, equivalent
in America to the accolade of the Atlantic or Harper's. By the
beginning of the 1890's little trickles from various sources had
begun to unite into a stream. Nietzsche's reputation grew with
amazing speed after 1890, but it by no means sprang up over
night.
The periodicals took him up first, and made his name quite
suddenly the fashion among the kind of people who need to
talk fashionably — so much so that when ten years later the
distinguished philosopher Hans Vaihinger wrote a book about
Nietzsche, he had to defend himself against the charge of
writing about "a merely fashionable writer" (ein blosser Mo-
deschriftsteller).δ Die Gegenwart published articles on Nie-
tzsche in 1889 and in 1891, the second by a well-known writer
of Swedish origin, Ola Hansson. Lou Salomé could scarcely
let a chance like this slip by. It began to look as though
Nietzsche had been a great man after all. She published in
the Sunday Supplement of the Vossische Zeitung during Janu-
ary 1891 some articles on Nietzsche which were shortly after-
* H . Herrig, "Ein moderner Freigeist," Die Gegenwart (August 7, 1880),
XVIII, 85. For other examples see M. Wirth, "Die Zukunft der Reminiscenz:
Variationen über Themen von Friedrich Nietzsche," Die Kunstwart (1888),
II, 52; Das musikalische Wochenblatt (1887), XVIII, 441.
6
H . Vaihinger, Nietzsche als Philosoph (1902), 13.
176 NIETZSCHE
wards expanded into a book. It was by no means a bad book,
rather pretentious philosophically, but sensible about Nietzsche
as a person. Nietzsche's Wagner heresies were attracting more
and more attention in the musical press. They were still
heresies — his remarks about Bizet's superiority over Wagner
were of course beneath disdain — but they made good copy.
The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums published in 1892
what is probably the first essay on Nietzsche and the Jewish
question. The quality magazines were now working the new
vein very hard. The Deutsche Rundschau, Nord und Süd, the
Preussische Jahrbücher, Westermanns Monatshefte assigned to
him long articles by well-known writers. One of these was
Eduard von Hartmann, a now almost forgotten professor of
philosophy, who had synthetized one of the most extraordinary
brews ever made, in which Hegel, Schopenhauer, and the in-
ductive method so successful in the natural sciences were mixed
— Hartmann's word was "reconciled." Hartmann was already
going out of fashion, and Nietzsche was coming into fashion,
but as Hartmann was not altogether aware of this, he treats
Nietzsche soberly and without bitterness — Nietzsche's "sys-
tem" he found, of course, inadequate, and not even new. 6
In 1892 and 1893, the original German volumes of Max

" J . Mähly, "Friedrich Nietzsche," Die Gegenwart (Sept. 7, 1889), X X X V I ,

148; O. Hansson, "Friedrich Nietzsche und der Naturalismus," Die Gegen-
wart (May 2, 1 8 9 1 ) , X X X I X , 2 7 5 ; G . Adler, "Friedrich Nietzsche der Social-
Philosoph der Aristokratie," Nord und Süd (March, 1 8 9 1 ) , L V I , 2 2 5 ; T .
Achelis, "Friedrich Nietzsche," Westermanns Monatshefte (April, 1894),
L X X V I , 99; E . von Hartmann, "Nietzsches neue Moral," Preussische Jahr-
bücher (May, 1 8 9 1 ) , X L V I I , 505. This is by no means an exhaustive list. See
H . Albert, "Friedrich Nietzsche," Mercure de France (Jan. 1 8 9 3 ) , V I I , 47,
notes 2 and 3 for a good bibliography of the "discoverers" of Nietzsche in
Germany.
 T H E G R O W T H OF A REPUTATION 177

Nordau's Degeneration appeared, and spread rapidly in trans-

lation through all the important languages. Nordau's huge
public learned that Nietzsche, though undoubtedly a literary
genius, had been insane all his life, that his books were written
during acute spasms of dementia, that he was a characteristi-
cally modern degenerate. Nordau seems to have known nothing
of Nietzsche beyond some of his more notorious books, and the
contemporary periodical literature we have just described.
Degeneration at least further stimulated interest in Nietzsche.
It seems to have made Elizabeth all the more determined to
publish at once what she considered the real truth about her
brother, her sound, steady, normal brother, whose health had
been destroyed by bad eyesight, hard work, and malevolent
enemies. The first of her piously untrustworthy biographies
of her brother appeared in 1895.
Nietzsche had become one of the spiritual heroes of the
1890's, a decade which professed to distrust both spirit and
heroes. In 1897, Ferdinand Tönnies began a pamphlet on "The
Cult of Nietzsche" with the words:
A philosophical writer who is read by many is already a remarkable
thing. But suppose this writer should be read with enthusiasm, that
readers should call themselves disciples, that his thoughts should be
received as an emancipation and a revelation, that these people should
feel that in the thinker they had found a leader (Fuehrer) ? 7

The kind of people whose pushing adulation of Wagner had

so sickened Nietzsche at Beyreuth were now worshipping
Nietzsche himself. And the object of their worship, secluded
once more under Elizabeth's loving care, was dragging out his
life quite unconscious of this sudden glory. It is a situation
' F . Tönnies, Der Nietzsche-Kultus (1897), ι.
178 NIETZSCHE
that tempts to rhetoric; and the Nietzscheans have been quite
willing to improve the situation. How the Master, had he
known what was going on, would have scorned this unwelcome
tribute from the herd! How his irony would have whipped
back these fawning fools! Perhaps. But success has achieved
some remarkable transvaluation of values on its own account.
The gods, we may believe, find pleasing the incense that
reaches their nostrils above the sweat of their worshippers. It
is possible that Nietzsche would have enjoyed his success.
From Germany Nietzsche's reputation quickly spread to
France, a country whose intellectuals have ever since Madame
de Staël been much more closely in touch with German
thought than is commonly realized — though recent pronounce-
ments from Vichy should drive the fact home to all. Here, too,
as in Germany the periodical press led the way, and in the early
1890's called attention to the remarkable writer who could
make the ponderous German language flash into aphorisms
worthy of a La Rochefoucauld. Barely behind the French
were the English, whose magazines and reviews began to take
up Nietzsche by the middle of the decade.8 With the interest
of writers in French and English stirred, Nietzsche's European
reputation was made. Translation into the major modern lan-
guages soon followed.
At his death in 1900, Nietzsche's reputation had conquered

8
For instance: T . de Wyzewa, "Friedrich Nietzsche, le dernier métaphysi-
cien," Revue bleue (7 Nov. 1891), X L V I I I , 586; J. de Nethy, "Nietzsche-
Zarathustra," Revue blanche (Apr. 1892), II, 206. G. B. S.[haw], "Nietzsche
in English," Saturday Review ( 1 1 Apr. 1896), L X X X I , 373. The decisive
article in English — it is still worth reading — appeared as "The Ideals of
Anarchy — Friedrich Nietzsche" in the Quarterly Review (Oct 1896),
C L X X X I V , 299.
 T H E GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 179

almost all the elaborate channels of publicity in the modern

world. His works were appearing in new editions; books were
being written about his life and his ideas; a steady stream of
articles and reviews was flowing through the periodical press;
and he was about to achieve the final consecration, about to be
the subject of a doctoral dissertation.9 His name was heard from
pulpits and from lecture-platforms. Editorial writers were
finding him an admirable subject for indignation. He had
arrived. A French critic wrote of him in 1893:
N o matter what critical review one thumbs, one finds Nietzsche's
name in the table of contents. His work, commented on even in its
minor details, exalted to the skies by some, attacked energetically by
others, has provoked a whole literature of pamphlets, booklets, articles.
Every day the army of his disciples and imitators increases. . . . T h e
anthologies are adorned with his sayings, the poets make use of his
magnificent aphorisms as epigraphs for their verses. 10

II
We are today hesitant about referring to the "influence" of a
writer, partly no doubt because of the influence of Nietzsche
himself. Ideas are no longer for us the wonder-workers they
were for our grandfathers. We distrust studies in the affiliation
or genealogy of ideas. Some of our more innocent anti-intel-
lectuals apparently hold that all generalizations — except
perhaps those of Marx when properly interpreted — are increas-
ingly useless disguises for our simpler lusts. Yet in those impor-
" One of the first of these was W. Jesinghaus, Der innere Zusammenhang
der Gedanken vom Uebermensch bei Nietzsche. Inaugural Dissertation at
the University of Bonn (1901). There have been dozens and dozens of them
since and on some very remarkable phases of Nietzsche's life and influence.
My own favorite is F. Sprengel, Nietzsche und das Ding-an-sich (1933).
10
H. Albert, "Friedrich Nietzsche," Mercure de France (Jan. 1893), VII,
47-48.
l8o NIETZSCHE
tant moments of carelessness which reveal the habits of routine,
uninspired, and useful thinking, the most conscientious anti-
intellectual is likely to let drop the phrase "influence of the
ideas of" so-and-so. Nietzsche's influence on the world, in the
sense of mere stir in the world, has been considerable, and very
varied. Without attempting yet to come to grips with the
problem of what relation — if any — that stir has had on events,
on the actions of men, we may try to see first what kind of men
the discoverers of Nietzsche were, what they found in him in
this first decade of his fame.
The intellectuals of the 1890's were not as wicked as they
aspired to be. What strikes one looking back on them from the
i94o's is the energy, liveliness, indeed the optimism, with which
they sought disillusion. They could defy most enjoyably the
philistine conventions of middle-class society. The middle
class was still there, apparently solidly established and well
worth defying. Anarchism was one of the very best of attitudes
for defying the middle class. On the whole, it seemed to give
more substantial nourishment to the pride of the defiant artist,
writer, and thinker than socialism — though of course, the two
together made a nice combination. Nietzsche's ideas seemed to
most of those who read him in the 1890's a new and attractive
variant of anarchism, an aristocratic, radical, aesthetic anar-
chism, unsullied by the vulgar conspiratorial atmosphere and
silly humanitarian aims of traditional anarchism. Nietzsche
appears first, therefore, in the history of opinion as the complete
anti-philistine, the emancipated poet of dionysian joy, the mas-
ter of those who live.
He appears, of course, in no such simple terms. Brandes
called him the "aristocratic radical," a phrase which gave
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 181

Nietzsche himself much pleasure. T o an early English re-

viewer, he was the "anarchist par excellence." T o Mr. Shaw,
one of his first English admirers, he was the "champion of
privilege, of power, of inequality." T o von Hartmann he was
the philosopher of "radical egotism," whose Superman was
really a modernized version of Plato's philosopher-king, be-
come philosopher-tyrant. T o Franz Mehring, already well-
known as a Social-Democrat historian, he was "the philosopher
of finance-capitalism (Philosoph des Grosskapitals)." To
Dilthey he had fished up the notion of the Superman from
Greek and Renaissance history, and turned it into a character-
istically modern form of irrational individualism. T o the
youthful André Gide he was the immoralist, the man who had
cut through conventions in morals as the earlier scientists had
cut through the superstitions of astrology and alchemy. 11
Not to all his critics were words like "anarchism," "individ-
ualism," "egotism," words of praise. Nietzsche shocked and
infuriated many people who could not be disarmed by his
literary gifts. A n early critic named Tiirck is as violent as any
opponent of Nietzsche has ever been. Nietzsche according to
Tiirck is a degenerate madman, an apologist for all sorts of
crimes, a perverse scorner of that divinest of human gifts, the
mind, an exalter of blind, animal striving, in short, a man who
has made the "human beast" a systematic ideal.12 British war

11 Quarterly Review (1896), CLXXXIV, 318; G.B.S. in Saturday Review

(1896), LXXI, 374; E. von Hartmann, Preussischer Jahrbücher (1891),

LXVII, 520; F. Mehring, "Nietzsche," Neue Zeit, 30. Jan. 1897; W. Dilthey,
Gesammelte Werfe (1898), IV, 528; G. Bianquis, Nietzsche en France (1929),
62.
18 H. Türck, Nietzsches philosophische Irrwege, Neue Ausgabe (1894),
63-69.
i82 NIETZSCHE
propaganda during the War of 1914-1918 was not more single-
minded and vehement in condemnation of Nietzsche. All over
the world, when Nietzsche first is known, he appears as de-
lightfully or horribly shocking, as a disturbing thinker, a rebel
not to be dismissed as a mere crank. Almost from the first, he
interested all sorts of men, and made all sorts of disciples. One
disciple has not infrequently found in the Master the exact
contrary — in logic and even in commonsense — of what an-
other disciple has found. This, however, is almost a habit
among disciples.

Ill
To some of the reasons for Nietzsche's charm over his readers
we shall return. The amazing variety of things his readers and
disciples have said they have found in him is explicable partly
by the variety of people his charm has attracted. It is also
explicable partly by the fact that his published writings actually
do contain varied and in some senses contradictory materials.
In the first place, Nietzsche seems to have changed direction
after he left Wagner. Some of his more unyielding worshippers
insist that, though he may have developed, he never changed,
that all his writings, of youth as well as of maturity, form one
splendid unity.13 Some such remark has certainly been made of
all thinkers, and about all of them it may have a degree of
truth. But to many an observer, the Nietzsche of The Birth of
Tragedy seemed a different man from the aphorisitc Nietzsche
of The Dawn of Day, and the "philosopher with a hammer" of
the Twilight of the Idols seemed still another man — if, indeed,

" T h i s is now the fashionable view among the Nazis. See R. Oehler,
Nietzsche und die deutsche Zukunft (1935).
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 183
he were a man at all. In other words, Nietzsche's works can
be divided into "periods" perhaps a bit more easily than most
men's. It is then possible to say that the "real" Nietzsche was
the Nietzsche of a certain period, and that the rest of his work
is not truly Nietzschean.
Moreover, Nietzsche wrote almost entirely in brief aphoristic
passages, composed in moments of high excitement, noted down
and strung together into a book. Here, too, critics have had no
trouble finding all sorts of underlying unity. But it is a fact
that Nietzsche was not tied down by any formal structure in
his books, that he had no brief to follow, no special audience
to adapt himself to. He had, it must be admitted, a love for
neatness and bite in phrasing, a love which he sometimes in-
dulged at the expense of accuracy in reflecting his actual judg-
ments. The works are a mass of reflections, a kind of running
note-book, a written Table-Talk, in which anyone can find
contradictions.
Finally, any body of written work, at least outside the natural
sciences and exact scholarship, lives on at the mercy of fashion.
What Nietzsche had to say was necessarily inexact, for he dealt
with matters about which men's feelings and habits have always
been more trustworthy expressions than their words — though
they cannot, if they are men like Nietzsche, give up the des-
perate task of fitting them to words. Nietzsche's work survives
as the subject of great disputes, partly because he failed to say
exactly what he meant; and no one who has tried to say the
kind of thing Nietzsche tried to say has succeeded much
better. We are still disputing about some of the things said by
Jesus of Nazareth. And so we ought not to be surprised that
men differ on what Nietzsche wrote, differ in some senses al-
184 NIETZSCHE

most totally. A contemporary Nietzschean writes, perhaps a

little too indignantly:
A n old game of the human imagination has begun. The past is called
into the present, and there begins that ceremony of consultation, of
seeking for authority, the end of which is already pretty clear, since the
consultant and the consulted are substantially one. For this reason
almost all current writing on Nietzsche has interest only as a part of
our contemporary history, and one may say of it what Lichtenberg said
of other books, "Such works are mirrors; when a monkey gapes into
one, no apostle can look back out." 1 4

All sorts of men have looked into Nietzsche's works, and seen
themselves. Any attempt to classify them will be unworthy of
their variety. It may be well, therefore, to adopt a frankly
dualistic device, a neat conceptual polarity. There are two sorts
of Nietzscheans, the gentle and the tough. There are no doubt
many in between the extremes, who might almost be called
medium Nietzscheans. Though the Master himself was most
immoderate, one might without too much violence to good
sense find some followers who could be called "moderate"
Nietzscheans. But the simple polar distinction between gentle
Nietzscheans and tough ones is a useful one, which is about all
one may expect of a distinction.
The gentle Nietzscheans regard the Master, in a nowadays
cant phrase, as a man of good will. For them, Nietzsche's work
is in a central great tradition of ethics marked by Socrates,
Jesus, Buddha, Luther, and other children of God. Nietzsche,
they hold, wanted men to be good; and by good he meant what
the great heroes of religion and morals have always meant by
good, good in a somewhat stoic sense. Because men were not
" A . Kesser, "Elemente zur Beurteilung Nietzsches," Neue Schweizer
Rundschau (1937), IV, 535.
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 185
good in the nineteenth-century Western world, he lost his tem-
per with them, and broke into prophetic violence. But at heart
he wanted them to be peaceful, happy, just, pure, honest, kindly,
humane. The gentle Nietzscheans have had to do a lot of ex-
plaining. They have taken in stride paradoxes that would have
given their Master pause. One of their favorites, phrased in a
dozen ways, runs something like this: Nietzsche was a most
Christian anti-Christian; he hated the sham Christianity of his
age as only a true follower of Jesus could hate it.
The tough Nietzscheans have had rather easier going, at least
with their logic. For themf the Master was an aristocrat of the
heart and the head, a man filled with a great contempt for the
pig-men about him, a tortured, sensitive, subtle soul in rebellion
against the middle-class stupidities of the nineteenth century.
When, according to them, he damned Christianity for its slave-
morality, its compassion for the weak, its distrust of the flesh,
he meant that he regarded Christianity as a bad thing. They
add the gloss that Nietzsche did not object to Christianity as a
solace for the masses, who could never be more than masses,
but that he hated it for corrupting the minority capable of
bright strength and cruelty, for preventing aristocrats from
behaving like aristocrats. Their Nietzsche was the dionysian
rebel, the unashamed pagan, the joyous fighter, the flashing
thinker, the superb ironist, whose wit danced merrily through
the bewildered herd, and now and then knocked down some
loud bawling beast.

IV
Elizabeth's biography of her brother, together with many
magazine articles pointing out Nietzsche's great literary virtues,
i86 NIETZSCHE
no doubt helped to lay the foundations on which the gentle
Nietzscheans have built. Yet it was his adoption as a philoso-
pher by German academic philosophers that first gave him the
respectability without which the gentle Nietzscheans might
have labored in vain. Why these academic philosophers should
have accepted him as a philosopher is hard to make out. He
did, it is true, frequently refer to himself as a philosopher; but
German writers all call themselves philosophers, somewhere,
before they get through. He left an unpublished set of apho-
risms labelled The Will to Power, which he often referred to
as his systematic opus mains, but which looks and sounds ex-
actly like the rest of his unsystematic works, save that it is
much duller. The best of Nietzsche's work is in fact more like
that of Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld than like that of
Kant or Hegel. But the Frenchmen were also philosophers?
Perhaps, but you will not find much attention paid them in
formal manuals of philosophy.15
The best of German philosophical writing on Nietzsche has
been of a high order. Books like those of Alois Riehl, Hans
Vaihinger, Raoul Richter, Richard Meyer have, in a good sense,
brought him down to earth, have made him an understand-
able figure.18 These writers must, on the whole, be classed as
gentle Nietzscheans. Even when, as with Vaihinger, they limit
themselves to expounding systematically what Nietzsche wrote
in a rush of words, they tend to tame him a bit, to subdue him to
u
In one of the best — and briefest — critical studies of Nietzsche, Vaihinger
insists that Nietzsche is properly designated a philosopher. But he also makes
the point I have made above, that Montaigne and his company are properly
philosophers. H. Vaihinger, Nietzsche als Philosoph, 15. Here there is no use
disputing about words.
M
A. Riehl, Friedrich Nietzsche, der Künstler und der Denker (1897);
H. Vaihinger, Nietzsche als Philosoph (1902); R. Richter, Friedrich Nietzsche
sein Leben und sein Wer\ (1903); R. W. Meyer, Nietzsche (1913).
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 187

the kind of professional sobriety he himself could never attain —

or put up with. They classify in terms of individualism, collec-
tivism, evolution, epistemology, metaphysics, culture-history,
what Nietzsche had poured out in more concrete, or at least
more poetic, terms. Some of them carry this process to distor-
tion. Richter, for instance, classified Nietzsche as an evolu-
tionist essentially in the Darwinian tradition; his "Will to
Power" becomes a form of the struggle for life as his century
understood that phrase. The Eternal Recurrence, and most of
Nietzsche's metaphysics, can hardly be fitted into such an
interpretation.
These gentlemen are not inclined to approve Nietzsche's
wildest flights and proposals. But on the whole they feel that
in some valuable way he renewed German philosophy, that he
restated fundamental problems fundamentally. They do not
however, like the extremists among the gentle Nietzscheans,
attempt to make him a Christian in spite of himself. They
soften, but they do not bowdlerize him. T o their ranks may
well be added a Frenchman, Henri Lichtenberger, whose little
book on Nietzsche came out in France in 1898. Lichtenberger
knew Germany and its intellectual life so thoroughly that
he fell quite naturally into the professorial interpretation of
Nietzsche.
France is the country which has nursed the gentlest Nie-
tzscheans, and perhaps also the greatest variety of Nietzscheans
of all sorts. It is probably impossible to give a satisfactory ex-
planation of the great interest Frenchmen have shown in the
writings of Nietzsche. 17 Perhaps they were overcome with
admiration at finding a German who wrote like a Frenchman.

" T h e facts are admirably assembled in G. Bianquis, Nietzsche en France

(1929). T h e bibliography, pp. 119-126 is especially useful.
ι88 NIETZSCHE
Many of them were doubtless attracted to Nietzsche by his
violent and well-phrased hatred for Bismarck's new Reich.
Others were impressed with his profundity, his prophetic wis-
dom, his dionysian contempt for stupid geometric "reason" —
in short, with the whole apparatus of Zarathustra, which im-
presses a Frenchman the more because it is utterly incredible
in French. Still others were touched by the sorrows of Nie-
tzsche's life ; here was a martyr to ideas, to the life of the spirit,
a thinker bloody but unbowed. This again has long been a
subject which can bring out to the full the great French capacity
for sentimentality.
In this latter vein is one of the most popular short lives of
Nietzsche, by Daniel Halévy, published in French in 1909 and
shortly thereafter translated into English. This life throbs
throughout with pity. Nietzsche is the great compassionate
one, the tender idealist, embittered by exposure to the vulgarities
and crudities of the expanding Germany of his day, driven to
mockery by his intelligence and his wounded sensibilities,
driven possibly to certain exaggerations. But at heart Nietzsche
is for Halévy a witness to the eternal strength of the human
spirit, a witness against Bismarck, against Moltke, and the great
German industrialists, against Wagner and the vicious pan-
Germanists, against the anti-Semites, against the materialist
successes of the day. Nietzsche follows in the footsteps of
Luther. But Luther was in a worldly way successful. Nie-
tzsche's greatness lies partly in his worldly failure.
The late Charles Andler, however, made something even
more extraordinary — and unrecognizable — out of Nietzsche.
He made him a Socialist. Whether Nietzsche himself, in the
flesh, would have been angrier at being called a Socialist than
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 189
at being called a Christian is a nice question. Since the Socialists
were committed to even more love for the common man than
the Christians of his day, one suspects that he felt a stronger
contempt for Socialists than for Christians, and this in general
is borne out by his writings. Yet Andler could write "one may
legitimately call the system of Nietzsche a socialism." The
Master wanted "a European working-class which would be a
class of masters." 18 Before Andler worked himself up to this
point, he had written four volumes on Nietzsche, in which he
had gradually built up a picture much like that of Halevy's.
Andler's great work is an invaluable source of information
about Nietzsche and his circle. But the man who finally
emerges ffom this huge accumulation of facts looks very little
like the Nietzsche most other men have seen. Nietzsche radical-
socialiste— Nietzsche in the cartel des gauches and the répu-
blique des professeursΡ Surely the Master never meant his
famous phrase, "the transvaluation of all values" to be taken
quite so fantastically ?
Not all Frenchmen have been as innocent about Nietzsche as
Halévy and Andler. André Gide, one of his earliest French
discoverers, seems at first glance to be almost a tough Nie-
tzschean. Joy, not sadness, inspires the man, writes Gide; it is
a mistake to think of him as a destroyer. Yet Gide soon comes
to his own curious formula: Nietzsche is a Jansenist. "Nie-
tzscheanism is at once a manifestation of abundant life . . .
and a tendency which, according to the times, has been called

18
C. Andler, Nietzsche, sa vie et sa pensée, V, 321. Andler was not the
first to call Nietzsche a Socialist. E. Gystrow, in the Sozialistische Monatsheft
for October 1900 wrote ecstatically, "He was one of us!" See F. Mess, Nietzsche
der Gesetzgeber (1930), 183-184.
190 NIETZSCHE
'Jansenism,' or 'Protestantism,' arid which will now be called
Nietzscheanism, because Nietzsche dared formulate to the very
extreme that which was still latently murmuring in it." 19
One of the most thorough jobs of softening Nietzsche's doc-
trines was done by an American, the late W. M. Salter, whose
Nietzsche the Thinner appeared in 1917. Salter is no Andler;
he does not try to make Nietzsche out a lover of his fellow-men,
nor even a primitive Christian. At no one point does he seem
to do much more than quote or paraphrase Nietzsche. Yet the
net impression one gets from Salter's book is of a Nietzsche no
longer very excited or exciting. All the impatience, all the
drum-beating, all the mystic exaltation have disappeared, and
we are left with a wise old gentleman thoughtfully pursuing
àperq and virtù for the good of generations to come.20 Salter
feels constantly obliged to defend the personal qualities of his
hero — his sanity, modesty, honesty, attractiveness, general all-
around balance of character. Nietzsche has to be a sage, and
sages have to be mellow, like Goethe or Emerson. But nothing
can be more certain than that Nietzsche's personal qualities
were most unendearing, that during the decade in which he
wrote his great books he was as unpleasant a person as any
clinical record of literature can show. Nietzsche's greatness
may have come from his more than Promethean suffering; but
it is a tortured, frenetic, shrilly intellectual cry that comes from
his suffering, a cry one does not hear in Salter's conscientious
book.
The English Nietzscheane formed in the earlier years of the
century a devoted band, now rather broken up by time and two
" Gide, Oeuvres complètes, III, 237, "Lettres à Angèle."
™ W . M. Salter, Nietzsche the Thinner, especially p. 375.
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 191
wars against Nietzsche's fatherland. Some of them were, at
least in appearance, tough Nietzscheans. As a band, however,
they tended to support, and spread abroad among literate Eng-
lishmen, the conception of Nietzsche as at bottom a profound
evolutionist, a moralist who really wanted what Herbert
Spencer wanted, peace and plenty, but saw that nineteenth-
century Englishmen weren't getting it very fast. They were a
somewhat disparate and not very popular group, who centered
their work around the eighteen-volume translation of the
Master into English, edited by Oscar Levy. J. M. Kennedy, who
translated some of the volumes, was perhaps their leading
pundit. He published during the War of 1914-1918 a short
volume on Nietzsche, ironically sub-titled "The Mind that
caused the Great War," and aiming to prove that Nietzsche
had in no sense influenced the Germans to make war. That
evil thing Treitschke had done, not Nietzsche. The good
Master, urging force, wrote "with an ideal Europe in mind." 2 1
Kennedy indeed, as did most of the English Nietzscheans, took
the Master's anti-democratic ideas very seriously. Some of
Kennedy's schemes for keeping the lower classes lower sound
almost tough. But so do some of Plato's schemes for achieving
the same end, and no one ever called Plato tough.
The philosophical and the aesthetic strains are the ones most
heard among the gentle Nietzscheans of any country. Brandes,
d'Annunzio, André Gide, Havelock Ellis, otherwise a strange
gathering, are all gentle Nietzscheans who found the Master
first of all a Poet.22 Poets, in spite of the authority of Shelley,

a
J . M. Kennedy, Nietzsche ( 1 9 1 4 ) , 9.
"Ellis's essay on Nietzsche was published in Affirmations (1898) and re-
mains an admirable specimen of the aesthetic touch applied to the Master.
192 NIETZSCHE

are not commonly legislators. Few of the gentle Nietzscheans

have specific programs of reform for a world they feel needs a
spiritual rebirth deeper than any program. Now and then there
are exceptions. Andler and his followers in France have tried
to tie Nietzsche into a popular front. Some of the German
Nietzscheans hoped to translate the Master's ideas into action
in ways not strictly conforming to Nazi achievements. Such,
for instance, is Dr. Mess, who saw Nietzsche as a kind of poten-
tial German Lycurgus, a law-giver who might inspire a code
for a stratified society, a society of Supermen, but not of storm
troopers and Labor Fronts.23
The tradition of Nietzsche as a man of good will, once
established, has continued in spite of the tough Nietzscheans,
and in spite of the identification various interested persons, from
propagandists to philosophers, have tried to make between the
ideas of Nietzsche and the practises of modern German gov-
ernments. It has been largely instrumental in making Nietzsche
a great and respected figure in the world of culture, a figure
about whom a small library has already been written. It has,
especially in the last twenty years, given rise to many admirable
studies, some of which are actually more interested in under-
standing Nietzsche than in defending him. A t long last, Nie-
tzsche's contributions to our knowledge of how human beings
behave have been pointed out and evaluated. Nietzsche's place
in the history of thought has been studied without undue
emphasis on the uniqueness of that place.24 There are signs
a Nietzsche der Gesetzgeber (1930). T h e book is almost, but not quite,
good N a z i doctrine. It is a wonderful example of the Teutonic gift for
spinning endless and exact details — in the air.
" F o r instance, M. Scheler, Über Ressentiment und moralisches Werturteil
(1912); Κ . Joel, Nietzsche und die Romanti\ (1923).
 T H E GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 193

that the gentle Nietzscheans as a sect are dying out. But they
are far from extinct. The increasing use of Nietzsche's name
by the German National Socialists in defense of the way of life
of the Third Reich, the attempt to make of him a kind of John
the Baptist for the Savior Hitler, has infuriated the gentle
Nietzscheans, and made them vocal again. One of them writes:
T h e herald of " T h e Higher M a n , " of the "roaming blond beast," this
aberration from the main line of his productivity, is played up [by the
Nazis] against the "good European," which he remained his whole
life long. . . . He, who appreciated the chivalrous greatness of the
English spirit just as he did the deep leaning to psychology of the Rus-
sians, he the enthusiastic worshipper of Stendhal, the admirer of Sterne,
Heine, Voltaire, is above every suspicion of having glorified Power in the
sense of nationalistic racial arrogance. W h a t final tragic fate it is, that
this martyr of thought, whose life has been an eternal battle against the
traditional and the outworn in his own heart, this actual martyr to
truthfulness, should be held aloft as their approving prophet by the
untruthful of today. 2 5

And a French Nietzschean of the gentlest sort, a follower of

the Left in politics, devotes a whole book to defending the
Master against the wicked calumniators who maintain that
Hitler actually learned from Nietzsche. He begins by remark-
ing that great spirits are always hounded by the pack: for
Socrates the hemlock, for Christ the cross, for others silence,
calumny. Nietzsche has undergone all three forms of persecu-
tion. But like Socrates and Christ . . . The rest is unfortu-
nately not silence.26
25
P. Gutmann, "Nietzsche, The 'Good European,' " Queen's Quarterly
(Spring, 1938), X L V , 21.
se
M. P. Nicolas, De Nietzsche à Hitler (1936), 9. English translation pub-
lished as From Nietzsche Down to Hitler (1937).
194 NIETZSCHE
V
The tough Nietzscheans were at first recruited from literary
and artistic circles, and their toughness was entirely a matter
of words. Early admirers like Brandes were perpetual adoles-
cents in rebellion, on the hunt for new Byrons like themselves.
And here was Nietzsche, by far the best prospective Bryon in a
generation, the best since Heine! Here was a Byron incredibly
mixed with a Buddha. The old line of romantic heroes was
dying out, and some new touch was needed to renew the
popularity of the wicked, defiant rebel, the picturesque egotist,
the scorner of convention, the eternal Artist crucified in a world
of Business Men. Nietzsche gave the nineties a new variation
on the old theme. Gabriele d'Annunzio took him up: Nietzsche
had reached his lowest point.
George Bernard Shaw still looks like a tough Nietzschean,
one of the better ones. He seems to have discovered Nietzsche
around 1894, when he had already made a place for himself in
dramatic and musical criticism. Most of his habits of mind had
already been formed, and it is highly unlikely that Nietzsche
changed Shaw in any important sense. Moreover, as an ardent
Wagnerite, Shaw could not accept one whole side of Nietzsche's
work. Shaw had no gift or stomach for German metaphysics,
and was annoyed by Nietzsche's elaborate distinctions between
Dionysian and Apollinian, and the rest of the German profes-
sor's apparatus which Nietzsche never wholly discarded.
Whether Shaw learned anything of the art of self-advertising
from the author of the chapters on "Why I am so clever" and
"Why I write such good books" in Ecce Homo is perhaps
debatable. Certainly "Man and Superman" owes to Nietzsche
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 195
more than the last word of the title. Shaw on women, Shaw on
middle-class morality, Shaw on Christianity, Shaw on noble
words sounds so much like Nietzsche on these subjects that we
are confronted, if not with a case of influence, at least with a
most touching meeting of noble minds. Shaw was, however,
wiser than some of the French Nietzscheans. The rather vola-
tile set of beliefs he called his socialism he kept fairly well out
of the way of Nietzsche.
Some, if not most of the inner circle of English Nietzscheans
— a circle rather too confining for Shaw — may be classified as
tough in the literary sense. As a lot they look rather seedy,
rather on the unpicturesque side of the lunatic fringe. One of
the best-known of them is Anthony Ludovici, who in younger
days made a specialty of knowing about women. Ludovici
agreed with Nietzsche that women are dangerous and unscrupu-
lous sentimentalists in politics and such high matters, but
sensible and realistic technicians in their proper sphere of family
life. That England should actually propose to give women the
vote was to him a final sign of English decadence. His social
and political ideas are more closely patterned after Nietzsche's
loudest affirmations on such matters than is usual outside Nazi
circles; he was against democracy, industrialism, socialism,
pacifism, feminism, and in general all the fashionable pre-
occupations of English intellectuals of Edwardian times. Like
his Master he was for the rule of the true aristocrats — not the
Cecils or the Howards, of course, nor even the Asquiths and
the Morleys, but the Ludovicis. He went over, consistently
enough, to the Nazis, and wrote in 1937 that Hitler was work-
ing to restore the true "biological" values of mankind, to bring
196 NIETZSCHE
back on earth that pre-Socratic lustiness and innocence the
Master praised as Dionysian.27
Nietzsche crossed the Atlantic with almost as much ease as
he had crossed the Channel. The first decade of the new cen-
tury saw his name familiar to most of our literary scouts. If in
W. M. Salter we produced an admirably tender Nietzschean,
in H. L. Mencken we produced a much more amusing specimen
of the tough Nietzschean. Mr. Mencken's first book was a study
of Nietzsche, published in 1908, when he was still far from the
temporary deanship of American letters to which he was called
in the 1920's. The prose style of the book is subdued, though
now and then one gets a glimpse of the coming Father of the
American language. Mr. Mencken refused to follow Nietzsche
into the Eternal Recurrence, and he had his doubts about some
of Zarathustra's finer moments. But he delighted, in 1908, in
Nietzsche's advice to go to women with a whip, and he shared
to the full Nietzsche's soul-satisfying dislike for the English,
for pious improvers of all sorts, for dull Christian folk, for the
as yet unnamed Babbitts of the world. The book is still one of
the best and liveliest accounts of Nietzsche's ideas taken liter-
ally, cheerfully, and with a fine disregard for the bowing and
scraping to Philosophy and Depth so common in German writ-
ing on Nietzsche.
Another American Nietzschean, the late Willard Huntington
Wright, deserves mention, for he illustrates Nietzsche's peculiar
appeal to the balked intellectual. Wright, who was associated
with Messrs. Mencken and Nathan on the old Smart Set, han-
kered after the good literary life impossible in vulgar America.
" A . Ludovici, "Hitler and Nietzsche," English Review (January and Feb-
ruary 1937), X L I V , 44-52; 192-202.
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 197

H e flourished, but only at the price of becoming S. S. V a n Dine,

and creating the best-seller detective Philo Vance. W r i g h t had
early found consolation in Nietzsche, and before he turned to
pot-boiling he published in 1915 What Nietzsche Taught, a
conscientious summary of the Master, but one so dull, sober
and humorless that it seems almost to be the w o r k of a gentle
Nietzschean.
T o u g h Nietzscheans in the literary tradition are hard to find
in Germany. T h e Germans are an earnest people, and the liter-
ary life is to them more than a consolation or an amusement.
G e r m a n books explaining Nietzsche have unfortunately, since
1889, ceased to be written by Nietzsche himself; the followers
have not the literary gifts of the Master. Theirs are occasionally
good books, but never light books, and they are very frequently
written to prove that Nietzsche's philosophical system is a
happy anticipation of the author's, or that Nietzsche can be
wrapped up in a f e w choice and m o v i n g G e r m a n abstractions
as an "eleusischer Mystagoge, als grosse Erzieher durch Ge-
heimnisse z u m Geheimnis." 2 8
It is true that beneath all the verbiage that learned Germans
have consecrated to Nietzsche in the last forty or fifty years a
reader sufficiently patient and imaginative can distinguish a
kind of ground-swell of sentiment, a ground-swell stronger and
stronger as the triumph of the N a z i s approaches. T h i s is the
identification of Nietzsche with something basically German,
something better than narrow French logic or stupid British
empiricism, something grand and nameless, not so m u c h irra-

** "an Eleusinian Mystagogue, as a great educator through mysteries to the

Mystery." E. Bertram, Nietzsche (1919), 354-355. There is lots more like
this, and better.
198 NIETZSCHE
tional as supra-rational. It is a claim not new in German in-
tellectual history, but it has rarely been made more exorbitantly
or more loosely than by such commentators on Nietzsche as
Ludwig Klages, for whom Nietzsche was the great pioneer in
transferring the current of living thought from dead logic to
the living unconscious.29 From a reasonably gentle aesthetic
Nietzscheanism to a tough if rather ecstatic Nietzscheanism,
the course in Germany is clear. Vaihinger, Riehl, and Richter
gave place to Klages and Bertram. The really tough Nietzsche-
ans are not far off. They are no longer nice professors.
The tough Nietzscheans in contemporary Germany are gen-
erally the people who try to use Nietzsche's ideas in actual life,
the politicians, the journalists, the educators of the triumphant
revolutionary party that came to power in 1933. The need and
therefore the test of actually applying in concrete cases their
fine notions have never confronted the lively Nietzscheans of
other countries. Mr. Ludovici in power is simply not conceiv-
able. Mr. Shaw in power, at the height of his maturity, is just
barely within the bounds of human imagination. One suspects
that his actions would have been those of an Anglo-Irish gentle-
man, not those of a tough Nietzschean. As for Mr. Mencken,
he is not in any sense a political figure. But were he magically
given power, one suspects that he would have left the "boob-
oisie" unpurged. In other words, even with the liveliest of our
tough Nietzscheans outside Germany, ideas flow on in a more
than academic irresponsibility. Not so in contemporary Ger-
many. There important people profess to be guided in action by

"See S. Aberdam, "Nietzsche et le 3 me Reich," Mercure de France (15

April, 1937), CCLXXV, 232. Aberdam adds, "The influence of Klages on the
mystagogs of Nazism is difficult to exaggerate."
 THE GROWTH OF A REPUTATION 199
Nietzsche, not the martyred Nietzsche of Halévy and Andler,
but the triumphant Nietzsche of Zarathustra, "glowing and
strong, like a morning sun coming out of gloomy mountains."
These are Nietzscheans such as we have not yet seen; they are
worth a separate chapter.
 CHAPTER Vili

NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS

T H E earliest disciples and lovers of Nietzsche were, as we

have seen, all intellectuals who drew a pure intellectual
joy from their Master's work. There was a joy in knowing you
were a master-man among the slave-men of the herd. But the
knowledge was enough. You didn't go about spitting in the
faces of the herd, or beating their flanks, or trying to stampede
them. As a matter of fact, you kept as far away from them as
possible, savoring your superiority. Even when, fairly shortly,
there arose the division between gentle Nietzscheans and tough
Nietzscheans, the Master was still regarded by both sorts of
followers as essentially a poet, a consolation and inspiration for
the few, a philosopher in the great and happily useless tradition
of philosophy.
It is true that from the very first some critics of Nietzsche
paid him the clear compliment — or is it a dubious one ? — of
assuming he meant what he said. These critics were in the
early days almost all bitterly opposed to Nietzsche, may, indeed,
well be labelled anti-Nietzschean. They did not like what they
understood him to mean. When he wrote in praise of immoral-
ism, when he praised cruelty, lying, treachery, they understood
him to mean that he thought it good for some men to be cruel,
dishonest, tricky. When he wrote rejoicingly about the "blonde
beast," they thought he was actually exulting about the blood-
shed and rapine achieved by flesh-and-blood German soldiers.
 NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 201
When he wrote that war is good, they took him to mean by
war real fighting in which men get killed and maimed, and by
good that he approved of it. When he wrote of herd-men and
slaves they held he must have meant men like themselves, if not
men like you and me. That his followers should deny this the
anti-Nietzschean critics considered annoying, but not surprising.
Indeed, one anti-Nietzschean who wrote as early as 1899 felt
that the Nietzscheane were applying to the work of their Master
an exegetical skill and impertinence worthy of the Bible itself.1
The outbreak of the Four Years' War in 1914 gave the anti-
Nietzscheans something concrete to point to as a product of
Nietzsche's wicked doctrines. Yet there is little to indicate that
these doctrines in their original sources were ever taken up by
the small group that made policy under William II. No doubt
numbers of young Germans had read their Nietzsche, and may
have got partly from him a resolve to be hard, realistic, aggres-
sive, not the metaphysical, sentimental, music-loving beer-
drinkers of tradition. Yet no organized group, either of
intellectuals or of politicians, had as yet taken up Nietzsche,
save only the hopelessly impractical and faithful workers of the
Nietzsche-Archiv. Any influence Nietzsche may have had in
producing what seems, in comparison with Hitler, the modest
little aggression of William II, is imponderable if not doubtful.
For once, we may perhaps grant that the Nietzscheans, both
gentle and tough, were right in their indignant replies to the
accusation that Nietzsche brought on the war in 1914.
The accusation was made in many forms and in many diflfer-

1
0 . Henne am Rhyn, Anti-Zarathustra (1899), IX. Henne am Rhyn
was especially grieved by a gentle Nietzschean who had asserted that Nietzsche
preached "Freedom and the Dignity of Woman."
202 NIETZSCHE

ent organs, from The Times to popular broadsheets. The Eng-

lish were most vocal, with the French much less certain that
Nietzsche was worth blaming when there were plenty of live
Germans to attack. In the first few months of the war, Nie-
tzsche, Treitschke, and von Bernhardi were linked together in
British propaganda as mainly responsible for working the Ger-
mans, leaders and led alike, up to an immoral lust for conquest
never yet seen on this earth. Dr. Oscar Levy, who had edited
the English edition of Nietzsche, then just completed in eighteen
volumes, reports that he found one morning on his doorstep a
copy of "The Scotsman" containing a leader attacking Nietzsche
as a ruthless preacher of violence, on which someone had
indignantly written in ink "You have brought this poison to
England." He adds that in one Piccadilly bookshop window a
bookseller had spread out all eighteen volumes with a large
sign "The Euro-Nietzschean War. Read the Devil in order to
fight him better." 2 Even Punch took up the cudgels, and
announced that "One touch of Nietzsche makes the whole
world sin." Dr. Levy seems to have taken this pun seriously;
but the inner circle of the English Nietzscheans always were a
beleaguered lot, well fortified against puns.
The little band around Dr. Levy stood by their principles —
or illusions — and insisted that Nietzsche loathed the German
Empire and would have loathed Schrec\lich\eit. Havelock
Ellis also, putting out a second edition of his Affirmations early
in 1915, stated the position of the gentle Nietzscheans as clearly
and as innocently as it has ever been stated.

"O. Levy, "Nietzsche im Krieg," Die weissen Blätter (1919), VI, 277-278.
This article contains a good list of those who attacked and those who de-
fended Nietzsche in relation to "war-guilt."
 NIETZSCHE A N D THE NAZIS 203
The idea of Power and the idea of War both entered into the work —
the later work, it is important to remember — of Nietzsche. But in his
hands they became spiritualized and transformed. Power was no longer
the force of success in this world, and War was no longer a method of
overcoming mere human enemies, but both alike belonged to the sphere
of the evolving soul. . . . My study of Nietzsche is not a study of the
Nietzsche of the moment but of the essential and significant Nietzsche.3

It is remarkable that Ellis refrained from adding the "eternal

Nietzsche." He probably thought it unnecessary. Even in
war-guilty Germany, the followers of Nietzsche refused to be-
lieve him in any way responsible for the war. Professor Messer
of Giessen used almost the same words as Ellis.
The chapter Of War and Warriors' [in Zarathustra] is to be taken
throughout as based on a spiritual sense of War — He who will take the
trouble to sound the depths of Nietzsche's ideal of the Superman, will
find there something quite other than mere worship of the 'physically
strong man.' 4

This line of defense has been continued to the present day,

whenever the acts of a German government seemed to illustrate
simple exercise of the Will to Power. When Nietzsche praised
war, the argument runs, he meant a nice spiritual War, not a
bloody one. Another line of apology has been the old assertion
that Nietzsche was a poet, that his work has solely an aesthetic
significance. Still another argument rests fundamentally on the
assertion that Nietzsche was in no sense a German nationalist,
that he was a good European who would have condemned the
march into Belgium. This position can be backed by citing
Nietzsche's biting criticisms of everything and everybody suc-
" Ellis, Affirmations, Preface to the second edition, xii.
4
A. Messer, "Nietzsche und der Militarismus," Frankfurter Zeitung,
15 Oct 1914. .
204 NIETZSCHE

cessful in late nineteenth-century Germany. Some of what was

successful in 1890 was still successful in Germany in 1914, so
Nietzsche can readily be quoted in condemnation. He wrote
much against Germany and the Germans, against nationalism,
against anti-semitism, against intellectuals. In a positive sense
it is harder to find anything in Nietzsche to gainsay those who
insist that he preaches violence and aggression. He wrote very
little in favor of the milder virtues. The gentle Nietzscheans
delight, however, to point out that personally he was in no sense
frightful, that he lived simply, indeed ascetically, that he looks,
in short, more and more like a saint as we gaze on him more
steadily — and from a greater distance. They delight in such
stories as the one about how, during the first onset of madness
in Turin, he saw a poor old nag maltreated by its driver, rushed
out in the street, and, weeping, threw his arms around the poor
creature's neck. 5 Surely, the gentle Nietzscheans say, a man
who could behave this way was at heart a kindly soul, and no
militarist.
Freud had not yet become fashionable save in very forward-
looking circles in 1914, and the study of semantics was still in
the stage of infancy. About all the anti-Nietzscheans could do
in rebuttal to the above arguments was to reiterate that they
thought the actions of the Kaiser illustrated the Will to Power,
and that the Germans who were doing such unspeakable things
in Belgium were examples of the "wrath of the blond Teuton
beast." As the war went on, Nietzsche, Treitschke, and von
Bernhardi tended to fade out of the picture a bit, to be replaced
by more immediate matters. They were revived again in their
full horror in the middle of the war, when it became necessary
to key the Americans up to the fight.
1 Podach, Nietzsches Zusammenbruch, 82.
 NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 205
Nictzsche's role in the Four Years' War is, however, for vari-
ous reasons less interesting and less enlightening for us today
than his role in the contemporary German revolution. The
Nazi revolution was produced partly by the activities of a
relatively small group, the National Socialist Party and its
leaders, whose professions of faith are much easier to determine
than the vaguer hopes that spread through all classes of Ger-
mans in the years before 1914. Nietzsche's thought was revolu-
tionary in many senses of that inexact word, and its currency
can best be tested in a revolutionary period. The year 1933 saw
a real revolution in Germany, a revolution in which men defi-
nitely appealed to the words of Nietzsche, among others, for
justification. The year 1914 did not see a revolution in Germany.
Neither, as we can now see, did 1918. At most the Four Years'
War and the Weimar Constitution began a long disturbance in
German life, the end of which we cannot yet predict. Nietzsche
was in 1914 brought into court by British propagandists anxious
to paint the Germans as black as possible; he was not in Ger-
many itself appreciably more conspicuous than he had been
before.6 Since the rise of Hitler, however, the philosopher has
been talked of and written about as one of the Early Fathers of
National Socialism. The problem of Nietzsche's relations to the
Four Years' War is then but an introduction to that of his role
in Germany today, a sample of the difficulties among which we
must now try to thread our way. At the very least, the facts of
Nietzsche's vogue in Nazi Germany are much clearer than the
facts of his vogue in the Germany of 1914.
' T h e current war has seen in allied countries and in America a mild
revival of the old argument that Nietzsche is to blame for everything evil in
German actions. Witness, for example, the following headlines: "Hitler War
Urge Blamed on Insane Philosopher: Nietzsche Nazi Chiefs Favorite Author,
Catholic Women Told," Boston Evening Transcript, April 24, 1940.
206 NIETZSCHE

II
National Socialism, like almost all successful revolutionary
movements, has in it elements which are also found in religious
bodies. One of these is the possession of holy writings. The
National Socialist canon is not yet completed, has not yet indeed
reached even the rough state of fixity attained by wholly estab-
lished religions. This is perhaps no more than to say that Na-
tional Socialism is still a growing and active faith. Mein Kampf
is already the central piece of the Nazi canon; but Hitler's
gospel needs some reinforcing. It needs antecedents, and if pos-
sible antecedents that will give it a philosophical respectability
it does not in itself seem — especially to the unconverted — to
have. Gobineau, H. S. Chamberlain, Treitschke, Spengler,
Alfred Rosenberg have all made their contributions to the
articles of faith. Nietzsche, too, has been drafted into service.
There can be no doubt that there is being made by important
people in contemporary Germany a conscious effort to enlist
Nietzsche as one of the pillars of the Nazi society.
The books and articles published on Nietzsche in Nazi Ger-
many are in themselves quite adequate evidence that such an
effort is being made. It should be clear from what has already
been said in this study about the vogue of Nietzsche since the
mid-nineties that there is nothing new in the mere fact that
articles and books on the Master keep appearing. But hitherto,
especially in Germany, such writing has been mainly addressed
to scholars, philosophers, lovers of the beautiful; and even when
it has been directed at popularizing the Master, it has been the
work of gentle Nietzscheans. What is striking in the Nietzsche
literature of the last dozen years in Germany is the emergence
 NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 207
of short popular books expressly intended to make Nietzsche
clear to ordinary literate Germans, and to show just how his
ideas fit into the Nazi völkische Weltanschauung?
Fair samples of such books are Alfred Baeumler's Nietzsche
der Philosoph und Politiker (Nietzsche the Philosopher and
Political Thinker), published in 1931 in Reclams Universal-
Bibliothe\, which is a sort of German equivalent of our Home
University Library; Hans Prinzhorn's Nietzsche und das XX
Jahrhundert (Nietzsche and the Twentieth Century), which in
1928 already anticipates official Nazi interpretations of Nie-
tzsche's work; Dr. Gottlieb Scheuffler's Friedrich Nietzsche im
Dritten Reich (Friedrich Nietzsche in the Third Reich), pub-
lished late in 1933, in celebration of the linking of the spiritual
children of Nietzsche, the two great natural aristocrats, Hitler
and Mussolini; Richard Oehler's Friedrich Nietzsche und die
deutsche Zukunft (Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Fu-
ture), published in 1935; and the handbook which Heinrich
Haertle brought out in 1937 under the title of Nietzsche und
der Nationalsozialismus (Nietzsche and National Socialism).
This last went into a second edition in 1939. Nietzsche's name
appears frequently in current German periodicals, and by no
means solely in philosophical and other learned journals. Here
again it is clear that the writers are working to impress Nie-
tzsche into the service of the new Nazi society.8
7
A good Nazi writer says this specifically: "And now it has come about
that the hitherto purely learned interest in the philosopher Nietzsche has
been broadened into love and reverence towards the man." F. Erdmann, in
the Ostdeutsche Monatshefte (1936), XVIII, 515. Erdmann is reviewing the
first volumes of the historisch-britische Ausgabe of Nietzsche. He adds that
now everything of Nietzsche must be printed. His work has become too
sacred for mere editors to pick and choose from it.
"For instance, "Nietzsche und wir" (Nietzsche and Ourselves), by M. O.
2o8 NIETZSCHE
The Historisch-\ritische Gesamtausgabe of the works and the
letters of Nietzsche is coming along slowly with the aid of
the Nietzsche-Archiv in Weimar. It is being undertaken with
the care, reverence, and detail given usually only to great men
of letters or great prophets. The four volumes of the works so
far issued reach only to Nietzsche's days as a student at Leipzig
— they are all, in fact, mere juvenilia or philological apprentice-
work and notes. Apparently any scrap of paper on which he
traced his childish fancies or student needs seems to the editors
worth reprinting. The war has undoubtedly slowed up this
edition, but only a catastrophe will stop it. As a thorough edi-
torial job — and also, though this must be an accident, some-
what in format and general appearance — this Gesamtausgabe
resembles another famous Gesamtausgabe that used to come out
of Germany before 1933, that of Marx and Engels. There may
be something symbolic here.
Finally, the Fuehrer himself has publicly gone on record as
having learned from Nietzsche. Hitler does not specifically
mention Nietzsche among the authors he read in his Vienna
days of unemployment, but it seems quite likely that many of
Nietzsche's notions filtered down to him second-hand even
before he went actively into politics. Since the revolution of
1933, Hitler has made several public visits to the Nietzsche-

Johannes in Hammer for January 1938 [ H a m m e r is a well-known anti-semitic

organ]; "Nietzsche über Staat und V o l k " (Nietzsche on State and F o l k ) , by
Κ . Kassler in Deutschlands Erneuerung, Vol. X X ( 1 9 3 4 ) ; F . Dehn's "Nie-
tzsches Prophetie der Gottlosigkeit" (Nietzsche's Prophecy of Atheism) in
Die Furche, vol. X X I I I ( 1 9 3 7 ) ; O. Haug, "Nietzsche und das Judentum"
(Nietzsche and Jewry) in Weltkampf, Vol. X I V ( 1 9 3 7 ) . H e has penetrated
even into the trade journals: see Stahl und Eisen (Steel and Iron) for 1935,
56th Jahrgang, II, 772.
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 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 209

Archiv in Weimar and has had himself photographed there.

One of these photographs, printed as the frontispiece in Richard
Oehler's Nietzsche und die deutsche Zukunft, may have quite
unintentional symbolism. It shows the Fuehrer in profile,
staring with an expression of bilious and determined reverence
at a bust of the Master. But though Hitler's face is fully shown,
the photographer cut Nietzsche's in half, leaving one stone
mustache curving off into nothing.
The Nietzsche-Archiv itself, as custodian of the Master's
tradition, has not hesitated to identify itself with the "world
revolution" of the Fascists and the Nazis. Elizabeth, then a very
old lady, actually had the Archiv send Mussolini on his fiftieth
birthday the following telegram:
T o the noblest disciple of Zarathustra, whom Nietzsche had dreamed
of, the inspired re-awakener of aristocratic values in Nietzsche's sense,
the Nietzsche-Archiv sends in deepest respect and admiration the warmest
good wishes.®

The professional Nietzscheans can hardly contain themselves.

Their hero has now come into his own. Even the academic
Nietzscheans — the academic ones who are good Nazis — burst
into ecstasy. "And when we call out to this youth, marching
under the swastika: Heil Hitler! — at the same time we greet
with this call Friedrich Nietzsche!" 1 0
Yet liberal and cultivated Germans, gentle Nietzscheans by
education, are still reluctant to admit that Hitler owes anything
personally to Nietzsche's work — even to Nietzsche's work
misinterpreted. One of them writes from exile in Massachusetts:

' G . Scheuffler, Friedrich Nietzsche im Dritten Reich (1933), 7.

MA. Baeumler, "Nietzsche und der Nazionalsozialismus," in his Studien
zur deutsche Geistesgeschichte (1937), 294.
210 NIETZSCHE
Nothing is more absurd than to see in him [Hitler] a disciple of
Nietzsche, the philosopher of "the hammer." . . . "The hammer" of
which Nietzsche wrote was the hammer of antiquity, the other which
Hitler swings is the hammer of Thor.11

It is, indeed, likely that Wagner's direct influence on Hitler

personally is much greater than Nietzsche's. But, justly or un-
justly, the makers of public opinion in Nazi Germany have
called Nietzsche to their aid. Of that there can be no doubt.
They are, as we shall see, quite capable of putting Thor's
hammer and a lot of other old Germanic war-gear in Nie-
tzsche's hânds.
Nietzsche, then, has been admitted into the Nazi pantheon,
and his works have become a part of Nazi education. The num-
ber and popular nature of recent German works on his life and
writings are facts which make this clear. Indeed, Haertle in the
introduction to the second edition of his little handbook on
Nietzsche and National Socialism is evidently a little irritated
by the continued existence of remnants of old-fashioned, aes-
thetic, perhaps even gentle, Nietzscheans. He is writing for no
"Nietzsche-circle," but for Nazi youth. He is making "an at-
tempt to render Nietzsche's spiritual treasure fruitful for the
development of the national socialistic attitude towards the
world" (nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung — a quite un-
translatable phrase). "I do not," he continues, "belong to any
group of esoteric devotees of Nietzsche; I wish merely to show
the worth of Nietzsche as a great ally in the spiritual warfare
of the present age." 12
Many others agree with Haertle as to that worth. We need

Auernheimer, Raoul, Prince Metternich (New York: 1940), p. viii.

11

"Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus, 2. Auflage (1939), 7.

 NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 211
not here attempt to fathom their reasons. On the surface it is
clear that Nietzsche brings to the miscellaneous and unimpres-
sive collection of works which make up the Nazi holy writings
an element otherwise almost lacking in them. For Nietzsche,
hated though he may be, is yet commonly accepted in the
Western world as a person who counts, as a sensitive artist, a
master of German prose, a philosopher, a Great Mind. No
such distinction has yet been conferred by the outside world
upon the race-theorists, the anti-Semites, the crank sociologists
and philosophers of history of the Hitlerite movement. Rosen-
berg, the most favored intellectual of the movement, seems
hardly more respectable, more sérieux in comparison with the
long tradition of Western thought, than Hitler himself. As for
Mein Kampf, however holy it might seem to the faithful, to
outsiders it is at the very mildest a book lacking in the final
distinctions of literary form and philosophical penetration. It
too is the book of a crank, a man outside the pale. With. Nie-
tzsche, however, the Nazis have been able to acquire, if not
respectability, at least distinction. Nietzsche belongs.

Ill
Nazi exegetes have been obliged to quote Nietzsche directly
and exactly — in these days of cheap printing, simple falsifying
of such texts is difficult. It should be plain, even from the
necessarily brief and schematic outline of Nietzsche's ideas
given in previous chapters of this study, that they can find
much in the Master which they can appropriate directly for
their own uses. Whatever their ultimate destiny, the Nazis are
revolutionists, and they are revolting against a society Nietzsche
had earlier revolted against. A good Nazi curls his lips as
212 NIETZSCHE

scornfully around the word "bourgeois" as any Marxist does.

Nietzsche's contempt for the nineteenth century and all its
works, his attacks on Christianity, on humanitarian movements,
on parliamentary government, that "destructive" part of his
writings which in verve and clarity is the best of his work —
all this is just what the convinced Nazi wants to hear.
Democracy has in all ages been the form under which organizing strength
has perished. . . . Liberalism, or the •transformation of mankind into
cattle. . . . Modern democracy is the historic form of the decay of the
state. . . . The two opposing parties, the socialist and the national — or
whatever they may be called in the different countries of Europe — are
worthy of each other; envy and laziness are the motive powers in each
of them. . . . The equality of souls before God, this lie, this screen for
the rancunes of all the baseminded, this anarchist bomb of a concept,
which has become the last revolution, the modern idea and principle of
the destruction of the whole social order — this is Christian dynamite. 13

There is also much in Nietzsche that helps to picture, with

proper vagueness, the new society which, like all revolution-
aries, the National Socialists are sure they are building. If the
old society was parliamentarian, pacific, at least in hope, tol-
erant of individual differences, devoted — at least in principle
— to free speech and other civil rights, and contented with an
unheroic and comfortable present, the new society will be
authoritarian, militant, contemptuous of such outmoded eight-
eenth-century notions as those of natural rights and individual
happiness, a society harsh and heroic, a new Sparta of Super-
men. Nietzsche's praise of war and the soldier is already a
commonplace:
The future of German culture rests with the sons of Prussian officers.
. . . Peace and letting other people alone — this is not a policy for which

Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes in a War with the Age," §39, 38;
u

Human, All Too Human, Part I, § 472, 480; Antichrist, § 62.

 N I E T Z S C H E A N D T H E NAZIS 213
I have any respect whatever. T o dominate (herrschen) and to help the
highest thought to victory — that would be the only thing that could
interest me in Germany. . . . The same discipline makes the soldier
and the scholar efficient; and, looked at more closely, there is no true
scholar who has not the instincts of the true soldier in his veins. . . .
Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars — and the short peace more
than the long. . . . War and courage have done more things than
charity. Not your sympathy but your bravery hath hitherto saved the
victims. . . , 1 4

Now and then in the midst of Nietzsche's aphorisms there

stands out a passage that might have been written today —
has, indeed, been written a hundred times today:
Is it not high time, now that the type "gregarious animal" is develop-
ing ever more and more in Europe, to set about rearing, thoroughly
artificially, and consciously, an opposite type, and to attempt to establish
the latter's virtues? And would not the democratic movement itself
find for the first time a sort of goal, salvation, and justification, if someone
appeared who availed himself of it — so that at last, beside its new and
sublime product, slavery (for this must be the end of European democ-
racy) that higher species of ruling and Caesarian spirits might also be
produced, a kind of men who would stand upon it, hold to it, and
would elevate themselves through it? This new race would climb aloft
to new and hitherto impossible things, to a broader vision, and to its
task on earth. 18

The Fuehrerprinzip has nowhere been better stated. Here,

notably, is an ambiguity useful, if also dangerous, to Nazi
leaders. "Caesarian" suggests that the superiors are very few
and rule over Germans as well as other peoples; "race" suggests
that they are fairly numerous, and that all Germans may
"climb aloft" over the inferior peoples without the Gospel.
The Nazis can also find support for their current racial doc-

" Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 14, 17; Will to Power,
§ 912; Zarathustra, Part I, chap. 10.
"The'Will to Power, §954.
214 NIETZSCHE

trines in the work of Nietzsche. One passage is especially

famous, since Allied propaganda in the Four Years' War
singled it out:
It is impossible not to recognize at the core of all these aristocratic races
the beast of prey; the magnificent blonde brute, avidly rampant for
spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time —
the Roman, Arabic, German, and Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes,
the Scandinavian Vikings, are all alike in this need. It is the aristocratic
races who have left the idea "Barbarian" on all the tracks in which they
have marched. . . . T h e profound, icy mistrust which the German pro-
vokes as soon as he arrives at power, even at the present time, is always
still an aftermath of that inextinguishable horror with which for whole
centuries Europe has regarded the wrath of the blonde Teuton beast.1®

Haertle quotes this passage with explicit approval in his hand-

book, and stops short, as do most tough Nietzscheans who quote
it, at the "blond Teuton beast." Actually Nietzsche continued,
. . although between the old Germans and ourselves there
exists scarce a psychological, let alone a physical, relationship."
This suppression is indicative of one of the ways in which
Nietzsche can be adapted for direct political use in the Third
Reich. 17
There is even more concretely apposite material for Nazi
educators in Nietzsche. There is no doubt that the Master
dabbled in notions of Rassenhygiene (race-hygiene). He wrote
a good deal about the degeneration of the European upper-
classes, which he thought came from the reckless breeding of
true noble families with those who had succeeded in such
vulgar pursuits as business, banking, the law and medicine. His

" Genealogy of Morals, Part I, § n . Note that already in 1883, the Japanese
are apparently "honorary Aryans."
17 Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus, 6ι.
 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 215
views, especially in so far as they depend on a knowledge of
genetics, are not as unzeitgemässe as he liked to think. Nie-
tzsche accepts the notion of blended inheritance in its simpler
forms. Occasionally he comes very close indeed to the Nazi
program, as in the following recommendations in a matter of
which he probably had less actual experience than is usual,
even among German philosophers:
Concerning the future of marriage — A super-tax on inherited property,
a long term of military service for bachelors. . . . Privileges of all sorts
for fathers who lavish boys upon the world, and perhaps plural votes
as well. A medical certificate as a condition of marriage, endorsed by
the parochial authorities, on which a series of questions addressed to the
parties and the medical officers must be answered ("family histories").
A s a counter-agent to prostitution, or as its ennoblement, I would recom-
mend leasehold marriages, to last for a term of years or months, with
adequate provision for the children. 18

Scattered through Nietzsche's work is a good deal of material

suitable for anti-semitic use. Nietzsche himself had Jewish
friends — if one may use the word friendship of any relation
between Nietzsche and another human being — ançl some Jew-
ish writers have for years been among the most ardent and
uncritical of Nietzscheans. Yet most of the stock of profes-
sional anti-semitism is represented in Nietzsche: the Jews are
intellectuals with a grievance, hence destroyers of what makes
for stability in society; they run the press and the stock-
exchange, to the disadvantage of the slower-witted but more
honest and healthy Gentiles; they are parasites, decadents; they
are responsible for the three great evils of modern civilization
— Christianity, Democracy, Marxism. 19
u
Will to Power, § 733.
u
För examples, see The Joyftd Wisdom, §301; Twilight of the Idols,
216 NIETZSCHE

Even when Nietzsche is trying his best, according to his own

standards, to be fair to the Jews, to be moderate and even-
tempered, he provides good ammunition for Nazi leaders, who
have only to excise a few of his qualifying phrases. Take for
instance one of his most famous and often-quoted passages on
the Jewish question:
I have never yet met a German who was favorably inclined to the
Jews: and however decided the repudiation of actual anti-semitism may
be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy
is not perhaps directed against the nature of sentiment itself, but only
against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and
infamous expression of this excess of sentiment: — on this point we
must not deceive ourselves. That Germany has amply sufficient Jews,
that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will
long have difficulty) in disposing of this quantity of "Jew" — as the
Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have done by means of a
stronger digestion: — that is the unmistakable declaration and language
of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which
one must act. "Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially
towards the East (also towards Austria) !" 2 0

Nietzsche, then, fits into National Socialist needs both in what

he damned and in what he praised. He damned democracy,
pacifism, individualism, Christianity, humanitarianism, both
as abstract ideals and as, in some vague way, actual descriptions
of modern European society. He praised authority, racial pu-
rity, the warrior spirit and practise, the stern life and the great
health, and urged upon his fellow-citizens a complete break
with their bad old habits and ideas. The spirit in which he

Part IV, §26; Will to Power, § 184, 864; Beyond Good and Evil, §251; and
especially Antichrist, 24-27.
Beyond Good and Evil, § 251. Clearly a discerning Nazi would need
to make suppressions here, but the substance is good Nazi doctrine.
 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 217

urged this break, and the book which he hoped would be the
bible of the new dispensation, are both worth our attention
here. It may well be that the relatively concrete hatreds and
hopes we have just been outlining are more fundamental in
current Nazi education than such Nietzschean abstractions as
the "transvaluation of all values," the "Superman" and the
"Will to Power," or such Nietzschean poetic and prophetic
strains as resound in Also sprach Zarathustra; none the less,
both Nietzsche's metaphysics and his prophetic writings are
popular in contemporary Germany, and throw additional light
on the nature of National Socialist plans for the Good Society.
In fact, most of Nietzsche's grand abstract terms, though
they can be given a variety of interpretations, contain overtones,
implications, admirably suited to Nazi uses. The famous phrase
"Will to Power" suggests ruthlessness, aggression, a policy of
expansion perfectly illustrated since Hitler's accession to power.
The concept of a new race of Supermen, though Nietzsche
himself left it as obscure in form and in detail as are most such
eschatological concepts of recent invention, has proved very
flattering to an aspiring Nazi elite, who have considered that
they were at least making possible the development of a new
race of men. 21
This most famous Nietzschean doctrine is, however, danger-
ous as well as useful for the purposes of Nazi leaders. It does,
as we have seen, sketch out a Fuehrerprinzip·, but it also sug-
gests an inner conflict which may give them real trouble.
Hitler himself does not conceal that he shares the contempt for

31 This notion is strong in Oehler, Nietzsche und die Deutsche Zukunft,

and is discernible even in so restrained a book as Haertle's Nietzsche und der
Nationalsozialismus.
2i8 NIETZSCHE
the masses which is an essential part of the Nietzschean doctrine.
Such scorn is clear in the famous chapter on "War Propa-
ganda" in Mein Kampf and in the exposition of the Fuehrer-
prinzip in the chapter on Persönlichkeit und völkischer Staats-
gedan\e. The organization of the State "must in itself be the
embodiment of the endeavor to put the heads above the masses
and to subject the masses to the heads," since the masses are
"incapable of thinking (nicht denkjähig) or incapable of doing
so competently," but can attain what is best for them "only
under the leadership of those whom Nature has endowed with
special gifts." 2 2
And yet, surely eighty million Germans cannot be regarded
as mere members of the herd, subject to slave-morality! What
good is Aryan supremacy if only a chosen few are to share it ?
The fact is that, however attractive Nietzsche's rather intellec-
tualized and ascetic ideas of aristocratic leadership may be to
Nazi leaders, they are hard to adapt to the popular teaching of
a party which has carefully preserved the word "socialist" in its
official name. Official Nazi propaganda, in the midst of Kraft
durch Freude and Labor Fronts, cannot prudently dilate upon
the theme that ignoble workers exist only for the sake of the
Supermen above them. Clearly, there are problems in adapting
Nietzsche to the common men he loathed so vocally.28
The "transvaluation of all values" is a phrase admirably revo-

" Hitler, Mein Kampf (1932), 497.

" Haertle is fully aware of this difficulty. Nietzsche, he admits, "denies
democracy in itself." This will not do. "Historical experience and the [ N a z i ]
organic idea of the Vol\ make it impossible for us to follow Nietzsche here."
But, Haertle continues, Nietzsche was absolutely right in his uncompromising
struggle against the vicious liberal Egalitäts-Demo\ratie of the West. Haertle,
Nietzsche und der Nazionalsozialismus, 23.
 N I E T Z S C H E A N D T H E NAZIS 2ig

lutionary in character. Indeed, Nietzsche was obsessed with

the desire for a catastrophic renewing of the world for which
the word "revolution" is much too mild. As to what could be
done to achieve this renewal, this transformation, Nietzsche
was appropriately vague. Nonetheless, as an attack on what
may be roughly called Christian values, Nietzsche's work is one
of the most thorough ever made. It seemed in his day — and
still seems — much fresher and more effective than the usual
complaints of weary nineteenth-century Voltaireans or posi-
tivists, or even of Marxians, since it was directed not merely
against the theological dogmas but the moral temper and basic
values of Christianity. The Nazis have found in his philosophy
a much better base for sniping at organized Christianity than
in mere conventional free-thinking, partly because it goes so
well with Nazi scorn for so "Latin" (or "Jewish") an activity
as reason.
Positively, they have had a hard time finding much help in
Nietzsche in their task of restoring Thor and Woden to German
worship. Amongst so much else, Nietzsche did throw ofi vari-
ous remarks in praise of the dionysian spirit of the early Ger-
mans, and commentators like Baeumler have embroidered
these remarks and for all, and rather more than all, they are
worth.24 However doubtful and obscure Nietzsche's own "Ger-
manismus" may have been the Nazis can see it clearly now.
And what is more important, they find Nietzsche's spirit use-
fully contagious. The passion for remaking, for renewing, the
desire to be born again, which is found in all great revolutionary
movements, and especially among the revolutionary elite, finds
"Baeumler, Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker, especially Part II,
section ι, "Germanische Grundhaltung."
220 NIETZSCHE
among the Nazis a justification and a vocabulary in the words
of Nietzsche.
Zarathustra has long been the most read of Nietzsche's books,
in Germany and out. It is an obscure and deliberately prophetic
book. Yet the long white robes, prophetic beard, and phospho-
rescent glance of Zarathustra, though, to anyone with eyes
trained to look distrustingly on prophets, they look like the
stage-trappings they are, have unquestionably helped Nietzsche
to his present prestige in a Germany made by post-war diffi-
culties a place increasingly suitable for the activities of prophets.
Zarathustra does not have a program. He never comes out in
the open with a specific suggestion for reform. But most of the
ideas Nietzsche works out more sharply in his more analytical
books appear in Also sprach Zarathustra, impressively shrouded
in poetic inspiration. Here Nietzsche trumpets loudly his great-
est discovery: "God is dead!" Here he calls out: "I teach you
the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. . . .
What is the ape to man ? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
And just the same shall man be to Superman, a laughing-stock,
a thing of shame. . . . Verily a polluted stream is man. One
must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming
impure. Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him
can your great contempt be submerged." Now and then a
passage or two stands out, ready for immediate use as a Nazi
text: "No people could live without first valuing; if a people
will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbor
valueth." 25 Zarathustra sounds as far-off as any Hebrew
prophet, and much more unreal. All the better for Nazi use.
The vagueness, the dithyrambic energy, the mantic arts, the
* Thus Spaile Zarathustra, Prologue, chaps, ii, iii; Part I, chap. xv.
 NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 221
tortured rhetoric of Nietzsche-Zarathustra seem able to move
men in a way no concrete proposals at the level of mere laws
or arrangements ever can move them.

IV
So much for what the Nazis find good and immediately
quotable in the work of Nietzsche. There is all told a very
great deal of it, especially in The Will to Power and in some
of the unpublished fragments which Baeumler has published
under the title The Innocence of Becoming?* Yet there is a lot
more that it would be indiscreet, and indeed dangerous, to
announce publicly in Germany today without very careful
attribution to Nietzsche, and some very ingenious explanation
to boot. Here are a few passages of the sort that the gentle
Nietzscheans have been flinging back at the tough ones for
forty years:
The Germans may well be the most mixed of all peoples. . . . Bismarck
a Slav. Let anyone look upon the face of the Germans. Everything that
had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug populace
remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement from
abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavic blood. . . . What a blessing a
Jew is among Germans I See the obtuseness, the flaxen hair, the blue eye,
and the lack of intellect in the face, the language, and the bearing . . .
among Germans. . . . The Jews are beyond all doubt the strongest,
toughest, and purest race now living in Europe. 27

Similarly with much more that Nietzsche has to say about

the Germans, about the Jews, about nationalism, patriotism,
obedience to law, the future of Europe, and many other topics.

" A. Baeumler, ed., Die Unschuld des Werdens: Der Nachlass (1931).
" Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 1 3 ; Beyond Good and
Evil, §251.
222 NIETZSCHE

The Nietzsche who wrote about "we good Europeans" would

doubtless be in danger of spending a term in a concentration
camp, were he alive in contemporary Germany. Whether this
Nietzsche or the Nietzsche who wrote the following remark-
ably timely passage is the "real" man is not for us to decide:
I observe more inclination towards greatness in the feelings of the Russian
nihilists than in those of the English Utilitarians. W e require an inter-
growth of the German and Slav races, . . . for us to become masters of
the world.
(a) The sense of reality.
(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the people's right of
representation. W e require the representation of the great interests.
(c) W e require an unconditional union with Russia, together with
a mutual plan of action which shall not permit any English notions to
obtain the mastery in Russia. N o American future?
(d) A national system of politics is untenable, and embarrassment by
Christian views is a very great evil. In Europe all sensible people are
skeptics, whether they say so or not. 28

This was written in the r88o's. The ellipsis indicated by the

three dots in the second sentence above is not Nietzsche's. It
marks our own deliberate omission of the following words : "and
we require, too, the cleverest financiers, the Jews." N o Nazi
leader would dare utter those words as Nietzsche wrote them.
The Master cannot be used without omissions, or exegesis. The
point is clear. Nietzsche wrote much the Nazis find delightful;
he also wrote much they cannot bear to hear, and certainly
cannot bear to have repeated. In this predicament the gentle-
men who have set themselves up as interpreters of Nietzsche
to the people of the Third Reich have pursued various courses,
some not altogether consistent one with another.

" Genealogy of Morals, "Peoples and Countries," § 17.

 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 223

The simplest solution would of course be to suppress those

passages in Nietzsche's works which, like those we have just
quoted on the Jews and the Germans, are flagrantly in violation
of the best-known and firmest Nazi doctrines. It would be
almost as simple to deny that Nietzsche ever wrote the offend-
ing passages, and to reinforce the denial by asserting that the
offending passages are forgeries, or "Jewish conspiracies," wick-
edly intended to undermine faith in Nazi saints. The Nazis
might discover — perhaps they have discovered — that the Jew
Paul Rèe inserted the offending passages without the Master's
knowledge. It is still, however, too early for such steps to suc-
ceed. We are still too near Nietzsche's own time, and know
too much about the Master. Moreover, the invention of printing
and the consequent wide distribution of books may actually
make such suppression or falsification forever impossible. This
seems a lot to hope for, but perhaps we have grown too despond-
ent over other failures of invention and enlightenment in this
world.
Some Nazi use of Nietzsche's work is at the fairly innocent
and almost honest level of neglecting the difficulties, of omitting
all reference to them. Oehler appears to belong in this category.
His book, Nietzsche and the German Future, is frankly adula-
tory,, almost the work of a gentle Nietzschean. One hardly
feels, reading it, the suppressio veri on which it is based.
Whether or not it is good propaganda only the faithful can
judge. It is full of passages like this :

And so we might turn a sharp passage in the Antichrist quite around,

and get thereby simply a National Socialist confession of faith.
"The Cross [Kreuz] as sign . . . against health, beauty, sense,
bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul — against Life itself."
224 NIETZSCHE

The Swastika \Ha\en\reuz] as sign for health, beauty, sense,

bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul — for Life itself.20

If, indeed, Nietzsche's ideas are "sublimated" sufficiently in

interpretation, they can suit almost anyone and serve almost
any use. Even in Hitler's Germany, the old professorial tradi-
tion of the gentle Nietzscheans goes on, and the war he preached
is still for these kindly souls the sublime war of the spirit. It
is a war anyone can fight, for it makes no demands on food,
munition, or oil supplies.
If suppression outright is impossible, and neglect sometimes
dangerous, good careful editing can be very useful. Anthologies
of wisdom from Nietzsche can be constructed out of the most
impeccable material, and the dangerous passages can be left
out. Baeumler has done just this with Nietzsche in an ingeni-
ous popular work entitled "Nietzsche's philosophy as wit-
nessed by himself," which is composed of extracts from all the
philosopher's works arranged in two parts, "The System" and
"Europe's Crisis." 30 It need hardly be said that the nice orderly
system Baeumler finds in Nietzsche has no place for shocking
remarks about the virtues of the Jews. Baeumler's carefully
chosen five hundred-odd passages are all of a kind that could
be taught any young Nazi.
Yet the whole works of Nietzsche exist in thousands of copies
in Germany. The offending passages are there, and may fall at
any time under eyes ill prepared to distinguish between good
28 Oehler, Nietzsche und die deutsche Zukunft, 24.
" A . Baeumler, Nietzsches Philosophie in Selbstzeugnissen (1931). This
is the fourth volume of Nietzsches Wer\e: Auswahl in 4 Baenden published
in a popular low-priced edition by the Reclam house. Baeumler's Nietzsche
der Philosoph und Politiker, though also published separately, is bound in
with this fourth volume of the Reclam edition of Nietzsche's selected works.
 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 225

and evil, and certainly not prepared to go beyond good and evil.
There are still serious problems before Nazi educators who
wish to use Nietzsche properly. Probably the commonest solu-
tion is to blame Nietzsche's errors on his environment. Haertle,
for instance, admits that Nietzsche did make mistakes. He is
quite frank about the matter. Some parts of Nietzsche's writ-
ings, he admits, are really the opposite of Nazi truth. "In the
measure that the interest in Nietzsche grows, the danger of
misunderstanding grows" — that is, the danger that young
Germans may actually accept what is anti-Nazi in him as just
as valid as what is pro-Nazi. Haertle therefore lists "errors"
very carefully, under headings such as "race," "the Jewish
question," "state" and so on. But he minimizes their place in
Nietzsche's work, and always he is able to explain them, usually
as an effect of the nineteenth-century environment. Nietzsche
saw many and great truths; but he saw them as from the midst
of a swamp, the swamp of nineteenth-century liberalism and
democracy, and inevitably the rising mists obscured his vision.
When he agrees with the Nazis, he is the prophet to whom is
granted the true vision of things to come; when he disagrees
with them, he is the mortal who cannot be expected to rise
entirely above his environment.31
There are variations on this explanation. Such, for instance,
is the assertion, dear to Baeumler, that Nietzsche had to push
his thoughts to paradoxical and violent extremes in order to
make any impression on so stupid an age; that, for instance, he
had to pretend to see some good things in the Jews and many
bad things in organized anti-semitism, in order to get any
81
Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus, especially Part I, "Ein-
leitung."
226 NIETZSCHE

attention, and in order to shake his contemporaries out of their

fatuous complacence over Bismarck's Reich. Baeumler even
goes so far as to assert that, since so much of Nietzsche's pub-
lished work is necessarily cut to fit the author's Machiavellian
purposes in his warfare with the age, his unpublished work is
therefore a more trustworthy index of what he really thought.
Herr Baeumler has, accordingly, published and arranged Nie-
tzsche's copious literary remains.32 In the Master's unpublished
work Baeumler discerns a perfect unity, and points out the way
in which Nietzsche may ultimately be shown to be infallible
— something always desirable, if not absolutely essential, in a
Founding Father. Baeumler, whose labors in the cause have
won him a chair in the University of Berlin, is the leading
expert in the exegetical study of Nietzsche. He does not, un-
fortunately, possess any of the Master's grace and vigor of style.
In fact, his German is heavier and more lumbering than is
usual even in the learned world. He has, however, great de-
termination in dialectic, and a lack of humor which in many
ways makes up for a lack of finesse.
Baeumler's method is best shown by specific examples. He
does, it is true, proceed on the blanket assumption outlined
above — that Nietzsche's work is perfectly consistent and per-
fectly Nazi, and that where it seems to conflict with the party
doctrine we have either misinterpreted the Master, or misunder-
stood his immediate purpose in the conflict he waged single-
handed against an age steeped in liberal and democratic error.
Baeumler's point-by-point analysis is, however, his really great
achievement. Nietzsche, for instance, wrote a great deal that
"See the preface to Baeumler's edition, Nietzsche, Die Unschuld des
Werdens: Der Nachlass, ix-xl.
 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 227

seems on the surface to be the kind of individualism, even

anarchism, popular with the superior aesthetic souls of the late
nineteenth century.33 Nietzsche has even, by unenlightened
critics, been coupled with Max Stirner, the author of The Ego
and Its Own. Certainly one of the things Mr. H. L. Mencken
and Mr. G. B. Shaw found to admire in Nietzsche was this
insistence that really strong men are not to be tied down to any
sentimental identification of themselves with the state or with
society, or with any other group composed largely of stupid
men.
N o w in the Nazi state, individualism, anarchism, distrust of
the state, are forbidden doctrines. Baeumler feels that he has to
show that Nietzsche under proper conditions would have identi-
fied himself as whole-heartedly with the state as does any good
brownshirt. When Nietzsche says he scorns the state, Baeumler
glosses, he is thinking of the second Reich. The second Reich
was a state based on the defeat and subordination of the German
people by Roman and Christian elements. It was based on
nearly two thousand years of corruption. Nietzsche rightly
hated this romanized Teutonic (deutsch) state, and when he
writes that he is "unpolitical" he means he is unpolitical in such
a state. Similarly, whenever he says cruel things about the
Germans, he is thinking of these romanized and christianized
Germans. But Nietzsche always admired the basic German

" " W e are feeling the consequences of the doctrine, preached lately from
all the housetops, that the state is the highest end of man and that there is
no higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not as a relapse into paganism,
but into stupidity." Thoughts out of Season, "Schopenhauer as Educator,"
chap. iv. Needless to say this passage, which could be duplicated in essentials
from any of Nietzsche's works, save perhaps The Will to Power and others
of his very latest period, is not used as a text by the N a z i preachers.
228 NIETZSCHE
(germanisch) qualities of virility, joy, simplicity, strength, and
so on. Were there on earth a state germanisch instead of
deutsch, Nietzsche would at once submit himself gratefully to
such a state. There is now such a state, the Third Reich, and
Nietzsche is undoubtedly smiling down upon it from Valhalla.
Baeumler then clinches his argument: Nietzsche hated a Reich
governed by a Kaiser, a bad Teutonic copy of the Roman
Caesar; he would have loved a Reich governed by a head
ineffably German, a Fuehrer.34
It is hardly necessary to pursue Baeumler much further. The
dialectical skill reported above is characteristic enough. Noth-
ing, in fact, stumps him. Did Nietzsche call himself something
that sounds like "freethinker," and does freethinker suggest to
the uninitiated Voltaire, Tom Paine, and other clearly non-
German writers? Mistake. "Not Latin freethinking {latein-
ische Freigeisterei) but Siegfried stands back of Nietzsche's
attack on Christianity." Even when Nietzsche praises the
Renaissance, he is praising nothing Latin. He is praising the
fighting spirit of the period; moreover, the north and central
Italians Nietzsche admired came of the nobility, and were
"extremely probably" of German blood. Baeumler ends with
a little prophetic flight of his own: "The German state of the
future will not be a continuation of the work of Bismarck; it
will rather be built out of the spirit of Nietzsche and the spirit
of the Great War." 3 5
The Italians themselves have made Nietzsche a good fascist.

"Baeumler, Nietzsche, 88-97.

" B a e u m l e r , Nietzsche, 103; 97; 183. My own favorite bit of Baeumler is
the following: "Only with Nietzsche did the Middle Ages really come to an
end" (p. 12).
 NIETZSCHE A N D T H E NAZIS 229
These honorary Nordics have also to exercise great skill in dia-
lectic. One of them writes in a vein worthy of Baeumler:
Dell'intelletto, inteso piuttosto nell'arido senso francese, che nel gran
senso romano (chè allora, come vide lo stesso Nietzsche, non è più in-
telletto, ma superiore ragione) Nietzsche fu nemico asperrimo: e tutta
la sua vita e tutto il suo pensiero fu piuttosto una musica, musica religiosa
e cosmica, che tutto distrugge e ricrea dalle fondamenta: musica che
sorge dal golfo mistico dell'essere, e profonda l'essere nella notte pura
del sentimento, nel puro volere, sintesi infinita d'infiniti opposti, rottura
d'ogni forma, gorgo d'infiniti nembi di possibilità di vita. 38

The form, as well as the matter, of this sentence seems to show

that the fascists are actually trying to write Italian as if it were
German — and succeeding pretty well.
In fact, the easiest and most satisfactory way to use Nietzsche
is to emphasize grand words and passages which contain a pre-
ponderance of the kind of words some modern anti-intellectuals
like to call "meaningless." These words are not, of course,
meaningless in any but a very narrow sense; their meanings are
as many as, and as complex as, the "occasions of experience" in
which they arise. "Freedom" will do as a sample — clean
German Freiheit, not the vicious Liberty Latins and Anglo-
Saxons use. Haertle writes:
Against the liberal conception of Freedom, which destroys all organic
relations, breaks up all natural sense of community, and finally leads to
*®G. Cogni, "Nietzsche e la Germania," Bibliografia fascista (May, 1935),
Χ, 452. (Of the intellect, taken rather in the arid French sense than in the
grand Roman sense (for then, as Nietzsche himself saw, it is no longer intel-
lect, but higher reason) Nietzsche was the bitterest enemy; and all his life and
all his thought was indeed a music, religious and cosmic music, which destroys
and rebuilds all, from the foundations, music which springs from the mystic
gulf of being, and sounds the depths of being in the pure night of feeling, in
pure will, infinite synthesis of infinite opposites, breaking up of all forms,
whirlpool of infinite storm-clouds of possibilities of life.)
230 NIETZSCHE

anarchy or to its counterpart, despotism, against this atomistic conception

of Freedom, Nietzsche puts squarely the Freedom of the Warrior, which
grows out of overcoming, out of struggle, Freedom as Victory.37

This passage needs no comment. It is sound, uninspired preach-

ing, for which Nietzsche makes as ready inspiration as any
other thinker who has great prestige in Nazi Germany.
Though Baeumler is among Nazi philosophers perhaps the
ablest at the subtleties of Nietzschean exegesis, even innocent
folk-teachers like Haertle are obliged to argue and explain:
Nietzsche's anti-anti-semitism is a particularly hard obstacle
for Haertle, but one which he has to surmount, for he has de-
cided that Nietzsche was a Jew-hater. "Priest means for him a
stylized, typified Jew. . . . The Jews are the bearers of slave-
morality, the Nordic race the bearers of master-morality." 38
Why then, was Nietzsche not with those who were seeking to
stamp out the Jews ? Easy. Nietzsche Was a Lamarckian, and
believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, in the
possibility of achieving physiological change by willed changes
in environment. He therefore thought it possible to make the
Jews good Germans. This belief was very excusable in 1880.
But were Nietzsche alive now, he would no longer be a
Lamarckian. He would no longer believe that the Jewishness
of German Jews could be altered. He would be a good Nazi,
eager to cleanse Germany of the Jewish race.39

"Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nazionalsozialismus, 14, That "organic-

German" and "atomistic-Western" contrast is one of the staples of German
intellectual life.
"Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nazionalsozialismus, 50. He writes, "¿in
stilisierter, typisierter Jude." How these corrupt Mediterranean words will
creep into a Nordic's vocabulary!
"Haertle, Nietzsche und der Nazionalsozialismus, 44-50.
 NIETZSCHE AND THE NAZIS 231

The Nazis then, and their fascist followers are tough Nie-
tzscheane in a more than literary and aesthetic sense. Nietzsche
is held in high honor today in his native land. He has become
one of the Early Fathers of the revolutionary Nazi faith. Point
for point he preached, along with a good deal else which the
Nazis choose to disremember, most of the cardinal articles of
the professed Nazi creed — a transvaluation of all values, the
sanctity of the* will to power, the right and duty of the strong
to dominate, the sole right of great states to exist, a renewing,
a rebirth, of German and hence European society. More
vaguely, Nietzsche preached the coming of the Superman; and
though many different ethical values can be, and have been,
attached to this concept of the Superman, both the Nazi idea
of the Master-race and the Nazi appeal to the, principle of
leadership (Fuehrerprinzip) are among the most obvious arid
congruous derivatives of that concept. Finally, the emotional
tone of Nietzsche's life and writings, as distinguished from his
ideas, is much like what we hear of the emotional tone of inner
Nazi circles. The unrelieved tension, the feverish aspiration,
the driving madness, the great noise Nietzsche made for him-
self, the Nazi elite is making for an uncomfortably large part
of the world. But these are vague, grand terms. The situation
can be described much more simply. Nietzsche, like the Nazi
leaders, was never really house-broken.
 CHAPTER IX
N I E T Z S C H E IN W E S T E R N T H O U G H T :
PROPHECY ON A PROPHET

IETZSCHE'S work has been given different interpreta-

tions. That, at any rate, seems a safe induction from
experience. Baeumler and Haertle find something very differ-
ent in Nietzsche from what Andler found, and Andler found
something very different from what Brandes found. But Nie-
tzsche was a definite person, and it ought to be possible to agree
on what he meant ? Perhaps, but if there really was a Nietzsche-
in-himself, a "true" Nietzsche, he is gone, and what lives after
him in his books is not one thing but many. Or so it seems to
the relativist critic.
N o doubt the relativist who likes to be uncompromising — a
paradoxical position, but there are absolute relativists — might
assert that there are as many Nietzsches as there are readers of
Nietzsche, that his work is therefore subject to η interpretations,
all of them "true." W e shall not attempt here to defend so
extreme and so meaningless a position. It is possible, however,
to make several rough classifications of what men have done
with Nietzsche. W e have already developed at some length one
of them, the distinction between the "gentle" and the "tough"
Nietzscheans. This is a useful distinction, but it needs refining
and supplementing. W e shall here suggest another, which in
part cuts across the simple dualism of "gentle" and "tough"
Nietzscheans, and which attempts to classify interpretations of
 NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT 233
the Master's works according to the uses to which they are put
by those who read him today. It is by no means an exhaustive
classification — no useful classification ever is. But after fifty
years, it is fairly clear that men go to Nietzsche's writings for
three different purposes, put them to three different uses, which
are not mutually exclusive. Some go to Nietzsche for an
aesthetic experience at once tonic and sedative, exalting and
consoling. Others go to him for his contributions to a "real-
istic" study of the behavior of men in society, for his tenta-
tive sketches of a "natural history of morals." Still others go to
him for support in what looks now like a new religious faith,
the faith of the Nazis and the fascists.
Ever since the young and the would-be young rebels of the
nineties discovered him, Nietzsche has been a refuge and a hope
for young men and women undergoing the manifold troubles
of adolescence. To the bright and sensitive youngster who is
just coming to appreciate with how little wisdom the world is
governed, how dull, muddled, and unenterprising his once-
reverenced elders really are, how unending and unearthly are
the hidden possibilities of life these elders have withheld from
him, Nietzsche is an incomparable ally. The lad learns with
delight that in communion with Nietzsche he becomes a free
spirit, a master; and that his parents and teachers remain no
more than browsing animals among the herd. He finds con-
solation in the midst of dull and pointless studies when he
learns from Nietzsche that the Supermen will be äbove science,
grammar and history as well as beyond good and evil. His
day-dreams are now more than mere day-dreams; they are
down-goings and over-goings with Zarathustra, as harsh, stoic,
and masculine as reality — indeed, harsher, more stoic and more
234 NIETZSCHE
masculine than the petty realities of his daily life. Thus Spalle
Zarathustra has been for many an adolescent a magic land in
which he at last begins to live. Everything in it is right — its
poetry is chanting ecstasy, its philosophy a white light, its
message a final evangel. Safe in Zarathustra's bosom, his
doubts and pains are resolved in a transcendent wisdom. He
can face his fellow-men, looking down upon them.
Not, usually, for long; so lofty a position involves a strain.
The boy grows up, and finds that he is not a Superman, and
that it is rather tiring to keep on pretending, even to himself,
that he is one. The world in all its dullness and imperfection
floods in upon him, and he finds it not unacceptable without
Nietzsche. There are, of course, perpetual adolescents. There
are those who, having found Poe a great poet when they are
sixteen, continue at sixty to find him a great poet. So too with
some of those who, at sixteen, find Nietzsche a great poet. But
most of them either find greater poets, or cease to concern
themselves with poetry.
There are, however, always fresh generations of adolescents,
and for them Nietzsche still remains a discovery of their own.
There is no one who can quite take his place. Aesthetic fashions
do, it is true, change somewhat, and in our own time some
youths have found a rather different sort of consolation in the
poetry of Anglo-Catholicism or in that of high Marxism. But
if Nietzsche did not exist, it would seem almost necessary to
invent him. No matter how much simple romanticism may
be out of fashion, no matter how many good causes invite to
doing or dying, there seems to be among the young a Welt-
schmerz — a syndrome, not a simple disease — for which Nie-
tzsche is almost a specific, a better one than Byron, or Heine,
or Poe, or Schopenhauer. These latter are useful, of course, and,
 NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT 235

since cases are so varied, sometimes even more useful than

Nietzsche. And there is another specific, often taken along
with Nietzsche, and valuable as a counter-agent to his exces-
sively tonic effects. Nietzsche would not have liked it so, but
Thus Spalle Zarathustra, at least in the English-speaking world,
belongs in the medicine-cabinet of the adolescent along with
another near-Eastern brew, Fitzgerald's version of the Rubaiyat
of Omar Khayyam.
W e have already pointed out that, especially in Beyond Good
and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals, as well as in many
aphorisms of his middle period, Nietzsche made no inconsider-
able contribution to the study of how men behave, and more
particularly to the study of the relation between their actual
behavior and their professed beliefs and systems of belief, their
religions, ethics, philosophies. Much of his work belongs to
the cumulative study of such problems, of which in our Western
tradition we have examples as far back as Thucydides and
Aristotle, and which seems to many of us today to be genuinely
cumulative, to be on the point of consolidation into something
like a science of sociology.1 If we are right, then Nietzsche's
attempt at a "natural history of morals" will have the permanent
value of all successful pioneering in scientific work. Its theo-
rems, so far as they are still useful, will be incorporated in the
general structure of the science, and will be modified and im-
proved upon by those who are seeking to advance the science.
And, even if they are largely superseded, they will continue to
have a place in the history of the science.
If, however, we are wrong, and if in spite of Pareto, Freud,

1 TalcottParsons, in The Structure of Social Action (1937) endeavors to

bring out this common cumulative character in the work of men as different
as Weber, Alfred Marshall, Durkheim, and Pareto.
236 NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche, and many another worker in the field, the study of
man should continue to be rather a part of literature and phi-
losophy than of science, should continue to vary as do taste and
fashion rather than to grow cumulatively as do the sciences,
even then Nietzsche's "work as a student of men would seem
likely to have permanent value. For the "realist," the observer,
the skeptic, the cynic — if you prefer bad names — Nietzsche's
work will probably continue to have a kind of attractiveness
perhaps not wholly different from the attractiveness it has for
the romantic adolescent. This second, or "realistic," group is
naturally on an average rather older in years than our first, or
"romantic" group. Indeed, it not infrequently happens that an
individual grows out of the first group into the second. The
youth for whom Nietzsche was above all the poet of Thus Spa\e
Zarathustra becomes the man for whom he is above all the
subtle aphorist of The Dawn of Day, the admirable psycholo-
gist of The Genealogy of Morals. As long as men are attracted
by the writings of Machiavelli, Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld,
the Duc de St. Simon, as long as they find the pleasant tang of
unpleasant-truth in such remarks as "there is something not
altogether displeasing to us in the misfortunes of our friends,"
they will be attracted by the Nietzsche who could write: "Our
sense of observation for how far others perceive our weaknesses
is much more subtle than our sense of observation for the weak-
nesses of others. It follows that the first-named sense is more
subtle than is necessary." 2
To the third sort of use men have made of Nietzsche's work
' La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, "Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous
trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas." This is the twenty-
first maxim in the so-called "maximes supprimées." Nietzsche, Human, Ail
Too Human, " T h e Wanderer and his Shadow," § 257.
 NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT 237
we have already consecrated a long chapter. Some of the things
he wrote have been incorporated into the canons of a hitherto
very successful revolutionary faith. Whether the treatment
given Nietzsche's works by the totalitarian world-revolutionists
is a legitimate use or a shocking abuse is a question for our
present purpose quite beside the point. Enough that Nietzsche's
distinction between master-men and herd-men is on the lips,
and probably also in the heart of many a good Nazi and helps
give him that sense of justification without which revolutionists
are mere rioters or conspirators. Enough that Nietzsche's Will
to Power, immoralism, his Yea-saying with a hammer, all his
lofty and prophetic rhetoric of violence, help to keep Germans
and Italians keyed to battle, the battle of the laboratory, factory,
farm, office, and home as well as the more deadly, but in a sense
less exhausting, battle of actual war. Enough that Nietzsche's
writings help — and help perhaps more than any other writ-
ings— to give to Germans especially a feeling of mission, of
alliance with God, Destiny, the World-Spirit, an unbreakable
alliance with an undefeatable ally. Enough that at the present
moment Nietzsche-Zarathustra does really look to many ordi-
nary Germans — and not merely to the very literate or the very
adolescent — like the prophet of a new religion.
Will this role of Nietzsche's also last ? If it does, it will prove
far more important than his other roles, will perhaps quite
overshadow them. If it does, Nietzsche will be remembered not
as a poet, critic, and psychologist, but as a prophet, a founder
of religion. He will be ranked not with Goethe or Schopen-
hauer or La Rochefoucauld, but with Buddha, with Christ,
with Mohammed.
We cannot sensibly attempt to prophesy very confidently
238 NIETZSCHE
about Nietzsche's future as a prophet. Far too many variables
are involved, for Nietzsche's place as a prophet depends on the
success of a totalitarian world-revolution, or at least on its par-
tial success, and on what happens to it under the stimulus —
and sedative — of success. The social sciences do not yet afford
us instruments adequate to handling such variables, and in mat-
ters so complex and far-reaching, rule-of-thumb wisdom is a
poor substitute for scientific knowledge. Furthermore, an
American writing in 1940 is extremely likely to make his pre-
diction the child of his hopes and fears; he can hardly help
wanting to have the totalitarians fail, to have them and all their
works perish from the earth.
We may, however, risk a few tentative conclusions based, as
well as we can base them, on the way revolutionists endeavoring
to establish a new society and a new set of religious and moral
beliefs have behaved in the past. This may be an unjustified
procedure. The totalitarians may have achieved something new
and unprecedented — instruments of social control, machines,
military power that make revolt impossible, some combination
of means to perpetuate the new order they are working for.
Nietzsche's doctrines may in themselves have some new com-
pelling power. But none of these possibilities seems at all like
a probability. The armies of the totalitarian powers, their
Gestapos, their one-party organizations, their factories, their
labor-fronts, their elaborate controls over the sentiments and
opinions of their citizens — that is, their various substitutes for
the Church — are all run by human beings. And it is still fairly
safe to assume, as the historian must assume, that in the long
run human beings will continue to behave like human beings.
We may, then, hazard the opinion that even if the totali-
 NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT 239
tarians are victorious in the present struggle; even if under
German hegemony the totalitarian revolutions are as successful
in establishing for the immediate future the spiritual values of
the Western world as were for us the English, American and
French revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries;
and even if Nietzsche comes to be a sort of Locke-Rousseau-
Jefierson for the new order — even then there will be no
Nietzschean "transvaluation of values." If established Chris-
tians failed to be heroically compassionate, it is likely that
established Nazis will fail to be heroically cruel. If established
democrats failed to make men quite equals, it is unlikely that
established totalitarians will succeed in making them quite un-
equals. We may appeal from Nietzsche the prophet to Nie-
tzsche the observer, and urge with the latter that a natural
history of morals shows that men have never lived up to their
moral professions, and that there is a kind of moral equilib-
rium of average human conduct, neither very "good" nor very
"bad" in terms of any moral code ever devised. This equilibrium
seems to be determined by social and biological factors very
slow to change rather than by theories, ideas, ideals, preachings,
which can change very rapidly. When under the impetus of
revolution this equilibrium suffers a disturbance, all sorts of
men are temporarily lifted or impelled into "living danger-
ously," into a desperate attempt to bring Heaven or Hell to this
earth. But with almost the regularity and certainty of a physico-
chemical reaction, the impetus exhausts itself, and something
like the original equilibrium returns.8

* I have attempted to study this general process in more detail as regards

the English, American, French, and Russian revolutions in my Anatomy of
Revolution (1938).
240 NIETZSCHE
In the kind of crisis the world is now undergoing, there seems
something unpleasantly, and indeed dangerously, Laodicean in
such reflections. There's no use trying to beat the Nazis, we
may seem to imply; they will beat themselves anyway. Better
sit back and do nothing; the equilibrium will take care of
itself — it always has. Any such interpretation, however, con-
tains a serious misunderstanding of what we have been trying
to bring out. Any such interpretation is a shocking simplifica-
tion, even of logic. The equilibrium is no static absolute. It
changes, develops, certainly in part under the impetus of revo-
lutions, certainly in part under the control of thinking and feel-
ing men, certainly in part even under the influence of prophets
like Nietzsche-Zarathustra. No sensible person would main-
tain that because it is impossible, even with all our practical
and scientific knowledge of animal husbandry, to make a sheep
into a gazelle, it is therefore impossible, if we want to, to breed
more agile and graceful sheep, or even, by careful training,
feeding and other kinds of control, to make existing sheep a
trifle more agile and graceful. The Nazis will not make men
into Supermen; they will not even very greatly change them.
But they may change them, indeed they already have probably
changed some of them, slightly in directions that must seem to
most persons brought up in the United States very undesirable
directions.
It may be that in order to oppose most effectively what the
Nazis are trying to do, we must believe they are devils about to
transform all humanity into devils. It may be that we cannot
fight effectively unless we are all of us conditioned to belief in
absolutes, to intolerance, to a single-minded concentration on
the task of achieving the impossible. We may have to be
 NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT 241
fanatics to prevail over fanatics, drunken to beat the drunken.
But one of the strongest strains in the intellectual tradition we
like to think of as that of the Western world is the rational and
scientific strain. We are committed by that tradition to attempt
to understand the social process and to guide that process slowly,
realistically, and with as little violence as possible, by rational
means towards rational ends. And neither Nazi means nor
Nazi ends, as expressed in the deeds of their leaders and the
words of their prophets, can seem to us rational. We cannot
believe that their means will possibly attain the ends they
profess to be working for; but we must believe that their means
are bad ones, and that they should be checked. We may not
succeed in checking them. Certainly we understand pathetically
little about social change, but we must work with what little
we have, or Nietzsche will indeed be enthroned as a prophet.
There is certainly a difficulty not too well concealed in all
these fine words. It is probably a difficulty insoluble in words.
We have argued that if we try to think rationally, "scientifi-
cally," about what the Nazis are doing, we come to the conclu-
sion that they are not behaving sensibly. But does that mean
anything more than that they are not behaving as we should
like to have them behave ? Or to put it another way, granted
that it is possible to make sense out of the phrase "rational
means," is it at all possible to make sense out of the phrase
"rational ends"? Is not the scientific method limited to the
study of means? Is it not therefore silly to maintain that a
preference for democracy over totalitarianism can find any
justification in the scientific attitude ?
Certainly we are driven back ultimately to questions of value,
of ends, of which we can only say, we want it so. Even the
242 NIETZSCHE

device, a favorite one with rationalists and empiricists, of call-

ing an end "useful" instead of "good" is perhaps only a dodge.
But we live by dodges, unless we are philosophers. And the
absolute can be dodged; we çan make even our superlatives
comparative. W e can, with an effort, put the most attractive
paradoxes out of our minds, if only by having recourse to a final
paradox: the unattainable is unattainable.
Simply as a matter of faith, if you like, we may unworriedly
assert that our way of life is more rational than the Nazi way
of life. And we may unworriedly try to make our way of life
prevail, even though we think that, since it is rational, it is
bound to prevail. Indeed, experience gives excellent grounds
for believing that men get more nearly what they want when
they think they are bound to get what they want because God,
Destiny, Nature, or Dialectical Materialism is on their side.
We need not be ashamed to claim that Science and Reason are
on our side. They are rather pale and colorless, as gods go, but
they have got on well for quite a while with other gods — the
Christian God, for instance. They promise less, but they may
give more, than the god — the Supergod — of Nietzsche and
the Nazis.
For this god is a little too new, a little too shiny and brassy.
A really effective god is very hard to invent. Indeed, it was
Nietzsche's failure to realize this that made his notion of the
"Jewish conspiracy" so inadequate an explanation of the origins
of Christianity. It does not seem that even in an attenuated
form, even in a "transvaluation," Nietzsche's positive doctrines
— the Supermen, the Will to Power, the transvaluation of all
values, the Eternal Recurrence, and the rest — can be made the
stuff of a religion to hold large numbers of men together. Great
 NIETZSCHE IN WESTERN THOUGHT 243
religions may be a striving after the impossible, but not a striv-
ing after the paradox. There is something abstractly, noisily —
yes, and coldly — intellectual about Nietzsche's work that
makes it almost unadaptable to the religious needs of ordinary
men. His excitements, his transportments are cerebral; his
absolute a little squirrel running frantically about the cage of
Nietzsche's mind. There is nothing earthy in this scorner of
the Christian heaven. Even his madness is not divine, not even
commonplace, but intellectual. The Supermen, if they come,
will probably forget him, along with the rest of history. Until
they come, his work will doubtless continue to look rather
more like a Rubaiyat than a Koran.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
There are already hundreds of books on Nietzsche, and probably
thousands of articles. Most writing about Nietzsche is in German
but all the modern languages are well represented. The following
bibliography represents a very considerable winnowing process. It
is meant chiefly to afford the student a guide to the intensive study
of Nietzsche, and is directed especially at English-speaking students.
I have marked with an asterisk books I consider essential to the
minimum basic Nietzsche collection. The division between works
primarily biographical and those primarily critical is, of course, no
more than a rough one. Most big books on Nietzsche are, like
Andler's, both critical and biographical.

I
NIETZSCHE'S WORKS
A . T H E WRITINGS

Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy), 1872.

Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (Thoughts out of Season), 1873-1876.
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All Too Human), 1878.
With the above in most current editions are now included: Vermischte
Meinungen, und Sprüche (Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions), 1879,
and Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (The Wanderer and his Shadow),
1879.
Morgenröte (The Dawn of Day), 1881.
Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Joyful Wisdom), 1882.
Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra), 1883-1884.
Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil), 1886.
Zur Genealogie der Moral (The Genealogy of Morals), 1887.
Der Fall Wagner (The Case of Wagner), 1888.
Götzendämmerung (Twilight of the Idols), 1889.
Der Antichrist (The Antichrist), 1902.
248 NIETZSCHE
Nietzsche contra Wagner, 1901.
Ecce Homo, 1908.
The three last titles above, published posthumously, are works de-
signed as such by Nietzsche himself.
Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power), 1909-1910.
This book is a collection of Nietzsche's fragments, put together under
his sister's directions. It is no more than scattered materials for the
book of that name Nietzsche planned as his great work.
Nietzsche, Historisch-Britische Gesamtausgabe: Werfte (Munich:
C. H . Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1 9 3 3 - ) .
This is the standard collected edition. Unfortunately only the follow-
ing have appeared up to 1940: Vol. I, Jugendschriften, 1854-1861·,
Vol. II, fugendschriften, 1861-1864; Vol. III, Schriften der Studenten-
und Militärzeit, 1864-1866·, Vol. IV, Schriften der Studenten- und
Militärzeit. Letzte Leipziger Zeit, 1866-1868. A most complete and
scholarly edition. But at present it stops short of Nietzsche's real
work.
Nietzsche's Wer\e, 19 vols. (Leipzig: 1895-1913).
This is the so-called Grossoctavausgabe, edited by Nietzsche's sister.
It includes, besides the usual books, three volumes called Philologie,
now vols. Ill and IV of the new historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe
just mentioned. There is also a Kleinoctavausgabe with the same
pagination, in which Philologi\a is not available. Both these sets are
now out of print
Nietzsche, Die Unschuld des Werdens: Der Nachlass, edited by
A . Baeumler, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, 1 9 3 1 ) .
This is a valuable collection of odds and ends of Nietzsche's remains,
some not elsewhere available.
There are numerous German reprints of separate works, especially
of Also sprach Zarathustra, pocket editions, and so on.
*The Complete Wor\s of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Dr. Oscar
Levy, 18 vols. (London: 1909-1913).
This is the authorized English edition. It really is "complete" save
for the juvenilia, the philological writings, and some fragments. The
translations, by various hands, are usually adequate, sometimes ex-
cellent.
*The Philosophy of Nietzsche, a "Modern Library Giant," with an
introduction by W . H . Wright ( N e w York: 1937).
A single volume, an admirable choice of the most representative of
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 249
Nietzsche's writings — Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The
Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo, and The Birth of Tragedy — and
quite sufficient for a general reader who wants a direct acquaintance
with Nietzsche.
B. CORRESPONDENCE
Nietzsche, Historisch-Britische Gesamtausgabe: Briefe (Munich: C. H .
Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1938-).
Of this only the following have appeared: Vol. I, Briefe der Schüler
und Bonner Studentenzeit, 1850-1865·, Vol. II, Briefe der Leipziger
und ersten Basler Zeit, 1865-1869. This is in some ways more valuable
than the Wer\e in the same edition, for a great deal of careful anno-
tation makes the edition very easy to use; and there are no other
adequate editions of the letters.
Friedrich Nietzsche's Gesammelte Briefe, 5 vols, Vol. V in two parts
(Berlin and Leipzig). The separate volumes exist in different print-
ings, up to 1909.
This edition is the work of Nietzsche's sister. It certainly contains
Nietzsche's most important letters. But it omits many proper names
of then living persons. There are many scattered letters which pre-
sumably will be brought together in the new historisch-kritische
Gesamtausgabe. Meanwhile, many of them are listed in K. Jaspers,
Nietzsche (Berlin and Leipzig: 1936).
*Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy
(London: William Heinemann, 1921).
Based on the five-volume edition in German mentioned above. The
translator is A. M. Ludovici. These are the best collected letters avail-
able in English.
La vie de Frédéric Nietzsche d'après sa correspondance, textes choisis
et traduits par Georges Walz (Paris: Rieder, 1932).
This is a more generous choice of Nietzsche's letters than is available
in English.
An indispensable tool for a thorough study of Nietzsche is the
concordance to the works, by R. Oehler, published as Vol. X X of the
Grossoctavausgabe in 1926 and separately as Nietzscheregister (Leip-
zig: F. Kröner, 1926). It refers to pages and volumes of either the
Gross or the Kleinoctovausgabe.
250 NIETZSCHE

Π
MAINLY BIOGRAPHICAL
•Andler, Charles, Nietzsche, sa vie et sa pensée, 6 vols. (Paris: Bossard,
1920-1931).
Vol. II, La jeunesse de Nietzsche and Vol. IV, La maturité de Nietzsche
jusqu'à sa mort are mainly biographical. This is the most scholarly
study of Nietzsche's life. It neglects no important evidence, and tries
to hold the balance between the Nietzsche-Archiv and Bernoulli-
Overbeck. But it is frankly adulatory, the work of a very gentle
Nietzschean. Andler actually thinks Nietzsche was at heart a socialisti
Andréas-Salomé, Lou, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werfen, new
edition (Dresden: C. Reissner, 1927).
Unaltered reprint of the original edition of 1894. Lou "reveals" less
personally than might be expected. Remains an interesting source for
Nietzsche's biography.
•Bernoulli, C. Α., Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche: Eine
Freundschaft, 2 vols. (Jena: 1908).
This, with its opposite, the work of Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, is
the basis of any study of Nietzsche biography. Bernoulli has on the
whole kept himself out of his book, content to put together material
Overbeck had accumulated. Overbeck was a sensible man, who liked
and admired Nietzsche, but who was aware of, and reported, traits
not brought out by Elizabeth. The publication of this book began
a most undignified feud, carried on in the best traditions of the
German learned world, between Elizabeth and Bernoulli. Elizabeth
got a court judgment suppressing from Vol. II of Overbeck und
Nietzsche certain letters of Peter Gast's which the court decided
were her property, as Nietzsche's heir. These passages are inked
over in most copies of this volume, but with patience the words can
be made out beneath the inking. They are not important.
Brann, H . W . , Nietzsche und die Frauen (Leipzig: Meiner, 1 9 3 1 ) .
A very fair treatment of a difficult subject. Inevitably a certain amount
of psychiatric and psychological jargon. Brann's general view is that
Nietzsche wanted very much to have a normal sexual life, and that
his failure to attain that purpose further disturbed his mental and
physical balance.
Cohn, P., Um Nietzsches Untergang (Hannover: Morris-Verlag, 1 9 3 1 ) .
A modernized version of the pietistic Nietzsche-Archiv attitude to-
wards Nietzsche's health.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 251
•Forster-Nietzsche, E., The Life of Nietzsche, translated by A. M. Ludo-
vici, 2 vols. (London and New York: 1912-1915). Vol. I, The
Young Nietzsche; Vol. II, The Lonely Nietzsche.
This is for most purposes the most useful of the various biographical
writings his sister Elizabeth devoted to Nietzsche. It is pure worship,
straight hagiographical writing. Elizabeth had all of her brother's
determination, energy, and sense of being right. Otherwise, she was
very stupid. She has no capacity at all for handling ideas. The book
does, however, give biographical details nowhere else available.
Halévy, D., The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche, translated from the French
by J. M. Hone (London: 1 9 1 1 ) .
This is a good translation of a well-known French short life of
Nietzsche, published in France in 1909. It is based largely on Eliza-
beth Förster-Nietzsche's work, but put together with infinitely more
literary skill and tact. It is most sympathetic towards Nietzsche, who
is pictured as a heroic martyr to Truth and Beauty in a vulgar,
anarchic society. Halévy writes with full French sentimentality.
Meyer, R. M., Nietzsche, sein Leben und seine Wer\e (Munich: 1913).
One of the pleasantest and soberest of German lives.
Miigge, Μ. Α., Friedrich Nietzsche. His Life and Wor\, third edi-
tion (London: 1 9 1 1 ) . '
Part IV, pages 385-442, is headed "Bibliography and Iconography."
It is very thorough, covering magazine articles in the major European
languages. That a bibliography in 1911 could be so huge is sympto-
matic. It could no doubt be tripled in length today. Mügge's Life
is not a distinguished one.
Podach, E. F., Nietzsches Zusammenbruch (Heidelberg: Ν . Kamp-
mann, 1930). French translation, L'Effondrement de Nietzsche
(Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1931). English translation, The Mad-
ness of Nietzsche (London and New York: Putnam, 1931).
The soundest general treatment of Nietzsche's physical and mental
ills. Podach's notes incorporate a very full bibliography of the sub-
ject up to 1930.
Der Kran\e Nietzsche: Briefe seiner Mutter am Franz Overbec\,
edited by E. F. Podach (Vienna: Bermann-Fischer Verlag, 1937).
These letters from his mother to Overbeck cover the years 1889 to
1897, and give all sorts of details of Nietzsche's last illness.
252 NIETZSCHE

III

MAINLY CRITICAL
A. NIETZSCHE'S IDEAS

*Andler, C., Nietzsche, sa vie et sa pensée.

Vol. III, Le pessimisme esthétique de Nietzsche, Vol. V, Nietzsche et le
transformisme intellectualiste, Vol. VI, La dernière philosophie de
Nietzsche are concerned with the exposition and criticism of Nietzsche's
ideas. This part of Andler's work has been especially criticized in
Germany, on the ground chiefly that Andler is not "philosopher"
enough, that he is mere literary historian. There is no doubt some
nationalistic feeling involved here. Andler's work is somewhat un-
systematic and rambling. Its chief defect is its softening of Nietzsche's
doctrines into the spiritual equivalent of French radical socialism.
*Baeumler, Α., Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker (Leipzig:
Philipp Keclam, 1 9 3 1 ) .
The orthodox, modern Nazi interpretation. The section on Nietzsche
as philosopher is not too obviously tied up with politics.
Bertram, E., Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie (Berlin: G. Bondi,
1918). Translated into French as Nietzsche, Essai de Mythologie,
by R. Pitrou (Paris: Rieder, 1932).
This is a very popular work in Germany, where it has gone through
many editions. It is literary, imaginative, "profound," in the tradition
of German gentle Nietzscheans, with post-war elaborations. Like the
later work of Jaspers, it gives glimpses of what the Nazis were to
make of Nietzsche, but it is basically contrary to Nazi ideas and prac-
tices.
Brock, W., Nietzsches Idee der Kultur (Bonn: F . Cohen, 1930).
Büscher, G., Nietzsches Wirkliches Gesicht (Zürich: A . Rudolf, 1928).
One of the relatively few thordughly hostile German works on
Nietzsche. Incidentally, it was published in Zürich.
Carus, Paul, Nietziche ( N e w York: 1914).
A very hostile book. Carus attacks from the point of view of a nine-
teenth-century "progressive," a positive empiricist. Nietzsche himself
was very fond of ridiculing these people, having begun with David
Strauss. Not a good, nor even a well-composed book. Nietzsche's
opponents generally have not been of the intellectual calibre of his
supporters.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 253
•Faguet, E., En lisant Nietzsche (Paris: 1904).
A very neat job of exposition, in some ways the best French writing
on Nietzsche. Insufficiently appreciated by most Nietzscheans.
Figgis, J. N., The Will to Freedom, or the Gospel of Nietzsche and the
Gospel of Christ (London: 1 9 1 7 ) .
The author of From Gerson to Grotius is not at his best in this book,
which is badly organized and hastily written. But it is a good example
of Nietzsche's hold over men of culture everywhere. Figgis resists
Nietzsche, but feels his "charm."
Fischer, Hugo, Nietzsche Apostata oder die Philosophie des Aerger-
nisses (Erfurt: K . Steuger, 1 9 3 1 ) .
Havenstein, M., Nietzsche als Erzieher (Berlin: E . S. Mittler and
Sohn, 1922).
Treats rather of Nietzsche as philosopher than as "educator" in a
specific sense; on the whole not out of the ruck of German books
on Nietzsche, of which there are many too many.
Horneffer, E., Nietzsche-Vorträge (Leipzig: A . Kroner, 1920).
Jaspers, K., Nietzsche (Berlin and Leipzig: W . de Gruyter, 1936).
One of the last, and most subtle and thorough studies of Nietzsche
in the German academic tradition, essentially a form of "gentle"
Nietzscheanism. Jaspers is almost willing to admit that Nietzsche
is what the reader finds in Nietzsche — but not quite. This book also
has an admirable bibliography, in which Jaspers goes beyond con-
ventional listing of books into a discussion of what kinds of writing
on Nietzsche we still need.
Joel, K . , Nietzsche und die Romanti\, 2te Auflage (Jena: E . Diederichs,
1923).
Klages, L., Die Psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches (Leip-
zig: J. Α . Barth, 1926).
A long over-due study of Nietzsche's place as a psychologist, and his
part in modern anti-intellectualism. An important book, if only for
its influence. Klages is a romantic wildman, who sees Nietzsche as
freeing men from the tyranny of Geist and giving them over to the
unconscious, irrational, ecstatic capacities civilization has not wholly
stifled — at least, not in Germany.
Knight, A . H . J., Some Aspects of the Wor\ of Nietzsche, and Par-
ticularly of his Connection with Gree\ Literature and Thought
(Cambridge: T h e University Press, 1 9 3 3 ) .
Sound, pleasant scholarship.
254 NIETZSCHE
Lasserre, P., Les idées de Nietzsche sur la musique (Paris: Garnier
Frères, 1919).
•Lichtenberger, H., The Gospel of Superman, translated from the
French by J. M. Kennedy (New York: Macmillan, 1926).
For English-speaking students, this is the handiest form of Lichten-
berger's La philosophie de Nietzsche, first published in French in
1898. It has the advantage of containing a later preface (1925) by the
author. Lichtenberger was one of the early French Nietzscheans, but
he remained a sensible and restrained one. He is less maudlin about
the Master's gentle soul than Halévy or Andler; but he is sure
Nietzsche is un homme de bonne volonté.
•Mencken, H. L., The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, third edition
(New York: 1913).
One of Mr. Mencken's earliest literary efforts. A good, colorful, ex-
position, assimilating Nietzsche to Mr. Mencken's own comfortable,
hearty contempt for democratic mediocrity.
Mess, F., Nietzsche der Gesetzgeber (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1930).
A n enthusiastic jurist sees in Nietzsche a law-giver, Lycurgean rather
than Hitlerian.
More, P. E., Nietzsche (Boston: 1912).
A slender booklet, one of the relatively few thoroughly repudiating
Nietzsche's whole work. Unlike Figgis, More was not "charmed"
by Nietzsche. More's position is that of a cultivated Christian admirer
of Plato, on whom almost every sentence of Nietzsche's grates pain-
fully.
Obenauer, Κ. J., Friedrich Nietzsche, der ekstatische Nihilist (Jena:
E. Diederichs, 1924).
Richter, R., Friedrich Nietzsche: sein Leben und sein Wer\, 3te
Auflage (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1917).
Sixteen lectures delivered at the University of Leipzig. Emphasizes
Nietzsche as a philosopher of growth, evolution. Clear, a bit heavy.
Riehl, Α., Friedrich Nietzsche, der Künstler und der Den\er (Stutt-
gart: 1897).
One of the best of the early critical expositions of Nietzsche's philosophy.
Rittelmeyer, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Religion. Vier Vorträge
(Ulm: 1904).
This is a good example of the respect German protestant ministers
often held for Nietzsche.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 255
Salter, W. K., Nietzsche the Thinner: A Study (New York: 1917).
Thorough, conscientious exposition and defense of Nietzsche as a
gentleman and seer, written partly against the Anglo-American clamor
about Nietzsche's responsibility for the War of 1914.
Stein, L., Friedrich Nietzsches Weltanschauung und ihre Gefahren
(Berlin: 1893).
An early cry of alarm.
Vaihinger, H., Nietzsche als Philosoph (Berlin: 1902).
An admirable analysis and commentary.
Wright, W. H., What Nietzsche Taught (New York: 1915).
The creator of Philo Vance here makes a routine analysis of Nietzsche's
writings, book by book.

B. NIETZSCHE'S RELATIONS WITH OTHER THINKERS

The whole field of Nietzsche's Belesenheit, of his reading, his in-

tellectual debts to predecessors and contemporaries, is best covered
by Andler. The whole of Vol. I, Les précurseurs de Nietzsche, is a
meticulous, sometimes far-fetched, study of possible "influences" on
Nietzsche. The other five volumes touch frequendy on Nietzsche's
intellectual debts. All such studies in the affiliation of ideas are, of
course, weakened by the fact that we don't know very much about
how ideas breed. Andler's assumptions as to the origins of ideas and
their spread are those of the ordinary nineteenth-century French
scholar trained as a literary historian.
Belart, H., Friedrich Nietzsche und Richard Wagner (Berlin: 1907).
One of the standard brief treatments. Of course all the biographers of
Nietzsche have paid particular attention to the Wagner episode. This
is true of the major three: Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, C. A. Bernoulli
(Overbeck) and Charles Andler.
Dippel, P. G., Nietzsche und Wagner (Berlin: P. Haupt, 1934).
(Reprinted from Sprache und Dichtung, Vol. LIV.)
General essay on their relations, main interest psychological.
*The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence, edited by E. Förster-
Nietzsche, translated by Caroline V. Kerr (New York: Boni
and Liveright, 1921).
Elizabeth's pathetic attempt to agree with Wagner and her brother
at the same time.
256 NIETZSCHE
Griesser, L., Nietzsche und Wagner (Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky,
1923).
A rather prolix account of their psychological and "ideological" rela-
tions.
Hildebrandt, Κ., Wagner und Nietzsche: Ihr Kampf gegen das XIX
Jahrhundert (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1924).
A n indication of the coming National Socialist use of both of these
German culture-heroes.
Lessing, T., Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche (Munich: 1906).
One of the best comparative studies of the ideas of Nietzscht and his
two "masters."
Löwith, Κ., Kierkegaard und Nietzsche (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klos-
termann, 1933).
Podach, E. F., Gestalten um Nietzsche (Weimar: E. Lichtenstein,
I
93 2 )·
Extremely valuable work on some of Nietzsche's friends and their
relations with him — that on Gast is especially good.
Rosengarth, W., Nietzsche und George (Leipzig: R. Hadl, 1934).
Simmel, G., Schopenhauer und Nietzsche, 3TE Auflage (Munich:
Duncker and Humblot, 1923).
Strecker, Κ., Nietzsche und Strindberg (Munich: G. Müller, 1921).

IV
NIETZSCHE'S REPUTATION AND INFLUENCE
A. GENERAL
It is too bad that the late Charles Andler, who knew more about
Nietzsche than any scholar ever has known, did not add a volume
on Le rayonnement des idées de Nietzsche. This most important
study of what men have made of Nietzsche's ideas is the most neg-
lected phase of Nietzschean scholarship. I have had to piece together
my chapters on Nietzsche's reputation and influence from very diverse
materials. Here I list only those books that deal with fairly large
aspects of Nietzsche's influence.
Benda, J., La trahison des clercs (Paris: Β. Grasset, 1927). Translated
into English by R. Aldington as The Treason of the Intellectuals
(New York: W. Morrow, 1928).
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 257
Nietzsche is for Benda one of the most important of the literary men
of our time who have "betrayed" us.
Bianquis, Geneviève, Nietzsche en France (Paris: F. Alean, 1929).
By a disciple of Andler. Thorough and very useful. Good bibliography.
Deesz, Gisela, Die Entwicklung des Nietzsche-Bildes in Deutschland
(Würzburg: Κ. Triltsch, 1933).
A doctoral dissertation, and rather slender. Deals chiefly with the
interpretation of Nietzsche by German academic philosophers from
Vaihinger to Baeumler. A useful, if limited, summary.
Gundolf, E. and Hildebrandt, Κ., Nietzsche als Richter unser Zeit
(Breslau: F. Hirt, 1923).
Horneffer, E., Nietzsche als Vorbote der Gegenwart (Düsseldorf:
A. Bagel, 1935).
Nicolas, M. P., De Nietzsche à Hitler (Paris: Fasquelle, 1936). English
translation, From Nietzsche down to Hitler (London: W. Hodge
and Company, 1938).
A warm defense of Nietzsche from "abuse" by the Nazis. Nicolas
insists that nothing in Nietzsche's writings can be legitimately and
logically given a sense favorable to the Nazis. The notes cover a good
range of the literature on Nietzsche.
Spengler, O., "Nietzsche und sein Jahrhundert," in his Reden und
Aufsätze (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1937).
More of Spengler.
Spenlé, J. E., "Nietzsche médiateur spirituel entre la France et l'Alle-
magne," Mercure de France (Paris), CCLXXVI (1937), 275.
Alas!
Stewart, H. L., Nietzsche and the Ideals of Modem Germany (Lon-
don: 1915).
A good example of a book produced by the Four Years' War. Stewart
thinks Nietzsche had a large part in preparing Germany to make
the aggression of 1914.

B. N I E T Z S C H E AND T H E N A Z I S

A bibliography here, especially if extended to magazine articles,

would be very extensive. The following will, I think, give the reader
a satisfactory notion of the official place Nietzsche now (1940) has in
the "ideology" of the Nazi movement.
258 NIETZSCHE
Aberdam, S., "Nietzsche et le 3m* Reich," Mercure de France (Paris),
C C L X X V (1937), 225.
The old French Nietzschean tradition, always dear to the Mercure de
France. Nietzsche was really doux, tendre, and the Nazis are
abusing his memory. Contains some useful material.
Baeumler, Α., Nietzsche der Philosoph und Politiker (Leipzig: Philipp
Reclam, 1931).
A brief popular statement, now become authoritative in view of
Baeumler's present chair at the University of Berlin.
Baeumler, Α., "Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus" in his Studien
zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin: Junker and Dünnhaupt,
1937)·
Cogni, G., "Nietzsche e la Germania," Bibliografica fascista (Rome),
ioth year (1935), 451.
A long review of the French translation of Bertram's Nietzsche, with
many side-lights on the fascist view of Nietzsche.
Gawronsky, D., Nietzsche und das Dritte Reich (Bern: Herbert
Lang, 1935).
Günther, Η. F. Κ., Der nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen
(Munich: J. F . Lehmann, 1927).
Haerde, H., Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus, 2te Auflage
(Munich: F . Eher Nachfolger, 1939).
A veritable handbook, listing what of Nietzsche a good Nazi can
accept, and what he must reject First published in 1937, it has
already had a second edition.
Kirchner, E., "Nietzsches Lehren im Lichte der Rassenhygiene,"
Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie (Berlin), X V I I (1926),
379·
Lauret, R., "Nietzsche et le 3 me Reich," Le Temps (Paris, October 22,
I
934)·
Lefebvre, H., Nietzsche (Paris: Editions sociales internationales, 1939).
Chapter iü is entitled "Nietzsche et notre temps." Lefebvre on the
eve of the current war concludes that Nietzsche was in no sense a
fascist, Nazi, or totalitarian. He was a socialist, and his ideas "fall
naturally in with the Marxist conception of man." Lefebvre and
Haerde (see above) are almost word for word and on almost every
point in complete contradiction as to what Nietzsche meant: this, no
doubt, is a sign of Nietzsche's final success as a philosopher.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 259
Lonsbach, R. M., Nietzsche und die Juden (Stockholm: Bermann-
Fischer Verlag, 1939).
Lonsbach is a gentle Nietzschean, who maintains that Nietzsche meant
the nice things he said about the Jews, but that the bad things he said
about them must be worked into a higher synthesis. The book was
not published in Germany.
Ludovici, Α., "Hitler and Nietzsche," English Review (London),
LXIV (1937), 44, 192.
Ludovici was rather more than an appeaser at this time — he was
frankly pro-Hitler. He holds that the Nazis have restored the "bio-
logical" and "pre-Socratic" values, and are hence good Nietzscheans.
Miéville, H. L., Nietzsche et la volonté de puissance, ou Vaventure
Nietzschéenne et le temps présent (Lausanne: Payot, 1935).
Mis, L., "Nietzsche et Stefan George, précurseurs de 3me Reich,"
Revue d'histoire de la philosophie (Paris), nouvelle serie, fascicule
ix (July 15, 1935), 204.
Oehler, R., Friedrich Nietzsche und die deutsche Zukunft (Leipzig:
Armanen-Verlag, 1935).
Prinzhorn, Hans, Nietzsche und das XX Jahrhundert (Heidelberg:
Ν. Kampmann, 1928).
Scheuffler, G., Friedrich Nietzsche im Dritten Reich (Erfurt: E.
Scheuffler, 1933).
A little pamphlet, emphasizing the curious notion that Nietzsche
would have approved especially the National Socialist effort to do
away with classes.
INDEX
 INDEX
Aberdam, S., 198η Dehn, F., 208η
Adams, Η., 14Ò Deussen, P., 20, 173
Andler, C., 14, 172, 188 Dilthey, W . , 181
Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 55, 94, 175 Dionysian, 39
d'Annunzio, G., 191, 194
Apollinian, 39 Ellis, H., 191, 202
Ariadne, 70 Emerson, 81
Aristode, 170 Engadine, 51
Auernheimer, R., 210η E r d m a n n , F., 207η
Eternal Recurrence, 76, 139
Babbitt, I., 91, 161 Euripides, 39
Bachofen, J . J., 27
Baeumler, Α., 65, 207, 209η, 22i, 224, Förster, Β., 68
225 Förster-Nietzsche, E . , 7, 22, 32,
Basle, 27 67, 71, i n , 177, 209
Bayreuth, 45, 46 Franconia Corps, 17
Bergson, 95 Frederick the Great, 126
Bernhardi, von, 202 Fuehrerprinzip, 213, 217
Bernoulli, C. Α., 32, 7 3 η
Bertram, Ε., 197η Gast, P., 49, 51, 67, 72, 173
Bismarck, 126 Gersdorfï, C. von, 20, 31
Brandes, G., 69, 174, 191 Gide, Α., 189, 191
Brann, H . W . , i6n Gobineau, 206
Bridgman, P. W . , 132 Granier, R., u n
Buddha, 100 Gutmann, P., 193η
Burckhardt, J., 27, 31
Halévy, D., 188
Carlyle, 80 Hartmann, E . von, 176
Chamberlain, H . S., 206 Haertle, H., 207, 210, 214, 225,
Chase, S., 132 Haug, Ο., 208η
Christianity attacked by Nietzsche, 97 Hegel, 39» ΐ3°> J 4 5
Cogni, G., 229η Herder, 3 9
Comte, 145 Hider, 171, 193» 2θ8, 217
Croce, 95
Jaspers, Κ . , 7 3 η
Dante, 116 Joel, Κ . , 192η
Darwin, 81, 145, 147 Johannes, Μ . Ο., 2θ8η
264 INDEX
Kant, 19, 87, 115, 153 Nietzsche, F. W. (cont.) :
Kassler, Κ., 2o8n aphoristic methods, 74, 183
Kennedy, J. M., 191 appearance, 21, 54
Klages, L., 94, 198 aristocratic aspirations, 29
Klingenbrunn, 47 attack on Christianity, 97
Koran, 243 attack on democracy, 107
Kösselitz, P. (Peter Gast), 49, 51, 67, classical background, 77
73» 173 critic, 161
Krug, G., ga education, 8, 14, 24
Eternal Recurrence, 76, 139
Lamarck, 27, 230 final insanity, 69
Levy, O., 191, 202 finances, 50
Lichtenberger, Η., 187 French influences, 48, 61, 79
Ludovici, Α., 195, friendships, 31
Germany and the Germans, 114
Mann, Η., 172 health, 5, 15, 22, 33, 43, 52, 69
Mark Twain, 81 ideas on priests, 101, 134
Mehring, F., 181 ideas on race, 99, 114, 122, 127, 221
Mein Kampf, 218 ideas on warriors, 134
Mencken, H. L., 97, 196, 227 influences upon, 19, 76
Mess, F., 192 middle-class background, 6
Messer, Α., 203 moralist, 164, 235
Meysenbug, M. von, 49, 51, 56, m musical tastes, 13, 1 1 3
Mill, J. S., 81 nationalist, 99
Möbius, P. G., 72η observer, 168
Mussolini, 171, 209 philologist, 18, 42, 77
philosophy of history, 144, 162
Napoleon, 133 poetry, 66, 160, 234
Naumburg, 6 professors, h i
Nicolas, M. P., 193η program, 119, 222
Nietzsche, Elizabeth (Frau Förster- prophet, 237
Nietzsche), 7, 22, 32, 56, 67, 71, publishers, 59
n i , 177, 209 reformer, 168
Nietzsche, F. W.: relation to his own times, 142
admirer of Renaissance, 31, 92 relation to modern anti-intellectu-
ambulance worker, 33 alism, 83, 95, 149, 235
ancestry, 3 relations with Wagner, 35, 48, 49,
anti-anti-semitism, 230 112
anti-idealist, 87, 151 religious background, 78, 94
anti-rationalist, 84 reputation in England, 190, 194, 202
anti-romanticist, 91, 161 reputation in France, 178, 187
anti-semite, 105, 215 reputation in Germany, 175,186,198
 INDEX 265
Nietzsche, F. W. (cont.): Podach, E. F., 15η, 23η, 72η
reputation in United States, 190, 196 Prinzhorn, Η., 207
reputation in war of 1914-1918, 200
social life, 28, 67 Raabe, Η., ι6η
socialism, 125 Ranke, L. von, 154
subject of doctoral theses, 179 Rassenhygiene, 121, 214
Supermen, 123, 129, 138, 217 Rèe, P., 49, 55, 223
teacher, 41, 43, 121 Ritsehl, F., 18
transvaluation of all values, 136 Robespierre, 124
unity of his ideas, 75, 182 Rohde, E., 20, 31, 42, 67, 173
visits to Italy, 51 Romundt, H., 32, 34
Will to Power, 132, 217 Rosenberg, Α., 2o6
women, 109 Rousseau, 91
womenfolk, 7 Rubaiyat, 235, 243
writer, 25, 58, 157 Russia, 126
Nietzsche, F. W., writings: Riitimeyer, L., 27
Antichrist, The, 64, 65
Beyond Good and Evil, 62 Saint Paul, 100, 133, 166
Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit Sainte Beuve, 80
of Music, The, 38 Salome, Lou (Frau Andréas-Salomé),
Case of Wagner, The, 63 55, 94, 175
Dawn of Day, The, 60 Salter, W. M., 196
De Laertii Diogenis fontibus, 19 Scheler, Μ., 192η
Ecce Homo, 64, 65 Scheuffler, G., 207
Genealogy of Morals, The, 62 Schiller, 39
Human, All Too Human, 49 Schopenhauer, 18, 45, 78, 131
Joyful Wisdom, The, 60 Schulpforta, 10
Thoughts out of Season, 45 Shaw, G. B., 194, 198, 227
Thus Spalle Zarathustra, 52, 61, 220 Sils-Maria, 51, 69
Twilight of the Idols, The, 64 Socrates, 39, 83
Will to Power, The, 65 Spencer, H., 95, 155, 191
Nietzsche-Archiv, 13, 18, 22, 201, 209 Spengler, 39, 206
Nietzscheans, "gentle," 184, 197, 221; Spinoza, 90
"tough," 185, 194, 231 Stirner, M., 227
Nordau, M., 177 Strauss, D., 45, 84, 115
Strindberg, Α., 6g, 174
Oehler, R., 207, 223
Overbeck, F., 32, 69, 71 Taine, H., 174
Tönnies, F., 177
Paine, T., 84, 228 Treitschke, H. von, 191, 202, 206
Parsons, T., 235η Triebschen, 35
Plato, 90, 150, 170 Turin, 51, 68
266 INDEX
Vaihinger, H., 175 Whitehead, 95
Voltaire, 49, 228 Wilamowitz, U. von,
Wright, W. H., 196
Wagner, Cosima, 35, 70, n i
Wagner, R., 20, 35, 40, 42, 45, 70, 78, Zola, 92
173 Zoroaster, 61