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Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter IX Section 4 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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IV. The Song of Zarathustra

And now from art, which seemed to have failed him, he took refuge in science—whose cold Apollonian air cleansed his soul after the Dionysian heat and riot of Tribschen and Bayreuth—and in philosophy, which “offers an asylum where no tyranny can penetrate.” Like Spinoza, he tried to calm his passions by examining them; we need, he said, “a chemistry of the emotions.” And so, in his next book, Human All Too Human (1878-80), he became psychologist, and analyzed with a surgeon’s ruthlessness the tenderest feelings and the most cherished beliefs,—dedicating it all bravely, in the midst of reaction, to the scandalous Voltaire. He sent the volumes to Wagner, and received in return the book of Parsifal. They never communicated again. 

And now from art, which seemed to have failed him, Nietzsche took refuge in science—whose cold Apollonian air cleansed his soul after the Dionysian heat and riot of Tribschen and Bayreuth—and in philosophy, which “offers an asylum where no tyranny can penetrate.” 

And then, at the very prime of life, in 1879, he broke down, physically and mentally, and sank into the vicinity of death. He prepared for the end defiantly: “Promise me,” he said to his sister, “that when I die only my friends shall stand about my coffin, and no inquisitive crowd. See that no priest or anyone else utter falsehoods at my graveside, when I can no longer protect myself; and let me descend into my tomb as an honest pagan.” But he recovered, and this heroic funeral had to be postponed. Out of such illness came his love of health and the sun, of life and laughter and dance, and Carmen’s “music of the south”; out of it too came a stronger will, born of fighting death, a “Yea-saying” that felt life’s sweetness even in its bitterness and pain; and out of it perhaps a pitiful effort to rise to Spinoza’s cheerful acceptance of natural limitations and human destiny. “My formula for greatness is Amor fati (love of one’s fate): … not only to bear up under every necessity, but to love it.” Alas, it is more easily said than done. 

And then, at the very prime of life, in 1879, Nietzsche broke down, physically and mentally, and sank into the vicinity of death. But he recovered, and out of such illness came his love of health and the sun, a stronger will, and a cheerful acceptance of natural limitations and human destiny.

The titles of his next books—The Dawn of Day (1881) and The Joyful Wisdom (1882)—reflect a grateful convalescence; here is a kindlier tone and a gentler tongue than in the later books. Now he had a year of quiet days, living modestly on the pension his university had given him. The proud philosopher could even thaw into a pretty frailty, and find himself suddenly in love. But Lou Salome did not return his love; his eyes were too sharp and deep for comfort. Paul Ree was less dangerous, and played Dr. Pagello to Nietzsche’s de Musset. Nietzsche fled in despair, composing aphorisms against women as he went. In truth he was naive, enthusiastic, romantic, tender to simplicity; his war against tenderness was an attempt to exorcise a virtue which had led to a bitter deception and to a wound that never healed. 

After his recovery, Nietzsche felt grateful. He displayed a kindlier tone and a gentler tongue than in the later books. He even fell in love; but his love was not returned Nietzsche fled in despair, composing aphorisms against women as he went. 

He could not find solitude enough now: “it is difficult to live with men, because silence is difficult.” He passed from Italy to the heights of the Alps at Sils-Maria in the Upper Engadine,—loving not man nor woman neither, and praying that Man might be surpassed. And there on the lonely heights came the inspiration of his greatest .book. 

I sat there waiting—waiting for nothing,
Enjoying, beyond good and evil, now
The light, now the shade; there was only
The day, the lake, the noon, time without end.
Then, my friend, suddenly one became two,
And Zarathustra passed by me.

Now his “soul rose, and overflowed all its margins.” He had found a new teacher—Zoroaster; a new god—the Superman; and a new religion—eternal recurrence: he must sing now—philosophy mounted into poetry under the ardor of hIs inspiration. “I could sing a song, and will sing it, although I am alone in an empty house and must sing it into mine own, ears.” (What loneliness is in that phrase!) “Thou great star!—what would be thy happiness, were it not for those for whom thou shinest? … Lo! I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath collected too much honey; I need hands reaching out for it.” So he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883) and finished it in that “hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in Venice.” It was his magnificent answer to Parsifal; but the maker of Parsifal was dead. 

It was then, alone on the lonely heights of Alps that Nietzsche found his inspiration. So he wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883) and finished it in that “hallowed hour when Richard Wagner gave up the ghost in Venice.”

It was his masterpiece, and he knew it. “This work stands alone,” he wrote of it later. “Do not let us mention the poets in the same breath; nothing perhaps had ever been produced out of such a superabundance of strength. … If all the spirit and goodness of every great soul were collected together, the whole could not create a single one of Zarathustra’s discourses.” A slight exaggeration!—but assuredly it is one of the great books of the nineteenth century. Yet Nietzsche had a bitter time getting it into print; the first part was delayed because the publisher’s presses were busy with an order for 500,000 hymn-books, and then by a stream of anti-Semitic pamphlets; and the publisher refused to print the last part at all, as quite worthless from the point of view of shekels; so that the author had to pay for its publication himself. Forty copies of the book were sold; seven were given away; one acknowledged it; no one praised it. Never was a man so much alone. 

Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883) is one of the great books of the nineteenth century. Yet Nietzsche had a bitter time getting it into print. He had to pay for its publication himself. Very few copies were sold and no one praised it. Never was a man so much alone. 

Zarathustra, aged thirty, comes down from his meditative mountain to preach to the crowd, like his Persian prototype Zoroaster; but the crowd turns from him to see a rope-walker perform. The rope-walker falls, and dies. Zarathustra takes him upon his shoulders and carries him away; “because thou hast made danger thy calling, therefore shall I bury thee with my own hands.” “Live dangerously,” he preaches. “Erect your cities beside Vesuvius. Send out your ships to unexplored seas. Live in a state of war.” 

Nietzsche preaches to others to live dangerously, “Erect your cities beside Vesuvius. Send out your ships to unexplored seas. Live in a state of war.”

And remember to disbelieve. Zarathustra, coming down from the mountain, meets an old hermit who talks to him about God. “But when Zarathustra was alone, he spake thus with his heart: “Can it actually be possible? This old saint in his forest hath not yet heard aught of God being dead!” But of course God was dead, all the Gods were dead. 

For the old Gods came to an end long ago. And verily it was a good and joyful end of Gods!
They did not die lingering in the twilight,—although that lie is told! On the contrary, they once upon a time—laughed themselves unto death!
That came to pass when, by a God himself, the most ungodly word was uttered, the word: “there is but one God! Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
An old grim beard of a God, a jealous one, forgot himself thus.
And then all Gods laughed and shook on their chairs and cried: “Is godliness not just that there are Gods, but no God?”
Whoever hath ears let him hear.
Thus spake Zarathustra.

All gods probably died when the most ungodly word was uttered, “There is but one God! Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

What hilarious atheism! “Is not just this godliness, that there are no gods?” ”What could be created if there were Gods? … If there were Gods, how could I bear to be no God? Consequently there are no Gods.” “Who is more ungodly than I, that I may enjoy his teachings?” “I conjure you, my brethren, remain faithful to earth, and do not believe those who speak unto you of super terrestrial hopes! Poisoners they are, whether they know it or not.” Many an erstwhile rebel returns to this sweet poison at last, as a necessary anesthesia for life. The ”higher men” gather in Zarathustra’s cave to prepare themselves to preach his doctrine; he leaves them for a while, and returns to find them offering incense to a donkey who has “created the world in his own image—i. e., as stupid as possible.” This is not edifying; but then, says our text: 

He who must be a creator in good and evil—verily, he must first be a destroyer, and break values into pieces.
Thus the highest evil is part of the highest goodness. But that is creative goodness.
Let us speak thereon, ye wisest men, however bad it be. To be silent is worse; all unuttered truths become poisonous.
And whatever will break on our truths;. let it break! Many a house hath yet to be built.”
Thus spake Zarathustra.

There is so much ungodly and stupid thinking goes on in the name of God and religion. Let it all destroy itself.

Is this irreverent? But Zarathustra complains that “nobody knoweth any longer how to revere,” and he calls himself “the most pious of all those who believe not in God.” He longs for belief, and pities “all who, like myself, suffer from the great loathing, for whom the old God died and no new God yet lieth in cradles and napkins.” And then he pronounces the name of the new God: 

Dead are all Gods; now we will that superman live. …
I teach you superman. Man is a something that shall be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass him? …
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what can be loved in man is that he is a transition and a destruction.
I love those who do not know how to live except in perishing, for they are those going beyond.
I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers, they are arrows of longing for the other shore.
I love those who do not seek beyond the stars for a reason to perish and be sacrificed, but who sacrifice themselves to earth in order that earth may some day become superman’s. …
It is time for man to mark his goal. It is time for man to plant the germ of his highest hope. …
Tell me, my brethren, if the goal be lacking to humanity, is not humanity itself lacking? …
Love unto the most remote man is higher than love unto your neighbor.

The old God has died for us. Man is the bridge to a new God. Man must evolve by perishing. Man must have a great longing for what lies beyond. Man must not be satisfied with what exist. There must be a higher goal.

Nietzsche appears to foresee that every reader will think himself the superman; and tries to guard against this by confessing that the superman is not yet born; we can only be his fore-runners and his soil. ”Will nothing beyond your capacity. … Be not virtuous beyond your ability; and demand nothing of yourselves contrary to probability.” Nat for us is the happiness which only the superman will know; our best goal is work. “For a long time I ceased not to strive for my happiness; now I strive for my work.” 

That higher goal must be real and achievable. Just do your work that is within your capacity, ability and reach. The superman will come.

Nietzsche is not content with having created God in his own image; he must make himself immortal. After the superman comes Eternal Recurrence. All things will return, in precise detail, and an infinite number of times; even Nietzsche will return, and this Germany of blood and iron and sack-cloth and ashes, and all the travail of the human mind from ignorance to Zarathustra. It is a terrible doctrine, the last and most courageous form of Yea saying and the acceptance of life; and yet how could it not be? The possible combinations of reality are limited, and time is endless; some day, inevitably, life and matter will fall into just such a form as they once had, and out of that fatal repetition all history must unwind its devious course again. To such a pass determinism brings us. No wonder Zarathustra feared to speak this his last lesson; feared and trembled and held back, until a voice spoke to him: “What matter about thyself, Zarathustra? Say thy word and break in pieces !”

Beyond the will to survive is the will to evolve.

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Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter IX Section 3 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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III. Nietzsche and Wagner

Early in 1872 he published his first, and his only complete, book—The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.*

*It falls in with their later break that Wagner wrote about the same time an essay “On the Evolution of Music Out of the Drama”.

Never had a philologist spoken so lyrically. ‘He told of the two gods whom Greek art had worshipped: at first Dionysus (or Bacchus), the god of wine and revelry, of ascending life, of joy in action, of ecstatic emotion and inspiration, of instinct and adventure and dauntless suffering, the god of song and music and dance and drama;—and then, later, Apollo, the god of peace and leisure and repose, of esthetic emotion and intellectual contemplation, of logical order and philosophic calm, the god of painting and sculpture and epic poetry. The noblest Greek art was a union of the two ideals,—the restless masculine power of Dionysus and the quiet feminine beauty of Apollo. In drama Dionysus inspired the chorus, and Apollo the dialogue; the chorus grew directly out of the procession of the satyr-dressed devotees of Dionysus; the dialogue was an after-thought; a reflective appendage to an emotional experience. 

Early in 1872 he published his first, and his only complete, book—The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. He told of the two gods whom Greek art had worshipped: the restless masculine power of Dionysus and the quiet feminine beauty of Apollo.

The profoundest feature of Greek drama was the Dionysian conquest of pessimism through art. The Greeks were not the cheerful and optimistic people whom we meet with in modem rhapsodies about them; they knew the stings of life intimately, and its tragic brevity. When Midas asked Silenus what fate is best for a man, Silenus answered: “Pitiful race of a day, children of accidents and sorrow, why do you force me to say what were better left unheard? The best of all is unobtainable–not to be born, to be nothing. The second best is to die early.” Evident1y these men had little to learn from Schopenhauer, or from the Hindus. But the Greeks overcame the gloom of their disillusionment with the brilliance of their art: out of their own suffering they made the spectacle of the drama, and found that “it is only as an esthetic phenomenon,” as an object of artistic contemplation or reconstruction, “that existence and the world appear justified.” “The sublime is the artistic subjugation of the awful.” Pessimism is a sign of decay, optimism is a sign of superficiality; “tragic optimism” is the mood of the strong man who seeks intensity and extent of experience, even at the cost of woe, and is delighted to find that strife is the law of life. “Tragedy itself is the proof of the fact that the Greeks were not pessimists.'” The days when this mood begot the Aeschylean drama and the pre-Socratic philosophy were the ”tremendous days of Greece.”

The Greeks knew the stings of life intimately, and its tragic brevity. The profoundest feature of Greek drama was the Dionysian conquest of pessimism through art. Tragic optimism is the mood of the strong man who seeks intensity and extent of experience.

Socrates—“the type of the theoretical man”—was a sign of the loosened fibre of the Greek character; “the old Marathonian stalwart capacity of body and soul was more and more sacrificed to a dubious enlightenment, involving progressive degeneration of the physical and mental powers.” Critical philosophy replaced the philosophical poetry of the pre-Socratics; science replaced art; intellect replaced instinct; dialectic replaced the games. Under the influence of Socrates, Plato the athlete became an esthete, Plato the dramatist became a logician, an enemy of passion, a deporter of poets, a “pre-Christian Christian,” an epistemologist. On the temple of Apollo at Delphi those words of passionless wisdom were inscribed—gnothe seauton (know thyself) and meden agan (nothing in excess)—which became, in Socrates and Plato, the delusion that intelligence is the only virtue, and in Aristotle the enervating doctrine of the golden mean. In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic. In its youth Greece produced Homer and Aeschylus; in its decay it gave us Euripides—the logician turned dramatist, the rationalist destroying myth and symbol, the sentimentalist destroying the tragic optimism of the masculine age, the friend of Socrates who replaces the Dionysian chorus with an Apollonian galaxy of dialecticians and orators.

After Socrates, critical philosophy replaced the philosophical poetry; science replaced art; intellect replaced instinct; and dialectic replaced the games; the rationalist destroying myth and symbol, the sentimentalist destroying the tragic optimism of the masculine age.

No wonder the Delphic oracle of Apollo had named Socrates the wisest of the Greeks, and Euripides the wisest after him; and no wonder that “the unerring instinct of Aristophanes … comprised Socrates and Euripides … in the same feeling of hatred, and saw in them the symptoms of a degenerate culture.” It is true that they recanted; that Euripides’ last play—The Bacchae—is his surrender to Dionysus, and the prelude to his suicide; and that Socrates in prison took to practicing the music of Dionysus to ease his conscience. “Perhaps—thus he had to ask himself—what is not intelligible to me is not therefore unreasonable? Perhaps there is a realm of wisdom from which the logician is banished? Perhaps art is even a necessary correlative of and supplement to science?” But it was too late; the work of the logician and the rationalist could not be undone; Greek drama and Greek character decayed. “The surprising thing had happened: when the poet” and the philosopher “recanted, their tendency had already conquered.” With them ended the age of heroes, and the art of Dionysus. 

Greek drama and Greek character decayed. The surprising thing had happened: when the poet and the philosopher recanted, their tendency had already conquered. With them ended the age of heroes, and the art of Dionysus. 

But perhaps the age of Dionysus may return? Did not Kant destroy once and for all the theoretical reason and the theoretical man?—and did not Schopenhauer teach us again the profundity of instinct and the tragedy of thought?—and is not Richard Wagner another Aeschylus, restoring myths and symbols, and uniting music and drama again in Dionysian ecstasy? “Out of the Dionysian root of the German spirit a power has arisen which has nothing in common with the primitive conditions of Socratic culture, …—namely, German music, … in its vast solar orbit from Bach to Beethoven, from Beethoven to Wagner.” The German spirit has too long reflected passively the Apollonian art of Italy and France; let the German people realize that their own instincts are sounder than these decadent cultures; let them make a Reformation in music as in religion, pouring the wild vigor of Luther again into art and life. Who knows but that out of the war-throes of the German nation another age of heroes dawns, and that out of the spirit of music tragedy may be reborn? 

But perhaps the age of Dionysus may return. Let the German people realize that their own instincts are sounder than these decadent cultures. Who knows but that out of the war-throes of the German nation another age of heroes dawns.

In 1872 Nietzsche returned to Basle, still weak in body, but with a spirit burning with ambition, and loath to consume itself in the drudgery of lecturing. “I have before me work enough for fifty years, and I must mark time under the yoke.” Already he was a little disillusioned with the wars, “the German Empire is extirpating the German spirit,” he wrote. The victory of 1871 had brought a certain coarse conceit into the soul of Germany; and nothing could be more hostile to spiritual growth. An impish quality in Nietzsche made him restless before every idol; and he determined to assail this dulling complacency by attacking its most respected exponent—David Strauss. “I enter society with a duel: Stendhal gave that advice.”

By 1872, Nietzsche became oath to consume his spirit in the drudgery of lecturing. He became quite restless, determined to assail  the prevailing complacency.

In the second of his well-named Thoughts out of Season—”Schopenhauer as Educator”—he turned his fire upon the chauvinistic universities. “Experience teaches us that nothing stands so much in the way of developing great philosophers as the custom of supporting bad ones in state universities…. No state would ever dare to patronize such men as Plato and Schopenhauer. … The state is always afraid of them.” He renewed the attack in “The Future of Our Educational Institutions”; and in “The Use and Abuse of History” he ridiculed the submergence of the German intellect in the minutiae of antiquarian scholarship. Already in these essays two of his distinctive ideas found expression: that morality, as well as theology, must be reconstructed in terms of the evolution theory; and that the function of life is to bring about “not the betterment of the majority, who, taken as individuals, are the most worthless types,” but “the creation of genius,” the development and elevation of superior personalities.

Two of the distinctive ideas of Nietzsche are: that morality, as well as theology, must be reconstructed in terms of the evolution theory; and that the function of life is to bring about the development and elevation of superior personalities.

The most enthusiastic of these essays was called “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth” It hailed Wagner as a Siegfried “who has never learned the meaning of fear,” and as founder of the only real art, because the first to fuse all the arts into a great esthetic synthesis; and it called upon Germany to realize the majestic significance of the coming Wagner festival -“Bayreuth signifies for us the morning sacrament on the day of battIe.” This was the voice of youthful worship, the voice of an almost femininely refined spirit who saw in Wagner something of that masculine decisiveness and courage which went later into the conception of the Superman. But the worshipper was a philosopher too, and recognized in Wagner a certain dictatorial egotism offensive to an aristocratic soul. He could not bear Wagner’s attack upon the French in 1871 (Paris had not been ‘kind to Tannhauser!); and he was astounded at Wagner’s jealousy of Brahms. The central theme even of this laudatory essay boded no good for Wagner: “The world has been Orientalized long enough; and men now yearn to be Hellenized.” But Nietzsche already knew that Wagner was half Semitic. 

Nietzsche saw in Wagner something of that masculine decisiveness and courage which went later into the conception of the Superman. But as a philosopher, he also recognized in Wagner a certain dictatorial egotism offensive to an aristocratic soul. 

And then, in 1876, came Bayreuth itself, and Wagnerian opera night after night,—without cuts,—and Wagneriennes, and emperors and princes and princelets, and the idle rich crowding out the impecunious devotees. Suddenly it dawned upon Nietzsche how much of Geyer there was in Wagner, how much The Ring of the Nibelungs owed to the theatrical effects which abounded in it, and how far the melos that some missed in the music had passed into the drama. “I, had had visions of a drama overspread with a symphony, a form growing out of the Lied. But the alien appeal of the opera drew Wagner irresistibly in the other direction.” II Nietzsche could not go in that direction; he detested the dramatic and the operatic. “I should be insane to stay here,” he wrote. “I await with terror each of these ‘long musical evenings … I can bear no more.”

Nietzsche could not stand the Wagnerian opera at Bayreuth in 1876 because it depended too much on theatrical effects and drama.

And so he fled, without a word to Wagner and in the midst of Wagner’s supreme triumph, while all the world worshiped; fled, “tired with disgust of all that is feminism and undisciplined rhapsody in that romanticism, that idealistic lying, that softening of the human conscience, which had conquered here one of the bravest souls.” And then, in far-away Sorrento, whom should he encounter but Wagner himself, resting from his victory, and full of a new opera he was writing—Parsifal. It was to be an exaltation of Christianity, pity, and fleshless love, and a world redeemed by a “pure fool,” “the fool in Christ.” Nietzsche turned away without a word, and never spoke to Wagner thereafter. “It is impossible for me to recognize greatness which is not united with candor and sincerity towards one’s self. The moment I make a discovery of this sort, a man’s achievements count for absolutely nothing with me.” He preferred Siegfried the rebel to Parsifal the saint, and could not forgive Wagner for coming to see in Christianity a moral value and beauty far outweighing its theological defects. In The Case of Wagner he lays about him with neurotic fury: 

Wagner flatters every nihilistic Buddhistic instinct, and disguises it in music; he flatters every kind of Christianity and every religious form and expression of decadence. … Richard Wagner, … a decrepit and desperate romantic, collapsed suddenly before the Holy Cross. Was there no German then with eyes to see, with pity in his conscience to bewail, this horrible spectacle? Am I then the only one he caused to suffer? … And yet I was one of the most corrupt Wagnerians. … Well, I am the child of this age, just like Wagner,—i. e., a decadent; but I am conscious of it; I defended myself against it.

Nietzsche preferred Siegfried the rebel to Parsifal the saint, and could not forgive Wagner for coming to see in Christianity a moral value and beauty far outweighing its theological defects.

Nietzsche was more “Apollonian” than he supposed: a lover of the subtle and delicate and refined, not of wild Dionysian vigor, nor of the tenderness of wine and song and love. “Your brother, with his air of delicate distinction, is a most uncomfortable fellow,” said Wagner to Frau Forster-Nietzsche; “… sometimes he is quite embarrassed at my jokes—and then I crack them more madly than ever.” There was so much of Plato in Nietzsche; he feared that art would unteach men to be hard; being tender-minded, he supposed that all the world was like himself,—dangerously near to practicing Christianity. There had not been wars enough to suit this gentle professor. And yet, in his quiet hours, he knew that Wagner was as right as Nietzsche, that Parsifal’s gentleness was as necessary as Siegfried’s strength, and that in some cosmic way these cruel oppositions merged into wholesome creative unities. He liked to think of this “stellar, friendship” that still bound him, silently, to the man who had been the most valuable and fruitful experience of his life. And when, in a lucid moment of his final insanity, he saw a picture of the long-dead Wagner, he said softly, “Him I loved much.”

But Nietzsche was a lover of the subtle and delicate and refined, not of wild Dionysian vigor. In his quiet hours, he knew that Parsifal’s gentleness was as necessary as Siegfried’s strength, and that in some cosmic way these cruel oppositions merged into wholesome creative unities.

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Reference: The Story of Philosophy

This paper presents Chapter IX Section 1 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The  contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.

The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.

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I. The Lineage of Nietzsche

Nietzsche was the child of Darwin and the brother of Bismarck. 

It does not matter that he ridiculed the English evolutionists and the German nationalists: he was accustomed to denounce those who had most influenced him; it was his unconscious way of covering up his debts. 

The ethical philosophy of Spencer was not the most natural corollary of the theory of evolution. If life is a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive, then strength is the ultimate virtue, and weakness the only fault. Good is that which survives, which wins; bad is that which gives way and fails. Only the mid-Victorian cowardice of the English Darwinians, and the bourgeois respectability of French positivists and German socialists, could conceal the inevitableness of this conclusion. These men were brave enough to reject Christian theology, but they did not dare to be logical, to reject the moral ideas, the worship of meekness and gentleness and altruism, which had grown out of that theology. They ceased to be Anglicans, or Catholics, or Lutherans; but they did not dare cease to be Christians.—So argued Friedrich Nietzsche. 

“The secret stimulus of the French free-thinkers from Voltaire to August Comte was not to remain behind the Christian ideal, … but to outbid it if possible. Comte, with his ‘Live for others,’ out-Christianizes Christianity. In Germany it was Schopenhauer, and in England John Stuart Mill, who gave the greatest fame to the theory of sympathetic affections, of pity, and of usefulness to others as the principle of action. … All the systems of socialism placed themselves unwittingly … upon the common ground of these doctrines.”

The ethical philosophy of Spencer was not the most natural corollary of the theory of evolution. If life is a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive, then strength is the ultimate virtue, and weakness the only fault.

Darwin unconsciously completed the work of the Encyclopedists: they had removed the theological basis of modern morals, but they had left that morality itself untouched and inviolate, hanging miraculously in the air; a little breath of biology was all that was needed to clear away this remnant of imposture. Men who could think clearly soon perceived what the profoundest minds of every age had known: that in this battle we call life, what we need is not goodness but strength, not humility but pride, not altruism but resolute intelligence; that equality and democracy are against the grain of selection and survival; that not masses but geniuses are the goal of evolution; that not “justice” but power is the arbiter of all differences and all destinies.—So it seemed to Friedrich Nietzsche. 

In this battle we call life, what we need is not goodness but strength, not humility but pride, not altruism but resolute intelligence.

Now if all this were true, nothing could be more magnificent or significant than Bismarck. Here was a man who knew the realities of life, who said bluntly that “there is no altruism among nations,” and that modern issues are to be decided not by votes and rhetoric, but by blood and iron. What a cleansing whirlwind he was for a Europe rotten with delusions and democracy and “ideals”! In a few brief months he had brought decadent Austria to accept his leadership; in a few brief months he had humbled a France drunk with the legend of Napoleon; and in those brief months had he not also forced all those little German “states,” all those petty potentates, principalities and powers to fuse themselves into a mighty empire, the very symbol of the new morality of strength? The growing military and industrial vigor of this new Germany needed a voice; the arbitrament of war needed a philosophy to justify it. Christianity would not justify it, but Darwinism could. Given a little audacity, and the thing could be done. 

Bismarck demonstrated this sentiment in practice. The growing military and industrial vigor of this new Germany needed a voice; the arbitrament of war needed a philosophy to justify it. 

Nietzsche had the audacity, and became the voice.

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