The Press Saturday, June 20, 1925. Nietzsche Again.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18413, 20 June 1925, Page 14

The Press Saturday, June 20, 1925. Nietzsche Again.

In his interesting- address two days ago at Canterbury College the Dean of Bristol suggested that tho remedy for tho world's ills is a new race of supermen —not "super-boxers and ''profiteers, but the 'poor fools' who " put service to others before them- " selves." But there was no to warn us against the philosophy of Nietzsche. It was in tho early days of tho Avar, in our search for tho main influences which moulded the modern German spirit, that wo bracketed the statesman Bismarck, the historian Treitschke, and the philosopher Xiotzscho, and wo would not have done it then if we had known. For of all Nictzscho's antipathies (and they were pretty intense), perhaps the moat intense was that which ho felt for the whole modern German spirit, its culture, its education, its artistic expression, its ideals. Compared with tho French, ho regarded his own countrymen as a nation of Philistines or barbarians. But, to let that pass, tho world seems for a long time- now (especially tho British world) to .have allowed Nietzsche and the Nietzsche-cult to die out of its cognisance or its interest. It is indeed surprising to find so cautious a firm of publishers as Messrs Allen and Unwin reissuing their collected edition of his works in eighteen volumes; and re-issuing also the brochure, "Who is " to be Master of the World? " by that fervid apostle of Nietzsche-ism, Anthony Ludovici. i Fluctuations in public taste arc common enough, especially in tho case ,qf writers whoso words and teaching arc stamped with a fierce individuality, For ourselves, .we have not discerned any pronounced symptoms of a revived interest in the "Superman," the "Will to Power," " Slave-morality," or the other conceptions which once camo red-hot from Nietzsche's ■ brain, and burned, their way into tho public consciousness. It is a remarkable coincidence that almost simultaneously with Allen and Unwin's venture, there appear a few German books about Nietzsche, which havo the interest of presenting him in tho light of modern Gorman sentiment, as contrasted with that of fifteen or twenty years ago. Tho general result is hardly favourable to tho depth or permanence of Nietzsche's influence.

This is what wo might havo expected. Tho so-called philosophy of Nietzsche was of tho kind to become a nine days' wonder; it was not of the kind to produce a deep and abiding influence. Ho never saw tho great facts of human nature and human life in a clear, steady light; ho saw them through a mephitic glare, in which bizarre and distorted forms assumed the pose of realities. Ho had no historic sense; and hence his attempt to present his conceptions as part of tho process of human evolution was a grotesque failure. His superman was a mongrel freak of his own over-heated imagination: one half of him being a creature of transcendent artistic and intellectual power: the other half a kind of glorified Viking or Goth, a "blond beast," a huge, fair-haired creature ravening and crashing through a prostrate world of moral slaves, uncontrolled by any such antediluvian considerations as those of good and evil. And this creature was the ideal towards which the human raco was inevitably (and rightly) tending! Another of Nietzsche's ideals was a sort of moral nihilism; not a triumph of evil over good, but an extinction of both. He developed this ideal in a book called "Beyond Good and' Evil" (" Jenseits der Giite und der Bose"), that is, a world in which those conceptions have no place at all. But tho real counterpart of the " blond beast" was his doctrine of "slave-morality." Ho denounced the so-called virtues of pity, compassion, humility, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and the like, as povertystricken shams, only suited for the mob, and really pernicious, because they poisoned the rich fountains of joy and freedom and beauty for mankind. And inasmuch as these havo derived their consecration from Christianity, Nietzsche held that religion mainly responsible for the degradation of humanity. In fairness one must add that he regarded the figure of Christ Himself as absolutely unique and unapproachable.

The pathos and tragedy of Nietzsohe's life must always awake a certain degree of sympathy, even while wo revolt against his teaching, and repudiate his claim to the name of philosopher. Nor had he always been raving about blond beasts and slavemorality. There was once another Xietzscho, a. young man, of whose pleasing and attractive personality wo have abundant illustrations. Wo "have them in his carij- JetteiSj which are.

delightful reading, and exhibit a remarkable faculty for loyal friendships. And we hare them in the memoirs of his youth, published a few years ago by his sister. It is very difficult to fuse the diverse elements of his nature into an organic ■whole. The new development slioavs itself in° the lirst year of his Professorship at Basle, IS7O, v.ith hopelessly broken health, nerves shattered, and mind at a high pitch of tension. From this time onwards his physical anguish was almost unendurable; and that accounts for much. He rushed to extremes. He picked up a copy of Schopenhauer on a stall, and sat up all night for a week reading him. ("The Will to Power" of Nietzsche was complementary to the

'•'Will to Live" of Schopenhauer.) His sudden and passionate attachments turned to violent and equally passionate antipathies. lie poured outbook after book: but the public took no notice —though he put into them, not so much his opinions, as his very lifo and being. He contemplated suicide, but was saved from it by a sense of self-exaltation, which almost rises to moral grandeur; but the selfesteem and self-exaltation went on expanding into a vast, illimitable egoism. At last the crash came. One day, while walking in the streets of Turin, he collapsed. From that hour his mind was gone, and his . body partially paralysed. For eleven years of twilight he lingered, tended ilrst by his mother, then by a sister. His books and teaching spread rapidly in Germany; but he knew nothing of it. There is bitter irony in the spectacle of the creator of tho superman tints sunk into mumbling imbecility. But this gives way to a feeling of the poignant pathos' of such a sceuo as is presented to us in the ruthless iconoclast standing on the seashore of the Italian Riviera, laughing at the little waves as they played On the beach, and telling them not to come any further.