The sun., 1908-11-29
TIE WILL TO SUFFER.

as declaring that @the greatest man 10 he
who forms the taste OF Q nation; the next
greatest 10 he who corrupts It," 1t Is an
elastic epigram and not unlike the rule
that is poor because 1t won't work both
ways. We might say that all master
reformers. heretlcs and rSbels were fret
great oorrupters. Itwas q prime necessity
In their propa Eanda. ht1stophanes and
Arius; Mohammed and Napoleon; Mon
taigne and Rabelais; Paul and Augustine;
Luther and Calvin; Voltaire and Rousseau
Darwin and Newman; Liszt and Wagner;
Kant and Schopenhauer-here are few
names Of men who undermined beliefs.
whether for good or evil. Rousseau. for
example, has been accused Of being one
Of the greatest oorrupters In history; yet
TO him we may owe the Constitution OF
the United States. Pascal In prose Of un-
equalled polish, denounced the Jesuits as
oorrupting youth. Nevertheless. DR.. Georg
Brandes. an intellectual and philo-
sophie anaroh, once wrote TO Nietzsche:
Il, too. love Pascal. But even az young
man was on the side Of the Jesuits
against Pascal. Wise men. 1t was they
who were right; he did not understand
them: but they understood him and
they published his Provincial
Letters with notes themselves. The best
edition is that of the Jesuits." We're
not Titan. Rubens and Rembrandt the
three unspeakable devils Of painting
for Blake9 Loosely speaking then. It
doesn't much matter whether one calls q
great man a regenerator or oorrupter.
Napoleon was called the latter by Taine
after he had been saluted as demigod by
his idolatrous contemporaries. Nor does
the case Of Nietzsche differ much from his
philosophic forerunners. He scolded
Schopenhauer. though borrowing his dia-
lectic tools, as he later Knocked at the one
sincere friendship of his lonely life. that
With Richard Wagner. We know the most
objective philosophers are tinged by the
individual temperamentso Of their makers,
and perhaps the chief characteristic Of
all philosophers is their unphilosophic
contempt for their fellow thinkers.
Nietzsche displayed this trait; 80 did
Richard Wagner-who was in a lesser
fashion an amateur philosopher. his
system adorned by plumes borrowed from
Fichte. Schelling and Sohopenhauer.
Arthur Schopenhauer was endowed with
a more powerful intellect than either
Wagner or Nietzsohe. He corrupted"
them both. He was materialst enough
to have echoed the epigram often at
tributed to Fontenelle: To be happy a
man must have a good stomach and a
wicked heart
Friedrich Nietzsche was more rhapso-
dist, poet and prose artist than original
thinker. Merely to say Nay! TO all
existing institutions is not to give birth
to a mighty idea. though the gesture is
brave. He substituted for Schopen-
hauer's will to live"-an ingenious
of Kant's thing in itself"-the
will to power" which is verbal Juggling.
The late Eduard Won Hartmann built his
house OF philosophy in the fog OF the un-
conscious; Nietzsche, despising Darwin
as dull grubber. returned unknowingly
to the very land Of metaphysics he thought
he had fed forever. He was always the
heologian-toujours semindriste. as they
said of Renan, Theology was in his
blood. 1t stifiened his bones. Abusing
particularly Protestant
he was hirnse!! On exponent
Of theological odium Of the old fash
ioned virulent sort, as may be seen in his
laundering polemics. He held brief
for the other side Of good and evil; but
man can't so easily empty his veins OF the
theologic blood of his forebears. IT was
his Nessus shirt and ended by consuming
him. He had the romantic cult of great
men, yet sneered at Carlyle for his titan
ism, He believed in human perfecti-
bility. He borrowed his superman partly
from the classic pantheon. partly from
the hierarchy Of Christian saints-or
perhaps from the very cross he vituper-
ated. The only Christian. he was fond
Of saying. died on the cross, The only
Nietzschian. we might reply, passed
away when the brilliant brain Of Nietzsche
Saturated with the culture
Of Goethe, his superman was sent bal
looming aloft by the poetic afflatus Of
He was an apparition possible only in
modern and rationalistic Protestant Ger
many. Like voice from the Middle Ages he
stirred the profound phlegm and spiritual
indifference Of his fellow countrymen.
But he has in him more Of Savonarola
than Of Luther-Luther, who WAS for him
the apotheosis Of all that is hateful in the
character: the self satisfied phiis-
tinism. sensuality. beer drinking, unre-
sponsiveness to all the finer issues of
existence, pious tactlessness and harsh
dogmatism. Nietzsche quite loses his
sense OF historic perspective when dealing
with the Reformation. 1t is the hyper
man who speaks. not the pene-
trating analyst OF soul states.
His truth is enclosed In a transcendental
Whether he had Cations sol
ence of eugenics in his mind when he
modelled his Zarathustra We need not
concern ourselves. His revaluation Of
moral values has not shaken morality to
It's centre. He challenged superficial
morality, but the ultimate
pillars Of faith still stand. He reminds
us Of William Blake when he writes: 'The
path to ones heaven ever leads through
The voluptuousness Of ones own hell"
And his psychical resemblance TO Pascal
Is striking. Both men were physically
their nervous systems. over
by the burdens they imposed
upon them, made their days and nights
1 continuous agony. The Eietzschian
may be negligible, but the
aspects Of this singularly
fascinating and contradictory
nature arAnot. His will to power in his
own case resolves itself into the will to