power. When, for example, the vulgar mob has appropriated or adapted to its needs some religious idea, has defended it stubbornly and dragged it along for centuries, then the originator of that idea is called great. There is the testimony of thousands of years for it, we are told. But—this is Nietzsche's and Kierkegaard's idea—the noblest and highest does not affect the masses at all, either at the moment or later. Therefore the historical success of a religion, its toughness and persistence, witness against its founder's greatness rather than for it.

When an instance is required of one of the few enterprises in history that have been completely successful, the Reformation is commonly chosen. Against the significance of this success Nietzsche does not urge the facts usually quoted: its early secularisation by Luther; his compromises with those in power; the interest of princes in emancipating themselves from the mastery of the Church and laying hands on its estates, while at the same time securing a submissive and dependent clergy instead of one independent of the State. He sees the chief cause of the success of the Reformation in the uncultured state of the nations of northern Europe. Many attempts at founding new Greek religions came to naught in antiquity. Although men like Pythagoras, Plato, perhaps Empedocles, had qualifications as founders of religions, the individuals they had to deal with were far too diversified in their nature to be helped by a common doctrine of faith and hope. In contrast with this, the success of Luther's Reformation in the North was an indication that northern culture was behind that of southern Europe. The people either blindly obeyed a watchword from above, like a flock of sheep; or, where conversion was a matter of conscience, it revealed how little individuality there was among a population which was found to be so homogeneous in its spiritual needs. In the same way, too, the original conversion of pagan antiquity was only successful on account of the abundant intermixture of barbarian with Roman blood which had taken place. The new doctrine was forced upon the masters of the world by barbarians and slaves.

The reader now has examples of the arguments Nietzsche employs in support of his proposition that history is not so sound and strengthening an educational factor as is thought: only he who has learnt to know life and is equipped for action has use for history and is capable of applying it; others are oppressed by it and rendered unproductive by being made to feel themselves late-comers, or are induced to worship success in every field.

Nietzsche's contribution to this question is a plea against every sort of historical optimism; but he energetically repudiates the ordinary pessimism, which is the result of degenerate or enfeebled instincts—of decadence. He preaches with youthful enthusiasm the triumph of a tragic culture, introduced by an intrepid rising generation, in which the spirit of ancient Greece might be born again. He rejects the pessimism of Schopenhauer, for he already abhors all renunciation; but he seeks a pessimism of healthiness, one derived from strength, from exuberant power, and he believes he has found it in the Greeks. He has developed this view in the learned and profound work of his youth, The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism, in which he introduced two new terms, Apollonian and Dionysian. The two Greek deities of art, Apollo and Dionysus, denote the antithesis between plastic art and music. The former corresponds to dreaming, the latter to drunkenness. In dreams the forms of the gods first appeared to men; dreams are the world of beauteous appearance. If, on the other hand, we look down into man's lowest depths, below the spheres of thought and imagination, we come upon a world of terror and rapture, the realm of Dionysus. Above reign beauty, measure and proportion; but underneath the profusion of Nature surges freely in pleasure and pain. Regarded from Nietzsche's later standpoint, the deeper motive of this searching absorption in Hellenic antiquity becomes apparent. Even at this early stage he suspects, in what passes for morality, a disparaging principle directed against Nature; he looks for its essential antithesis, and finds it in the purely artistic principle, farthest removed from Christianity, which he calls Dionysian.

Our author's main psychological features are now clearly apparent. What kind of a nature is it that carries this savage hatred of philistinism even as far as to David Strauss? An artist's nature, obviously. What kind of a writer is it who warns us with such firm conviction against the dangers of historical culture? A philologist obviously, who has experienced them in himself, has felt himself threatened with becoming a mere aftermath and tempted to worship historical success. What kind of a nature is it that so passionately defines culture as the worship of genius? Certainly no Eckermann-nature, but an enthusiast, willing at the outset to obey where he cannot command, but quick to recognise his own masterful bias, and to see that humanity is far from having outgrown the ancient antithetical relation of commanding and obeying. The appearance of Napoleon is to him, as to many others, a proof of this; in the joy that thrilled thousands, when at last they saw one who knew how to command.

But in the sphere of ethics he is not disposed to preach obedience. On the contrary, constituted as he is, he sees the apathy and meanness of our modern morality in the fact that it still upholds obedience as the highest moral commandment, instead of the power of dictating to one's self one's own morality.

His military schooling and participation in the war of 1870-71 probably led to his discovery of a hard and manly quality in himself, and imbued him with an extreme abhorrence of all softness and effeminacy. He turned aside with disgust from the morality of pity in Schopenhauer's philosophy and from the romantic-catholic element in Wagner's music, to both of which he had previously paid homage. He saw that he had transformed both masters according to his own needs, and he understood quite well the instinct of self preservation that was here at work. The aspiring mind creates the helpers it requires. Thus he afterwards dedicated his book, Human, all-too-Human, which was published on Voltaire's centenary, to the "free spirits" among his contemporaries; his dreams created the associates that he had not yet found in the flesh.

The severe and painful illness, which began in his thirty-second year and long made him a recluse, detached him from all romanticism and freed his heart from all bonds of piety. It carried him far away from pessimism, in virtue of his proud thought that "a sufferer has no right to pessimism." This illness made a philosopher of him in a strict sense. His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: This thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This is regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?—Is not God refuted? But can we say as much of the devil?—Are we not deceived? and deceived deceivers, all of us?...

And then out of this long sickliness arises a passionate desire for health, the joy of the convalescent in life, in light, in warmth, in freedom and ease of mind, in the range and horizon of thought, in "visions of new dawns," in creative capacity, in poetical strength. And he enters upon the lofty self-confidence and ecstasy of a long uninterrupted production.

3.

It is neither possible nor necessary to review here the long series of his writings. In calling attention to an author who is still unread, one need only throw his most characteristic thoughts and expressions into relief, so that the reader with little trouble may form an idea of his way of thinking and quality of mind. The task is here rendered difficult by Nietzsche's thinking in aphorisms, and facilitated by his habit of emphasising every thought in such a way as to give it a startling appearance.

English utilitarianism has met with little