THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

334
THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
as no other modern thinker had done; 118 that "he introduced a value
hitherto practically unknown in the realms of ethics namely, aristocracy";
119 that he compelled an honest taking of thought about the ethical
implications of Darwinism; that he wrote the greatest prose poem in the
literature of his century; and (this above all) that he conceived of man
as something that man must surpass. He spoke with bitterness, but with
invaluable sincerity; and his thought went through the clouds and cob-
webs of the modern mind like cleansing lightning and a rushing wind.
The air of European philosophy is clearer and fresher now because
Nietzsche wrote. 120
X. FINALE
"I love him who willeth the creation of something beyond himself*
and then perisheth," said Zarathustra. 121
Undoubtedly Nietzsche's intensity of thought consumed him prematurely.
His battle against his time unbalanced his mind; "it has always
been found a terrible thing to war with the moral system of one's ago;
it will have its revenge . . . from within and from without" 122 Towards
the end Nietzsche's work grew in bitterness; he attacked persons as well
as ideas, Wagner, Christ, etc. "Growth in wisdom," he wrote, "may be
exactly measured by decrease in bitterness": 128 but he could not convince
his pen. Even his laughter became neurotic as his mind broke down;
nothing could better reveal the poison that was corroding him than the
reflection: "Perhaps I know best why man is the only animal that laughs:
he alone suffers so excruciatingly that he was compelled to invent laughter."
12* Disease and increasing blindness were the physiological side of
his breakdown. 125 He began to give way to paranoiac delusions of grandeur
and persecution; he sent one of his books to Tainc with a note assuring
the great critic that it was the most marvelous book ever written ;m and
he filled his last book, Ecce Homo, with such mad self-praise as wo have
seen. 127 Ecce homo! alas, we behold the man here only too well!
Perhaps a little more appreciation by others would have forestalled
this compensatory egotism, and given Nietzsche a bettor hold upon
perspective and sanity. But appreciation came too late. Taine sent him a
lls
Though of course the essentials of Nietzsche's ethic are to be found in Plato,,
Machiavelli, Hobbes, La Rochefoucauld, and even in the Vautrin of Bahac's ?r*
Coriot.
^Simrael.
^The extensive influence of Nietzsche on contemporary literature will need no
pointing out to those who are familiar with the writings or Artdbashef,
Przybyszewski, Hauptmann, Dehmel, Hamsun, and d'Annunzio.
m Z., 86. ""Ellis, 39^
""Quoted by Ellis, 80. W. P., i, 34,
""Of. the essay on Nietzsche in Gould's Biographical Clinic*
'""Figgis, 43. ""E. H., so; cf. Nordau, 465.