GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

640 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
one's fitness for power except by exercising it. Hence,
if A and B both believe themselves to be superior men,
and if the circumstances are such that they cannot both
have power, the only way in which their superiority can
be made manifest is by fighting it out, in order to find
out which is the better man. It is not, therefore, surprising
to find the Nietzschean admiration for war echoed in
contemporary fascist literature. I cite one quotation,
where a hundred might be given. The following appeared
in 1937 in the Deutscht Wehr, the professional journal of
Hitler's Officer-Corps:
"A new world has come into being for which war is
frankly a postulate, the measure of all things, and in which
the soldier lays down the law and rules the roost. . . .
Every human and social activity is justified only when it
9 *
aids preparation for war.
The article from which the extract is taken proceeds to
point
out that war has now become a form of human
existence with the same rights as peace. -
Nietzscheanism and Christianity. I do not propose
to comment on these doctrines beyond drawing attention
to the width of the gulf which separates the scale of values
they imply, from the Christian ethic which has been accepted
in Europe, at le&st in theory, for nearly two thousand years.
Christianity believes in human equality; Nietzsche, that
some men are by nature superior to and more important
than others. Christianity holds with Kant that each human
soul is an end in itself and should be treated as such;
Nietzsche, that ordinary men are the raw material for the
manipulation of superior men. Christianity maintains that
all races are of equal worth in the sight of God; Nietzsche,
that some races are of greater worth than others, because
they possess superior survival value; Christianity prescribes
the attainment of virtue as the end of life; Nietzsche,
the exercise of power; Christianity preaches kindliness and
humility; Nietzsche, ruthlessness and pride; Christianity
exhorts us to meet evil not with a contrary evil, but with