.

Quite apart from any elements of truth contained in Nietzsche's
ethics, the first reason for his popularity is, no doubt, the
perfection of his form and style. Nietzsche is one of the supreme
masters of language, in a literature which counts very few masters of
language, and the beauty of his style is transparent even in the
disguise of a foreign translation.

The second reason is that Nietzsche, who imagined that he was fighting
against the times, was in reality thinking with the times, and he has
met with a ready response, in the dominant instincts of the present
age, in the aggressive materialism, in the race for wealth and power.
The Supermen and the Super-races of to-day only too cordially accept a
philosophy which seems to justify extortion, aggression, and
oppression in the name of a supreme moral principle.

The third and most important reason, and the real secret of
Nietzsche's influence, is the fine quality of his moral personality.
However much we may be repelled by the thinker, we are attracted by
the magnetism of the man, by his noble courage, by his splendid
integrity, by his love of truth, his hatred of cant. Even though he
has himself misunderstood Christianity, he has done a great deal to
bring us back to the fundamental ideals of the Christian religion. He
has done a great deal to undermine that superficial and "rose-water"
view of Christianity current in official and academic Protestant
circles. He has done a great deal to convince us that whatever may be
the essence of Christianity, it has nothing in common with that silly
and pedantic game which, for half a century, has made Eternal Religion
depend on the conclusions of "Higher Criticism," and which has made
theology and philosophy the handmaidens of archaeology and philology.

Nietzsche is a formidable foe of Christianity, but he is a magnanimous
foe, who certainly brings us nearer to a comprehension of the inmost
meaning of the very doctrines he attacks. And it is quite possible
that the Christian champion of the future may incorporate Nietzsche in
his apologetics, even as St. Thomas Aquinas incorporated Aristotle,
even as Pascal incorporated Montaigne. It was in the fitness of things
that Nietzsche should be the descendant of a long line of Protestant
ministers. For, indeed, he is the last of the true German Protestants,
ever ready to protest and to defy and to challenge. He is the noblest
of modern German heretics.

II.--MONTAIGNE AND