type of morality which is to be
overcome and which he calls the servile morality. He deliberately sets
in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls
noble virtues: meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage,
force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain
Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic. He
would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of
conduct to the Christian valuation.

In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of
all values. Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every
suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested
afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old. And with this
claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle
which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the
higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will
evolve a superior kind of men--"Over-men" or "Uebermenschen"--to whom,
therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for
subsequent conduct.

Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on
that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for
system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his
aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not
inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is
difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions
that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of
morality which he demands. So far as I can make out, there is only one
point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and
that point seems to cause him no little difficulty. No thinker can
afford to question the binding nature of the law of Truth, least of
all a thinker so obviously in earnest about his own prophetic message
as Nietzsche was. All his investigations presuppose the validity of
this law for his own thought; all his utterances imply an appeal to
it; and his influence depends on the confidence which others have in
his veracity. And on this one point only Nietzsche has to confess
himself a child of the older morality. "This book," he says in the
preface to one of the least paradoxical of his works, 'Dawn of Day,'
"This book ... implies a contradiction and is not afraid of it: in it
we break with the faith in morals--why? In obedi