aneanise into "sun-burnt mirth" the souls of the northern
nations, Nietzsche was still at heart an ingrained hyperborean, still at
heart a splendid and savage Goth.
As in every other instance, we may take it for granted that any
popular idea which runs the gamut of the idealistic lecture-halls and
pulpits of a modern democracy is false through and through. Among
such false ideas is the almost universal one that what is called the
decadence of a nation is a sign of something regrettable and
deplorable. On the contrary, it is a sign of something admirable and
excellent. Such "weakness," in a deeper than a popular sense, is
"strength"; such decadence is simply wisdom.
The new cult of the "will to power" which Nietzsche originated is
nothing more than the old demiurgic life-illusion breaking loose
again, as it broke loose in the grave ecstasies of the early Christians
and in the Lutheran reformation. Nietzsche rent and tore at the
morality of Christendom, but he did so with the full intention of
substituting a morality of his own. One illusion for another illusion.
A Roland for an Oliver!
Nietzsche praised with desperate laudation a classical equanimity
which he was never able to reach. He would have us love fate and
laugh and dance; but there were drops of scorching tears upon the
page of his prophecy and the motif of his challenge was the terrible
gravity of his own nature; though the conclusion of his seriousness
was that we must renounce all seriousness. It is Nietzsche himself
who teaches us that in estimating the value of a philosopher we have
to consider the psychology of the motive-force which drove him.
The motive-force that drove Nietzsche was the old savage
life-instinct, penetrated with illusion through and through, and praise as
he might the classical urbanity, no temper that has ever existed was
less urbane than his own.
The history of the human race upon this planet may be regarded--in
so far as its spiritual eruptions are concerned--as the pressure
upwards, from the abysmal depths, of one scoriae tempest after
another, rending and tearing their way from the dark centre fires
where Demogorgon turns himself over in his sleep, and becoming as
soon as they reach the surface and harden into rock, the great
monumental systems of human thought, the huge fetters of our
imaginations. The central life-fire which thus forces its path at
cataclysmic intervals to the devastated surface is certainly no
illusio
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