He was right in thinking that it was a disaster, not only for themselves, but for the world at large, if men such as these were forced to abjure the right use of their higher faculties, and make themselves the servants of baser-born natures, stifling their aspirations, exhausting their powers in the pursuit of the dull ends of ordinary mankind. Some of his violent invective of the weak, and open admiration for the exercise of sheer brutal strength, may be partly excused as the expression of his disapproval of this cult of the average; the Durchschnitts-Leben of Eucken. The popular plea for "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," too often means that there is to be none of the noblest happiness for any at all; that the valleys are to be filled up with the débris of the mountain peaks. But the glory of the mountain is really for God and itself and for the valleys as well. On its summit appears, to the lowly dwellers beneath, the first glory of the morning, the last splendor of the day; and in its shadow they are protected from the storms which the great and noble are the first to endure. We must remember too that Nietzsche allowed of no eminence which was not founded on self-conquest. A Kempis himself has not taught us, more persistently and emphatically, that the nearest and the deadliest enemy of man is his own self. And one of the deepest reasons for his contempt of the ordinary man was that he thought him incapable of exercising the sternest self-discipline, or of enduring the keenest suffering. The average man flies from pain; his superman was to find in it the richest sources of life.

But here were the faults which vitiated his system, which made it seem a plea for the self-assertion of the few and the strong at the cost of the many and the weak.

First, much as he endeavored to dissociate himself from Darwin, the doctrine of physical evolution obsessed him, and he imported it, to an extent he himself never conceived, into his own more spiritual philosophy. He saw that the ways of Nature were ruthless and unsparing; that the Raub-Thier, the beast of prey, was a necessary element in her constitution. The Raub-Thier has no altruistic considerations, and we hardly conceive of an orderly universe in which the owl should give himself up to the service of the mouse, or the lion lay down his life for the lamb. But the owl and the mouse, the lion and the lamb, at least in these respects, are part of the

material and not of the spiritual universe; they partake of those goods which are lessened by division; the advantage of the one is, individually, positively, antagonistic to that of the other; the good of the whole is advanced by the suffering of the part.

This is the scheme of physical nature which Nietzsche thoughtlessly transferred to a different order, in which the advance of the one is not dependent on the defeat of the other. A spiritual Raub- Thier is as monstrous and absurd a conception as would be that of an angelic vampire. We do not want to consume the spiritual essence of our neighbor in order to grow stronger ourselves; if we gain anything from him it is in so far as, through him, we partake more fully of an infinite and inexhaustible beyond.

Furthermore, Nietzsche ascribed the temperament of the Raub- Thier just to those who are furthest removed from it. We will not pretend to think that man has nothing in common with the beast of prey, nor even that he should have nothing in common with it. But it is precisely in his average actions, in his life as one of a people or crowd, that this element is predominant and conspicuous. A populace or a mob is, in humanity, what most resembles the brute creation, just because it is irrational and impersonal; while the nobler the personality, the further is it removed from the nature of the beast. Hence Nietzsche made a colossal mistake in likening his superman to the Raub- Thier; for the very nobility of his aims would raise him above the field of vulgar, material competition.

And the second great defect of his doctrine concerning the few and the many, or the superman and the average man, is that, by thus cutting off the exceptional individual from all relation to a greater world without, he makes it impossible to find for him any substantial and independent justification. That such individuals have a right and a justification we would most firmly maintain, but it cannot be found save in something which is greater than themselves, though immanent to them, just as it is also greater than, though also immanent in, the crowd beneath. The superman must, in fact, be judged in his relations to humanity by that which is greatest in them both, though also surpassing either; no relative standard of rights can be based on qualities which are present in one man

and wholly lacking in the rest. The conception of Nietzsche's superman needs for its complement the conception of Eucken's Geistes-Leben (Spirit-life); or else we merely substitute for the fallacies of altruism those of egoism, and for the tyranny of the many, the tyranny of the few. Man and superman must converge in something greater; must meet in those interests which admit of no rivalry, because they are infinite and eternal.

II.

PARASITISM.

One of the chief characteristics of the superman was selfassertion or independence; this independence was developed into a system of absolute isolation, an isolation in which Zarathoustra and the superman shared the fate of Nietzsche himself. They went amongst men to give of their superabundance, but to receive nothing in return; they went back into solitude, having gained nothing but an added contempt for mankind.

As I have already said, I believe that Nietzsche was more uniform and continuous in his development than is generally supposed. Already, in his earliest works, we have some hints of the superman, and abundant hints of this characteristic of self-assertion. In the treatise on Schopenhauer are already undeniable traces of his fundamental disagreement with that philosopher on this very point. For the "resignation" of Schopenhauer was totally opposed to the self-assertion of Nietzsche. Schopenhauer was inspired by the sorrows of life to utter an emphatic No to individual existence; this was his method of conquering pain, a method of denial. Nietzsche, recognizing also, as indeed his own circumstances forced him to recognize, the miseries of earthly existence, passed eventually to the very opposite extreme in his practical solution; pain was to be conquered, not by denial, but by a more vigorous affirmation of life in the very face of it; an affirmation which should transform it from the destroyer to the fulfiller of life, one of its richest and most fruitful elements. This is indeed the prevalent note of Nietzsche's philosophy, for which many sins and errors should be forgiven him. If the superman was to assert himself at the expense of others, he was to do so far more at his own cost, by the steady, persistent conquest of all moods of cowardice

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age

and weakness. He was to welcome pain and ennui and old itself. "Selbst die Langeweile "; even tedium or ennui," says Nietzsche, must be surmounted in the ever onward life of the soul.

"Selbst die Langeweile,"

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even ennui"; those who have experience will appreciate the value of the particle, as Nietzsche well shows that he himself appreciated it. He had known that most deadly of battles, the wrestle with his own tired, weary self; that struggle to be alive in mind and heart, when even the wish seems to be sealed in apathy.

Too dear the purchase one pays for life

In such a heart-wasting hour of strife.*

That hour when life seems not even worth fighting for.

Old age, too, not the old age that must inevitably, sooner or later, arrive, with its white hair and its furrowed countenance, but the old age of tired mind and stiffened heart, was to be overcome by the superman.

"Wie alt ich bin! Wie jung ich kann noch werden!" says Nietzsche in more than one of his letters. "How old I am! How young I may yet become!"

Like the pain that was to find its end and its issue in joy, So was age to hand over its treasures of experience to a renewed youth; its gains preserved, its losses overcome.

"Profound is the sorrow of the world, but its joy is still deeper. Sorrow says: 'Pass on and end,' but joy demands an eternity-a profound eternity." †

We are meeting, in this ideal of humanity, the ideal of art with which we have already made acquaintance.‡ Nietzsche's aim in both was the full, the self-assertive, the strong, the militant, the creative type, as against that which is needy, dependent, delicate, plaintive, parasitic. The superman is to give of his superabundance, to pour forth on others the overflow of his own riches. It is an absurdity for the needy man to bestow alms, he has not the wherewithal; he will part only with his own refuse and disease.

"Wish nothing beyond your strength," says Zarathoustra; a sentence which reminds us of Marcus Aurelius, and his "Do nothing against thy own will." The supreme enemy of the Vid. January number.

*Peer Gynt. Ibsen.

Zarathoustra.

superman is the parasite, a being exactly opposite in its characteristics.

"The most loathsome beast that I have found amongst men," says Zarathustra, "is that which I have named parasite; it loves not, but would live on love."

"In the spot where the strong are weak, where the noble are over tender, there the parasite builds its horrid nest; dwelling in the sick corners of the great man . . . and it is just the highest species which harbors the largest number of parasites."

In the Genealogie der Moral many pages are consecrated to the same theme. "The sick," he says, "are the greatest danger of the strong"; and he develops the evil of contagion, the weakening effect on the best and highest of continually sinking to the lower level. We know already how he applied his rules to himself, and how he shrank from pity in his own sufferings.

Let philanthropists cry out as they may, we cannot seriously deny the existence of the evil of which Nietzsche speaks. If there have been times when the strong protected themselves at the expense of the weak, there is perhaps somewhat a reversal of the order at present. Do we not often see the physical health of an entire family deteriorating under the influence and demands of one sick member? And, in the intellectual and moral order, does not the same thing happen more frequently, and with still more deadening results? Well enough, did the weak at least profit by the strong, did they gain what the others lost. But too often there is no such result. The true parasite possesses the secret of exhausting ten vigorous natures without growing stronger himself.

Let us not leave this matter open to misapprehension. There are those who are sick and suffering, in body or soul, but who are not, for this, to be termed parasites. Like the old Cumberland beggar of Wordsworth, they are a blessing to the rest of the world. The strength expended on them adds to their own, and they make a return, though in a different kind.

But in these days, when we call our friend "strong and healthy" in order to insult him, there is a form of weakness which desires to be weak; which uses up the strength of others to realize all the details of its own misery. Disease has a life