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Summary and Conclusion This is no time for apologetics, or for pleading extenuating circumstances. Even if Nietzsche's doctrines have been presented in a form too undiluted to be inviting, it would scarcely mend matters, now, to beg pardon fur them; and I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. But these questions may be put without any fear of assuming a penitential attitude, and I do not hesitate to put them: Was the promise of Nietzsche's life fulfilled? Did the task he started out with, "the elevation of the type man," receive his best strength, his best endeavours, his sincerest application? However fundamentally we may However often we may think he has erred, it is nonsense any longer to speak of him as an anarchist, an advocate of brutality, a supporter of immorality in its worst modern sense, and a guardian saint of savage passions. If I have led any readers to suspect that he was all this, I can only entreat them to turn as soon as possible to the original works themselves, and there they will find that it was I who was wrong. Personally I believe, as Hippolyte Taine, Dr. George Brandes and Wagner believed, that Nietzsche's work is greater than his own or the next generation could ever suspect. Questions such as Art, the future of Science, and the future of Religion,which Nietzsche treats with his customary skill, I have been unable to find room for, in this work. But in each of these departments, I believe (and in this belief I am by no means alone) that Nietzsche's speculations may prove of the very highest value. Already in Biology there are signs that Nietz- For the present, though the outlook is brighter than it was, Nietzscheism that is to say: free-spiritedness, intellectual bravery; the ability to stand alone when every one else has his arm linked in something; the courage to face unpleasant, fatal, and disconcerting truths, has not much hope of very general acceptance, among those to whom it really ought to appeal. Calumny, which had a long start, has deafened many to the cause and will continue deafening a larger number still, until the truth is ultimately known. Yet it is to be hoped that readers may learn to be less satisfied than they have been heretofore with second-hand accounts of what Nietzsche stood for, and that very shortly everybody who is interested in the matter will be able to reply to the slanderer with facts culled from Nietzsche's life and works. "Mine enemies have grown strong," says Zara- "But like a wind I shall one day blow amidst them, and take away their breath with my spirit; thus my future willeth it. "Verily a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low lands; and his enemies and everything that spitteth and speweth he counselleth with such advice: Beware of spitting against the wind." 2 1 Z., pp. 95, 96. 2 Z., p. 116. |
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