Part 31 (2/2)

Those words made my blood tingle, they made me tremble. Alone, miserable, helpless--here was a voice at last, a friend! I dropped the book and I went to the library, and I was back with ”Also sprach Zarathustra” in an hour.

I have been reading it for two days--reading it in a state of excitement, forgetting everything. Here is a man!--Here is a man! The first night that I read it I kicked my heels together and laughed aloud in glee, like a child. _Oh_, it was so fine! And to find things like this already written, and in the world! Great heavens, it was like finding a gold mine underneath my feet; and I have forgotten all my troubles again, forgotten everything! I have found a man who understands me, a man to be my friend!

I do not know what the name Friedrich Nietzsche conveys to the average cultured American. I can only judge by my own case--I have kept pace with our literary movements and I have read the standard journals and reviews; but I have never come upon even a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche, except as a byword and a jest.

I had rather live my own life than any other man's life. My own vision is my home. But every great man's inspiration is a challenge, and until you have mastered it you can not go on.

I speak not of poets, nor of philosophers, but of religious teachers, of prophets; and I speak but my opinion--let every man form his own. I say that I have read all those that men honor, and that a greater prophet than this man has not come upon the earth in centuries. I think of Emerson and Carlyle as the religious teachers, the prophets, of this time; and beside this mighty spirit Emerson is a child and Carlyle a man without a faith or an idea. I call him the John Baptist of the new Dispensation, the first high priest of the Religion of Evolution; and I bid the truth-seeker read well his Bible, for in it lies the future of mankind for ages upon ages to come.

Half that I love in my soul's life I owe to the prophet of Nazareth. The other half I owe,--not to Nietzsche, but to the new Dispensation of which he is a priest. Nietzsche will stand alone; but he is nevertheless the child of his age--he sings what thousands feel.

It is a disadvantage to be the first man. If you are the first man you see but half-truths and you hate your enemies. When you seek truth, truly, all systems and all faiths of men--they are beautiful to you--born of sorrow, and hallowed with love; but they will not satisfy you, and you put them by.

You do not let them influence you one way or the other; you can no more find truth while you are bound to them by hatred than while you are bound to them by love. There are dreary places in ”Also sprach Zarathustra,”

narrownesses and weaknesses too; they come whenever the writer is thinking of the evils of the hour, whenever he is gazing, not on the vision of his soul, but on the half-truths of the men about him.

When I speak of Christ let no man think of Christianity. I speak of a prince of the soul, the boldest, the freest, the n.o.blest of men that I know. With the thousand systems that mankind has made in his memory, I have simply nothing in any way to do.

To me all morality is one. Morality is hunger and thirst after righteousness. Morality is a quality of will. The differences that there are between Christ and Nietzsche are differences of the intellect--where no man is final.

The doctrine of each is a doctrine of sacrifice; with one it is a sacrifice of love, with the other it is a sacrifice of labor. For myself, I care not for the half-truths of any man. I said to my soul, ”Shall I cast out love for labor?” And my soul replied, ”For what wilt thou labor but love?”

Moral sublimity lies in the escape from self. The doctrine of Christ is a negation of life, that of Nietzsche an affirmation; it seems to me much easier to attain to sublimity with the former.

It is easier to die for righteousness than to live for it. If you are to die, you have but to fix your eyes upon your vision, and see that you do not take them away. But the man who will _live_ for righteousness--he must plant and reap, must gather fire-wood and establish a police-force; and to do these things n.o.bly is not easy; to do them sublimely seems hardly possible at all.

Twenty centuries ago the Jewish world was a little plain, and G.o.d a loving Father. He held you in his arms, he spoke to you in every dream, in every fantasy, in every accident. Life was very short--but a little trial--you had only to be patient, and nothing mattered. Society did not exist--only your neighbor existed. Knowledge did not exist, nor was it needed--the world was to end--perhaps to-night--and what difference made all the rest?

You took no heed for the morrow--for would not your Father send you bread?

You resisted not evil--for if you died, was not that all that you could ask?

It was with such a sweet and simple faith as this that the victory of Jesus Christ was won. These were his ideas, and as the soul was all-consuming with him, he lived by them and died by them, and stands as the symbol of faith.

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