ABSTRACT
I WHATEVER the medical aspects of Nietzsche’s mental breakdown, there can be no doubt that the catastrophe itself was hastened by the conflicts of his inner life, which in the end became too involved for any normal solution. The tension of his basic duality-that of a highly religious temperament smarting under the weight of an anti-religious outlook-was itself enough to preclude the possibility of a balance, let alone that of an integration. Even his loftiest symbol, Zarathustra, strikes one as a paradox: a prophet in the old biblical manner, but on an anti-religious basis. Relying on a biological substitute for religion, Nietzsche makes his superman look with nostalgia even in the direction of the healthy ‘Promethean barbarian’, whose proximity to the ‘blond beast’ is beyond doubt. Nor is his doctrine of will to power, with all its ambiguous and contradictory facets, of much help to those who remain only on the surface of his philosophy. If the amount of physical strength and of the will to power is to be (as Nietzsche so often insists) the measure of one’s right to live and to rule, who is then going to prevent an aggressive barbarian-whether ‘Promethean’ or otherwise-from seizing power and installing himself as the ruling superman by means of subhuman methods? Recent history has abounded in such usurpers, and it will take one or two generations before we clear away the chaos wrought by them all over the world.
