he secret of life is to take every risk without fear; even the risk
of finding one's self an exile, with "no shrine, no grove, no oracle,
no heat of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming" in the land without
memories, without altars, without Thee!

NIETZSCHE

It is not the hour in which to say much about Nietzsche. The
dissentient voices are silent. The crowd has stopped howling. But a
worse thing is happening to him, the thing of all others he dreaded
most;--he is becoming "accepted"--The preachers are quoting him
and the theologians are explaining him.

What he would himself pray for now are Enemies--fierce
irreconcilable Enemies--but our age cannot produce such. It can
only produce sneering disparagement; or frightened conventional
approbation.

What one would like to say, at this particular juncture, is that
_here,_ or again _there,_ this deadly antagonist of God missed his
aim. But who can say that? He aimed too surely. No, he did not miss
his aim. He smote whom he went out to smite. But one thing he
could not smite; he could neither smite it, or unmask it, or
"transvalue" it. I mean the Earth itself--the great, shrewd, wise,
all-enduring Mother of us all--who knows so much, and remains so
silent!

And sometimes one feels, walking some country road, with the
smell of upturned sods and heavy leaf-mould in one's nostrils, that
even Lucifer himself is not as deep or strong or wise as is patient
furrowed earth and her blundering children. A rough earth-hint, a
Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric
humour;--and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb
and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense,
its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction";
tumbles us over in the mud--for all our "aloofness"--and roars over
us, like a romping bull-calf!

The antidote to Nietzsche is not to be found in the company of the
Saints. He was too much of a Saint himself for that. It is to be found
in the company of Shakespearean clodhoppers, and Rabelaisian
topers, and Cervantian serving-wenches. In fact, it is to be found, as
with the antidotes for other noble excesses, in burying your face in
rough moist earth; and grubbing for pig-nuts under the beech-trees.
A summer's day in the woods with Audrey will put "Fatality" into its
place and remove "the Recurrence of all things" to a very modest
remoteness. And this is not a relinquishing of the secret of