rnal
Recurrence of all things"--to take the most terrible--is clearly but
another instance of his intellectual Sadism.

The worst thing that could happen to those innumerable Victims of
Life, for whom he sought to kill his Pity, was that they should have
to go through the same punishment again--not once or twice, but for
an infinity of times--and it was just that that he, whose immense Pity
for them took so long a killing, suddenly felt must be what _had_ to
happen--had to happen for no other reason than that it was
_intolerable_ that it should happen. Again, we may note, it was not
"Truth" he sought, but ecstasy, and, in this case, the ecstasy of
"accepting" the very worst kind of issue he could possibly imagine.

The idea of the Superman, too, is an idea that could only have
entered the brain of one, pushed on to think, at the spear-head of his
own cruelty. It is a great and terrible idea, sublime and devastating,
this idea of the human race yielding place to _another race,_
stronger, wiser, fairer, sterner, gayer, and more godlike! Especially
noble and compelling is Nietzsche's constant insistence that the
moment has come for men to take their Destiny out of the blind
power of Evolution, and to guide it themselves, with a strong hand
and a clear will, towards a _definite goal._

The fact that this driving force, of cruelty to himself and, through
himself, to humanity, scourged him on to so formidable an
illumination of our path, is a proof how unwise it is to suppress any
grand perversion. Such motive-forces should be used, as Nietzsche
used his, for purposes of intellectual insight--not simply trampled
upon as "evil."

Whether our poor human race ever will surpass itself, as he demands,
and rise to something psychologically different, "may admit a wide
solution." It is not an unscientific idea. It is not an irreligious idea.
It has all the dreams of the Prophets behind it. But--who can tell? It is
quite as possible that the spirit of destruction in us will wantonly
ruin this great Chance as that we shall seize upon it. Man has many
other impulses besides the impulse of creation. Perhaps he will
never be seduced into even _desiring_ such a goal, far less "willing"
it over long spaces of time.

The curious "optimism" of Nietzsche, by means of which he sought
to force himself into a mood of such Dionysian ecstasy as to be able
not only to endure Fate, but to "love" it, is yet another example of
the subterranean