"conscience" of Christianity working in him. In the
presence of such a mood, and, indeed, in the presence of nearly all
his great dramatic Passions, it is Nietzsche, and not his humorous
critic, who is "with Our Lord" in Gethsemane. One does not drink of
the cup of Fate "lovingly"--without bloody sweat!

The interesting thing to observe about Nietzsche's ideas is that the
wider they depart from what was essentially Christian in him, the
less convincing they grow. One cannot help feeling he recognised
this himself--and, infuriated by it, strode further and further into the
Jungle.

For instance, one cannot suppose that the cult of "the Blonde Beast,"
and the cult of Caesar Borgia, were anything but mad reprisals,
directed towards himself, in savage revenge; blind blows struck at
random against the lofty and penetrating spirituality in which he had
indulged when writing Zarathustra.

But there is a point here of some curious psychological interest, to
which we are attracted by a certain treacherous red glow upon his
words when he speaks of this sultry, crouching, spotted, tail-lashing
mood. Why is it precisely this Borgian type, this Renaissance type,
among the world's various Lust-Darlings that he chooses to select?

Why does he not oppose, to the Christian Ideal, _its true opposite_--the
naive, artless, faun-like, pagan "child of Nature," who has never
known "remorse"?

The answer is clear. He chooses the Borgian type--the type which is
_not_ free from "superstition," which is always wrestling with
"superstition"--the type that sprinkles holy water upon its
dagger--because such a type is the inevitable _product_ of the presence
among us of the Christian Ideal. The Christian Ideal has made a
certain complication of "wickedness" possible, which were
impossible without it.

If Nietzsche had not been obsessed by Christianity he would have
selected as his "Ideal Blond Beast" that perfectly naive, "unfallen"
man, of imperturbable nerves, of classic nerves, such as Life
abounded in _before Christ came._ He makes, indeed, a pathetic
struggle to idealize this type, rather than the "conscience-stricken"
Renaissance one. He lets his fingers stray more than once over the
red-stained limbs of real sun-burnt "Pompeian" heathenism. He
turns feverishly the wanton pages of Petronius to reach this
unsullied, "imperial" Animal. But he cannot reach him. He never
could reach him. The "consecrated" dagger of the Borgia gleams and
sc